Max Ernst

Dif­fer­ent spa­tial impres­sions emerged: an inte­ri­or, an exte­ri­or, a for­est, a cham­ber, and always the struc­tur­ing ele­ment of the mul­ti­col­ored light. The del­i­cate inter­play of light con­trast­ed with the impen­e­tra­ble tex­ture of Ern­st’s work. It served both as a struc­tur­ing device and as a metaphor for the intan­gi­ble, which Max Ernst, as a Sur­re­al­ist, sought to rep­re­sent. The four col­ors rep­re­sent­ed each of his four lives in Ger­many, France, Amer­i­ca, and again Europe. The sub­tle col­or effect was achieved through skill­ful­ly arranged light fil­ters and back­lit walls, which left a col­or echo on the white walls. This artis­tic device was repeat­ed on the exhib­it labels and was also fea­tured in the cat­a­log. The col­ors seemed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly present and absent, trac­ing the mag­i­cal ten­sion between design and chance that unfolds in Max Ern­st’s work. No work or image of the artist adorns the cat­a­log cov­er; instead, only his con­cise name floats in neg­a­tive let­ter­ing with­in a col­ored light space. Open­ing the cat­a­log becomes a zoom into the let­ters. As in the exhi­bi­tion, col­ored light serves as a sub­tle struc­tur­ing of the four stages of Max Ern­st’s life: each loca­tion is bathed in its own col­or; the Paris pho­tographs, for exam­ple, are tint­ed an elec­tric pink, while the Ari­zona sun glows yel­low. The sceno­graph­ic and design ele­ments com­bined in the exhi­bi­tion and cat­a­log to cre­ate a sub­tle nar­ra­tive that illu­mi­nat­ed the artist’s inten­tions in the truest sense of the word.