Макс Эрнст цитаты

„Искусство имеет ничего общего со вкусом.“

—  Макс Эрнст

„Соединение швейной машинки и зонтика на хирургическом столе это известный и ставший уже классическим пример феномена, открытого сюрреалистами: соединение двух внешне чуждых элементов на плоскости, чуждой обоим, является одним из сильнейших средств, чтобы высечь искру поэзии.“

—  Макс Эрнст

„Будучи человеком заурядной конституции, я приложил все своё старание, чтобы сделать свою душу монстрообразной. Из слепого пловца, каким я был, я превратил себя в провидца. И обнаружил, что я влюбляюсь в то, что вижу, и хочу идентифицировать себя с виденным мною. Так рождались работы и образы самого себя.“

—  Макс Эрнст

„Однажды в 1919 году, оказавшись в дождливую погоду в одном городе на берегу Рейна, я был поражен наваждением, приковавшим мой взор к страницам иллюстрированного каталога, на которых красовались предметы антропологического, микроскопического, психологического, минералогического, палеонтологического толка. Я нашел там собранные воедино настолько различные фигуративные элементы, что сама абсурдность этого собрания вызвала во мне внезапное усиление зрительно-пророческих способностей и противоречивых, двойственных, тройственных и множественных образов, накладывающихся друг на друга с настойчивостью и быстротой, свойственными любовным воспоминаниям и образам в полусне.“

—  Макс Эрнст

„Чтобы подвести базу под мои занятия медитацией и галлюцинацией, я сделал серию зарисовок кафельных плиток, накладывая на них наугад листы бумаги и заштриховывая их карандашом. Осмотрев результат, я был удивлен внезапно обострившимся ощущением, сходным с галлюцинацией, вызванным изменениями контрастно наложенных друг на друга рисунков. Я объединил первые «фроттажи»“

—  Макс Эрнст

рисунки, полученные таким образом, в серию и назвал её «История природы».

„В качестве последнего суеверия, печального остатка мифа о творении западная культура сохранила легенду о суверенности творчества художника. Одним из первых революционных актов сюрреализма было то, что он атаковал эту выдумку действенными средствами и в самой резкой форме, усиленно настаивая на чисто пассивной роли так называемого автора в механизме поэтического вдохновения и разоблачая всяческий контроль со стороны разума, морали или эстетических соображений.“

—  Макс Эрнст

„Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.“

—  Max Ernst

„Max Ernst died the 1st of August 1914. He resuscitated the 11th of November 1918 as a young man aspiring to become a magician and to find the myth of his time.“

—  Max Ernst

Quote in 'Some Data on the Youth of M. E., As Told by Himself' in the w:View (April 1942); also cited in Max Ernst and Alchemy (2001) by M. E. Warlick, p. 17
Max Ernst refers to his serving-period on the Western and then on the Eastern front during World War 1 (1914-1918)
1936 - 1950

„A picture that I painted after the defeat of the Republicans in Spain [in 1936, Max Ernst was a resolute opponent of the Spanish dictator General Franco, who was supported by Germany's Nazi regime] is 'The Fireside Angel'. This is, of course, an ironic title for a rampaging beast that destroys and annihilates anything that gets in its way. This was my idea at the time of what would probably happen in the world, and I was right.“

—  Max Ernst

Quote in 'Room 10, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is referring to his painting 'L'ange du foyer' / 'Le triomphe du surréalisme', 1937 ('The Fireside Angel' / The Triumph of Surrealism'); the alternative title was offered by Ernst himself in 1938, when he spontaneously opted for a different title: 'The Triumph of Surrealism'.
1936 - 1950

„Looking at them [the metaphysical paintings of De Chirico, c. 1919] I had the sense of rediscovering something I had always known, just as when some event already seen opens up to us a whole realm of our own dream world, one that we have failed to see or comprehend, owing to a kind of censorship.“

—  Max Ernst

Quote in 'Notes pour un biographie', Max Ernst, 1929, pp. 30-31; as cited in Max Ernst: a Retrospective, ed. Werner Spies & Sabine Rewald, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2005, p. 10
1910 - 1935

„First contact with occult, magical and enchanting forces. One of his best friends, a very intelligent and affectionate pink cockatoo, died in the night of 5 January. It was a terrible shock for Max when he found the dead bird in the morning, at the same moment as his father told him of the birth of his sister, Loni. The boy's consternation was so great that he fainted. In his imagination, he linked the two events and made the baby responsible for extinguishing the bird's life. A series of psychological crises and depressions followed. A dangerous amalgamation of birds and human beings became firmly established in his mind and later found expression in his paintings and drawings.“

—  Max Ernst

Quote in 'Tissue of Truth, Tissue of Lies', Max Ernst; as cited in 'Room 7, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is referring to a childhood experience in 1906, when Max Ernst was c. 15 years old
posthumous

„Mixed feelings when he [Max Ernst frequently writes about himself in the third person] enters the forest for the first time: delight and oppression. And what the Romantics spoke of as 'being at one with Nature'. Wonderful joy in breathing freely in an open space, but also anxiety at being encircled by hostile trees. Outside and inside at the same time, free and trapped.“

