Video No. 6012. English Language Pal VHS.
An Exploration of Art on Film.
A Film by Peter Schamoni.
The German-born artist Max Ernst (1891-1976) was a leading member of the Surrealist movement, involved in the most radical innovations in art and literature in Europe between the wars. After experiencing the trench warfare of World War I, Ernst's early fascination with the energies of the unconscious found expression in his association with Dada, an art movement dedicated to overturning all conventional attitudes to culture.
This film shows how Ernst exemplified the Surrealist artistic synthesis of bizarre fantasy with the role of chance irrational juxtapositions, focusing on his ceaseless technical experimentation: in particular, he developed the use of collage in a series of visual "novels" including 'Une Semaine de Bonte' ('A Week Of Goodness', 1934) and the method of frottage in which images evolve form rubbings taken from textured surfaces; in 1939 he appeared in the Surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel's early masterpiece 'L'Age d'or'.
During World War II Ernst escaped from occupied France with the help of the wealthy collector Peggy Guggenheim, who became his third wife. He lived in the USA until 1949, and the profound influence on his work of the American landscape and Native American art - of which he formed an important collection - is vividly evoked here.
Extensive interview sequences with Ernst himself combine with a full-scale survey of his work to create a remarkable eloquent celebration of the "seditious" fusion of "madness and history" that he pursued in various forms throughout his long artistic career.
