….’seemingly strange situation of creating a work without having the perception of being its author. In this case, being dispossessed of agency and authorship becomes not an obstacle, but a condition for creation.

The intuitive idea most people have of artistic creation is that artists are able to turn their fantasies and ideas into concrete, perceptible objects by following a more or less elaborate technical process. Whether the artistic establishment will recognise the value of these objects is of course another matter. This is a very rational way of looking at the whole process, a perspective that has been largely predominant in the history of modern art. After all, acknowledging that a particular person is the ultimate ‘author’ of a work implies such a linear view of artistic creation. But the history of Western culture (not to mention those of other cultures) is full of moments in which this simple paradigm has been challenged, whether metaphorically or literally.’……

……’The creative techniques of automatism, based on spirit communication, were formalised by 19th-century spiritualism. Their use did not ensure artistic quality, but they could at least facilitate radical experimentation and innovation. This potential was seen and interpreted positively by early psychologists of the unconscious, such as Frederic WH Myers and Théodore Flournoy. It was the subliminal self that was speaking through the artist, not the spirits, and could express itself in ways that could lead to the development of real artistic genius. The same potential was perceived by the surrealists, who, as in the case of André Masson, were keen to experiment with automatic drawing and other similar techniques. The belief in the spirits had vanished; the new interpretive framework was now wholly secular and based on the insights of psychoanalysis, but the basic techniques were adopted from spiritualism.’…….

Read Marco Pasi’s article in Tate Etc. issue 37 : Summer 2016 here: The Hidden Hand