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(jazzy piano music)

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- [Steven] We're in the
Museum of Modern Art.

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And we're looking at a
painting by Max Ernst,

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Two Children Are Threatened
by a Nightingale,

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and this isn't a painting
in the traditional sense.

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There's stuff in it.

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- [Beth] A lot of stuff, actually,

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that emerges toward us from the painting.

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There's an open gate,
there's a rudimentary house

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with some other objects
stuck on top of it.

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And there's something
that looks like a knob.

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- [Steven] And despite
these toy-like objects

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that are nailed into the
surface of the painting,

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there are references to
the tradition of painting.

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There's a deep recessionary space

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that's beautifully expressed
by linear perspective

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and by atmospheric perspective,

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but tradition pretty much stops there.

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- [Beth] Including
objects from everyday life

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had been done by Picasso and
Braque about a decade earlier,

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but in those paintings we
see forms that still cohere.

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What we have here is something
that was very important

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to Dadaist artists, and that
is the bringing together

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of really disparate objects.

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We see the title on this painted frame

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and then we see a surface
painted with a thick impasto

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in very flat green and two
figures painted in grisailles,

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that is painted in grayish tones.

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- [Steven] These are both female figures.

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The one that's upright seems to be running

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holding an enormous knife.

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Her hair is flying up behind her,

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and so there's a sense of
velocity, a sense of drama

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which suggests that she's
either fleeing or chasing.

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And it's completely unclear as to which.

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- [Beth] And she moves toward
the outside of the painting.

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And so if she is running from something

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we don't see anything behind her.

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And we certainly don't see anything

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that she could be running toward.

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So we're missing a big
piece of that narrative.

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And then this figure who is either asleep

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or wounded or dead in this green field.

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There is a feeling of danger.

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Perhaps the woman on
the left with the knife

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is reacting in some way to
that figure on the ground.

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- [Steven] But they're far enough away

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that they're also disassociated.

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And that's the confusing part.

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The woman with the
knife is running by her.

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She's not running at, or from
the figure on the ground.

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- [Beth] I think that you
raise an important point

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that they're not near one another,

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but we really can't judge
distance here at all.

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That wall moves too quickly
back into that space.

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Those forms in the background,
what looked like a wall,

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a triumphal arch, and behind
that a domed structure

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perhaps with a minaret
or a wall around it,

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how far away are those?

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How far away other
figures from one another?

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The depth of that green field
is impossible to determine.

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And then these objects
are really close to us.

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- [Steven] I always think
of this as metaphorical,

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that that ancient Roman arch
is the distance of history.

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And the domed architecture
reminds me at least

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of Renaissance paintings that
show Jerusalem at a distance.

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And so the distance is not only physical,

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but perhaps historical or metaphorical.

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- [Beth] And we shouldn't forget about

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what is perhaps the most
menacing figure in the painting,

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the figure who alights on the roof

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as though he's been flying

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with just his right toes carrying a child,

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and like the female
figure carrying the knife,

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reaches out his arm and moves toward

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outside the frame of the painting.

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- [Steven] In fact, he
almost seems to be trying

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to reach or touch the knob

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that is physically attached to the frame.

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And like the figures below
the child and the man

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are painted in grisailles,

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which some art historians
have noted reminds them

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of Ernst's earlier collages,
where he would cut out

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black and white photographs or drawings

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and paste them together.

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There is a fifth figure
also painted in grisailles.

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And that's a bird,
presumably the nightingale.

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- [Beth] The title tells us that this is

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about the menacing of the nightingale,

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this bird, which has a beautiful song

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and which is supposed to seduce us,

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does the very opposite here.

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We have this immediate sense of things

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that don't belong together,
suggesting a dream.

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- [Steven] I would say that in this image

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things don't come together
in an aggressive way

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that is a reminder of
the art that was made

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by groups of artists in
Paris where this was made,

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in Cologne, where Ernst had come from,

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but also in New York, in Zurich, Berlin.

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And in all of these places,
artists were responding

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to the devastation of the First World War,

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of its uselessness, of its violence.

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- [Beth] The absurdity of the war,

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the use of technology in that war.

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This is also the time of Freud,

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who Ernst was very interested in,

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the idea of the unconscious,

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of things that can't be controlled.

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And there are forms here
that suggest the erotic

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or sexual meaning that would have been

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similar to the kinds of readings of Freud.

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So what are the figures
here afraid of precisely?

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- [Steven] Ernest went
into the war in 1914

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and didn't come out until the war's end.

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He served both on the Western Front

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and on the Eastern Front.

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And he was wounded when artillery

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that he was manning recoiled.

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He had firsthand knowledge
of this devastation.

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- [Beth] And when he came
back from the war to Cologne,

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he came back to a city that
was occupied by British forces

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and political and
economic chaos in Germany.

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- [Steven] And yet, despite
this unprecedented violence,

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society was trying to
normalize what had happened

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and the Dadaists refused that.

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And so Ernst does seem to be drawing on

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his interest in Freud and
especially the interest

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in the irrational of the unconscious,

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of our state below our socialized beings.

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What made the work possible?

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(jazzy piano music)