12/18/2016 Print artist page - Max Ernst

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Max Ernst
German Painter and Sculptor
Movements: Dada, Surrealism

Born: April 2, 1891 - Bruhl, Germany

Died: April 1, 1976 - Paris, France

QUOTES "Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it
"The role of the painter... is to project that must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation."
which sees itself in him."

Max Ernst

"Collage is the noble conquest of the Synopsis

irrational, the coupling of two realities,

irreconcilable in appearance, upon a German-born Max Ernst was a provocateur, a shocking and innovative artist who mined his
plane which apparently does not suit unconscious for dreamlike imagery that mocked social conventions. A soldier in World War I,
them." Ernst emerged deeply traumatized and highly critical of western culture. These charged
Max Ernst sentiments directly fed into his vision of the modern world as irrational, an idea that
becamethe basis of his artwork. Ernst's artistic vision, along with his humor and verve come
"He who speaks of collage speaks of the
through strongly in his Dada and Surrealists works; Ernst was a pioneer of both movements.
irrational."
Spending the majority of his life in France, during WWII Ernst was categorized as an "enemy
Max Ernst
alien"; the United States government af xed the same label when Ernst arrived as a refugee. In
later life, in addition to his proli c outpouring of paintings, sculpture, and works-on-paper, Ernst
"All good ideas arrive by chance."
devoted much of his time to playing and studying chess which he revered as an art form. His
Max Ernst
work with the unconscious, his social commentary, and broad experimentation in both subject
"Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is and technique remain in uential.
not there to be tasted."

Max Ernst Key Ideas

Max Ernst attacked the conventions and traditions of art, all the while possessing a
thorough knowledge of European art history. He questioned the sanctity of art by creating
non-representational works without clear narratives, by making sport of religious icons, and
by formulating new means of creating artworks to express the modern condition.

Ernst was profoundly interested in the art of the mentally ill as a means to access primal
emotion and unfettered creativity.

Ernst was one of the rst artists to apply Sigmund Freud's dream theories investigate his
deep psyche in order to explore the source of his own creativity. While turning inwards unto
himself, Ernst was also tapping into the universal unconscious with its common dream
imagery.

Interested in locating the origin of his own creativity, Ernst attempted to freely paint from his
inner psyche and in an attempt to reach a pre-verbal state of being. Doing so unleashed his
primal emotions and revealed his personal traumas, which then became the subject of his

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collages and paintings. This desire to paint from the sub-conscious, also known as
automatic painting was central to his Surrealist works and would later in uence the
Abstract Expressionists.

Biography

Childhood

Max Ernst was born into a middle-class Catholic family of nine children
in Bruhl, Germany, near Cologne. Ernst rst learned to paint from his
father, a strict disciplinarian who was deaf, and a teacher who held an
avid interest in academic art. A good deal of Ernst's work as an adult
sought to undermine authority including that of his father. Other than
this introduction to amateur painting at home, Ernst never received any
formal training in art: thus he was responsible for his own artistic
techniques. Ernst matriculated at the University of Bonn in 1914 to study
philosophy but soon abandoned it, later claiming that he avoided "any
studies which might degenerate into breadwinning." Instead, the artist preferred those areas of
study considered "futile by his professors - predominately painting...seditious philosophers,
and unorthodox poetry." At this time, Ernst became deeply interested in psychology and the art
of the mentally ill. When World War I broke out Ernst was conscripted into the German army
and served in an artillery division in which he directly experienced the drama and bloodshed of
trench warfare - he served on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. Ernst was one of multiple
artists who emerged from military service emotionally wounded and alienated from European
traditions and conventional values.

Early Training

Although primarily self-taught, Ernst was in uenced by the works of Vincent van Gogh and
August Macke, and the canvases of Giorgio de Chirico prompted his interest in dream imagery
and the fantastical. Ernst mined the experiences of his childhood and war to depict both
absurd and apocalyptic scenes. A subversive tendency remained strong in Ernst throughout
his career, as he literally turned the world upside down in many of his works. Returning to
Germany after armistice, Ernst along with the artist-poet Jean Arp helped form the Dada
group in Cologne; simultaneously he maintained close ties with the Parisian avant-garde. Ernst
began creating his rst collages in 1919, reworking mundane materials such as scienti c
manuals and illustrated catalogs from the turn-of-the-century to create new stunning,
fantastical images without set narratives. This irrational image-making allowed Ernst to make
the world of dreams, the subconscious, and the accidental all visual as he plumbed his own
psyche for inspiration and to confront his own trauma.

