Happenstance and the Surrealists

Surrealism is an art movement that began in the 1920s and is known for the creation of hybrids of words and images often generated through the experiences of happenstance, a circumstance especially due to chance. Tangible and intangible materials acquired in this way and used within the creative making process include 3-D objects, words/images found in printed material (i.e. collage) and even random thoughts (i.e. automatism writing and art making) are often juxtaposed and thrown into the mix.

The surrealists' use of ‘objective chance’ was driven by a belief in the existence of an unconscious state of mind which could only be accessed obliquely. The surrealists believed the key to finding universal truth was the unconscious mind as defined by the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1836-1939).

               …the store of feelings, urges, memories, and thoughts,
               outside a person’s conscious realisation.

Within my own work I most closely identify with the surrealists. I’m fascinated with creatively unlocking the unconscious and I have had a life-long appetite to collect objects as a result of happenstance.

As I recall, my first 3-D artwork created out of found objects was a sculpture made in Mr Plunkett’s eighth grade art class constructed out of rusty metal bits picked up along the nearby railway tracks. It wasn’t very big, stood about 18 inches high and was fixed to a wood base. It looked rather like a flat metal leaning tower with gap-toothed featured edges.

This set the precedence for decades of collecting random objects discovered by chance in the dirt, in the street, in second-hand shops or gifted to me (anonymous people have left things on my doorstep). I have been inspired to creatively rearrange these various serendipities transforming them into something new that sparks child-like curiosity inviting one to creatively explore – the more you look, the more you see.

A good example of this is Swell to Great that explores in a surrealistic manner the influence WW II had on the painters who formed the School of Fantastic Realism in Vienna.

Swell to Great © 2012 KEW
Artwork for Society for Art of Imagination’s 50 Anniversary Exhibition Phantesten Museum, Vienna, 2012 

Serendipitous words and images found in newspapers or magazines also become objects of creativity too such as this collage Can You See Me?

Can You See Me?  © 2011 KEW
October 2011 Exhibition Türe Sanat Galerisi, Konya Turkey

Images put onto a surface through an automatic process, without any preconceived notion is relished and according to the Metropolitan Museum in New York is a way of… unleashing the mind and challenging the rationalism of the modern world.

I have worked in this spontaneous unconscious way for many years creating drawings using white gel pen on black paper then manipulating the images on the computer in a more conscious way. I  have discussed this process in a previous blog Image (July 29, 2024).

For this article I thought I’d have a crack at unconscious automatic writing. I first tried doing it in one minute (too short), then two minutes and finally a five minute exercise. I then consciously attempted to craft the two minute piece – interesting.

Two Minute Automatic Writing Exercise © 2025 KEW

 

in the jungle

elephants waltz
within the tangled vines
managed by humans caught
in concrete nothingness

worms dig, moles dig
into the dry then damp
make tunnels, burrowing
underground, away from

white noise, loud bangs
tranquillity welcome


Thank you for reading, Kate J

Sources:
Cambridge Dictionary, 2025. Happenstance. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/happenstance#google_vignette Accessed 1 March.
Libquotes, 2025. Sigmund Freud – Unconscious Quotes. https://libquotes.com/sigmund-freud/quotes/unconscious Accessed 2 March.
Rank, M.R., 2024. How the surrealists used randomness as a catalyst for creative expression. https://theconversation.com/how-the-surrealists-used-randomness-as-a-catalyst-for-creative-expression-226908 Accessed 1 March 2025.
Watson, K., 2020. Surrealism, Chance and the Extended Mind. Chapter 10, pages 171 – 188 Distributed Cognition in Victorian Culture and Modernism. https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/37693/chapter-abstract/332025472?redirectedFrom=fulltext Accessed 1 March 2025.
The Met, 2025. Surrealism Beyond Borders. https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/surrealism-beyond-borders/visiting-guide Accessed 1 March.
Study.com, 2025. Freud and the Unconscious Mind/Definition and Theory. https://study.com/learn/lesson/unconscious-mind-psychology.html#:~:text=Sigmund%20Freud%20believed%20that%20the,memories%20in%20the%20unconscious%20mind Accessed 3 March.

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Weird: The strange, unusual and surreal

There’s a lot of weirdness that has shaped my life, ultimately influencing the creative work I produce: Dad constructing non-conventional furniture, Psychology Today and National Geographic magazines and last but not least the Surrealists.

