EVOLUTIONARY MAX ERNST

 A Study in the Life and Art of Max Ernst

Max Ernst was born April 2, 1891, in Bruhn, south of Cologne. His father, an amateur painter, inspired in him a penchant for defying authority. 

He was a self-taught artist, having studied at the University of Bonn.  He visited asylums regularly as he was fascinated by the artwork of mental patients. He was often found sketching the gardens at the Bruhl Castle or at home drawing his little sister. Coincidently, he was greatly influenced by the works of Picasso.  All of these first impressions of art contributed to his unique style of painting. It has been said that his style contained many juxtaposed grotesque elements alongside Cubism and Expressionist motifs. 

World War l interrupted his artistic endeavors as he was drafted and served on both Western and Eastern Fronts. The effect of the war on Ernst was devastating. He wrote in his Autobiography this..."On the first of August, 1914, Max Ernst died. He was resurrected on the 11th of November, 1918."

In 1918, he was demobilized and returned to Cologne, where he married Luise Straus and began a serious attempt to paint. He and several colleagues founded the Cologne Dada Group and organized the Dada Exhibitions. 

Now you are asking as you are reading...what does Dada mean? Dada was created by an elite group of artists who mainly painted in Surreal Form and is how Surrealism got its birth. They also created works of collage, photomontage and mixed media assemblage which during that time, this style of art was not considered to be "true art".  At the turn of the century, society had begun a change and had also thrust itself into a World War, leaving many people worried and fearful of the future. These Dada Groups sprang up in almost every country of the world, all united in being able to represent their opinions about this great change of their world in their artwork. Many Artists used their art as a protest against war, nationalism, and cultural conformity.  They adopted strategies of nonsense, chance and ridiculed "normal" aesthetic values.

Max met the poet, Paul Eluard, and his life took a radical turn. In 1922, he wanted to leave Cologne and move to Paris where he thought he could have a better chance of exhibiting his work and being recognized as a professional artist. He could not secure the necessary papers to leave Cologne, so he divorced his wife, Luise, and entered France illegally. he found his friend, Eluard and was immediately taken in and began living with them. Then the evitable happened, Ernst began a "menage a trois" with Eluard and his wife, Gala. Eluard knew people and became instrumental was instrumental in helping Ernst get his artwork noticed and his paintings began to sell. His career as a professional artist began to bloom and grow, however, his private life was not so successful as the tryst between the three of them did not last very long. Eluard began to resist the notion of his wife having intimate relations with his best friend. The affair ended and Eluard would remain friends with Ernst for the rest of his life. 

In1926, Ernst invented two Graphic art techniques, one is called Fottage, which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images and the other one is called, Grottage, which is scraped paint across a canvas to reveal the placed objects beneath it.  His paintings, Forest and Dove and Black Forest are examples of these techniques.

He developed a fascination with birds which he suggested was an earlier extension of himself and the confusion of birds and humans. When he was very young, he woke up one night and found that his pet bird had died only to be told by his father, minutes later, that his sister was born.

He published a collage novel, an artist's book entitled, Une Semaine De Bonte, A Week of Kindness. He created 182 collage illustration pages using cut up illustrations and images from Victorian Magazines, Encyclopedias and Novels. The 7-volume book was created in three short weeks. He arranged the images to present a dark, surreal world. He constructed his characters with heads of animals connected to human bodies. The book was received well, widely read, and known for its strange, graphic images and subject manner.

When WWII broke out, Ernst being of German descent, was considered in Paris to be a "undesirable foreigner". He was arrested and sent to jail. Thanks to his friend, Eluard and other artists, he was released and stayed in Paris until the city was occupied by the Nazi's and then he was arrested again by the Gestapo. He managed to escape to América with the help of Peggy Guggenheim. She met Ernst in Paris and had his works exhibited in the Guggenheim Art Museum in London so she was more than willing to help him! Peggy's motives, sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes not as her actions were nothing but ulterior motives when it came to men who were also famous artists! She was very rich, lived off of her trust fund, and owned two art museums that needed to be filled with the master works of the new Surreal artists! After Max came to America, he and Peggy were married, and coincidently, she began exhibiting his artwork in her New York Art Museum as well. 

