Max Ernst and the Avant-Guarde

Max Ernst and the Avant-Guarde

     What do we mean when we say an artist is avant-guarde?

The French phrase literally means advance guard. When you apply the phrase to an artist it means the artist is so innovative and experimental that no one has seen what they have done before and their work changes society forever. Some examples of Avant-guarde artists are Frank Zappa, who wrote orchestral music for rock musicians, Giorgio Armani, who deconstructed the business suit and created more space in the corporate environment for women and Yuang Yong Ping, who was the first Chinese dissident to use art as a strategy to fight back against his repressive government.

      We also have Max Ernst. Max Ernst was a German born artist and poet. After being brutally traumatised as a soldier in WW1 he became one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement in Europe. Dada was a protest, antiwar and anti-establishment rebellion that started in 1915 In Zurich, Switzerland and it was very  similar to, and maybe even a precedent to, the Hippie movement in California decades later. Dada artists protested logic, reason and and modern capitalism by using shock, nonsense and irrationality in poetry, performance and visual art. The idea was to create works that were not aesthetically pleasing and use the role of chance instead of a set of rigid processes and proceedure for creation.

     Max Ernst became a member of the avant-guarde for his use of invented drawing techniques. He invented frottage, which are pencil rubbings from textured objects. He also invented grattage which is paint scraped across canvass to reaveal layers or imprints underneath and collage novel which is a sequence of collages used to tell a story.  Sometimes he would mix all three inventions together to create images made by chance or his subconcious. His dreamlike unreal images influenced many artists, especially surrealist painters.

    Max Ernsts legacy as a member of the Avant-guarde lives on in modern digital art and design and A.I. imagery. You can see his influences in cut and paste and seamless collage of photoshop and other photograpghy apps and the use of different typography and design across social media platforms and the use of layers, textures and surreal imagery in video games. The use of A.I  can trace back to Dada's use of chance as A.I generates unexpected resuts through algorithms and random combinations. Yesterdays Dada social critique shows up in todays memes and viral videos.