Egregore: The Montréal Automatist Movement

Patricia Morley is a professor of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University, an associate fellow of the Simone de Beauvoir
Institute, and author of Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

The Montreal Surrealists, later known as the Automatists, were among the
first nonfigurative artists in Canada. The group included writers,
dancers, photographers, and designers as well as painters. They were
involved with the politics of art and with social change—witness their
manifesto Refus global. Marcel Barbeau offers the following vague
definition: “Automatism was simply a permission, an opening onto the
unconscious, that’s all. . . . You can’t enclose it in a precise
framework.”

Both the members and their works—written and visual—remain in
relative obscurity. Ray Ellenwood, professor of English at York
University and author of nine volumes of translations of French-Canadian
literature (including Refus global), sets out to correct this neglect.
His well-documented history is both general and individual. Numerous
illustrations include photographs of people, posters, news articles, and
cartoons as well as paintings. There are 11 color plates.

“Egregore,” an ancient alchemical term, means a group of humans
endowed with a personality different from that of the individuals
concerned. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Ellenwood’s
history, from 1940 to the mid-1950s, affords perceptive insights into
the intellectual and cultural history of Quebec.