Abstract expressionism in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky. Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic, or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of André Masson, Max Ernst, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The newer research tends to put the exile-surrealist Wolfgang Paalen in the position of the artist and theoretician who fostered the theory of the viewer-dependent possibility space through his paintings and his magazine "DYN". Paalen considered ideas of quantum mechanics, as well as idiosyncratic interpretations of
The Ghost of a Flea the work is in relatively poor condition, partly due to the technique employed by Blake. Areas of the surface have cracked and dulled with age. Although Blake was singular in his ability to directly transcribe visions onto canvas or paper, a number of visual and literary sources can be detected in this work. The art historian Hope Werness suggested that "The Flea" may be inspired by a 1665 work by early microscopist Robert Hooke (1635–1703), whose "Micrographia" includes a drawing of a flea microscopically observed. Comparisons have been made to Henry Fuseli's monstrous imps, while the image of the flea