His marriage with Peggy did not last, as we all well know, when on that fateful day when Dorothea Tanning stopped by his studio and they played a game of friendly chess and fell in-love. He divorced Peggy and married Dorothea, happy with his artist wife. They moved to a remote part of Sedona, Arizona, where he built a small cottage for them to live and paint together. Even though Sedona was populated by immigrants and farmers, their popularity grew and their influence and artwork inspired many people. They started an American Colony of artists and intellectuals and shared their ideas and techniques with anyone interested in becoming an artist or a writer. They happily resided there for 7 years until France began to call out to them to return. They moved back to Paris and continued to paint and exhibit their work. In 1954, Ernst was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting, in Venice, Biennale. 

The Elephant

Max Ernst died 1972 and is buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

Here is my Ernst Creations:

Digital art created from Pixabay, Itkupilli's Digital Kit Abandoned Buildings, Friday Designs Digital Kit Old Vintage Portraits, Miriam's Scraps Digital Kit, and DreamFusionPrint Digital Kit DayDream Escapes

DARING DOROTHEA TANNING

Exploring the Art of Dorothea Tanning

 "Am I a surrealist? Must we artists bow our heads and accept a label without which we do not exist? The ideas of surrealism are still very much with me. But I have no label except artist."

Dorothea was born in 1910 in Galesburg, Illinois. She was a self-taught artist and only briefly studied painting in Chicago while haunting the Art Institute where she learned what painting was.  She moved to New York City in 1941 and met the most important influence in her life, the artist and painter Max Ernst. He came to visit her studio to look at one of her paintings but stayed to play a game of chess. They had 34 happy years together. Early in their relationship they decide to move out of the United States and lived in France, where she continued to paint her enigmatic versions of life: on the inside looking out. 

 Dorothea found herself facing a solitary future when Max died on April 1, 1976. 

She was quoted as having said after Max's death, " I was a loner, am a loner, good Lord, it is the only way I can imagine working. When I hooked up with Max, he was clearly the only person I needed, and I can assure you, we never, never talked about art. Never."

 Soon her paint tubes, brushes, and canvases began calling out to her, telling her to go back home to the United States where she remained for the rest of her life.

Dorothea's early paintings were precisely figurative renderings of dream-like situations. In her youth, Dorothea read many gothic, romantic novels in her hometown of Galesburg. These fantastical stories filled with imagery of the imaginary, heavily influenced her style and subject matter for years to come.  Like most Surrealist painters, she was meticulous in her attention to details, building layers of paint with carefully muted brushstrokes.  She painted depictions of unreal scenes, some of which combined erotic subjects with enigmatic symbols and desolate space. While in France, her work radically changed as her paintings took on a less erotic approach and her images became increasingly fragmented and pragmatic.

She explains her work with this quote, " Around 1955, my canvases literally splintered...I broke the mirror, you might say."

Her artwork has been exhibited in numerous one-person shows in France, Sweden, and London as well as the United States. In 1992,  The New York Library had a showing of her prints and in 2000, The Philadelphia Art Museum held an exhibition of her work. 

  After returning to the United States, Dorothea found her voice and began writing poetry and short stories, which were widely published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review.

In an interview for Salon.com and asked, "So what have you tried to communicate as an artist?

She replied, "I'd be satisfied in suggesting that there is more than meets the eye."

In 1997, The Dorothea Tanning Foundation was established with the purpose of preserving the artist's legacy while fostering a broader, public understanding of the artist's art, writing, and poetry. They manage and distribute the art and asset of Dorothea for philanthropic purposes.

"The diversity pf experience and attitude on the part of women artists active in Surrealism has proved both an obstacle and a challenge. In the end, I came to view such diversity as a tribute to these women, an attribution to their strength and a mark of their commitment to a form of creative expression in which personal reality dominates".

 Dorethea died in her home in New York City on January 31, 2012. She was 101 years old. She had just published her second collection of poems called, "Coming To That".

ALL HALLOWS EVE

by Dorothe Tanning

Be perfect, make it otherwise. 

Yesterday is torn in shreds.

Lightnings thousand sulfur eyes

Rip apart the breathing beds.

Her bones crack and pulverize.

Doom creeps in on rubber treads.

Countless overwrought housewives,

Minds unraveling like threads,

Try lipstick shades to tranquilize

Fears of age and general dreads.

Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,

Don't take faucets for fountainheads.

Drink tasty antidotes.  Otherwise

You and the werewolf: Newlyweds.

Now it is your turn to immerse yourself in the style of Dorothea Tanning and create your own Surrealist art piece! This is the first artist I have showcased that did not have a tragic life circumstance that influenced her artistic style!! Her life is as described as..."She breathed words as well as air and looked at her paintings in amazement"!

