COLLAGE ON VIEW
Max Ernst: Beyond Painting
Museum of Modern Art in New York City
23 September 23–1 January 2018
In 1919, Max Ernst was living in post-war Cologne, Germany with his new bride, Luise Straus. He went to Munich to study with Paul Klee and saw the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, which moved him to create fantastical images free of narrative, irrational, and surreal. He began cutting up mail-order catalogues, scientific manuals, and teaching-aides as a way of plumbing “his own psyche for inspiration and to confront his own trauma.” A survey of the artist’s work is on view at Museum of Modern Art in New York City, 23 September 2017 to 1 January 2018.
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“Max Ernst: Beyond Painting” features “approximately 100 works drawn from the Museum’s collection” and “includes paintings that challenged material and compositional conventions; collages and overpaintings utilizing found printed reproductions; frottages (rubbings); illustrated books and collage novels; sculptures of painted stone and bronze; and prints made using a range of techniques.” Of particular interest is the 1920 work Here Everything Is Still Floating which shows how Ernst was an early pioneer of using photomechanical reproductions to create collage.
From the Museum:
This exhibition surveys the career of the preeminent Dada and Surrealist artist Max Ernst (French and American, born Germany, 1891–1976), with particular emphasis on his ceaseless experimentation. Ernst began his pursuit of radical new techniques that went “beyond painting” to articulate the irrational and unexplainable in the wake of World War I, continuing through the advent and aftermath of World War II. Featuring approximately 100 works drawn from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition includes paintings that challenged material and compositional conventions; collages and overpaintings utilizing found printed reproductions; frottages (rubbings); illustrated books and collage novels; sculptures of painted stone and bronze; and prints made using a range of techniques. Several major, multipart projects represent key moments in Ernst’s long career, ranging from early Dada and Surrealist portfolios of the late 1910s and 1920s to his late masterpiece–a recent acquisition to MoMA’s collection–65 Maximiliana, ou l’exercice illégal de l’astronomie (1964). This illustrated book comprises 34 aquatints complemented by imaginative typographic designs and a secret hieroglyphic script of the artist’s own invention.
This article appears in KOLAJ #21. To see the entire article, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.
INFORMATION
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, New York 10019 USA
(212) 708-9400
Hours:
Enter at 18 West 54th Street
Daily, 10:30AM-5:30PM
Open until 9PM on Fridays and Saturdays through 30 December 2017
Image: (top)
Loplop Introduces Members of the Surrealist Group (Loplop présente les membres du groupe surréaliste)
by Max Ernst
19.75″x13.25″
cut-and-pasted gelatin silver prints, cut-and-pasted printed paper, pencil, and pencil frottage on paper
1931
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase, 1935.
Photo: John Wronn. © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Image: (centre)
Butterflies (Papillons)
by Max Ernst
19.75″x25.5″
cut-and-pasted printed and painted paper, cellophane, and pencil on paper
1931
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase, 1935.
Photo: John Wronn. © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Image: (bottom)
The Gramineous Bicycle Garnished with Bells the Dappled Fire Damps and the Echinoderms Bending the Spine to Look for Caresses (La Biciclette graminée garnie de grelots les grisons grivelés et les échinodermes courbants l’échine pour quêter des caresses)
by Max Ernst
29.25″x39.25″
gouache, ink, and pencil on printed paper on paperboard
c. 1921
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase, 1937.
Photo: Robert Gerhardt. © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.