Distant Sounds

… or DISTANT GALAXIES

A painter is lost if he finds himself.
That’s wonderful, said by an octogenarian artist.
MAX ERNST

Naissance d’une galaxie (Birth of a galaxy) was created in the year of the first moon landing. Man had conquered the lunar symbol of the yearnings of Romanticism (a cultural epoch so important for Ernst) and found only empty, rocky silence. As if by way of a replacement, Ernst allows a new galaxy, its circular disc patterned with dots, to arise out of the nebula of primeval forms inhabiting the lower border of the picture. This galaxy is located in the imagination – and in the picture seen here. Entirely in keeping with Ernst’s fantastical natural history, the eternal, ethereal realm and the here and now of artistic invention converge in the moment of this picture.