Max Ernst e il collage come motto di spirito

Authors

  • Andrea Zucchinali Università degli Studi di Bergamo

Abstract

This essay aims to highlight the relationship between verbal and visual dimensions in Max Ernst's collages, considered in their various variants. A true author-bridge between the Dada experience and Surrealism, Ernst develops, starting from the bio-mechanomorphic imagery peculiar to Dadaist photomontages, a combinatorial technique that profoundly renews the practice of collage: starting from the photographic collages exhibited in the seminal exhibition at the Au Sans Pareil gallery (1921), the article aims to demonstrate the influence exerted on Ernst by the constant reading of Sigmund Freud's texts since his university studies in Bonn, in particular Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious (1905). In this seminal text, Freud opens the way to linguistic studies of the unconscious and a psychoanalytic approach to aesthetic phenomena: in the description of the peculiar dynamics of the wit – which, as Freud himself notes, present strong analogies with the mechanisms of dream work analysed in the Interpretation of Dreams – this text proposes to identify a specific influence for the logics of organization of the material, verbal and visual, at work in the practice of Ernst's collage at the turn of the Twenties.

Author Biography

Andrea Zucchinali, Università degli Studi di Bergamo

Andrea Zucchinali è dottore di ricerca in Studi Umanistici Interculturali presso l’Università degli Studi di Bergamo, e in Langue française presso Sorbonne Université. Il suo ambito di ricerca principale è il rapporto tra immagine e testo nelle pratiche artistiche delle avanguardie storiche, in particolare del Surrealismo francese.
Tra le sue pubblicazioni: Jacques-André Boiffard. Storia di un occhio fotografico (Quodlibet, Roma 2015); “La Terra vista da Maximiliana: riflessioni sull'ultimo Max Ernst”, in Amelia Valtolina, Alessandro Baldacci (ed.), Elephant&Castle n. 18, Postludi. Lo stile tardo, November 2018, pp. 4-23; “Inventaire de l’effroi dans les romans-collages de Max Ernst / L’inventario del terrore nei romanzi-collage di Max Ernst”, in Franca Franchi, Pierre Glaudes (ed.), Faire peur: aux limites du visible Fare paura: ai limiti del visibile, Silvana editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo 2019, pp. 240-259; “Visible/Lisible : stratégies verbo-visuelles dans La femme 100 têtes de Max Ernst”, in Elio Grazioli, Jacques Dürrenmatt (a cura di), Cahiers de Littérature française, n. 18, Paroles et Images, 2020, pp. 37-48.

Published

31-12-2021

How to Cite

Zucchinali, A. (2021). Max Ernst e il collage come motto di spirito. Elephant & Castle, (26). Retrieved from https://elephantandcastle.unibg.it/index.php/eac/article/view/55