"What is a forest? A marvelous insect. A drawing-board, what do forests do? They never go to bed early. They are waiting for the tailor. What is the high season of the forests? It is the future.."
Max Ernst was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create imag
"What is a dream? You ask too much of me: it is a woman cutting down a tree. What are forests for? For making the matches one gives children to play with. Is the fire in the forest, then? The fire is in the forest. What do plants feed on? On mystery. What day is it today? Shit.."
"The 2nd of April (1891) at 9:45 a.m. Max Ernst had his first contact with the sensible world, when he came out of the egg which his mother had laid in an eagles nest and which the bird had brooded for seven years."
"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."
"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 beasts claws instead of toes."
"Womans nakedness is wiser than the teachings of the philosophers. [the title of his essay]"
"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."