Automatistes

History

Automatistes were a group of dissenting artists of Montreal, with the Quebec active between 1945 and 1954. The movement was founded in 1942 by the painter Paul-Emile Borduas. The Surrealism as well as the psychoanalysis were two currents of thought which inspired the automatists largely. Against the surrealist ones, " Automatistes" recommended an experimental intuitive approach nonrepresentative leading to an in-depth renewal of the artistic language. The first works resulting from these experiments were connected with the abstract Expressionnisme, in spite of the absence of bonds between the group montréalais and New Yorkean.

The movement gathered especially artists Plasticien S Marcel Barbeau, Roger Fauteux, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Gauvreau, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, and Marcelle Ferron as well as writers Claude Gauvreau and Therese Renaud, the dancers and choreographers Francoise Sullivan, Francoise Riopelle and Jeanne Renaud, the designer Madeleine Arbor and the photographer Maurice Perron. They were surrounded by young intellectuals, in particular the psychiatrist psychoanalyst, Bruno Cormier.

It is generally recognized that the exposure of forty-five gouaches of Paul-Emile Borduas, in the month of April 1942, the Hearth of the Hermitage, Montreal, was the starting point of the movement of Automatistes. Many enthusiastic painters united then with this last, adopting its ideas and its style, and carrying it to the head of what quickly became the movement automatist. Initially initiated in the medium of visual arts (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc), it extended quickly to the other artistic disciplines, in particular poetry, the dance and the theater. Their first public demonstration took place in March 1946 within the framework of an exposure organized in an unused shop of the street Amherst. Publication of the Libertarian proclamation " total Refusal " , on August 8th 1948, stigmatized their difference of the other Québécois modernistic esthetic movements at the same time as it involved their setting with the round of applause of the company.

It is the journalist and communicator, Tancrède Marcil Jr., which, the first, named the " group; Automatistes" in its criticism of their second exposure to Montreal (February 15th at March 1st, 1947). This article was published in the Latin Quarter, the studied newspaper of the Université of Montreal. This name had been inspired to him by the esthetic speech of the exhibitors themselves during varnishing, in particular that of its leader, Paul-Emile Borduas, and that of the poet Claude Gauvreau, who preached the recourse an automatic writing inspired of the surrealist practices.

Without being itself separate radically, Automatistes stopped their common activities in 1954, after the exposure " The matter chante". The departure for the foreigner of the majority of them, particularly that of Borduas for New York, in 1953, then Paris, in 1956, precipitated the effective dissolution of the group. However, Automatistes constantly maintained bonds between them beyond the time and the evolution of their respective esthetic research.

Total refusal

In 1948, Borduas and the automatists published a proclamation, the total Refus, one of the most influential and important documents of the Québécois history. Even if the group dispersed little time after the publication of proclamation, the movement continued its opening in the Québécois company and is regarded today as the element release of the Quiet revolution of the Années 1960.

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