The Position of Automatism in the Masterpieces of Some Western Contemporary Artists & Its Impact on Painting in Turkey

The social, political and economic situations in the 20th century, specially post-world war I & II, have led to the emergence of artist’s subjectivity and consequently, moving towards reconstruction with the aims of modernization, return to individualization and unification of his consciousness and unconsciousness. Automatism or ‘being automated in Art’ is applied to the unconsciousness behaviors and involuntary movements which develop through the artist’s production path. It is a method of creation through which the artist endeavors to prevent any kind of logical and control of his conscious mind over the movement of his hands and permit his semi- consciousness mind, lead the way to his artistic performance. The unconsciousness is the reality of our inner side and it is the unconsciousness which transforms the reality of the world outside. The human reality rests somewhere in the mind called ‘the unconsciousness’. At times, the artists create works of art relying upon the power of the unconsciousness mind, which is called ‘Automatism’. The idea of Automatism, which is in fact considered as one of the influential factors in the development of some important art movements of the 20th century such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, has been applied in different manners by different artists. This study bears an attempt to investigate the inner sources and the reasons for the particular behaviors and practices of artists as well as the different methods of applying the unconsciousness through Automatism in creating masterpieces. The survey indicates that Automatism have been employed in a different manner in each of the masterpieces presented. Here it is argued that for the artist, Automatism means trusting the unexpected events occurring while creating his works of art. At the same time, it means deciding upon the relation of the image to the existing order for creating a specific artwork where the element of ‘chance’ is also plays a part. Creation through the medium of Automatism is in fact an interpretation of the unconsciousness territory of the artist’s mind since the beginning of his life so far portrayed mystically and symbolically in the form of images or words. The aim of the present research is to explore the position of Automatism and its reflections in the artworks of Western and Turkish artists. Furthermore, the paper seeks to answer thse questions that as 1) What does the idea of automation in the creation of artwork mean? and 2) in which field of art the Western and Turkish artists has used the idea of automation? The study comes to this conclusion that in the works of the artists surveyed, automation means trusting the unexpected events occurring during the process of creating their works. Thus it falls out for some artists as the intrinsic heart beats and as dreams for others.  Due to the eternal recording of the inner voices of these artists in their unconscious memories, one has to heed to these inner voices while the take note of the harmony formed between their hands and their souls. We will show that every single western artist mentioned in this research has created a unique movement in the fields of designing, painting, photography and sculpturing under influence of Automatism while those Turkish artists who have been studied in this paper have presented their Automatism through their artworks in the field of design and painting.  The Automatism in the Turkish artists` paintings  has led to spontaneous thoughts containing dreams and unconscious imaginations (Islamic handwriting) which had long been suppressed However, creation through Automatism in the artworks of western artists is manifested in the shape of abstract forms, gigantesque brush strokes, convoluted lines or a canvas full of letters. This research has been conducted through descriptive-analytical approach using library materials as well as consulting the works of painting. The main body of the present study is the translation of English and Turkish texts and, according to the necessity of research, the aspect of neutrality has been preserved.