LaurieAnnie's photos with the keyword: Ernst

Max Ernst, German, 1891–1976 The Witch, 1941 Oil on canvas 24.5 x 19 cm (9 5/8 x 7 1/2 in.) frame: 33.4 × 28.2 × 3.5 cm (13 1/8 × 11 1/8 × 1 3/8 in.) Gift of Alfred H. Barr Jr., Class of 1922, and Mrs. Barr y1979-5 © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris Werner Spies; Sigrid Metken; et al., Max Ernst - Werke 1939- 1953 (Koln: DuMont, 1987): 45 cat. no. 2390 Handbook Entry A pivotal figure in the twentieth-century avant-garde, Max Ernst helped form the Cologne-based Dadaists in 1919. He moved to Paris in 1922 and became involved with France’s nascent Surreal­ist movement a few years later. Influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, Ernst prized the unconscious, the irrational, and the uncanny. Art, he believed, should serve as a repository for immaterial states of mind. The Surrealists projected many of their fantasies onto women, and Ernst was no exception. Painted the same year he fled Europe for New York seeking sanctuary from the Nazis, this painting depicts one of Ernst’s favorite subjects — the witch — whose powers of metamorphosis inspired both fear and fascination. In order to more faithfully channel the unconscious into art, the Surrealists embraced automatism, a technique intended to inhibit deliberation. The Witch, for instance, was made using decalcomania, a process whereby sheets of glass or paper are pressed into wet paint, resulting in unpredictable bubbles and rivulets. Signed, bottom right: max ernst/41; Signed, verso, top: max ernst; Gallery Label A pivotal figure of the twentieth-century avant-garde and a foundational artist of French Surrealism, Ernst was influenced by Sigmund Freud’s writings on the unconscious, the irrational, and the uncanny. Painted the same year he fled Europe for New York, seeking sanctuary from the Nazis, The Witch depicts one of Ernst’s favorite subjects, a fantastical figure whose powers of metamorphosis inspire both fear and fascination. To more faithfully channel the unconscious into art, Ernst embraced automatist techniques that incorporate elements created by chance and suspend the artist’s deliberation. The Witch, for instance, was made using decalcomania, a process whereby sheets of glass or paper are pressed into wet paint, resulting in unpredictable bubbles and rivulets that serve as the starting point for the final composition. Text from: artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/32398

Max Ernst, German, 1891–1976 The Witch, 1941 Oil on canvas 24.5 x 19 cm (9 5/8 x 7 1/2 in.) frame: 33.4 × 28.2 × 3.5 cm (13 1/8 × 11 1/8 × 1 3/8 in.) Gift of Alfred H. Barr Jr., Class of 1922, and Mrs. Barr y1979-5 © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris Werner Spies; Sigrid Metken; et al., Max Ernst - Werke 1939- 1953 (Koln: DuMont, 1987): 45 cat. no. 2390 Handbook Entry A pivotal figure in the twentieth-century avant-garde, Max Ernst helped form the Cologne-based Dadaists in 1919. He moved to Paris in 1922 and became involved with France’s nascent Surreal­ist movement a few years later. Influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, Ernst prized the unconscious, the irrational, and the uncanny. Art, he believed, should serve as a repository for immaterial states of mind. The Surrealists projected many of their fantasies onto women, and Ernst was no exception. Painted the same year he fled Europe for New York seeking sanctuary from the Nazis, this painting depicts one of Ernst’s favorite subjects — the witch — whose powers of metamorphosis inspired both fear and fascination. In order to more faithfully channel the unconscious into art, the Surrealists embraced automatism, a technique intended to inhibit deliberation. The Witch, for instance, was made using decalcomania, a process whereby sheets of glass or paper are pressed into wet paint, resulting in unpredictable bubbles and rivulets. Signed, bottom right: max ernst/41; Signed, verso, top: max ernst; Gallery Label A pivotal figure of the twentieth-century avant-garde and a foundational artist of French Surrealism, Ernst was influenced by Sigmund Freud’s writings on the unconscious, the irrational, and the uncanny. Painted the same year he fled Europe for New York, seeking sanctuary from the Nazis, The Witch depicts one of Ernst’s favorite subjects, a fantastical figure whose powers of metamorphosis inspire both fear and fascination. To more faithfully channel the unconscious into art, Ernst embraced automatist techniques that incorporate elements created by chance and suspend the artist’s deliberation. The Witch, for instance, was made using decalcomania, a process whereby sheets of glass or paper are pressed into wet paint, resulting in unpredictable bubbles and rivulets that serve as the starting point for the final composition. Text from: artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/32398

