WEBVTT 00:00:00.375 --> 00:00:03.375 (jazzy piano music) 00:00:04.610 --> 00:00:06.050 - [Steven] We're in the Museum of Modern Art. 00:00:06.050 --> 00:00:08.000 And we're looking at a painting by Max Ernst, 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:10.480 Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:12.800 and this isn't a painting in the traditional sense. 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:14.200 There's stuff in it. 00:00:14.200 --> 00:00:16.000 - [Beth] A lot of stuff, actually, 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:18.850 that emerges toward us from the painting. 00:00:18.850 --> 00:00:22.730 There's an open gate, there's a rudimentary house 00:00:22.730 --> 00:00:25.880 with some other objects stuck on top of it. 00:00:25.880 --> 00:00:28.230 And there's something that looks like a knob. 00:00:28.230 --> 00:00:30.610 - [Steven] And despite these toy-like objects 00:00:30.610 --> 00:00:33.090 that are nailed into the surface of the painting, 00:00:33.090 --> 00:00:35.780 there are references to the tradition of painting. 00:00:35.780 --> 00:00:37.970 There's a deep recessionary space 00:00:37.970 --> 00:00:40.670 that's beautifully expressed by linear perspective 00:00:40.670 --> 00:00:43.100 and by atmospheric perspective, 00:00:43.100 --> 00:00:45.870 but tradition pretty much stops there. 00:00:45.870 --> 00:00:47.610 - [Beth] Including objects from everyday life 00:00:47.610 --> 00:00:51.620 had been done by Picasso and Braque about a decade earlier, 00:00:51.620 --> 00:00:55.580 but in those paintings we see forms that still cohere. 00:00:55.580 --> 00:00:58.620 What we have here is something that was very important 00:00:58.620 --> 00:01:01.200 to Dadaist artists, and that is the bringing together 00:01:01.200 --> 00:01:03.260 of really disparate objects. 00:01:03.260 --> 00:01:06.680 We see the title on this painted frame 00:01:06.680 --> 00:01:10.660 and then we see a surface painted with a thick impasto 00:01:10.660 --> 00:01:14.790 in very flat green and two figures painted in grisailles, 00:01:14.790 --> 00:01:17.080 that is painted in grayish tones. 00:01:17.080 --> 00:01:18.610 - [Steven] These are both female figures. 00:01:18.610 --> 00:01:20.670 The one that's upright seems to be running 00:01:20.670 --> 00:01:22.250 holding an enormous knife. 00:01:22.250 --> 00:01:24.501 Her hair is flying up behind her, 00:01:24.501 --> 00:01:26.670 and so there's a sense of velocity, a sense of drama 00:01:26.670 --> 00:01:29.780 which suggests that she's either fleeing or chasing. 00:01:29.780 --> 00:01:32.380 And it's completely unclear as to which. 00:01:32.380 --> 00:01:36.230 - [Beth] And she moves toward the outside of the painting. 00:01:36.230 --> 00:01:38.500 And so if she is running from something 00:01:38.500 --> 00:01:40.060 we don't see anything behind her. 00:01:40.060 --> 00:01:41.760 And we certainly don't see anything 00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:43.330 that she could be running toward. 00:01:43.330 --> 00:01:45.920 So we're missing a big piece of that narrative. 00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:49.460 And then this figure who is either asleep 00:01:49.460 --> 00:01:52.830 or wounded or dead in this green field. 00:01:52.830 --> 00:01:55.450 There is a feeling of danger. 00:01:55.450 --> 00:01:57.310 Perhaps the woman on the left with the knife 00:01:57.310 --> 00:02:01.280 is reacting in some way to that figure on the ground. 00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:02.920 - [Steven] But they're far enough away 00:02:02.920 --> 00:02:04.770 that they're also disassociated. 00:02:04.770 --> 00:02:06.740 And that's the confusing part. 00:02:06.740 --> 00:02:08.520 The woman with the knife is running by her. 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:12.140 She's not running at, or from the figure on the ground. 00:02:12.140 --> 00:02:14.620 - [Beth] I think that you raise an important point 00:02:14.620 --> 00:02:17.080 that they're not near one another, 00:02:17.080 --> 00:02:20.510 but we really can't judge distance here at all. 00:02:20.510 --> 00:02:24.170 That wall moves too quickly back into that space. 00:02:24.170 --> 00:02:27.720 Those forms in the background, what looked like a wall, 00:02:27.720 --> 00:02:31.350 a triumphal arch, and behind that a domed structure 00:02:31.350 --> 00:02:34.730 perhaps with a minaret or a wall around it, 00:02:34.730 --> 00:02:36.770 how far away are those? 00:02:36.770 --> 00:02:39.230 How far away other figures from one another? 00:02:39.230 --> 00:02:43.270 The depth of that green field is impossible to determine. 00:02:43.270 --> 00:02:46.520 And then these objects are really close to us. 00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:48.580 - [Steven] I always think of this as metaphorical, 00:02:48.580 --> 00:02:52.250 that that ancient Roman arch is the distance of history. 