Max Ernst Quotes

• Every normal human being (and not merely the 'artist') has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious, it is merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures ... of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light.

  Max Ernst

  Artist, Light, Found Objects

  Max Ernst, Ian Turpin, Julian Stallabrass (1993). “Ernst”, Phaidon Press

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• Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them.

  Max Ernst

  Reality, Two, Suits

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• Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.

  Max Ernst

  Creativity, Reality, Sparks

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• All good ideas arrive by chance.

  Max Ernst

  Writing, Ideas, Intuition

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• Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted

  Max Ernst

  Art, Taste, Art Is

  Max Ernst, Karin von Maur, Tate Gallery, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Germany) (1991). “Max Ernst: a retrospective”

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• Painting is neither decorative amusement, nor the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.

  Max Ernst

  Reality, Discovery, Amusement

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• Who made art history? Not the most reasonable people. The mad men did. If painting is the mirror of a time, it must be mad to have a true image of what that time is. To one madness we oppose another madness.

  Max Ernst

  Art, Men, Mirrors

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• Before he goes into the water, a diver cannot know what he will bring back.

  Max Ernst

  Water, Knows

  Max Ernst, Werner Spies, Karin von Maur, Tate Gallery, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (1991). “Max Ernst: a retrospective”, Prestel Pub

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• The role of the painter . . . is to project that which sees itself in him.

  Max Ernst

  Roles, Projects, Painter

  Max Ernst, Werner Spies, Sabine Rewald, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) (2005). “Max Ernst: A Retrospective”, p.54, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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• Woman's nudity is wiser than the philosopher's teachings.

  Max Ernst

  Beauty, Teaching, Philosopher

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• The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development.

  Max Ernst

  Artist, Development, Phases

  Quoted in Saranne Alexandrian Surrealist Art (1970).

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• When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement.

  Max Ernst

  Artist, Reflection, Achievement

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• I have never seen a beautiful painting of a beautiful woman. But you can take an ugly woman and make a beautiful painting of her. It is the painting itself that should be beautiful.

  Max Ernst

  Beautiful, Art, Ugly

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• Collage is a supersensitive and scrupulously accurate instrument, similar to a seismograph, which is able to record the exact amount of the possibility of human happiness at any period.

  Max Ernst

  Records, Able, Possibility

  Quoted in Saranne Alexandrian Surrealist Art (1970).

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• I succeeded in simply attending at the birth of all my works.

  Max Ernst

  Birth, Attending

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• And Loplop, bird superior, has transformed himself into flesh without flesh and will dwell among us.

  Max Ernst

  Bird, Flesh, Transformed

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• 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.

  Max Ernst

  Expression, Giving, Common

  Review of 'Rhenish Expressionists', Bonn, 1913.

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• Art has got nothing to do with taste.

  Max Ernst

  Art, Taste

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• The virtue of pride, which was once the beauty of mankind, has given place to that fount of ugliness, Christian humility.

  Max Ernst

  Christian, Humility, Pride

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• My paintings are not meant to be tasted.

  Max Ernst

  Painting, Meant To Be

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