ABSTRACT
Pailthorpe placed much emphasis on the purely psychic and automatic nature of Surrealist art as well as its means of expressing the real process of thought. She always acknowledged Dadaism which she saw as the birth of Surrealism together with Andre Breton’s definition of it. In this lecture, Pailthorpe asserts her full understanding of the unconscious to her audience at the Vancouver Art Gallery and describes how her research with Mednikoff links to Surrealism due to their use of automatic art. She claims that Surrealism established a new conception of art which valued the “marvellous” and irrational thought and creation. She talks about how the Surrealists presented a visible manifestation of the unconscious through its automatic creativity.