Max Ernst, German, 1891–1976 The Witch, 1941 Oil on canvas 24.5 x 19 cm (9 5/8 x 7 1/2 in.) frame: 33.4 × 28.2 × 3.5 cm (13 1/8 × 11 1/8 × 1 3/8 in.) Gift of Alfred H. Barr Jr., Class of 1922, and Mrs. Barr y1979-5 © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris Werner Spies; Sigrid Metken; et al., Max Ernst - Werke 1939- 1953 (Koln: DuMont, 1987): 45 cat. no. 2390 Handbook Entry A pivotal figure in the twentieth-century avant-garde, Max Ernst helped form the Cologne-based Dadaists in 1919. He moved to Paris in 1922 and became involved with France’s nascent Surreal­ist movement a few years later. Influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, Ernst prized the unconscious, the irrational, and the uncanny. Art, he believed, should serve as a repository for immaterial states of mind. The Surrealists projected many of their fantasies onto women, and Ernst was no exception. Painted the same year he fled Europe for New York seeking sanctuary from the Nazis, this painting depicts one of Ernst’s favorite subjects — the witch — whose powers of metamorphosis inspired both fear and fascination. In order to more faithfully channel the unconscious into art, the Surrealists embraced automatism, a technique intended to inhibit deliberation. The Witch, for instance, was made using decalcomania, a process whereby sheets of glass or paper are pressed into wet paint, resulting in unpredictable bubbles and rivulets. Signed, bottom right: max ernst/41; Signed, verso, top: max ernst; Gallery Label A pivotal figure of the twentieth-century avant-garde and a foundational artist of French Surrealism, Ernst was influenced by Sigmund Freud’s writings on the unconscious, the irrational, and the uncanny. Painted the same year he fled Europe for New York, seeking sanctuary from the Nazis, The Witch depicts one of Ernst’s favorite subjects, a fantastical figure whose powers of metamorphosis inspire both fear and fascination. To more faithfully channel the unconscious into art, Ernst embraced automatist techniques that incorporate elements created by chance and suspend the artist’s deliberation. The Witch, for instance, was made using decalcomania, a process whereby sheets of glass or paper are pressed into wet paint, resulting in unpredictable bubbles and rivulets that serve as the starting point for the final composition. Text from: artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/32398

The Barbarians, 1937 Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891–1976) Oil on cardboard; 9 1/2 x 13 in. (24 x 33 cm) Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998 (1999.363.21) Between 1919 and 1920, Max Ernst was one of the most enthusiastic leaders of the Dada movement in Cologne. Before long, he attracted the attention of André Breton, who in 1921 organized an exhibition in Paris of Ernst's collages. By 1922, Ernst had moved to the French capital, and never again worked in his native country. In 1924, in Paris, the thirty-three-year-old artist became one of the founding members of the Surrealist group. Ernst's Surrealist paintings are steeped in Freudian metaphor, private mythology, and childhood memories. One of his major themes centered on the image of the bird, which often incorporated human elements. Although some of these birds look benign, their mere presence appears to be ominous. He first coupled birds and windblown, apocalyptic animals in a series of small works entitled The Horde (1927), and he resumed the theme in 1935 in a series of even smaller paintings called The Barbarians, to which the present one belongs. In his biography of the artist, John Russell identified these creatures as expressions of Ernst's fearful anticipation of the impending devastation in Europe during World War II. In this small painting, a gigantic, malevolent-looking bird couple marches forward with seemingly mile-long strides. The dark female leads the way as her male companion turns to look at the strange animal—perhaps their offspring—clinging to his left arm. In the far distance, a tiny woman holds onto some undefined winged being. The strange patterns on the bodies of the main figures, which evoke fossils or geological formations, are the result of grattage (scraping). In this technique, the artist coated the canvas, or in this case, a piece of cardboard, with layers of paint and while it was still wet pressed it against objects that left imprints on the surface. Afterward, he used a brush to touch up the forms thus created, or scraped away layers of pigment. Text from: www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/ho_1999.363.21.htm

