Surrealist artists adopted the spiritualist technique of automatic writing just to tap into their subconscious

A closer look

Why let ghosts have all the fun when your own brain is chaotic enough? In the 1920s, Andre Breton and the Surrealists realized that mediums using 'automatic writing' to channel spirits were actually just bypassing their conscious filters. The artists stole the technique, furiously scribbling down unedited, grammarless nonsense in trances, not to contact the dead, but to create bizarre avant-garde poetry. It was basically structured daydreaming.