The Importance of Being Ernst

Since Max Ernst organized his first Dada exhibition in his native Cologne, 27 years had passed. That had been quite a show. The entrance had been through a public lavatory, and visitors were given hatchets to smash what they liked--since the idea was to give everybody's subconscious desires free rein. In one corner a schoolgirl in a white Communion dress pipingly recited obscene verses. Quite delightful.

As the high priest of surrealism (the successor of Dada), delicate little, white-haired Max Ernst was still going strong but his new show in a Manhattan gallery last week lacked something--the schoolgirl perhaps--which made that first exhibition memorable. Dada was a granddad now. And nowadays the visitors brandished checkbooks instead of hatchets. Instead of a live little virgin they found merely a semi-abstract painting distinguished by two nobbed streaks representing breasts or eyes, and entitled Foolish Virgins.

Foolish Virgins, like Double Wedding in Beverly Hills, did demonstrate the kind of craftsmanship and the horrified absorption in sex which have always been Ernst's claims to notoriety. Only Salvador Dali (whom orthodox surrealists consider too slick and too successful) can rival Ernst at his most unpleasant.

At 55, Ernst lives in Arizona with fellow surrealist Dorothea Tanning--his fourth wife--looking at the desert to get ideas for painting the sea. Like Lewis Carroll's Father William, Ernst has a limited stock of answers for those who question his strange ways. He feels sure he could never abandon his witch-doctor's approach to painting even if he wanted to. "One always meets one's self again," he says. "Evolution in art does not go straight; it goes in circles. I have seen this in my own work."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.