- Max Ernst: Life and WorkOur PickBy Werner Spies
- Max Ernst: Dream and RevolutionBy Werner Spies, Iris Muller-Westermann
- Max Ernst and Alchemy : A Magician in Search of MythBy Franklin Rosemont, M. E. Warlick
Important Art by Max Ernst
Here Everything is Still Floating (1920)
This composition made from unrelated cutout photographs of fish, anatomical drawings, insects (turned over to suggest a sailing ship), and puffs of clouds and smoke cunningly arranged demonstrates Ernst's unique collage aesthetic. Through the medium, Ernst created a new world where randomness and illogic expressed the insanity of WWI and threw bourgeois sensibilities into question. The artist appropriated these images from scientific manuals, anthropological journals, and common merchandising catalogs dating from the turn-of-the-century. Ernst has managed to create a very delicate and detailed work, small in format, which seduces the viewer into close looking, and which propels the viewer to gauge the work's intentions. The title, Here Everything is Still Floating, does not appear to connect with the image in any meaningful way, except that the objects appear floating in the air. Despite the futile search for meaning, this whimsical work ultimately proves enjoyable and satisfying. The artist was to later recall that, "Collage was seen as a kind of crime, meaning one did violence to nature."
Celebes (1921)
At center, a large round shape dominates the composition that Ernst based upon a photograph of a Sudanese bin for storing corn which the artist has refigured as an elephant-like mechanical being from the subconscious. The painting's title (sometimes known as The Elephant Celebes) comes from a childish and naughty German rhyme that starts off, "The elephant from Celebes has sticky, yellow bottom grease," a bawdy reference to those that know the original rhyme.
Ernst's painting demonstrates his indebtedness to Freudian dream theory with its odd juxtapositions of disparate objects. Despite this disparity - a headless/nude woman, the bits of machinery - the painting holds together as a finished composition. Ernst's work elicits discomfort in the not knowing of his intentions and also, in early-20th century audiences, disgust because of its irrelevant depiction of the human form (the headless nude) which is revered within art making (since people are made in God's image). Through this work, Ernst questions which is the "real" world - that of night-time and dreams - or that of the waking state.
Ubu Imperator (1923)
This is a relatively small canvas in comparison to Ernst's other works although it radiates a commanding presence beyond its scale. At center, dominating the composition is a tower-like form with human arms extended and a head constructed as an architectural form. The tower is balanced precariously as if a spinning top which has been halted. The stability of architecture versus the instability of the tower's base, and its movement, places the object in internal conflict. Ernst has placed the body/building within a bare desert, with just an abandoned scythe in the background, which would prove futile in such a setting. The title, "Ubu Imperator," translates as the Commander, yet the central figure lacks the stability and authority a leader usually commands in both art and life.
Influences and Connections

- Dorothea Tanning
- Peggy Guggenheim
- Jimmy Ernst