Ernst edited journals while in Cologne and helped stage a Dada exhibition in a public restroom
where visitors were greeted by a sweet young girl reciting obscene poetry. Also on view was a
sculpture by Ernst with an axe alongside it that the public was invited to use to attack and to
destroy the piece of art. This audience participatory event caused quite a scandal to bourgeois
sensibilities.

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Mature Period

In 1922, Ernst left his rst wife behind and moved to Paris, where
he would live and work until 1941 - when World War II made it
impossible to remain in Europe. During these decades, Surrealism
came to displace Dadaism with the publication of Andr Breton's
"First Surrealist Manifesto"(1924), and Ernst became one of the
movement's founding members. Ernst and his artist-colleagues
were discovering the possibilities of autonomism and dreams; in
fact, his artistic investigations were aided by hypnosis and
hallucinogenics. In 1925, in order to activate the ow of imagery
from his unconscious, Ernst began to experiment with frottage
(pencil rubbings of such things as wood grain, fabric, or leaves), a technique he in fact
developed, and decalcomania (the technique of transferring paint from one surface to another
by pressing the two surfaces together). His experiments and technical innovations led to
nished images, accidental patterns, and de nite textures which he would then incorporate
into his drawings and paintings. This emphasis on the contact between materials, as well as
transforming everyday materials in order to arrive at an image that signi ed some sort of
collective consciousness, would become central to Surrealism's concept of automatism.

Late Years and Death

By 1933, Hitler and the Nazi Party had seized control of Germany.
By the fall of 1937, Hitler had accumulated approximately sixteen-
thousand works of avant-garde art from Germany's national
museums, and shipped six hundred and fty works to Munich to
be for his infamous exhibition "Degenerate Kunst" (Degenerate
Art). It appears that Ernst had at least two paintings on display in
the exhibition, both of which have since disappeared, or most
likely were destroyed. Ernst ed from France with the Gestapo on
his heels after being interned three times as a German national. As a refugee in New York
where along with such important European avant-garde artists as Marcel Duchamp and Piet
Mondrian, he electri ed a generation of American artists. Ernst met Peggy Guggenheim, the
amboyant socialite, gallery owner, and patron of the arts, who was to become his third wife.
Guggenheim provided Ernst entry to New York's burgeoning art scene. Ernst's rejection of
traditional painting techniques, styles, and imagery (as symbolized by the classical style of his
father's work) captivated young American painters, who similarly sought to forge a fresh and
unorthodox approach to painting. He had a particularly strong effect on the direction of
Jackson Pollock's painting, who became interested in the collage aspects of Ernst's work, as
well as his tendency to use his art as an externalization of his internal state. The younger
artists were greatly interested in Ernst having captured the unconscious and the accidental in
his art making, and his great Surrealist experimentation with autonomism and automatic
writing. In 1942, Ernst experimented with "Oscillation" or painting by swinging a paint lled can
punctured multiple times with holes over the canvas; this especially impressed Pollock.

Divorcing Guggenheim, Ernst soon relocated to Sedona, Arizona with his fourth wife, the
American Surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning. Ernst and Tanning ultimately moved back to
France in 1953. In 1954, Ernst was awarded the main painting prize at the prestigious Venice
Biennale. In 1971, to honor the artist's 80th birthday, a major retrospective toured through
America and Europe. Ernst was active as an artist up until his death in Paris in 1976. He was
interred at Paris's famed Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

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Legacy

Max Ernst achieved a rare feat in that he established a glowing

reputation and critical following in three countries simultaneously
(Germany, France, and the United States) while still living. Although
Ernst is an artist who is better known by art historians and
academics than by the general public today, his in uence in shaping
the direction of mid-century American art is easily recognizable.
Through his association with Peggy Guggenheim, Ernst interacted
with the Abstract Expressionists directly, and via his son, Jimmy
Ernst, who became a well-known German/American Abstract
Expressionist painter after the war.

