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Max Ernst Max Ernst remains a potent and influential figure in the visual arts in the new century. What characterizes Ernst's art, above all, are abrupt changes of direction and a rigorously self-critical attitude. Through a constant reworking of his imagery and technique he expresses the desire to visualize the tumultuous events through which he lived during the first half of the 20 th century. Max Ernst not only influenced a generation of artists that incorporated some of the elements of his style, but also was able to come up with some new and refreshing techniques to his art.
Some of the techniques used by Ernst are frottage and grattan. Frottage involved placing paper over a surface and rubbing it with black lead; in grattan he applied layers of paint, the darkest last, and scraped it away to reveal the lighter paint. (Quinn, p. 118) He would apply countless layers of dark colors, then, to create the exceptional light in his paintings, he would scratch away the paint revealing the brilliant white of the canvas beneath. Rembrandt used a similar technique. Ernst developed these techniques in his visionary works, "Forests", "Cities", "Entire Cities" and his "Monument to the Birds." (Russel, p. 62) He sought to express his intense feelings about world events through his art. He captured the psychological dimensions of this period in images as intense and unforgettable as disturbing dream sequences. But his works were far from painted dreams.
Of one of his paintings, "Fireside Angel", Ernst wrote: "One painting I did after the defeat of the Republicans in Spain was 'Fireside Angel'. Now this was naturally an ironic title for a sort of ungainly beast that tramples down and destroys everything in its path. It was the impression I had at the time of what was likely to happen in the world, and I was right. " (Russel, p. 126) The series of visionary paintings, known as "Europe after the Rain", was produced between 1933 - 42. In them Ernst sought to make his thoughts visible. He used his own version of the technique of Declomania, developed by fellow surrealist painter Dominguez. This involved applying paper or glass to a painted surface and pulling it away. (Quinn, p. 136) Other surrealists would leave the spontaneous result untouched.
Ernst advanced the technique, and revealed hidden mutations of human and animal forms, jungles, cities and forests. The first picture in the "Europe after the Rain" series consists of a pilot's view of a wide land- and seascape from high in the stratosphere. The landscape is covered by gathering storm clouds -- a visual incarnation of the impending war, after the rise to power of Hitler in Germany. Ernst was a soldier in the First World War and had supported the Russian Revolution. He opposed the rise of fascism and protested against Stalin's Moscow Trials. He was chased from France with the Gestapo at his heels, after being interned in France as a German national.
All these experiences were translated into paintings reflecting the artist's sense that civilization had received a near fatal blow from Stalinism and fascism. The final version of the "Europe after the Rain" was created in 1942. It is unparalleled in its artistic portrayal of the most devastating attack on human culture in history. It is Ernst's vision of the near destruction of an ancient civilization.
Out of the terrifying landscape, life forms begin to emerge from rock and vegetation observing what has been done, or sit with numbed expression, unable to comprehend the new environment. These landscapes throughout the 1930 s and 1940 s came to represent his feelings on the fate of human progress. Ernst produced other paintings using the same technique that are among his most magnificent and disturbing. These are "The Robbing of the Bride", "Napoleon in the Wilderness", "The Antipope, " and "The Stolen Mirror. " (Hopkins, p. 177) As well as a painter, Ernst sculpted and had a talent for poetry. In his autobiographical diary "Tissue of Truth, Tissue of Lies", written in the third person, Ernst meticulously examined his own creativity. He reworked his diary until his death, seeking to extend consciousness into the regions of inspiration.
He once described his work as an attempt to conquer the last great myth of civilization, the myth surrounding the creative process. (Quinn, p. 159) Between 1921 and 1924 Ernst developed his collage technique in the direction of collage painting. In this context it is valuable to consider one of the most challenging paintings he produced, "Two Children Threatened by a Nightingale" -- valuable because in his more personal works the complex sinews of Ernst's creative process are more visible. Painted in 1924, it was the culmination of a period of Ernst's work. (Quinn, p. 170) He regarded this technique as his greatest contribution to surrealism. His aim was to transform painting into more than a visual experience. He wanted to reveal psychic tension, psychological drama, a disturbance of perception, the complex journey of childhood memories into maturity and the manner in which life shapes and changes these processes. Despite Ernst's tendency to view the images he produced as unspoilt creations of his individual unconscious, his work clearly bears the imprint as well of external events of often historic magnitude -- mediated through the conscious application of technique.
