Max Ernst Quotations

Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.

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.

Art has got nothing to do with taste.

Woman's nudity is wiser than the philosopher's teachings.

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.

The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development.

I succeeded in simply attending at the birth of all my works.

The virtue of pride, which was once the beauty of mankind, has given place to that fount of ugliness, Christian humility.

My paintings are not meant to be tasted.

The role of the painter . . . is to project that which sees itself in him.

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.

And Loplop, bird superior, has transformed himself into flesh without flesh and will dwell among us...

Before he goes into the water, a diver cannot know what he will bring back.

All good ideas arrive by 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.

Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted

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.

Painting is neither decorative amusement, nor the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.

Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.

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.

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.