While based in Sedona, Ernst became attracted to Southwest Native American Navajo art as
artistic inspiration. The younger Abstract Expressionists, in particular Pollock, in turn became
fascinated with the art of sand painting, which are deeply tied to healing rituals and evocations
of the spiritual. Ernst remains a foundational gure for those artists deeply interested in
technique, psychology, and the desire to shock and confront social mores.

Important Art by Max Ernst

The below artworks are the most important by Max Ernst - that both overview the major
creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist.

Here Everything is Still Floating (1920)

Artwork description & Analysis: This composition made from unrelated cutout photographs
of sh, anatomical drawings, insects (turned over to suggest a sailing ship), and puffs of
clouds and smoke cunningly arranged demonstrates Ernst's unique collage aesthetic.
Through the medium, Ernst created a new world where randomness and illogic expressed the
insanity of WWI and threw bourgeois sensibilities into question. The artist appropriated these
images from scienti c manuals, anthropological journals, and common merchandising
catalogs dating from the turn-of-the-century. Ernst has managed to create a very delicate and
detailed work, small in format, which seduces the viewer into close looking, and which propels
the viewer to gauge the work's intentions. The title, Here Everything is Still Floating, does not
appear to connect with the image in any meaningful way, except that the objects appear
oating in the air. Despite the futile search for meaning, this whimsical work ultimately proves
enjoyable and satisfying. The artist was to later recall that, "Collage was seen as a kind of
crime, meaning one did violence to nature."
Cut-and-pasted printed paper and pencil on printed paper on cardstock - Museum of Modern
Art, New York

Celebes (1921)
Artwork description & Analysis: At center, a large round shape dominates the composition
that Ernst based upon a photograph of a Sudanese bin for storing corn which the artist has
re gured as an elephant-like mechanical being from the subconscious.The painting's title
comes from a childish and naughty German rhyme with that starts off, "The elephant from
Celebes has sticky, yellow bottom grease," a bawdy reference to those in the know. Ernst's
painting demonstrates his indebtedness to Freudian dream theory with its odd juxtapositions
of disparate objects. Despite this disparity - a headless/nude woman, the bits of machinery -
the painting holds together as a nished composition. Ernst's work elicits discomfort in the
not knowing of his intentions and also, in early twentieth century audiences, disgust because
of its irrelevant depiction of the human form (the headless nude) which is revered within art
making (since people are made in God's image). Through this work, Ernst questions which is
the "real" world - that of night-time and dreams - or that of the waking state.
Oil on canvas - Tate Gallery, London

Ubu Imperator (1923)

Artwork description & Analysis: This is a relatively small canvas in comparison to Ernst's
other works although it radiates a commanding presence beyond its scale. At center,
dominating the composition is a tower-like form with human arms extended and a head
constructed as an architectural form. The tower is balanced precariously as if a spinning top
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which has been halted. The stability of architecture versus the instability of the tower's base,
and its movement, places the object in internal con ict. Ernst has placed the body/building
within a bare desert, with just an abandoned scythe in the background, which would prove
futile in such a setting. The title, "Ubu Imperator," translates as the Commander, yet the central
gure lacks the stability and authority a leader usually commands in both art and life.
Oil on canvas - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

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Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924)