—  Max Ernst

Quote in 'Room 6, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is describing an early childhood experience, in the third person
posthumous

„A series of powers are at work within the great stream of Expressionism who have no outward similarity to one another but a common direction of thrust, namely the intention to give expression to things of the psyche [Seelisches] through form alone.“

—  Max Ernst

Quote of Max Ernst in a newspaper review of 'Rhenish Expressionists', Bonn (1913); as cited in Expressionism, by Norbert Wolf (2004)
1910 - 1935

„One rainy day in Cologne on the Rhine, the catalogue of a teaching aids company caught my attention. It was illustrated with models of all kind – mathematical, geometrical, anthropological, zoological, botanical, anatomical, mineralogical, paleontological, and so forth- elements of of such a diverse nature that the absurdity of the collection confused the eye and mind, producing hallucinations and lending the objects depicted new and rapidly changing meanings. I suddenly felt my 'visionary faculties' so intensified that I began seeing the newly emerged objects against a new background. To capture it, a little paint or a few lines were enough, a horizon, a sky, a wooden floor, that sort of things. My hallucination had been fixed. Now it was a matter of interpreting the hallucination in a few words or sentences Such as: 'Above the clouds midnight passes. Above midnight glides the invisible bird of day..“

—  Max Ernst

Quote in 'Biographical Notes. Tissue of truth, Tissue of Lies', 1929; as cited in Max Ernst. A Retrospective, Munich, Prestel, 1991, p. 290
1910 - 1935

„I saw a shady forest and therein a crowd of nightingales. The nightingales as to their breast were rough and hairy, and as to their feet some were like calves, some like panthers, and some like wolves, and they had beast's claws instead of toes.“

—  Max Ernst

text of Max Ernst's poem 'First Memorable Conversation with the Chimera', in the journal 'VVV', no. 1. New York, June 1942, p. 17
1936 - 1950

„Studies in painting: Non. He learned to express himself by means of art in the same way as the child learns to talk. No teaching is needed for the one who is born an artist, and even the expression 'self-taught' is a phony, he thinks.“

—  Max Ernst

Quote in a questionnaire, Max Ernst filled out in 1948, the U.S; as cited in Max Ernst: a Retrospective, ed. Werner Spies & Sabine Rewald, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2005, p. 7
1936 - 1950

„Are there still forests over there? They are, apparently, wild and impenetrable, black and russet, extravagant, secular, full of ant-hills, diametrical, negligent, ferocious, fervent and kindly, without yesterdays or tomorrows. From one island to another, above the volcanoes, they play cards with inmatched packs. Naked, they are decked only in their majesty and their mystery.“

—  Max Ernst

1910 - 1935, The mysteries of the forest' (1934)

„Art has nothing to do with taste, art is not there to be 'tasted'. Yet a certain mayor believes that art exists to be 'judged', and the most modern art to be 'judged from a business point of view'. That such an original thought could emerge from a mayor's brain! What the mayor wants is exactly what the critics of the large and small dailies actually do. They set out to judge art. That is a very pleasant occupation, because no matter how wrong a judgment may be, you never have to revise it. The art judges talk about 'ability' and complain that the 'younger generation' has lost this ability. Sometimes their complaints are even seriously intended. But, gentlemen, do you really know what that is — ability? No, you don't.“

—  Max Ernst

As quoted in Max Ernst: Sculptures (1996) by Max Ernst, Jürgen Pech, and Ida Gianelli, p. 11
posthumous

„A banal fever hallucination, soon obliterated and forgotten; it didn't reappear in M's memory until about thirty years later (on 10 August 1925), as he sat alone on a rainy day in a little inn by the seaside, staring at the wooden floor which had been scored by years of scrubbing, and noticed that the grain had started moving of its own accord (much like the lines on the [imitation] mahogany board of his childhood). As with the mahogany board back then, and as with visions seen between sleeping and waking, the lines formed shifting, changing images, blurred at first but then increasingly precise. Max {Ernst] decided to pursue the symbolism of this compulsory inspiration and, in order to sharpen his meditative and hallucinatory skills, he took a series of drawings from the floorboards. Letting pieces of paper drop at random on the floor, he rubbed over them with a black pencil. On careful inspection of the impressions made in this way, he was surprised by the sudden increase they produced in his visionary abilities. His curiosity was aroused. He was delighted, and began making the same type of inquiry into all sorts of materials, whatever caught his eye – leaves with their ribs, the frayed edges of sacking, the strokes of a palette knife in a 'modern' painting, thread rolling off a spool, and so forth. To quote 'Beyond Painting' These drawings, the first fruits of the frottage technique, were collected under the title 'Histoire Naturell.“

—  Max Ernst

Quote in 'Biographical Notes. Tissue of truth, Tissue of Lies', 1929; as cited in Max Ernst. A Retrospective, Munich, Prestel, 1991, pp.283/284
1910 - 1935