the Reactionary Rebel

...Even if the comic-strip monster capering across the plain in The Angel of the Earth could be taken seriously as a response to Picasso's Guernica, its impact is considerably weakened by the tired, smeary surface of the paint...

...Birds recur in many of his pictures, and it was at the end of the '20s that he invented his Surrealist alter ego, "Loplop," a bird-like creature who rather resembled the artist...

...Indeed, the canvases that are the most visually affecting are those that strongly reveal this characteristic-his weird landscapes from the late '20s and '30s...

...The influence of the Swiss sculptor is clear in these tall, totemic forms...

...His influence has certainly been as pervasive, for without his seminal juxtapositions of unrelated objects and figures, the history of pictorial Surrealism is unimaginable...

...I like Kokoschka's theory that modernism in general has been "the technical expression for the artistic sublimation of hunger," although I suspect that the pronouncement only holds true for its author...

...By the age of 23, Ernst had published art criticism in German periodicals, participated in group showings that included such artists as Klee and Chagall, and made his first visit to Paris...

...It was during this time that he met Gala and Paul Eluard, with whom he stayed when he returned to France the following year as an illegal immigrant...

...It seemed that only through his technical innovations did he obtain release...

...The catalogue in which it appears is worthy of note for being a very good-looking paperback, fully illustrated (in black-and-white for the most part) and, above all, a catalogue and not an art book...

...Naturally, no revolution is possible without some material, but it strikes me that the nature of the financing is what distinguishes serious uprisings from theatrical events...

...In any case, given the general course of biography, with its tendency to dwell on the traumas of infancy and ignore the equally formative influence of money or the lack of it, we will never know who or what paid the bills...

...It was by frottage and grattage that Ernst produced two of his most notable works, both from the mid-'20s: Histoire Naturelle, a volume of lithographs, and 100,000 Doves, a whitish canvas covered with a tracery of pink and blue bird forms...

...Ernst's American period was largely a recapitulation of earlier themes, and his latest work, though more elegant, lacks even the old Surrealist menace...

...Some early sales are noted, including that of his entire output to a dealer in 1924, and of the sets and costumes he designed for a Diaghilev ballet in 1926 -but these, along with his graphic work, can scarcely account for the obvious comfort of his life, especially in the early days...

...grattage is more or less the same thing, only done with paint and canvas...

...Still, the physical experience of his oeuvre doesn't exactly confirm this idea...

...Between these eerie and, at times, melodramatic efforts, Ernst often reverted to a kind of eccentric academism...

...This is especially irritating in the case of the Dadaists, some of whom might not have been able to destroy the notion of art had it not been for either parental support (Duchamp, in his early stages) or substantial private incomes (French Cubist Picabia...

...We young people came back from the War in a state of stupefaction, and our rage had to find expression somehow or other...

...Ernst learned to paint at an early age, but his decision to become an artist resulted from his philosophy studies at the University of Bonn...

...This we did quite naturally through attacks on the foundations of civilizations responsible for the War...

...Revivals like the Ernst exhibit are now valuable only in that they demonstrate the weary truth that reactionary rebellion is no substitute for revolution...

...and decalcomania acts as a "starter" for imagery, whereby paint is scraped across the canvas by means of a sharp edge-a piece of glass or metal-and the ensuing effects are influenced by what the shapes may suggest...

...They were already shocked enough...

...Being the first Surrealist painter, Ernst is to Picasso what anti-matter is to matter, or so he is presented...

...After World War I, he returned to Germany to co-found the Cologne branch of Dada with a banker's son named Baargeld, a Communist sympathizer, who was himself producing Dada objects, collages and altered engravings...

...Despite this disclaimer, it was still painful to watch the artist, as it were, thrashing around at the Guggenheim retrospective, which covered nearly 70 years...

...At the invitation of Andre Breton, Ernst had his first one-man show in Paris in 1921...

