Rainwater 1986

Rainwater, Robert, ed. Max Ernst: Beyond Surrealism. New York Public Library, 1986.

Robert Rainwater, "Max Ernst, Printmaker"

Ernst on his own collages: “the fortuitous encounter upon a nonsuitable plane of two mutually distant realities” (11)

“As Ernst unquestionably attained with Maximiliana in 1964 his highest accomplishment in printed art, he again adapted indirect, semi-automatic procedures originating in Surrealism of the 1920s for the realization of the book’s thirty-four etchings and aquatints. Six of the volume’s most striking prints, for folios 5, 7, 8, 25, 27, and 287, bear strong resemblance to Man Ray’s photograms in their shadow wilhouettes, variable light sources, and transparent backgrounds. By placing found objects on his copperplates while dusting the resin (or spraying a diluted stop-out varnish) in the preliminary stages of making an aquatint, Ernst was able to transpose the forms of the objects onto the plates when exposed to acid. In a similar way, Man Ray had made his photograms as counterparts to collages by assembling objects on photographic paper.” (34)