An examination of Ernst's rediscovery of frottage and its impact on the further development of surrealism illustrates this. Ernst's description of one of his frottage paintings, 'The Hundred Thousand Doves', provides a beautiful verbal and visual sensation of his feelings about freedom: "In a country the color of a pigeon's breast I acclaimed the flight of 1, 000, 000 doves. I saw them invade the forests, black with desire, and the walls and seas without end. I saw an ivy leaf float upon the ocean and I felt a very gentle earthquake.
I saw a pale, white dove, flower of the desert. She refused to understand" (Hopkins, p. 240). He reacted with hostility to anything that compromised his sense of independence in his art. It was because of this that Breton and Ernst retained a respect for one another, which lasted all their lives. Many of Ernst's artistic conceptions were a product of his close collaboration with Breton. Ernst took every opportunity in his own writings to acknowledge this.
Ernst explained his vision of the possibilities that surrealist concepts opened up for the future of human creativity. In a remarkable passage written in 1934, after the victory of Hitler in Germany, when he was deeply affected by the emergence of both Stalinism and fascism, he defined his attitude to art. "Every normal human being (and not merely the 'artist') has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious; it is merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures... of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light. " (Quinn, p. 212) This expresses Ernst's confidence that artistic creation is open to the whole of humanity. It was an important point in his development. Although it was under the influence of the surrealist movement that he drew such clear conclusions, Ernst had considered similar ideas throughout his life -- his study of art and human society at Cologne University, his study of the most progressive ideas on the unconscious mind, his shattering experiences in the First World War, his refusal to tie himself to restrictive artistic schools. It is this attitude that permeates his work and goes some way towards explaining his influence upon other artists and artistic movements.
Ernst was exiled in New York 1941, having been chased across Europe by the Gestapo. Before he escaped from the southern French port of Marseilles, he met with Andre Breton. They resolved differences that had resulted in Ernst and fellow artist Man Ray leaving the surrealist movement in 1938. Ernst had been interned in France and on his arrival in America was initially restricted to New York City. (Russel, p. 141) While there, Ernst held an exhibition at the Wakefield bookshop.
A group of young American artists were in attendance. He was displaying a new technique to them, which he described as "child's play." It consisted of a canister on a string with a whole punctured in the bottom. Paint was then poured in and it was set in motion above a canvas. One of the young artists was Jackson Pollock; Pollock transformed this technique into his "drip" paintings. (Russel, p. 153) Pollock's fascination with this technique later inspired Ernst to produce "Young Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly." The painting was initially called, "Abstract Art, Concrete Art." This unusual title anticipated a conflict that would emerge after the war between different artistic schools. (Russel, p. 154) It is not only an interest in his concept of freedom in creativity that attracted abstract artists to Ernst, nor his continual subversion of attempts to restrict artistic freedom whether by totalitarian states or restrictive artistic schools. Breton made a comment that sheds another light on this unusual attraction between artists of the "concrete" and abstract schools; he said that surrealist art, "lent the mask of the concrete to the abstract and vice versa. " (Hopkins, p. 273) Passing through an exhibition of Max Ernst's work one witnesses the unfolding of a social and psychological drama, the essential themes of which are bound to the events of the twentieth century. The one constant in Ernst remains his untarnished adherence to artistic independence and freedom of creativity.
The majority of his work retains such immediacy because the problems he grappled with have only grown in depth and complexity. His life casts an uncompromising shadow over the present crisis in the visual arts. Words Count: 1, 604. Bibliography: Hopkins, D. Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst: The Bride Shared. Clarendon Press, 1998.
Quinn, E. Max Ernst. New York: Harper Collins, 1999. Russel, J. Max Ernst. Life and Work.
London: Pluto Press, 1987.
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