When I was a kid, my parents and I paid a visit to the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg while we were visiting Florida on vacation. At the time, I was old enough to know who Dali was because my art teacher had introduced us to his famous painting, “The Persistence of Memory,” an iconic surrealist painting featuring the famous “melting clock.” Upon entering the museum, I was surprised to find that Dali painted a wide array of surrealist paintings, many of which deviated from the style of his most famous piece. Unfortunately, due to my age and limited experience, I wasn’t very appreciative. I didn’t think much of Dali, or specifically the surrealist artistic movement. Who could blame me, I was probably nine or ten years old. However, my point of view didn’t really change over time. As I explored new art styles, I became more absorbed with art that I felt comfortable analyzing and writing about. As a result, I avoided surrealist paintings, because I felt like I had a hard time understanding them. Thankfully, while I was doing my research for this week’s issue, I stumbled upon a perplexing painting by Max Ernst which may have changed my mind about surrealist art.
Normally, I try my best to write about artists that are obscure or underappreciated. In this issue, I somehow managed to choose an artist that started an entire artistic movement. Max Ernst was a German painter and sculptor who was one of the first members of both the dada movement and the surrealist movement. Both dada and surrealism are art forms that focus on disregarding the constraints of western culture, rejecting societal norms, and thinking outside the box of the rational mind. Ernst’s belief in these ideals was likely influenced by his traumatizing experience serving in the German army as a young man during World War I. Regardless of how Ernst adopted these ideas, it is important to recognize just how unique his art is. Not only did Ernst experiment with a variety of different forms of media, but he also took artistic inspiration from other artistic styles that he picked up during his studies. He also painted a multitude of different subjects, not excluding portraits, landscapes, collages, and more from his portfolio.
The painting I included for Ernst is called “Saint Cecilia (Invisible Piano)” and was produced by Ernst in 1923 while he was still living in Paris, France. It’s one of his more colorful paintings, yet it has this incredible eeriness to it that really drew me in. The woman in the painting seems to be trapped inside a stone wall and is playing a stone piano with invisible keys. However, what’s truly interesting about this painting is how Ernst uses lighting to manipulate the perspective. One can tell that the woman is inside the stone wall because the stone wall casts a shadow on her. However, we can’t tell if she is playing the stone piano with invisible keys to her left because a shadow is also cast onto the side of the stone piano. It’s an interesting effect because it makes you question if the object to her left is actually a stone piano with invisible keys or an entirely different object. Is the woman playing a totally invisible piano? If so, what is the object to her left? As you can tell, I am already going in circles thinking about what Ernst is trying to portray. My past self would find this state of confusion annoying, but my present self is amused with the idea of patient observation. I want to find out what Ernst was thinking when he was painting this piece; what was he trying to say? Moral of the story: don’t take art for simply what you see. Take your time and really try to understand what the artist is trying to convey, especially when presented with art that is highly conceptual and up to interpretation. If you see me on campus, tell me what you think, I’m still trying to get to the bottom of this one…
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