00:02:52.250 --> 00:02:55.350 And the domed architecture reminds me at least 00:02:55.350 --> 00:02:59.240 of Renaissance paintings that show Jerusalem at a distance. 00:02:59.240 --> 00:03:01.240 And so the distance is not only physical, 00:03:01.240 --> 00:03:03.580 but perhaps historical or metaphorical. 00:03:03.580 --> 00:03:05.070 - [Beth] And we shouldn't forget about 00:03:05.070 --> 00:03:08.970 what is perhaps the most menacing figure in the painting, 00:03:08.970 --> 00:03:11.020 the figure who alights on the roof 00:03:11.020 --> 00:03:12.550 as though he's been flying 00:03:12.550 --> 00:03:16.720 with just his right toes carrying a child, 00:03:16.720 --> 00:03:19.540 and like the female figure carrying the knife, 00:03:19.540 --> 00:03:21.690 reaches out his arm and moves toward 00:03:21.690 --> 00:03:23.780 outside the frame of the painting. 00:03:23.780 --> 00:03:25.640 - [Steven] In fact, he almost seems to be trying 00:03:25.640 --> 00:03:27.550 to reach or touch the knob 00:03:27.550 --> 00:03:29.930 that is physically attached to the frame. 00:03:29.930 --> 00:03:33.030 And like the figures below the child and the man 00:03:33.030 --> 00:03:34.530 are painted in grisailles, 00:03:34.530 --> 00:03:38.250 which some art historians have noted reminds them 00:03:38.250 --> 00:03:41.660 of Ernst's earlier collages, where he would cut out 00:03:41.660 --> 00:03:44.110 black and white photographs or drawings 00:03:44.110 --> 00:03:45.300 and paste them together. 00:03:45.300 --> 00:03:47.890 There is a fifth figure also painted in grisailles. 00:03:47.890 --> 00:03:50.400 And that's a bird, presumably the nightingale. 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:52.050 - [Beth] The title tells us that this is 00:03:52.050 --> 00:03:54.040 about the menacing of the nightingale, 00:03:54.040 --> 00:03:56.560 this bird, which has a beautiful song 00:03:56.560 --> 00:03:58.450 and which is supposed to seduce us, 00:03:58.450 --> 00:04:00.270 does the very opposite here. 00:04:00.270 --> 00:04:02.060 We have this immediate sense of things 00:04:02.060 --> 00:04:05.610 that don't belong together, suggesting a dream. 00:04:05.610 --> 00:04:07.480 - [Steven] I would say that in this image 00:04:07.480 --> 00:04:10.060 things don't come together in an aggressive way 00:04:10.060 --> 00:04:12.750 that is a reminder of the art that was made 00:04:12.750 --> 00:04:16.020 by groups of artists in Paris where this was made, 00:04:16.020 --> 00:04:18.090 in Cologne, where Ernst had come from, 00:04:18.090 --> 00:04:21.320 but also in New York, in Zurich, Berlin. 00:04:21.320 --> 00:04:24.020 And in all of these places, artists were responding 00:04:24.020 --> 00:04:26.090 to the devastation of the First World War, 00:04:26.090 --> 00:04:28.610 of its uselessness, of its violence. 00:04:28.610 --> 00:04:30.690 - [Beth] The absurdity of the war, 00:04:30.690 --> 00:04:33.370 the use of technology in that war. 00:04:33.370 --> 00:04:35.980 This is also the time of Freud, 00:04:35.980 --> 00:04:38.210 who Ernst was very interested in, 00:04:38.210 --> 00:04:40.100 the idea of the unconscious, 00:04:40.100 --> 00:04:42.380 of things that can't be controlled. 00:04:42.380 --> 00:04:45.310 And there are forms here that suggest the erotic 00:04:45.310 --> 00:04:47.900 or sexual meaning that would have been 00:04:47.900 --> 00:04:50.650 similar to the kinds of readings of Freud. 00:04:50.650 --> 00:04:54.230 So what are the figures here afraid of precisely? 00:04:54.230 --> 00:04:56.730 - [Steven] Ernest went into the war in 1914 00:04:56.730 --> 00:04:58.560 and didn't come out until the war's end. 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:00.590 He served both on the Western Front 00:05:00.590 --> 00:05:01.910 and on the Eastern Front. 00:05:01.910 --> 00:05:03.730 And he was wounded when artillery 00:05:03.730 --> 00:05:05.530 that he was manning recoiled. 00:05:05.530 --> 00:05:08.610 He had firsthand knowledge of this devastation. 00:05:08.610 --> 00:05:11.940 - [Beth] And when he came back from the war to Cologne, 00:05:11.940 --> 00:05:15.600 he came back to a city that was occupied by British forces 00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:19.520 and political and economic chaos in Germany. 00:05:19.520 --> 00:05:22.820 - [Steven] And yet, despite this unprecedented violence, 00:05:22.820 --> 00:05:25.500 society was trying to normalize what had happened 00:05:25.500 --> 00:05:27.570 and the Dadaists refused that. 00:05:27.570 --> 00:05:29.815 And so Ernst does seem to be drawing on 00:05:29.815 --> 00:05:32.370 his interest in Freud and especially the interest 00:05:32.370 --> 00:05:35.270 in the irrational of the unconscious, 00:05:35.270 --> 00:05:38.620 of our state below our socialized beings. 00:05:38.620 --> 00:05:41.100 What made the work possible? 00:05:41.100 --> 00:05:44.100 (jazzy piano music)