I have written about my father before. My blog Luggage had a photo of him strapping a pile of furniture four feet high onto the roof of the blue Buick during our family vacation. This in and of itself was weird and almost could have been likened to a mobile assemblage artwork. Much of the furniture that he brought home from that trip was eventually transformed. Wood was stripped, revarnished or painted and chairs were caned with loving hands.

About ten years later, Dad (a Presbyterian minister) went above and beyond, and decided to dismantle a church organ (not from our church) with all its bells and whistles and reassemble it in a spare bedroom in our house. My guess is he had caught wind of the instrument in need of a home through his professional connections.

Now this activity could have been deemed a bit weird, it was certainly unusual – none of my friends had a church organ in their bedrooms but it was ‘normal’ in our household and I revel in that memory.

With the leftover wooden pipes, he made two coffee tables. One of them graced our lounge where the latest issues of Psychology Today and National Geographic were carefully placed for leisurely light reading. Both of these publications I would regularly peruse. I found Jung’s philosophy to be particularly interesting and the photographs that appeared on the pages of both magazines were serious eye candy.

The creation of the pipe organ tables showed me how to use objects in a way not originally intended. Add this to an interest in unusual old objects (thanks to my parents), the inspirational imagery from the magazines as highlighted above along with an introduction to Jungian theory focusing on the unconscious, made for my own unconscious gravitational pull towards the Surrealists when I was doing my undergraduate study in Art.

We have André Breton and his colleagues (i.e. Dalí, Duchamp, Man Ray) to thank for the Surrealist movement established in the early 20th century. The Surrealists are known for their juxtaposition of diverse imagery, influenced by the unconscious often from dreams manifesting in various imaginative creative outputs including: paintings, sculpture using the found object (objet trouvé), collage, film and of course poetry.

Sarane Alexandrian writes:

the surrealists set out…to create new demands on reality…to liberate the workings of the subconscious, disrupting conscious thought….creat[ing] a new form of sensibility….it set poetry at the centre of everything, and used art to make poetry into something which could be seen and touched…

Michel mentions that if one takes surrealist imagery/poetry at face value, that the creative works appear to be weird and random. He also puts forward how these types of artworks resist simple meanings and concrete interpretations. The Surrealists he says:

confronted viewers and readers with bizarre imagery that avoided no fixed cultural meaning or else subverted established meanings….One might argue many don’t accept that life doesn’t make sense…

Thus, it seems that the Surrealists’ audience back in the day and perhaps today as well, had issues with the works because of their weirdness and non-depiction of a known reality - a fear of the weird, Fear of the Surreal, as Michel’s blog post title is called. I got lost in further reading about the Surrealists for this article, definite food for thought, however I became distracted as I began to reflect on my own work, my own weirdness and creative development.

Untitled (Alarm Clock Case) 1983

In my first drawing class at university I was making juxtaposed images such as a cigarette metamorphosing into a pencil. Later in my third year I used a box full of alarm clock cases found at a local thrift store as foundations to create a series of 15 artworks (see example above). These were to be a pivotal series. I continue to use clocks today in my work.

Insect Hotel (Grandfather Clock Case)Manchester Museum 2020

My later assemblage works purposefully make connections between different elements, like visual poetry. They often tell non-linear stories focusing on place and identity. In the case of the Insect Hotel, created during my Artist in Residence at Manchester Museum in 2020, I also incorporated poetry into the work as well and created a collection of insect themed poems.

Insect Hotel Detail Manchester Museum 2020

Often with surrealist art and my own assemblages because the viewer can’t read the works with immediate recognition other than a main object/s (i.e. clock shape) they will not take time to explore and discover the many layers of meaning and connections within them – this also goes for some types of poetry. It’s taking time with a creative piece. There’s no wrong or right way to read something no matter how weird, although one might think there is. Everything is open for interpretation and each viewer brings their personal experience when engaging.

Enough rambling - to finish off, I thought I’d have a go at creating more weirdness, surrendering to the unconscious through automatic writing, one of the Surrealists’ methods of creating poetry. I found this not as enjoyable and more difficult than other Surrealists’ methods I have experimented with (collage and blackout poetry). It was an interesting exercise and quicker to do than the other types. I set a timer for two minutes, with the first two, and three minutes for the last. Here are the results:

1)
what moon bright star
giraffe feet clumsy
sink into soil a sandpit
a dark hole swallow
whole and grains like
timer oh the flowers arched
droop stems petals are
gone as dust flies into the
wind my eyes pop out roll
along the hill on a journey beyond
the horizon

2)
homeward bound dogs run past
the prairie dogs on grass by
trees alone she stands among
men who circle the feet with
dogs barking cars racing down the
long straight road to nowhere
somewhere another she lights a
fire to keep warm opening a tin
of beans

