Max Ernst [antikvár]

There is little to be gained from looking for a style common to ail Surrealism; and the same holds good for Max Ernst's work. For in both cases it is the method which is crucial, not the style or the form. Max Ernst employs highly spécifié and identifiable techniques of manipulation and combination. Because his work is the resuit of conscious thought, and yet allows room for chance to operate, it possesses a whole variety of meanings. It addresses itself directly to the observer's powers of association. Max Ernst is often thought to be a painter of dreams, and of the depths of the uncon-scious, but this is not so. Against the back-ground of his knowledge of the mechanisms of dreams, wit and the subconscious, he pursues his creative game with historical associations, artistic allusions, psychological relationships, visions, materials and artistic techniques: he juxtaposes unrelated areas of civilization; or breathes fresh life into objects and structures by making them become alien to us, or negate their own function. And in these ways he creates works of art which, in spite of ail his doubts about the viability of art, do have a more than purely personal relevance. Max Ernst went to a university instead of an academy of art, and he is an intellectual artist. He makes use of the past, and hence his relationship with Mannerism and Romanti-cism is much closer than is the case with other modem artists; and he reacts strongly to the present, never trying to conceal his hatred of authoritarianism, war and the Church. Max Ernst has substituted complex technical opérations for the painter's creative process; he has substituted combination for 'inspiration'; he has expanded his repertoire of images to include trivial areas not considered worthy of art; he has revolted against normative artistic pretensions. But he has also turned his critical awareness in on itself, on to the artist and his art-making. For sixty years he has fashioned art out of the apparent négation of traditional concepts of art. Picasso has said that he does not seek but finds. Max Ernst would say the opposite. Ernst has no solutions to offer, only contradictions and tensions. This book sets out to cover each stage in the development of Max Ernst's work. It would be inappropriate in a study of this nature to engage in detailed analyses of individual works. But whenever his work seems to render it desirable, Max Ernst will be set briefly against the political and artistic background of which he himself has been so conscious an observer and so critical a judge.