Max Ernst. (French, born Germany. 1891-1976). Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale. 1924. Oil on wood with painted wood elements and frame, 27 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 4 1/2" (69.8 x 57.1 x 11.4 cm). Purchase. Gallery label text Dada, June 18–September 11, 2006 Made in 1924, the year of Surrealism’s founding, Ernst described this work as "the last consequence of his [sic] early collages—and a kind of farewell to a technique..." He later gave two possible autobiographical references for the nightingale: the death of his sister in 1897, and a fevered hallucination he recalled 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." Publication excerpt The Museum of Modern Art , MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 105 In Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, a girl, frightened by the bird's flight (birds appear often in Ernst's work), brandishes a knife; another faints away. A man carrying a baby balances on the roof of a hut, which, like the work's gate (which makes sense in the picture) and knob (which does not), is a three–dimensional supplement to the canvas. This combination of unlike elements, flat and volumetric, extends the collage technique, which Ernst cherished for its "systematic displacement." "He who speaks of collage," the artist believed, "speaks of the irrational." But even if the scene were entirely a painted illusion, it would have a hallucinatory unreality, and indeed Ernst linked his work of this period to childhood memories and dreams. Ernst was one of many artists who emerged from service in World War I deeply alienated from the conventional values of his European world. In truth, his alienation predated the war; he would later describe himself when young as avoiding "any studies which might degenerate into bread winning," preferring "those considered futile by his professors—predominantly painting. Other futile pursuits: reading seditious philosophers and unorthodox poetry." The war years, however, focused Ernst's revolt and put him in contact with kindred spirits in the Dada movement. He later became a leader in the emergence of Surrealism. Publication excerpt John Russell, The Meanings of Modern Art, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1981, p. 206 It was Max Ernst, in 1924, who best fulfilled the Surrealist's mandate. Ernst did it above all in the construction called Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, which starts from one of those instincts of irrational panic which we suppress in our waking lives. Only in dreams can a diminutive songbird scare the daylights out of us; only in dreams can the button of an alarm bell swell to the size of a beach ball and yet remain just out of our reach. Two Children incorporates elements from traditional European painting: perspectives that give an illusion of depth, a subtly atmospheric sky, formalized poses that come straight from the Old Masters, a distant architecture of dome and tower and triumphal arch. But it also breaks out of the frame, in literal terms: the alarm or doorbell, the swinging gate on its hinge and the blind-walled house are three-dimensional constructions, physical objects in the real world. We are both in, and out of, painting; in, and out of, art; in and out of, a world subject to rational interpretation. Where traditional painting subdues disbelief by presenting us with a world unified on its own terms, Max Ernst in the Two Children breaks the contract over and over again. We have reason to disbelieve the plight of his two children. Implausible in itself, it is set out in terms which eddy between those of fine art and those of the toyshop. Nothing "makes sense" in the picture. Yet the total experience is undeniably meaningful; Ernst has re-created a sensation painfully familiar to us from our dreams but never before quite recaptured in art—that of total di

Max Ernst. (French, born Germany. 1891-1976). Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale. 1924. Oil on wood with painted wood elements and frame, 27 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 4 1/2" (69.8 x 57.1 x 11.4 cm). Purchase. Gallery label text Dada, June 18–September 11, 2006 Made in 1924, the year of Surrealism’s founding, Ernst described this work as "the last consequence of his [sic] early collages—and a kind of farewell to a technique..." He later gave two possible autobiographical references for the nightingale: the death of his sister in 1897, and a fevered hallucination he recalled 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." Publication excerpt The Museum of Modern Art , MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 105 In Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, a girl, frightened by the bird's flight (birds appear often in Ernst's work), brandishes a knife; another faints away. A man carrying a baby balances on the roof of a hut, which, like the work's gate (which makes sense in the picture) and knob (which does not), is a three–dimensional supplement to the canvas. This combination of unlike elements, flat and volumetric, extends the collage technique, which Ernst cherished for its "systematic displacement." "He who speaks of collage," the artist believed, "speaks of the irrational." But even if the scene were entirely a painted illusion, it would have a hallucinatory unreality, and indeed Ernst linked his work of this period to childhood memories and dreams. Ernst was one of many artists who emerged from service in World War I deeply alienated from the conventional values of his European world. In truth, his alienation predated the war; he would later describe himself when young as avoiding "any studies which might degenerate into bread winning," preferring "those considered futile by his professors—predominantly painting. Other futile pursuits: reading seditious philosophers and unorthodox poetry." The war years, however, focused Ernst's revolt and put him in contact with kindred spirits in the Dada movement. He later became a leader in the emergence of Surrealism. Publication excerpt John Russell, The Meanings of Modern Art, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1981, p. 206 It was Max Ernst, in 1924, who best fulfilled the Surrealist's mandate. Ernst did it above all in the construction called Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, which starts from one of those instincts of irrational panic which we suppress in our waking lives. Only in dreams can a diminutive songbird scare the daylights out of us; only in dreams can the button of an alarm bell swell to the size of a beach ball and yet remain just out of our reach. Two Children incorporates elements from traditional European painting: perspectives that give an illusion of depth, a subtly atmospheric sky, formalized poses that come straight from the Old Masters, a distant architecture of dome and tower and triumphal arch. But it also breaks out of the frame, in literal terms: the alarm or doorbell, the swinging gate on its hinge and the blind-walled house are three-dimensional constructions, physical objects in the real world. We are both in, and out of, painting; in, and out of, art; in and out of, a world subject to rational interpretation. Where traditional painting subdues disbelief by presenting us with a world unified on its own terms, Max Ernst in the Two Children breaks the contract over and over again. We have reason to disbelieve the plight of his two children. Implausible in itself, it is set out in terms which eddy between those of fine art and those of the toyshop. Nothing "makes sense" in the picture. Yet the total experience is undeniably meaningful; Ernst has re-created a sensation painfully familiar to us from our dreams but never before quite recaptured in art—that of total di