Artwork description & Analysis: A red wooden fence af xed to the painting's surface opens in
a welcoming manner and reveals what at rst seems to be an idyllic setting. Against a
pleasing background of a blue sky, Ernst has diligently rendered a scene of confusion and
terror. At top, a small gure strikes down on a buzzer as if to signal a warning. Our eye quickly
catches sight of a crazed female gure at left running in distress - painted in grisaille --
wielding a knife as if ghting off the nightingale. A second female, similarly painted in just grey
and white tones, collapses on the ground as if fainted. Ernst later provided two
autobiographical references for the nightingale: rst, was the death of his sister in 1897. The
second was a boyhood fevered hallucination in which the wood grain of a panel near his bed
took on "successively the aspect of an eye, a nose, a bird's head, a menacing nightingale, a
spinning top and so on." Ernst would often depict birds in his works, which he used as an
autobiographical symbol. Although Ernst painted from his own life and rendered personal
symbols, he successful conveys the terror of dreams that is universal.
Oil on wood with painted wood elements and frame - Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child Before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton,
Paul Eluard, and the Painter (1926)
Artwork description & Analysis: Here, portrayed as an earthy, frustrated woman, the Virgin
Mary sharply paddles her young son - the unruly baby Jesus - on his bottom which displays
red marks already left by her punishing hand. Watching through the background window and
serving as witnesses are Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and the painter himself; all three seem
untroubled by the scene. Ernst successfully upends both his own Catholic faith with its
devotion to Christ's mother Mary, while simultaneously debasing much of Western art history
with its proliferation of loving scenes between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Christ child,
and also, undercutting the secular, bourgeois sanctity of motherhood. Ernst's painting is
simultaneously blasphemous and sharply humorous. As expected, not everyone saw humor in
the theme and the work created considerable controversy as an attack on Christianity and
contemporary values.
Oil on canvas - Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Forest and Dove (1927)

Artwork description & Analysis: In this work, Ernst depicts a nocturnal scene of a forest of
bizarre, abstract, and threatening trees. The artist frequently rendered thick forests to recall his
own feelings and memories of "enchantment and terror" about the woods near his childhood
home in Germany. Within this thick grove is a child-like drawing of a bird to represent Ernst,
possibly in his post-war traumatic state. Forest and Dove exempli es Ernst's pioneering
'grattage' technique where he scraped paint across the canvas to reveal imprints of objects, a
techniquehe developed with the Spanish surrealist Joan Miro. Grattage produced a rough
texture that added another dimension to the canvas - the density of a forest was ampli ed. It
would be a mistake to overlook Ernst's German origins with its heritage of Romanticism, and
how this shaped his individual psyche. The German concept of Ahnung, or the sense of
foreboding, impending catastrophe pulsates in his apocalyptic paintings. Ernst was well-
versed in Wagnerian myths of the German forests as being mysterious and spellbinding; the
Surrealists later adopted forests and dark enclaves as a metaphor for the human imagination.
Oil on canvas - Tate Modern, London

The Fireside Angel (1937)

Artwork description & Analysis: This fantastical creature, with arms and legs extended,

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appears to be leaping with a garish, yet joyous, expression on its face. The gures and its
appendages are oddly colored and malformed. Further, its leg seems to be spawning another
being, as if a cancerous growth spreading. Fireside Angel is one of the rare works by Ernst that
was inspired directly by world political events. The artist was motivated to paint the work after
Franco's fascists defeated the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Ernst strove to create a
painting suggestive of the ensuing chaos he feared was spreading across Europe, and
emanating from his native Germany. Revisiting the benign and misleading title, it was Ernst's
play to attract viewers with pleasing words, and then shock them into questioning their own
beliefs by labeling monsters as angels.
Oil on canvas

Europe After the Rain II (1940-1942)

Artwork description & Analysis: In this other-worldly canvas, Ernst has painted an evocation
of a vast apocalypse. In the midst of the ruined land, a helmeted, bird-headed gure - perhaps
a soldier - threatens a female gure with his spear or ruined battle standard. It has been
suggested that the gures could be large garden statuary, or perhaps semi-mythical survivors
of a futuristic war. As mentioned previously, Ernst's use of the bird-human gure might be self-
referential.

Seen within the context of twentieth century European history, Europe after the Rain II bears
testimony to the insurmountable reign of warfare that devastated Europe up through the mid-
twentieth century. This work is unparalleled in Ernst's artistic interpretation of the Spanish Civil
War and the beginnings of World War II. To create the ruinous forms, the grattage technique
perfectly evokes the great destruction that Europe had suffered. The span of dates attributed
to the work suggests that Ernst began this piece in France and completed it in the United
States while the war continued on and the fate of Europe remained unknown.
Oil on canvas - Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut

The King Playing with the Queen (1944)