...The blur of influences reflected at the present Guggenheim show are almost beyond itemization: Between 1906-19 alone one could discern the effects of Van Gogh, Munch, Cubism, Futurism, Delau-nay, Chagall, Kandinsky, Duchamp, and, most noticeably, Chirico...

...They come very close to the creations of the German Romantics Friedrich and Bocklin, with their mysterious coral and spongelike formations and oppressive sense of death...

...Our enthusiasm encompassed total revolution.' Rage, perhaps, but vital energy and enthusiasm, no: Each time it is presented for serious appraisal, the atmosphere of Dada-Surrealist work seems to get more futile and trivial...

...The barren moonlit mountains, deserted "cities," scenes of decaying matter, and dense, Rousseau-like vegetation all suggest a look back into 19th-century fantasy rather than the prophetic vision he is commonly credited with...

...There can be no doubt that Ernst, like his peers, is a total Romantic...

...There, the writings of Freud and Wilhelm Worringer's book, Abstraction and Empathy, had a profound effect upon him, as did the visits he paid to a local lunatic asylum...

...Rebellious, heterogeneous, full of contradictions, it is unacceptable to specialists of modern art, culture, logic, morality...

...His initial ambition was to write a book on the art of the insane, a venture that was deflected by the outbreak of World War I. Sharing the view of other Dada-Sur-realists, Ernst's approach to art was essentially literary rather than visual, being heavily influenced by the work of Romantic and Symbolist writers...

...Waldman's history of Ernst's development, which must have been quite a task to compile, is most thorough and readable, yet I wish it included more of the banal details of this artist's existence...

...His eclecticism subsided slightly thereafter, but the record of his close acquaintanceships remains all too apparent in his work...

...it resulted from the absurdity, the whole immense Schweinerei of the imbecilic War...

...These developments included frottage, grattage and decalcomania...

...Ernst's son Jimmy, also a well-known painter, is the offspring of his first marriage...

...He once remarked amusingly that he eschewed any form of study likely to "degenerate into gainful employment," so one can't help wondering just how he managed to survive...

...Ernst has said that, "Contrary to general belief, Dada did not want to shock the bourgeoisie...

...No, Dada was a rebellious upsurge of vital energy and rage...

...Many of the bronzes resemble primitive sculpture, being simple i do like figures, often horned and with square or disc-shaped heads...

...How does one paint full-time while taking and shedding wives (one for each country, apparently), mistresses and houses with such ease...

...Already a close friend of August Macke, who had introduced him to Delaunay and Apol-linaire, he began what was to be a lifelong friendship with fellow-Dadaist Jean Arp...

...But it does have the ability to enchant my accomplices: poets, pa-taphysicians and a few illiterates...

...Living mostly in Arizona with Dorothea Tanning, the Surrealist painter who became his third wife, Ernst resided in this country until 1953, but chose finally to make France his permanent home...

...At the age of five he wandered out into the street and joined a passing group of pilgrims who, "enchanted by his blond hair and blue eyes, saw in him the image of the Christ Child...

...Upon being returned home, he convinced his angry father that he was, in fact, Jesus-where upon Ernst pere, a religious man and an amateur artist, painted him in that role...

...These are but the chronological headlines of a life that has been as active socially as it has been creative, and they are taken from Diane Waldman's introduction to the current retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum (through April 20...

...Frottage consists of laying paper over an object and rubbing it with chalk until the underlying shape and texture come through...

...Most of the sculpture was cast during the '50s and '60s, but his interest in this medium, which he regards as "even more of a game than painting," was stimulated in the '40s by his friendship with Alberto Giacometti...

...Their consistent simplicity and directness relieves the confusion frequently generated by his canvases...

...Ernst himself has said his work is "like his conduct...

...The movement must have seemed an appropriate response to massacre and corruption at the time it appeared on the scene, but having accomplished nothing, it has lost whatever stature it may have had as art or revolution-particularly since its major figures, Arp and Miro, extricated themselves long ago in order to pursue individual greatness...

...He remained in that country until the start of World War II when, after escaping from an internment relating to his alien status, he was escorted to the United States by Peggy Guggenheim...