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André Masson and Joan Miró were amongst the
first artists to develop the idea of 'automatic drawing'.
Trying to put down lines intuitively, without thinking about
the forms they might take was, the surrealists believed, a
way of coming close to the impulses and thoughts that lay
at the core of the psyche. The technique had first been used
by the poets of the movement, who invented 'automatic writing',
allowing words to flow unbidden from the lower levels of the
mind and creating verbal images that they found all the more
compelling for being illogical.
With their sinuous lines and sculpted curves, the works in
this room evoke the tactile nature of desire; as if, in suggesting
the rounded contours of a lover's body, the artists were trying
to capture an imprinted memory of touch.
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Joan Miro, A Star Caresses the Breast of a
Negress, 1938, Tate © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2001
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