Max Ernst

Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet, considered one of the chief representatives of Dadaism and Surrealism.

Early life

Ernst was born in Brühl, Germany, near Cologne. In 1909, he enrolled in the University at Bonn to study philosophy but soon abandoned the courses. He began painting that year, but never received any formal artistic training. During World War I he served in the German army, which was a momentous interruption in his career as an artist. He stated in his autobiography, "Max Ernst died the 1st of August, 1914."

Dada and Surrealism

After the war, filled with new ideas, Ernst, Jean Arp and social activist Alfred Grünwald, formed the Cologne, Germany Dada group. In 1918 he married the art historian Luise Straus - a stormy relationship that would not last. The couple had a son who was born in 1920, the artist Jimmy Ernst. (Luise died in Auschwitz in 1944.) In 1919 Ernst visited Paul Klee and created paintings, block prints and collages, and experimented with mixed media.

In 1922, he joined fellow Dadaists André Breton, Gala, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard at the artistic community of Montparnasse. Constantly experimenting, in 1925 he invented a graphic art technique called frottage, which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images.

The next year he collaborated with Joan Miró on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered grattage in which he troweled pigment from his canvases. He also explored with the technique of decalcomania which involves pressing paint between two surfaces.

Ernst developed a fascination with birds that was prevalent in his work. His alter ego in paintings, which he called Loplop, was a bird. He suggested this alter-ego was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans. He said his sister was born soon after his bird died. Loplop often appeared in collages of other artists' work, such as Loplop presents André Breton. Ernst drew a great deal of controversy with his 1926 painting The Virgin Chastises the infant Jesus before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Painter. In 1927 he married Marie-Berthe Aurenche, and it is thought his relationship with her may have inspired the erotic subject matter of The Kiss and other works of this year. In 1930, he appeared in the film L'Âge d'or directed jointly by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. Ernst began to make sculpture in 1934, and spent time with Alberto Giacometti. In 1938, the American heiress and artistic patron Peggy Guggenheim acquired a number of Max Ernst's works which she displayed in her new museum in London.

World War II and after

In 1938 he was interned in Camp des Milles, near Aix-en-Provence, along with fellow surrealist, Hans Bellmer, who had recently emigrated to Paris on the outbreak of World War II. Thanks to the intercession of Paul Eluard, and other friends including the journalist Varian Fry he was discharged a few weeks later. Soon after the Nazi occupation of France, he was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo, but managed to escape and flee to America with the help of Guggenheim. He left behind his lover, Leonora Carrington, and she suffered a major mental breakdown. Ernst and Guggenheim arrived in the United States in 1941 and were married the following year. Along with other artists and friends (Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall) who had fled from the war and lived in New York City, Ernst helped inspire the development of Abstract expressionism.

His marriage to Guggenheim did not last, and in Beverly Hills, California in October 1946, in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Browner, he married Dorothea Tanning. The couple first made their home in Sedona, Arizona. In 1948 Ernst wrote the treatise Beyond Painting. As a result of the publicity, he began to achieve financial success.

In 1953 he and Tanning moved to a small town in the south of France where he continued to work. The City, and the Galeries Nationales du Grand-Palais in Paris published a complete catalogue of his works.

Ernst died on 1 April 1976, in Paris. He was interred there at the Père Lachaise Cemetery

Selected works

• And the butterflies began to sing (Et les Papillions se Mettent a Chanter) (1929)
• Aquis Submersus (1919)
• Capricorn (1948)
• Europe After the Rain (1940-1942)
• Forest and Dove (1927)
• La femme 100 têtes (The hundred-headed woman or The woman without a head) (1929)
• Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person (1919-1920)
• Loplop Introduces Loplop (1930)
• Lunar Asparagus (1935)
• Murdering Airplane (1920)
• Pietà or Revolution by Night (1923)
• The Elephant Celebes (1921)
• The Hat Makes the Man (1920)
• The Robing of the Bride (1940)
• The Wood (1927)
• Trophy, Hypertrophied (1919)
• Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924)
• Une Semaine de Bonté (1934)

Ernst in modern culture

• Many of Ernst's works from Une Semaine de Bonté are used in albums by American rock group The Mars Volta, and Barefoot In The Head, a collaboration between guitarist Thurston Moore and saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich of Borbetomagus, features a collage from this same book.
• The American rock group Mission of Burma titled two songs after the artist: "Max Ernst" was the b-side of their first 1978 single (now included on the CD of Signals, Calls and Marches), mentioning two of Ernst's paintings (The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus and Garden Airplane-Trap) and ending with the words "Dada dada dada ..." repeated many times and distorted via tape loop; their 2002 album OnOffOn features "Max Ernst's Dream".
• The writer J. G. Ballard makes numerous references to the art works of Max Ernst in his 1970 experimental novel The Atrocity Exhibition.

Legacy

Ernst's son Jimmy and his grandson Eric are both artists and writers. Jimmy Ernst died in 1984 and was a well known German/American abstract expressionist painter, who lived on the south shore of Long Island. His memoirs, A Not-So-Still Life, were published shortly before his death.

In 2005, "Max Ernst: A Retrospective" opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and included works such as Celebes (1921), Ubu Imperator (1923), and Fireside Angel (1937), which is one of the few definitively political pieces and is sub-titled The Triumph of Surrealism depicting a raging bird-like creature that symbolizes the wave of fascism that took over Europe. The exhibition also includes Ernst's works that experiment with free association writing and the techniques of frottage, created from a rubbing from a textured surface; grattage, involving scratching at the surface of a painting; and decalcomania, which involves altering a wet painting by pressing a second surface against it and taking it away.

References

Bibliography

• Werner Spies & Sabine Rewald (eds.), Max Ernst: A Retrospective. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art / New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Catalogue of exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: Max Ernst: a retrospective )
• John Russell. Max Ernst: life and work (New York, H.N. Abrams, 1967) OCLC 2034599
• Bodley Gallery (New York, N.Y.) Max Ernst : paintings, collages, drawings, sculpture : October 30-November 25, 1961 : Bodley Gallery, 223 East 60, New York (exhibition catalogue and commentary; published by the gallery, 1961) OCLC 54157692
• Max Ernst Books and Graphic Works. Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen, 1977.

External links

• Works in the National Galleries of Scotland

• Max-Ernst Museum Brühl
• Max Ernst collection The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
• Max Ernst works and biography Olga's Gallery
• Max Ernst works and biography Galerie Ludorff
• Max Ernst gallery Ten Dreams
• "Max Ernst, will-o'-the-wisp" Max Ernst explained to younger generation, Gilbert-Rts
• Max Ernst facts Artfacts.Net