Max Ernst

When youthful folly filled me with a self defensive cynicism and fear that the world was going to be made boring by the formulaic, Max Ernst's collages gave me rapture. At the time, I did not believe in novelty. My mantra was that imagination wasn't a womb but rather a sift. Taking that approach toward creativity, Ernst seemed to me a virtuoso. His collages always surprised me. Their often seemless quality as if these remixs were the original ink drawings, struck me. The often haunting compositions deep with spiritual of metaphysical content. They were nothing short of magical to me. I excitedly started cutting up my very old Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedias. The limitless combinations offered me by those 26 volumes gave me a sense of transcendence. If I could take these raw materials, many seeming simple, boring, academic, and make something fantastical, something of immense spectacle even though it is merely a 2 dimensional cut and paste stuck to a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 white paper...If I could do that, think what other sorts of beautiful things could be made from the materials at hand, if we only had the courage to cut away at that which is established and see the myriad possibilities when it is deconstructed and then reconstructed. For months, I had scissors in one hand and a glue stick in the other. I framed my collages. I gave them to pretty girls in order to win their attentions. And these collages were just a single facet of this incredible artist, this incredible man.