Max Ernst famous quotes

03-22-2025

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 #Noble
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 #Matter
Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.
-- Max Ernst

#Creativity #Reality #Sparks
Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted
-- Max Ernst

#Art #Taste #Art Is
My paintings are not meant to be tasted.
-- Max Ernst

#Painting #Meant To Be
All good ideas arrive by chance.
-- Max Ernst

#Ideas #Intuition #Chance
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
The role of the painter . . . is to project that which sees itself in him.
-- Max Ernst

#Roles #Projects #Painter
I succeeded in simply attending at the birth of all my works.
-- Max Ernst

#Birth
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

#Reflection #Artist #Achievement
And Loplop, bird superior, has transformed himself into flesh without flesh and will dwell among us...
-- Max Ernst

#Bird #Flesh
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

#Able #Records #Possibility
The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development.
-- Max Ernst

#Artist #Phases #Development
Before he goes into the water, a diver cannot know what he will bring back.
-- Max Ernst

#Water
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
Woman's nudity is wiser than the philosopher's teachings.
-- Max Ernst

#Beauty #Teaching #Philosopher
Art has got nothing to do with taste.
-- Max Ernst

#Art #Taste
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
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
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

You may also like:

Alberto Giacometti
Artist
Andre Breton
Writer
Dorothea Tanning
Painter
Francis Picabia
Painter
Giorgio de Chirico
Artist
Hans Arp
Sculptor
Henri Matisse
Artist
Joan Miro
Painter
Leonora Carrington
Artist
Man Ray
Artist
Marc Chagall
Artist
Marcel Duchamp
Painter
Pablo Picasso
Painter
Paul Eluard
Poet
Paul Klee
Painter
Peggy Guggenheim
Art collector
Rene Magritte
Artist
Salvador Dali
Painter
Tristan Tzara
Poet
Yves Tanguy