Max Ernst: Dadaist and Surrealist

Max Ernst is often described as “the German Dadaist turned Surrealist,”[1] a title which can be explored and understood through his two works, Self-Constructed Little Machine (1919) and Massacre of the Innocents (1920).  This appellation is not only afforded by his status as one of many modernists exploring ideas found in the art of the insane (a movement which gained substantial interest within the artistic community by the early 1920s[2]), but also by the various new techniques of pictorial creation which he began developing during his engagement with the Dada artists.  These techniques, including collage, frottage (producing an image through rubbing), grattage (creating an image through scraping), his early collages, and his “veristic dream paintings,” proved to be highly influential to the later ideas that fueled Surrealism[3]^{, [4]}.

Massacre of the Innocents from 1920 and Self-Constructed Little Machine from 1919 originate from Max Ernst’s Dada period, and suggest continuity between Dada and Surrealism in both their subject matter and composition.  A comparison of these two works offers a wide range of critiques on modern culture and the destruction of World War I.  These works also show a move away from other forms of abstraction and modernism in their renewed concern with the subject matter itself and the impression and meaning therein.  They accomplish this while also giving consideration to the various novel and inventive mediums through which these ideas could be made transmissible to their audience.  This combination of effect of both medium and subject matter is a step away from the supreme priority placed on the artist’s medium found in earlier forms of abstraction.

By utilizing both the medium and thematic elements in these images, Max Ernst was able to offer a powerful critique on the use and destruction of the modern machine as well as to transform specific elements and themes of the Dada movement into inspirational material for the Surrealists.

To read a more in-depth analysis of the two works mentioned above and their connection to both Dadaism and Surrealism, please check back later this week!

Unless otherwise noted, the ideas in this article are solely those of the author: SadieFaye

---

[1] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Volume 1: 1900-

               1944 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 182.

[2] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 180.

[3] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 183.

[4] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 190.