Surrealism in art, poetry, and literature uses numerous techniques and games to provide inspiration. Many of these are said to free imagination by producing a creative process free of conscious control. The importance of the unconscious as a source of inspiration is central to the nature of surrealism.
The Surrealist movement has been a fractious one since its inception. The value and role of the various techniques has been one of many subjects of disagreement. Some Surrealists consider automatism and games to be sources of inspiration only, while others consider them starting points for finished works. Others consider the items created through automatism to be finished works themselves, needing no further refinement.
Aerography
Aerography is a technique in which a 3-dimensional object is used as a stencil with spraypainting.
Automatism
Automatism was used in different ways for each art : Automatic drawing Automatic painting Automatic writing Automatic poetry is poetry written using the automatic method. It has probably been the chief surrealist method from the founding of surrealism to the present day. One of the oddest uses of automatic writing by a great writer was that of W. B. Yeats; his wife, a spiritualist, practised it, and Yeats put large chunks of it into his prose work, A Vision and much of his later poetry, but Yeats was not a surrealist. In French surrealism, André Breton and Philippe Soupault were often considered as the pioneers of this technique with their collection Les Champs magnétiques (1919), who claimed to be the first collection only written through the automatic method : but recent studies have proven the manuscripts showed many variants and corrections throughout the poems.
The Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal used the method of automatic text in his famous book I Served the King of England. One chapter in the book is written as a single sentence, and at the end of the book Hrabal endorses the use of automatic writing.
Bulletism
Bulletism is shooting ink at a blank piece of paper. The artist can then develop images based on what is seen.
Calligramme
A calligramme is a text or poem of a type developed by Guillaume Apollinaire in which the words or letters make up a shape, particularly a shape connected to the subject of the text or poem.
Collage
Collage is the assemblage of different forms creating a new whole. For example, an artistic collage work may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or hand-made papers, photographs, etc., glued to a solid support or canvas.
Coulage
A coulage is a kind of automatic or involuntary sculpture made by pouring a molten material (such as metal, wax, chocolate or white chocolate) into cold water. As the material cools it takes on what appears to be a random (or aleatoric) form, though the physical properties of the materials involved may lead to a conglomeration of discs or spheres. The artist may use a variety of techniques to affect the outcome.
This technique is also used in the divination process known as ceromancy.
Cubomania
Cubomania is a method of making collages in which a picture or image is cut into squares and the squares are then reassembled without regard for the image. The technique was first used by the Romanian surrealist Gherasim Luca.
Cut-up technique
Cut-up technique is a literary form or method in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text.
Decalcomania
Decalcomania is a process of spreading thick paint upon a canvas then—while it is still wet—covering it with further material such as paper or aluminium foil. This covering is then removed (again before the paint dries), and the resultant paint pattern becomes the basis of the finished painting. The technique was much employed by artists such as Max Ernst.
Dream résumé
The dream résumé takes the form of an employment résumé but chronicles its subject's achievements, employment, or the like, in dreams, rather than in waking life. Sometimes dream résumés contain the achievements of both, however.
Echo poem
An echo poem is a poem written using a technique invented by Aurélien Dauguet in 1972. The poem is composed by one or more persons, working together in a process as follows.
The first "stanza" of the poem is written on the left-hand column of a piece of paper divided into two columns. Then the "opposite", or 'echo', of the first stanza, in whatever sense is appropriate to the poem, is composed in the right-hand column of the page. The writing is done automatically and often the "opposite" stanza is composed of a phonetic correspondence to the first stanza.