Sandrine Welte: Artist, Collector, Ethnographer: Max Ernst and Anthropology
Dissertationsprojekt
Whereas numerous essays, articles and books have been published on Max Ernst’s vast and multi-faceted oeuvre, an approach through the lens of anthropology has never been undertaken. Throughout his life, the German Surrealist fostered a profound interest in indigenous cultures, societies and cosmologies which subsequently translated into his body of work. First occurring in his proto-Surrealist creations, frequent references to foreign geographies and ‘exotic’ realms continue to permeate his artistic production in later years, in a constant push ‘au-delà de la frontière’. The subtle citations read as visual allusions to non-Western spheres, quotations that lace through his images and constitute stimuli and tropes for a reflection on his cultural situatedness. Yet, his deep knowledge of native traditions and their iconographic mention notwithstanding, the German Surrealist has remained firmly anchored in an occidental canon, framed through art historical perspectives that concentrated on his European background rather than endorsing universal prisms. A gap in the reading of his artistic output, given his enduring concern with ethnographic matters beyond the confines of a Euro-centric worldview.
With my PhD proposal I intend to address this lacuna. Drawing on my own interdisciplinary training in both fields, my aim is to offer a new look at Max Ernst’s body of work by aligning anthropology and art history. On these grounds, I intend to reiterate and disentangle the many strands of ethnographic-cultural references, Max Ernst wove into his compositions which in their nuanced, cross-referential and visually captivating force have never ceased to stimulate, bedazzle and confront. Instead of proceeding from a mere iconographic study of his drawings, paintings or sculptures, I will endorse a twofold approach: By turning to Max Ernst as an anthropologist in his own right, my goal is to highlight his cultural-ethnographic sensitivity with its translation into his body of works on the one hand, while applying an ethnographic glance at his oeuvre on the other.
Current anthropological theory such as Multispecies ethnography, Posthumanism and cultural ecology reveal written into his paintings and sculptures ‘ante litteram’ – thus providing an opening to a novel reading that justifies a genre-transcending lens. Correspondingly, my aim is to apply like perspectives and frameworks for a re-contextualisation of his oeuvre through an interdisciplinary toolkit.