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| Max Ernst "Self-Constructed Little Machine" 1919/20 |
Max Ernst’s Self-Constructed
Little Machine is a pencil sketch that unites the Dadaist concern with the
possibility of personal and cultural destruction by the machine (a response to
World War I), and the surrealist fascination with Freud. This image depicts two machines placed on
either side of the paper with an explanation of the scene in Ernst’s own
handwriting that seems to be “a confused account…that conflates sex and
scatology.”[1]
From simply viewing the image, the depicted
machines might be hard to categorize. The machine on the right somewhat
resembles a wind turbine with capital letter A’s placed in a round near the
top, with what a viewer of today might recognize as a solar panel above it-
though this object would not have been known to Ernst at the time of the
image’s creation. The machine on the
left resembles a giant saw, waiting at ready for someone to pull it down and
cut something. Art historians have
discovered that the image is actually based on a “found printer’s proof”
depicting a “drum figure with numbered slots” on the left and a “tripod
personage” on the right[2]. Ernst also plays with the spatial relation of
the two objects by adding a mismatching tilt to the flat surface lines on which
they appear to stand.
The numerous effects and visual oddities within this
work can be explained to have origins and relations to both the Dada and Surrealist
movements. Its inspiration from a found
object is representative of the Dadaists play with such objects in novel
combinations as a way to create a feeling of shock and to cause reason for
societal evaluation and revolution; while the fact that the original object was
a printer’s proof is indicative of Dada’s embrace of the “new synthesis of
avant-garde art with technology.” This
represents both Dada’s critique of and reliance on the materials and machines
of modern society. While a large part of
the Dadaist artistic and political motivations were a reaction to the
destructive and negative world changes brought about by the machine as a
response to WWI, they also embraced the new mechanical advances in printing
technology as a way to spread their ideas to a greater population[3],[4] .
The Self-Constructed Little Machine can also
be linked to ideas within the production of “the art of the insane”- with which
Ernst dedicated himself to while still in his Dadaist phase. The modernist interpretation of the art of
the insane as “directly revelatory of the unconscious” came from the
publications of the psychologist Lombroso, whose ideas surfaced in the early
1920s.[5] Ernst used the “disturbances of schizophrenic
representation” to “disrupt the principle of identity” in terms of both art and
the self. It is this freedom from
reality that lead Ernst to develop the idea of the body as a “dysfunctional
machine” which can be seen within this image, and within some of his early
Dadaist collages.[6] Upon closer examination of the work itself,
one discovers the hidden bodies within the machines; the object on the right a
knock-kneed quasi-man with the protruding A's as arms, and the solar panel type
object as a head. There is also a long
cylindrical object placed between the “legs” which can be thought of as a
phallic symbol. Its detachment from the
body is crucial in light of the burgeoning interest in Freud at this time, as a
possible representation of the male castration anxiety. The object on the left can be seen not only
as the source of this castration anxiety in the female form (suggested by the
numbered slots in the drum, or the slot in the middle of the base of the
machine), but also as the saw itself which physically removed the phallic shape
from the body of the machine-man on the right.
On the base of the “female” machine there appears to be a pair of
glasses, which could represent the new vision of reality, of the self, and of
the female counterpart that was revealed through the experience of a young
boy’s realization that his mother does not have the same parts that he
does. This integration of symbols that
represent castration anxiety into the image can be seen as a connection and
possibly an influence to the Surrealists, whose main preoccupation was the
depiction of the ideas of psychoanalysis and dream images.
To read more
about Max Ernst’s pivotal role in the transition from Dadaism to Surrealism and
for an in-depth look at his work, Massacre
of the Innocents…check back here tomorrow!
Unless
otherwise noted, the thoughts an opinions in this article are solely those of
the author: SadieFaye
[1] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 183.
[2] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 183.
[3] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 135.
[4] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 168.
[5] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 180.
[6] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 183.
