Max Ernst
Stratified Rocks, Nature's Gift of Gneiss Lava Iceland Moss 2 kinds of lungwort 2 kinds of ruptures of the perinaeum growths of the heart b) the same thing in a well-polished little box somewhat more expensive (schichtgestein naturgabe aus gneis lava isländisch moos 2 sorten lungenkraut 2 sorten dammriss/herzgewächse b) dasselbe in fein poliertem kästchen etwas teurer)
1920
Gouache and pencil on printed paper on cardstock
Not on view
The source for this overpainting is a color lithograph showing the anatomy of a horse from the Bibliotheca Paedagogica (1914), a teaching-aids supply catalogue. Ernst inverted this image and added gouache and pencil to transform the horse’s innards into a geological cross section. The punning, nonsensical text handwritten on the secondary support offers several interpretive clues, like “stratified rocks” and “gneiss lava Iceland moss,” which suggest that this is a landscape. The artist later wrote of the Bibliotheca that “the sheer absurdity of the collection provoked a sudden intensification of the visionary faculties in me.”
Max Ernst: Beyond Painting, September 23, 2017-January 1, 2018.
Gallery label from Dada , June 18–September 11, 2006.
The source for this overpainting is an equine anatomical diagram from a teaching-aids supply catalogue (the Bibliotheca Paedagogica, 1914), which the artist turned upside down. Ernst’s inscription reads: "Stratified rocks, nature’s gift of gneiss lava Icelandic moss 2 kinds of lungwort 2 kinds of ruptures of the perinaeum growths of the heart b) the same thing in a well-polished little box somewhat more expensive."
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[Hans Arp]
Tristan Tzara, Paris
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchased from Tristan Tzara, 1937
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Max Ernst
French and American, born Germany. 1891–1976 234 works onlineA key member of first Dada and then Surrealism in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, Max Ernst used a variety of mediums—painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture, and various unconventional drawing methods—to give visual form to both personal memory and collective myth.
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