Surrealism Essay

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remained unchanged from European Surrealism with a loyalty to the idiom of independence from bourgeois culture and with a reaction to various social realisms, such as current politics dictated by the war. As a result, many of the American Surrealists displayed a psychological interpretation created around the imaginative environments of particular regions in America. They also maintained the model of automatism and the myth, a central theory for the European surrealist. The embracement of automatism and myth provides an important connection to the work of Ernst, who arrived in New York on July 14, 1941. Previously in 1939, Ernst was interned as “a citizen of the German Reich,” in both prisons of Largentière and Les Milles near Aix-en-Provence, where he shared a room with a fellow German Surrealist artist, Hans Bellmer. In 1940, Ernst was part of a mass relocation of the prisoners “whose life would be in danger if the Nazis took the camp.” After a series of train stops at various checkpoints, Ernst was imprisoned at Saint-Nicolas, near Nimes, France. However, he constantly tried to escape back to Saint-Martin, where he was recaptured and re-imprisoned until he made a second escape back to Saint-Martin. It was during this second escape, in which he was sought by the Gestapo, that he made the decision to leave Europe. An Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles welcomed Ernst. As a consequence of this tumultuous environment, Ernst shared a similar enthrallment with myth, illusion, and the ability to adapt to a new location. Furthermore, shortly after moving to New York, Ernst relocated to the American West, where he developed a deep fascination with Native American art. This new environment and art style, “For Ernst and his Sur... ... middle of paper ... ...wever, because there are far more demons concealed within the image. Moreover, whereas Grünewald awaits the transmutation of “plants into human forms and vice versa; Ernst repeated these aggressive monsters without actually copying them.” Therefore, it is easy to speculate that Ernst was inspired by the imagery of Grünewald, but imbued it with more of his own style. He uses the figures to research an understanding of the world, in a sort of crude unconsciousness. He is creating the reality of Saint Anthony. Conversely, Ernst’s depiction of Anthony is substantially different from that of Grünewald. For instance, Grünewald paints Anthony wearing a cloak of light blue with red sleeves and depicts his face essentially devoid of any emotion. Ernst pictures Anthony wearing a bright, vivid red cloak and shows him twisting and turning in agony as he is being tormented by

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