How Did Max Ersnt Influence Surrealism

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Max Ersnt was known for his amazing and mysterious artwork, but to reach such a level of understanding of surrealism, Ersnt had to practice and understand many theories of the inner psyche and went on a personal and awakening journey which then helped him understand his true nature and thus influenced abstract expressionists. This, however, was only a small portion of his discoveries and to fully understand Ernst’s Art, it must be broken down in different sections. Throughout his life he was always influenced by internal and external factors that varied from experiences, to other artists, to his own elf. All these factors made it possible for Max Ernst to create his unique and expressive artwork. The two components that Max Ernst fused to…show more content…
Andre Breton was the founder of this movement and defined it as “pure psychic automatism”. This movement encompassed not only paintings, but writings and even drawing games. This movement originated in café’s where artists would form small groups and talk about surrealist art and also develop new techniques. As the group who frequented these cafes grew larger, it attracted more upcoming and inspired artists, such as Max Ernst. What attracted Max was that the founders of this movement were influenced by Freudian psychoanalytic theories, which made them believe that although the artwork seemed a little too abstract; it was that lack of clear imagery that made someone see out of his own consciousness. In other words, because they could not associate what they were seeing to anything they knew, their sub-conscious took over and projected their own feelings and attachment on to these surrealist paintings. This movement had a much stronger impression on paintings than it did on written work. Max Ernst had just come out of World War I, and had been left traumatized. He had a new outlook on western culture after the atrocities he had witnessed and as such went on to look for answers. All these feelings and questions Ernst was going through were considered irrational, and this fueled his even seemingly crazier work. What surrealism had done to Ernst was more than simply inspire him, it had accepted his seemingly crazy and outlandish ideas and shared them with a group of artists who went through similar experiences so they could get together and further expand the ideas of surrealism. A large part of the surrealism artwork that struck with Ernst was the use of automatism, which is an even more spontaneous form of surrealism, where artists concerned would create surrealist artwork without the artist’s conscious censorship in a way to break new bounds and to visualize one’s feelings and

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