The Elephant Celebes

Last updated

The Elephant Celebes
The Elephant Celebes.jpg
Artist Max Ernst
Year1921
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions125.4 cm× 107.9 cm(49.4 in× 42.5 in)
Location Tate Modern, London

The Elephant Celebes (or short Celebes) is a 1921 painting by the German Dadaist and surrealist Max Ernst. It is among the most famous of Ernst's early surrealist works and "undoubtedly the first masterpiece of Surrealist painting in the de Chirico tradition." [1] It combines the vivid dreamlike atmosphere of Surrealism with the collage aspects of Dada.

Contents

Description and influence

Giorgio de Chirico was an inspiration for the early Surrealists, and Celebes' palette and spatial construction show his influence. [2] The painting also attempts to apply Dada's collage effects to simulate different materials. Ernst's realistic portrayal of the constituent elements produces a hallucinatory effect that he associated with collage, and was trying to achieve in this painting. [3] Regarding the art of collage, Ernst said, "It is the systematic exploitation of the coincidental or artificially provoked encounter of two or more unrelated realities on an apparently inappropriate plane and the spark of poetry created by the proximity of these realities." [4]

The central focus of the painting is a giant mechanical elephant. It is round and has a trunk-like hose protruding from it. The figure's round body was modeled after a photograph in an anthropological journal of a clay corn bin from a West African culture, the Konkomba. [5] Celebes suggests "ritual and totemic sculpture of African origin", evidenced by the totem-like pole at right and the figure's bull horns. [2] The painting uniquely combines found imagery and non-Western visual elements. [2]

Ernst's creature has a frilly metallic cuff or collar, and a horned head and tail. The low horizon emphasizes the creature's bulk, and the gesture of the headless mannequin introduces the viewer to the figure. The mannequin wears a surgical glove, a common Surrealist symbol. This nude figure may have a mythological connotation, suggesting the abduction of Europa by Zeus while disguised as a bull. [3] The mostly empty sky contains more incongruities: there are two fish 'flying' at left (one writer considers the scene to be underwater [3] ). The black shape to the right of the fish looks like an oncoming airplane, and there is a trail of smoke in the right part of the sky. These may be allusions to the "mechanical terror of the war experience" which led to Ernst writing, 'On the 1st of August 1914 Max Ernst died. He was resurrected on the 11 November 1918 as a young man who aspired to find the myths of his time.' [2] Celebes, then, seems to represent the myth of destruction. [2]

"Celebes" was once the popular name for the island of Sulawesi, one of the Greater Sunda Islands of Indonesia. Ernst told Roland Penrose that the title Celebes was derived from the opening words of a German schoolboys' rhyme with sexual connotations: [6]

Der Elefant von Celebes
hat hinten etwas Gelebes.
Der Elefant von Sumatra,
der vögelt seine Grossmama.
Der Elefant von Indien,
der kann das Loch nicht findien.

The elephant from Celebes
has sticky, yellow bottom grease.
The elephant from Sumatra
always fucks his grandmama.
The elephant from India
can never find the hole ha-ha. [2]

History

The painting's short original title is Celebes, according to inscriptions on the front and back of the canvas. [1] Ernst painted Celebes in Cologne in 1921. The French poet and Surrealist Paul Éluard visited Ernst that year and purchased the painting and took it back to Paris. Éluard would buy other of Ernst's paintings, and Ernst painted murals for Éluard's house in Eaubonne. It remained in Éluard's collection until 1938 and was then purchased by the English artist Roland Penrose. It has been in the collection of the Tate gallery, London, since 1975 and is displayed in the Tate Modern. The money from Penrose's sale of the painting was used to set up the grant-giving Elephant Trust which continues to administer bursaries to artists and small arts organisation in the UK. [7] The back of the canvas is decorated with some doodles that are seemingly unconnected to the subject matter on the front of the canvas, including two figures holding golf clubs adjacent to the word "GOLF".

The painting was the inspiration for the naming of the Elephant 6 recording collective. According to Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider, he chose the name because he was enchanted by the painting but misheard its title. [8]

Sources

  1. 1 2 Wilson, Simon (March 1978). "'Dada and Surrealism Reviewed' at the Hayward Gallery". The Burlington Magazine . Vol. 120, no. 900. pp. 178, 181–184.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Jeffett, William (1990). "Max Ernst" in James Vinson (ed.), International Dictionary of Art and Artists vol. 2, Art. Detroit: St. James Press; pp. 864–865. ISBN   1-55862-001-X.
  3. 1 2 3 Klingseohr-Leroy, Cathrin (2004). Surrealism. Taschen. p. 50. ISBN   3-8228-2215-9.
  4. Walther, Ingo F.; Robert Suckale (2002). Masterpieces of Western Art: A History of Art in 900 Individual Studies from the Gothic to the Present Day. Taschen. p. 608. ISBN   3-8228-1825-9.
  5. "Corn Bin", Konkombwa, Penn Libraries, University of Pennsylvania
  6. "The Elephant Celebes, 1921 – by Max Ernst, Max-Ernst.com
  7. "The Elephant Trust", Registered Charity No. 269615
  8. Marah Eakin (25 August 2023). "Inside Elephant 6: 8 Takeaways from a New Documentary about the Musical Collective". grammy.com. Retrieved 17 September 2023.;
    "Lance Bangs on The Elephant 6 Recording Co". Aquarium Drunkard . 25 August 2023. Retrieved 17 September 2023.;
    Lance Bangs (director) (25 August 2023). The Elephant Six Recording Co (Motion picture). Athens, Georgia.;
    A Future History Of: The Elephant 6 Recording Co. at IMDb OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg (earlier version by Chad B. Stockfleth)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surrealism</span> International cultural movement active from the 1920s to the 1950s

Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas. Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Ernst</span> German artist (1891–1976)

Max Ernst was a German 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 images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, and this experience left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Man Ray</span> American visual artist and photographer (1890–1976)

Man Ray was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his pioneering photography, and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.