Here is my Dorothea Tanning Creations:

Digital art created from Gecko Galz Free Images and DreamPrint Fusion Digital Kit Daydream Escapes

REVOLTIONARY RENE MAGRITTE

To continue in our Surrealist Masterclass, we will learn about the amazing artist, 

Rene Magritte

 A Belgian surrealist painter, Rene Magritte was renowned for his witty, thought-provoking paintings which took ordinary objects in unexpected contexts which challenged the viewers perception of reality. His work provoked questions about the nature of reality and representation.  He began drawing lesson at age 10 at the royal academy of Fine Art in Brussels. During this time his mother committed suicide by drowning. Her body was not discovered until 16 days later. Magritte was present at the time they retrieved her body from the water. When her body was discovered, her dress was covering her face. This image has been repeated in several of Magritte's paintings where the people he painted have cloth obscuring their faces. Many of Magritte's paintings have an alluring, almost fantastic appeal with a subject matter of images with gruesome detail.

 

The use of objects as other than what they seem typifies his work which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe, Ceci n'est nas une pipe..."this is not a pipe," which seems a contradiction but actually is true: the painting in not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. When asked about this image Magritte said, "Of course this is not a pipe---just try to fill it with of tobacco."

In 1922-23, Magritte worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory and he was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full time. In 1927m he held his first solo exhibition in Brussels. it was poorly reviewed.

 Depressed by his failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with Anton Benton and became involved in a Surrealist group.  An illusionistic, dream-like quality is characteristic of Magritte's version of Surrealism. he became a leading member of the group and remained in Paris for 3 years. In 1929, he was pit under contract at the Goeman's Gallery in Paris.

   

Magritte married Georgette Berger in June 1922. Childhood sweethearts, he first met Georgette when she was 13 and he was 15. They met again in Brussels 7 years later when Georgette, who also studied art, became his model, his muse, and his wife. He was madly in love with her until 1936, when Magritte's marriage became troubled. He met a young performance artist, Sheila Lege, and began a short-lived affair with her. He arranged for his friend, Paul Colinet, to entertain and distract Georgette, but this led to an affair between Georgette and Paul. Sadly, they separated and did not reconcile until 1940 and then lived happily together until the day Magritte died. She lived on after him for 10 more years before she passed away.

In 1945, Magritte joined the Belgium Communist party. his political beliefs distinguished him form many of his surrealists pers. Magritte's support for the communist party tied him neatly to his love for the ubiquitous bowler hat which became s constant fixture of his wardrobe. The hat made him appear just like his fellow comrades, having the opposite effect of say, Salvador Dali's moustache! The hat also became a permanent fixture in his artwork as well.

Unlike many of his surrealist peers, Magritte didn't rely on automatic techniques or dreamlike abstraction. Instead, he applied precision of a realist painter to surreal ideas, creatin poetic puzzles that tease the boundaries between illusion and reality. His work is not simply what is seen, but about how it is seen. Pipes that are not pipes, men with obscured faces, skies inside eyes---his images remain ss enigmatic today as they were when first unveiled. You can see the recurring symbols, sly contradictions and quite provocations that define Magritte's unique legacy.

He once said, "It is irrelevant of the scene behind the easel differed from what was depicted upon it, but the main thing was to eliminate the difference between a view seen from outside and from inside a room."

His use of ordinary objects in unfamiliar spaces in unfamiliar spaces is joined to his desire to create poetic imagery. He called painting as, "the art of putting colors side by side in such a way that their real aspect is effaced, so that familiar objects ----the sky people, trees, mountains, furniture, the stars, solid structures, graffiti----became united in a single poetically disciplined image. The poetry pf this image dispenses with any symbolic significance, old or new.

As Curator Catlin Haskell wrote of Magritte's work: Magritte more than any other artist of the past century, made it his project to subvert our faith in visual similitude. As rapidly improving technology simplifies our ability to realistically distort images, it's more important than ever to consider what  is a pipe and what's not."

Magritte described his paintings as "visible images which conceal nothing, they evoke mystery and indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, "What does it mean? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."

Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on August 15, 1967, age 68. and was buried in Schaerbeek Cemetery, Evere, Brussels.

Here are my Magritte Creations!

Sorry for the delay in posting the challenge! I had another loss in my family and so the past few weeks I have been traveling back and forth involved in family matters! I am back now and hopefully no more delays! Thank you for patiently waiting for me! 

Can't wait to see your own Magritte creations!

Digital art created from DreamPrintFusion Digital Kits Quirky People and Spring Quirky People and images from Pixabay