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Lot Essay
‘We young people came back from the war dazed and our disgust simply had to find an outlet. This quite naturally took the form of attacks on the foundations of the civilization that had brought this war about - attacks on language, syntax, logic, literature, painting and so forth.’
(Ernst, quoted in Max Ernst, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1991, p. 82).
Justitia (Justice) is one of the very first of Max Ernst’s Dada creations. Along with the paintings Aquis submerses now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, and the now lost Das Jüngste Gericht, it is one of three major oil paintings that Ernst made for his first ever Dada show, the Bulletin D exhibition held in Cologne in 1919. Of these three paintings, it was also Justitia that Ernst chose to represent this period of his work at the great exhibition of German art of 1922, the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung.
Bearing the rich deep colours and bright reds and oranges of Ernst’s earlier Expressionist work with the Jünge Rheinland group Justitia, with its steep angular perspective, mannequin-like figures, geometric forms and puzzling, almost sinister sense of enigma, is a work that reflects the new, profound and transformatory influence of Italian Metaphysical painting upon him. It also is a painting that reflects the artists newly adopted absurdist, anti-logical, Dadaist, standpoint.
In the summer of 1919, Ernst, along with his wife Lou and Alfred Grünwald - the artist who was soon to call himself Johannes Theodor Baargeld and establish Dada with Ernst in Cologne - took a holiday in Bergsteigen on the Königsee near Salzburg. Around mid-September Ernst and his wife stopped in Munich where they met Paul Klee. There they also met Ball and Emmy Hennings and learned from them that their great friend Hans Arp was alive and living in Zurich. On a visit to Hans Goltz’s gallery and bookshop Ernst became transfixed by the most recent Dada publications from Zurich and by the Italian magazine Valori Plastici with its reproductions of wok by Carrà and De Chirico. On seeing these works, Ernst later wrote, ‘I had the impression of having met something that had always been familiar to me, as when a déjà-vu phenomenon reveals to us an entire domain of our own dream world that, thanks to a sort of censorship, one has refused to see or comprehend’ (Ernst, ‘Notes for a Biography’, quoted in Max Ernst, Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism, exh. cat., Houston, 1993, p. 57).
Ernst and Baargeld immediately set about establishing a Cologne branch of Dada and organizing the Bulletin D (D for Dada) exhibition where they intended to distinguish themselves from their former Expressionist colleagues of the ‘Young Rhineland’. Intended also as a homage to De Chirico and Carrà, Ernst made at this time a portfolio of prints utilizing metaphysical and mechanical forms to which he gave the provocative Latin title: Fiat modes – pereat ars (Let fashion be made and art perish). This title is a corruption of the humanist motto ‘Fiat justitia et pereat mundus’ (Let justice be done though the world perish). Justitia’s bizarre combining of the figure of justice with that of a butcher’s shop also seems to present a cynical and absurdist view of the noble concept of justice.
(Ernst, quoted in Max Ernst, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1991, p. 82).
Justitia (Justice) is one of the very first of Max Ernst’s Dada creations. Along with the paintings Aquis submerses now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, and the now lost Das Jüngste Gericht, it is one of three major oil paintings that Ernst made for his first ever Dada show, the Bulletin D exhibition held in Cologne in 1919. Of these three paintings, it was also Justitia that Ernst chose to represent this period of his work at the great exhibition of German art of 1922, the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung.
Bearing the rich deep colours and bright reds and oranges of Ernst’s earlier Expressionist work with the Jünge Rheinland group Justitia, with its steep angular perspective, mannequin-like figures, geometric forms and puzzling, almost sinister sense of enigma, is a work that reflects the new, profound and transformatory influence of Italian Metaphysical painting upon him. It also is a painting that reflects the artists newly adopted absurdist, anti-logical, Dadaist, standpoint.
In the summer of 1919, Ernst, along with his wife Lou and Alfred Grünwald - the artist who was soon to call himself Johannes Theodor Baargeld and establish Dada with Ernst in Cologne - took a holiday in Bergsteigen on the Königsee near Salzburg. Around mid-September Ernst and his wife stopped in Munich where they met Paul Klee. There they also met Ball and Emmy Hennings and learned from them that their great friend Hans Arp was alive and living in Zurich. On a visit to Hans Goltz’s gallery and bookshop Ernst became transfixed by the most recent Dada publications from Zurich and by the Italian magazine Valori Plastici with its reproductions of wok by Carrà and De Chirico. On seeing these works, Ernst later wrote, ‘I had the impression of having met something that had always been familiar to me, as when a déjà-vu phenomenon reveals to us an entire domain of our own dream world that, thanks to a sort of censorship, one has refused to see or comprehend’ (Ernst, ‘Notes for a Biography’, quoted in Max Ernst, Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism, exh. cat., Houston, 1993, p. 57).
Ernst and Baargeld immediately set about establishing a Cologne branch of Dada and organizing the Bulletin D (D for Dada) exhibition where they intended to distinguish themselves from their former Expressionist colleagues of the ‘Young Rhineland’. Intended also as a homage to De Chirico and Carrà, Ernst made at this time a portfolio of prints utilizing metaphysical and mechanical forms to which he gave the provocative Latin title: Fiat modes – pereat ars (Let fashion be made and art perish). This title is a corruption of the humanist motto ‘Fiat justitia et pereat mundus’ (Let justice be done though the world perish). Justitia’s bizarre combining of the figure of justice with that of a butcher’s shop also seems to present a cynical and absurdist view of the noble concept of justice.