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| Max Ernst. "The Massacre of the Innocents" 1920 |
In Max Ernst’s Massacre
of the Innocents one sees an entirely different mode of image construction
and a greater emphasis on societal critique.
This image is composed of a black and white photo of what seems like a
possible night time city scape, with various drawings over it in watercolor,
gouache, and black ink. These can appear
to be buildings or ladders depending on what angle they are viewed from, and
seem to jut out of the city and into space in impossible directions. Out of this scene of chaos spring four
amorphous human figures. The two on the
right and the one on the bottom left are composed of pure flat, unmodulated
color and seem to be running hurriedly out of the city scene; the singular
figure in the top left has the foot and general shape of the running figures,
though it is modified and slightly more detailed in the body to resemble what
could be a machine-like head and wings – possibly an airplane. The night sky is filled in with dark and
emotionally motivated visible brush strokes of bluish black, intensifying the
dreary, mysterious, and chaotic scene below.
Massacre of the Innocents is deeply laden with ideas connected to the art of
the insane, surrealism, and a cultural critique of the destruction of the
modern machine instigated by the terrors of World War I. The use of a photo for the background city
acts to engage the viewer as it is a familiar scene of everyday life, while the
jutting building/ladders and the floating figures disturb the image by turning
it into a nightmare view of the chaotic modern city. This image calls to mind a common theme within
Ernst’s works of this time: the representation of his own anxieties about the
body and the necessity of “lines between self and world necessary to a sense of
autonomy.”[1] This is seen in the radical emphasis of the
individual’s hostile estrangement from the world and from each other indicated
by the illusion that the figures are floating or running to get out of the
scene in opposite directions of one another.
The chaotic combination of the twinkling cityscape and the spatially
confusing buildings/ladders offers a stark contrast to the minimalist colorful
body shapes which attempt to escape it, while the dark outline of each body
further emphasizes the separation between body and world. These bodies are also reminiscent of the
ideas of the primitive figures seen in works such as Matisse’s Music of 1910, which ties this image to
the idea in the art of the insane, that the “madness” is a “regression to a
primitive stage of psycho-physical development”[2] through
which modern artists could access the unconscious, and a way to progress
forward from the destructions of mechanized modern-day life.
This idea of the primitive unconscious and
the dreamlike trauma created in the floating and barely shaped human figures as
well as the unrealistic and unidentifiable angles of the building/bridges ties
this image to the focus on dream images within the production of Surrealist
images.[3] The menacing and disfigured airplane-person
figure and the unnerving maze created with the jutting building/bridges also
serve to emphasize the terror imposed on and created by the modern machine
within everyday life.
Unless
otherwise noted, the thoughts and opinions in this article are solely those of
the author: SadieFaye
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