3)
onto the shore seaweed slime
open eyes diamonds shine
red or white at night and day
squint moon squint
can you see through black abyss
the owl fluffs its wings
brown speckled feathers
one is lost floating free
to land in moss and fungi
ants crawl spiders weave
squirrels climb the cat stalks
rodents hide

Thank you for reading, 

Kate J

Sources
Alexandrian, S. 1989. Surrealist Art. 2nd Edition. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd Cambridge Dictionary, 2024
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/weird Accessed 14 April
Language is a virus, 2024. Automatic Writing.
https://www.languageisavirus.com/creative-writing-techniques/automatic-writing.php 
Accessed 14 April
Michel, L., 2023. Fear of the Surreal.
https://countercraft.substack.com/p/fear-of-the-surreal Accessed 15 April 2024

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The True Origin of Surrealism

When Steve asked me to submit a piece for the blog I was delighted...except when he informed me that the title was "Surrealism" (gulp...) So I put on my thinking cap..looked it up on Google... Interesting , it was a poet who coined the word..good start...something about 1920's..right...dreams, abstract visions ? Surely a piece from the late 1960's ? Delved into my archives, and found a poem that would fit the bill...about disco dancing, coloured lights, atmosphere, psychedelia ...getting warmer...satisfied. Anyway, having made my mind up I was discussing the event with Don, who asked in his dry humour " Surrealism? Who's he ?" Complete change of mind in an instant...enter "The True Origin of Surrealism"....

Sir Reyal Issim, knight of old
Was brave and strong, courageous and bold.
Rode to rescue maidens fair
(Especially if they had blonde hair!)

Brave Sir Issim dreamt of fame
Got wounded and now he's lame-
Fell heavily off his horse..
No pension those days, of course.

And so Sir Issim thought of a plan
To make himself a wealthy man.
Took up art with a brush
And finished his paintings in a rush

Distorted bodies, floating eyes,
Apples, vegetables and some meat pies !
Nobody could understand his work
They all thought him quite a birk!

So poor Sir Issim in his time
Never made a single dime.
His paintings lay lost and forlorn,
Till the 20th century dawn.

Found in an attic covered in dust-
Someone thought "Yes  really we must
Exhibit these for all to see
Come one and all, admission free ! "

Well they took the art world quite by storm.
These wondrous paintings once forlorn.
Worth a fortune now , you see.
Signed Sir Reyal Issim, 1543 !

Thanks for reading, Kathleen Curtiss

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Endless

didn't shatter but bounced twice across the tiles before rolling beneath the chair.  When she stooped to retrieve it she observed a hairline crack which passed through the cat's face and beneath the handle.  

"Pass it here, I'll throw it out."  He reached for the teacup with dirty fingers.

"Shut up, she'll hear you."  

She snatched the cup away from him, tucking it into her bag between the virgin novel and yesterday's knickers.  The rain drummed on the window behind them and the wind sang in the fireplace.  The smell of burnt apples billowed from the kitchen as the women reappeared, escorted by the aging spaniel, its ears brushing the parquet floor as its head drooped; a heavy bloom on a broken stem. 

"I'm all out of raspberry but there's plenty of pedals seem to be shrinking or my shoes are growing.  I'm fidgeting my feet up and down, trying to find the brake but each time I hit the accelerator instead and jolt forwards.  The steering wheel isn't responding, or it's over sensitive, and the slightest touch sends me veering into a wall.  There are cars ahead and I'm desperately stamping on the pedals, stamping and stamping.  One of these must be the brake, one of them must be familiar but you won't quite place him.  

"The Oneiroi."  He'll  say again.

"No, I can't."  You'll reply, not knowing why, but this will be the correct answer and the group will disperse.  

Taking advantage of the chance to explore, you'll head from the courtyard towards the oldest part of the castle.  The corridor will be stately and the carpets deep.  Light will filter down through blown glass windows, through dust which smells of old books and wax polish.  The door will be precisely large enough for a fully grown spaniel and set at head height in the wall.  A woman with ill-fitting shoes will instruct you in the art of wall-diving.  Pay particular attention to her directions.  She will only assist you if you first remember to give her a heavy bloom on a broken stem.

"I'm all out of raspberry but there's plenty of apricot."  

Placing an empty plate on the table, the woman straightened up and rubbed her back.  

"Good weather for ducks."

The dog sighed.

"Good weather for ducks."

The dog sighed.

"Good weather for ducks."

The dog smiled.

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