Hmmm, I'm not sure what Mr Ernst would make of this city created in his name... The city you describe sounds just so bucolic and pastoral and pleasant - a sort of whimsical, new-age hippies retreat in the tree-tops... You know, I struggle to find that energy in Ernst's work. Isn't Ernst's world a bit edgier, a bit darker-hued, with a sense of menace in some of those environments - a sense of dream-like strangeness of dislocation and melancholy? I don't see the jewels and I don't see the rainbow trees; Ernst associates much more strongly with the more neurotic side of Freudian theory and the unconscious... I think you might be wearing a great big pair of rose-tinted spectacles; there is nothing whimsical or pretty about Max Ernst's worlds surely? Take another look at Ernst's forests... do they seem particularly safe and cosy and harmonious to you? I'd just question how much your travelogue has to do with Ernst, and how much has to do with the sorts of environment you like to imagine.
I wonder if you're struggling a bit with your artist, Kayleigh? I wonder if it would be more immediately useful to you if you stepped away from the more landscapy stuff and looked instead at the idea of his photomontages - i.e. objects hybridised from cut-outs and components. I think you're onto something interesting with your thumbnails in which you were collaging and scanning in fragments, but how about using the same technique to actually create some surreal buildings - so cutting out random elements from magazines and newspapers etc. combining them, and then scanning them in, bringing them in Photoshop and working with them by putting them into a space? In all honesty, I'd drop the whimsy of your forest folk - they're not Ernst's people. Ernst's citizens are a less happy breed - just look at his work; nope, no rainbows and pastoral utopia there.
So - look at Ernst's photomontages as a way forward and look again at the emotional range of his work; there's an unhappiness and unfriendliness you're missing.
OGR 06/11/2014
ReplyDeleteHi Kayliegh,
Hmmm, I'm not sure what Mr Ernst would make of this city created in his name... The city you describe sounds just so bucolic and pastoral and pleasant - a sort of whimsical, new-age hippies retreat in the tree-tops... You know, I struggle to find that energy in Ernst's work. Isn't Ernst's world a bit edgier, a bit darker-hued, with a sense of menace in some of those environments - a sense of dream-like strangeness of dislocation and melancholy? I don't see the jewels and I don't see the rainbow trees; Ernst associates much more strongly with the more neurotic side of Freudian theory and the unconscious... I think you might be wearing a great big pair of rose-tinted spectacles; there is nothing whimsical or pretty about Max Ernst's worlds surely? Take another look at Ernst's forests... do they seem particularly safe and cosy and harmonious to you? I'd just question how much your travelogue has to do with Ernst, and how much has to do with the sorts of environment you like to imagine.
I wonder if you're struggling a bit with your artist, Kayleigh? I wonder if it would be more immediately useful to you if you stepped away from the more landscapy stuff and looked instead at the idea of his photomontages - i.e. objects hybridised from cut-outs and components. I think you're onto something interesting with your thumbnails in which you were collaging and scanning in fragments, but how about using the same technique to actually create some surreal buildings - so cutting out random elements from magazines and newspapers etc. combining them, and then scanning them in, bringing them in Photoshop and working with them by putting them into a space? In all honesty, I'd drop the whimsy of your forest folk - they're not Ernst's people. Ernst's citizens are a less happy breed - just look at his work; nope, no rainbows and pastoral utopia there.
So - look at Ernst's photomontages as a way forward and look again at the emotional range of his work; there's an unhappiness and unfriendliness you're missing.