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 Robert Schomburgk's photograph of a three-legged clay guinea corn bin from a West African culture, the Konkomba. The photograph was published in a travel memoir [5] and in an anthropological journal. [6] 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: [7]
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] |
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.
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.
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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.
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