Max Ernst. (French, born Germany. 1891-1976). Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale. 1924. Oil on wood with painted wood elements and frame, 27 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 4 1/2" (69.8 x 57.1 x 11.4 cm). Purchase. Gallery label text Dada, June 18–September 11, 2006 Made in 1924, the year of Surrealism’s founding, Ernst described this work as "the last consequence of his [sic] early collages—and a kind of farewell to a technique..." He later gave two possible autobiographical references for the nightingale: the death of his sister in 1897, and a fevered hallucination he recalled 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." Publication excerpt The Museum of Modern Art , MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 105 In Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, a girl, frightened by the bird's flight (birds appear often in Ernst's work), brandishes a knife; another faints away. A man carrying a baby balances on the roof of a hut, which, like the work's gate (which makes sense in the picture) and knob (which does not), is a three–dimensional supplement to the canvas. This combination of unlike elements, flat and volumetric, extends the collage technique, which Ernst cherished for its "systematic displacement." "He who speaks of collage," the artist believed, "speaks of the irrational." But even if the scene were entirely a painted illusion, it would have a hallucinatory unreality, and indeed Ernst linked his work of this period to childhood memories and dreams. Ernst was one of many artists who emerged from service in World War I deeply alienated from the conventional values of his European world. In truth, his alienation predated the war; he would later describe himself when young as avoiding "any studies which might degenerate into bread winning," preferring "those considered futile by his professors—predominantly painting. Other futile pursuits: reading seditious philosophers and unorthodox poetry." The war years, however, focused Ernst's revolt and put him in contact with kindred spirits in the Dada movement. He later became a leader in the emergence of Surrealism. Publication excerpt John Russell, The Meanings of Modern Art, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1981, p. 206 It was Max Ernst, in 1924, who best fulfilled the Surrealist's mandate. Ernst did it above all in the construction called Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, which starts from one of those instincts of irrational panic which we suppress in our waking lives. Only in dreams can a diminutive songbird scare the daylights out of us; only in dreams can the button of an alarm bell swell to the size of a beach ball and yet remain just out of our reach. Two Children incorporates elements from traditional European painting: perspectives that give an illusion of depth, a subtly atmospheric sky, formalized poses that come straight from the Old Masters, a distant architecture of dome and tower and triumphal arch. But it also breaks out of the frame, in literal terms: the alarm or doorbell, the swinging gate on its hinge and the blind-walled house are three-dimensional constructions, physical objects in the real world. We are both in, and out of, painting; in, and out of, art; in and out of, a world subject to rational interpretation. Where traditional painting subdues disbelief by presenting us with a world unified on its own terms, Max Ernst in the Two Children breaks the contract over and over again. We have reason to disbelieve the plight of his two children. Implausible in itself, it is set out in terms which eddy between those of fine art and those of the toyshop. Nothing "makes sense" in the picture. Yet the total experience is undeniably meaningful; Ernst has re-created a sensation painfully familiar to us from our dreams but never before quite recaptured in art—that of total diso