Thoughts on Max Ernst’s Entire City series
Strangely, last night I woke up around midnight, after only two hours of sleep, with Max Ernt’s The Entire City in my head, a painting I hadn’t thought about for quite some time, which made the experience even more unusual. The image that I woke up with was accompanied by an epiphany that the painting is a statement on consciousness, particularly the omnipresent yellow disc representing the sun, a universal, yet mysterious element that has accompanied the subjective experience of all conscious life on earth.
The city underneath and the jungle-like foliage at the forefront of the painting also seem to be a statement on consciousness. The city represents culture, civilization and order — the rational, conscious ego — while the foliage represents an uncontrolled nature, the capricious unconscious irrational forces underpinning our waking lives. The sun is the light of life and consciousness that activates this panorama and makes it all possible.
What I like most about this series of paintings (Ernst painted several variations on the theme) is how it reduces the perennial question of painting, “What to paint?”, to its simplest elements. It’s hard to find a simpler statement on our situation that is both immediate and near to our experience, and yet utterly alien. This could be another planet. The subject-matter of this painting is so elemental that even an alien could potentially relate to it, as it would likely be dealing with the same visual ingredients that form its own consciousness.