Artwork description & Analysis: Among the mediums in which Ernst excelled was sculpture,
such as in this prominent bronze. Similar to fellow Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, Ernst fancied
chess playing as an art form unto itself. Ernst would often title his works with irrational titles,
or tongue-in-cheek puns playing with words. Here, the enlarged king (most likely Ernst himself)
plays with his diminutive queen (possibly his wife Dorothea Tanning) who herself is somewhat
larger than the other pieces. The words "playing with" in the title might refer to sexual playing
and games between the newlyweds, as well as the establishing of domestic order of married
life.World War II was at its height in 1944 when Ernst along with Tanning spent the summer on
Long Island as the guest of gallery owner Julien Levy; there, the couple often played chess.
Ernst began a thorough examination into the intricacies of this game against the backdrop of
global warfare. Earlier, in 1929, Ernst rst modeled chess pieces that he turned into sculptures;
he designed and executed several complete chessboards as well. Ernst's turn to chess as an
artistic subject in the mid-1940s went beyond the technical merits of the game, instead
probing what he thought were the game's literary and magical associations.
Bronze - Museum of Modern Art, New York

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Related Art and Artists

Church at Auvers (1890)
Artist: Vincent van Gogh
Artwork description & Analysis: After Van Gogh left the asylum at Saint-Remy in May 1890 he
travelled north to Auvers, outside of Paris. Church at Auvers is one of the most well-known
images from the last few months of Van Gogh's life. Imbuing the landscape with movement
and emotion, he rendered the scene with a palette of vividly contrasting colors and
brushstrokes that lead the viewer through painting. Van Gogh distorted and attened out the
architecture of the church and depicted it caught within its own shadow - which re ects his
own complex relationship to spirituality and religion. Van Gogh conveys a sense that true
spirituality is found in nature, not in the buildings of man. The continued in uence of Japanese
woodblock printing is clear in the thick dark outlines and the at swaths of color of the roofs

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12/18/2016 Print artist page - Max Ernst
and landscape, while the visible brushstrokes of the Impressionists are elongated and
emphasized. The use of the acidic tones and the darkness of the church alludes to the
impending mental disquiet that would eventually erupt within Van Gogh and lead to his
suicide. This sense of instability plagued Van Gogh throughout his life, infusing his works with
a unique blend of charm and tension.
Oil on canvas - Musee d'Orsay, Paris

The Disquieting Muses (1916)

Artist: Giorgio De Chirico
Artwork description & Analysis: The muses are another recurring motif in de Chirico's
paintings. He believed they inspired the artist to see beyond mere appearances and look into
the metaphysical - the realm of memory, mythology and truth. This was originally painted
while he was living in Ferrara, around 1917; the city's Castello Estense can be seen in the
background. It would later become an inspiration for a Sylvia Plath poem of the same name.
Once again, de Chirico disregards the true scale of architecture, and seems to represent it
almost as a miniature model in which he can place the symbolic objects of an uncanny still
life. At least 18 copies of this painting exist, which were backdated by the artist to suggest that
he had painted them in the late 1910s, just like this picture. The practice of producing such
copies and backdating them was partly an attempt to pro t and, in part, a means of taking
revenge on the critics who attacked his later works.
Oil on canvas - Private collection

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, or The Large Glass (1915-
1923)
Artist: Marcel Duchamp
Artwork description & Analysis: The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, or The Large
Glass was partly inspired by author Raymond Roussel's use of homophones, words that
sound alike but have different meanings. Duchamp frequently resorted to puns and double-
meanings in his work.With The Large Glass, he sought to make an artwork that could be both
visually experienced and "read" as a text. After attending a performance of Roussel's
Impressions d'Afrique, Duchamp envisioned a sculptural assemblage as a stage of sorts.
Preliminary studies for this stage, which would have been over nine feet tall, included
depictions of an abstracted "bride" being attacked by machine-like gures in chaotic motion.
The constructed gadgetry featured between the two glass panels was also likely inspired by
Duchamp's study of mathematician Henri Poincare's physics theorems.
Mixed media - Philadelphia Museum of Art

Max Ernst and More at Online Auctions

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Edition-Originale ArtWise ArtWise DANTE'S
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Price Price Price Est
7 100 USD 350 USD 395 USD 1 500 USD

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