Nightingales and nightmares, Max Ernst and Dada

(jazzy piano music)

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

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

Two Children Are Threatened
by a Nightingale,

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

There's stuff in it.

- [Beth] A lot of stuff, actually,

that emerges toward us from the painting.

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

with some other objects
stuck on top of it.

And there's something
that looks like a knob.

- [Steven] And despite
these toy-like objects

that are nailed into the
surface of the painting,

there are references to
the tradition of painting.

There's a deep recessionary space

that's beautifully expressed
by linear perspective

and by atmospheric perspective,

but tradition pretty much stops there.

- [Beth] Including
objects from everyday life

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

but in those paintings we
see forms that still cohere.

What we have here is something
that was very important

to Dadaist artists, and that
is the bringing together

of really disparate objects.

We see the title on this painted frame

and then we see a surface
painted with a thick impasto

in very flat green and two
figures painted in grisailles,

that is painted in grayish tones.

- [Steven] These are both female figures.

The one that's upright seems to be running

holding an enormous knife.

Her hair is flying up behind her,

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

which suggests that she's
either fleeing or chasing.

And it's completely unclear as to which.

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

And so if she is running from something

we don't see anything behind her.

And we certainly don't see anything

that she could be running toward.

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

And then this figure who is either asleep

or wounded or dead in this green field.

There is a feeling of danger.

Perhaps the woman on
the left with the knife

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

- [Steven] But they're far enough away

that they're also disassociated.

And that's the confusing part.

The woman with the
knife is running by her.

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

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

that they're not near one another,

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

That wall moves too quickly
back into that space.

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

a triumphal arch, and behind
that a domed structure

perhaps with a minaret
or a wall around it,

how far away are those?

How far away other
figures from one another?

The depth of that green field
is impossible to determine.

And then these objects
are really close to us.

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

that that ancient Roman arch
is the distance of history.

And the domed architecture
reminds me at least

of Renaissance paintings that
show Jerusalem at a distance.

And so the distance is not only physical,

but perhaps historical or metaphorical.

- [Beth] And we shouldn't forget about

what is perhaps the most
menacing figure in the painting,

the figure who alights on the roof

as though he's been flying

with just his right toes carrying a child,

and like the female
figure carrying the knife,

reaches out his arm and moves toward

outside the frame of the painting.

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

to reach or touch the knob

that is physically attached to the frame.

And like the figures below
the child and the man

are painted in grisailles,

which some art historians
have noted reminds them

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

black and white photographs or drawings

and paste them together.

There is a fifth figure
also painted in grisailles.

And that's a bird,
presumably the nightingale.

- [Beth] The title tells us that this is

about the menacing of the nightingale,

this bird, which has a beautiful song

and which is supposed to seduce us,

does the very opposite here.

We have this immediate sense of things

that don't belong together,
suggesting a dream.

- [Steven] I would say that in this image

things don't come together
in an aggressive way

that is a reminder of
the art that was made

by groups of artists in
Paris where this was made,

in Cologne, where Ernst had come from,

but also in New York, in Zurich, Berlin.

And in all of these places,
artists were responding

to the devastation of the First World War,

of its uselessness, of its violence.

- [Beth] The absurdity of the war,

the use of technology in that war.

This is also the time of Freud,

who Ernst was very interested in,

the idea of the unconscious,

of things that can't be controlled.

And there are forms here
that suggest the erotic

or sexual meaning that would have been

similar to the kinds of readings of Freud.

So what are the figures
here afraid of precisely?

- [Steven] Ernest went
into the war in 1914

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

He served both on the Western Front

and on the Eastern Front.

And he was wounded when artillery

that he was manning recoiled.

He had firsthand knowledge
of this devastation.

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

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

and political and
economic chaos in Germany.

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

society was trying to
normalize what had happened

and the Dadaists refused that.

And so Ernst does seem to be drawing on

his interest in Freud and
especially the interest

in the irrational of the unconscious,

of our state below our socialized beings.

What made the work possible?

(jazzy piano music)