Conroy Maddox was an English surrealist painter, collagist, writer and lecturer; and a key figure in the Birmingham Surrealist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loplop</span> Alter ego of Max Ernst

Loplop, or more formally, Loplop, Father Superior of the Birds, is the name of a birdlike character that was an alter ego of the Dada-Surrealist artist Max Ernst. Ernst had a ongoing fascination with birds, which often appear in his work. Loplop functioned as a familiar animal. William Rubin wrote of Ernst "Among his more successful works of the thirties are a series begun in 1930 around the theme of his alter ego, Loplop, Superior of the Birds." Loplop is an iconic image of surrealist art, the painting Loplop Introduces Loplop (1930) appears on the front cover of the Gaëtan Picon's book Surrealist and Surrealism 1919-1939, and the drawing and collage Loplop Presents (1932) was used as the frontispiece of Patrick Waldberg's book Surrealism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothea Tanning</span> American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet

Dorothea Margaret Tanning was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. Her early work was influenced by Surrealism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metaphysical painting</span> Italian art style

Metaphysical painting or metaphysical art was a style of painting developed by the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began in 1910 with de Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious quality, "painting that which cannot be seen". De Chirico, his younger brother Alberto Savinio, and Carrà formally established the school and its principles in 1917.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roland Penrose</span> British artist and art historian (1900-1984)

Sir Roland Algernon Penrose was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom. During the Second World War he put his artistic skills to practical use as a teacher of camouflage.

<i>Minotaure</i> French surrealist magazine

Minotaure was a Surrealist-oriented magazine founded by Albert Skira and E. Tériade in Paris and published between 1933 and 1939. Minotaure published on the plastic arts, poetry, and literature, avant garde, as well as articles on esoteric and unusual aspects of literary and art history. Also included were psychoanalytical studies and artistic aspects of anthropology and ethnography. It was a lavish and extravagant magazine by the standards of the 1930s, profusely illustrated with high quality reproductions of art, often in color.

Stupid was a short-lived grouping of constructivist artists, formed in Cologne in 1919. The founding members were Willy Fick, Heinrich Hoerle, Angelika Hoerle, Anton Räderscheidt, Marta Hegemann, and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert.

Richard Oelze was a German painter. He is classified as a surrealist.

Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution was a periodical issued by the Surrealist Group in Paris between 1930 and 1933. It was the successor of La Révolution surréaliste and preceded the primarily surrealist publication Minotaure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">20th-century Western painting</span> Art in the Western world during the 20th century

20th-century Western painting begins with the heritage of late-19th-century painters Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others who were essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck, revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Matisse's second version of The Dance signified a key point in his career and in the development of modern painting. It reflected Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art: the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women surrealists</span> Women involved with the Surrealist movement

Women Surrealists are women artists, photographers, filmmakers and authors connected with the surrealist movement, which began in the early 1920s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eileen Agar</span> Argentine artist, photographer (1899–1991)

Eileen Forrester Agar was an Argentine-British painter and photographer associated with the Surrealist movement.

<i>Le Déjeuner en fourrure</i> Sculpture by Méret Oppenheim

Object , lit. Object, known in English as Fur Breakfast or Breakfast in Fur, is a 1936 sculpture by the surrealist Méret Oppenheim, consisting of a fur-covered teacup, saucer and spoon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme</span> 1938 Paris exhibition by surrealist artists

The Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme was an exhibition by surrealist artists that took place from January 17 to February 24, 1938, in the generously equipped Galérie Beaux-Arts, run by Georges Wildenstein, at 140, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. It was organised by the French writer André Breton, the surrealists' brain and theorist, and Paul Éluard, the best known poet of the movement. The catalogue listed, along with the above, Marcel Duchamp as generator and arbitrator, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst as technical advisers, Man Ray as head lighting technician and Wolfgang Paalen as responsible for the design of the entrance and main hall with "water and foliage". The exhibition was staged in three sections, showing paintings and objects as well as unusually decorated rooms and mannequins which had been redesigned in various ways. With this holistic presentation of surrealist art work the movement wrote exhibition history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valentine Penrose</span> French surrealist poet, author and collagist (1898–1978)

Valentine Penrose, was a French surrealist poet, author, and collagist.

Pierre Roy was a French surrealist painter. He is known for his realistically painted compositions of ordinary objects in unexpected arrangements.

<i>Hebdomeros</i> 1929 book by Giorgio De Chirico

Hebdomeros is a 1929 book by Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. Chirico did not produce any other long-form writing. The book is narrated in the third person and loosely concerns the movement of a man, Hebdomeros, westward. Writing in The Kenyon Review, Alan Burns referred to the text as a "surrealist dream novel".