One of my favorite artistic expressions is Surrealism — I love the dreamy nature of the subject material and the blend of realism with irrationality. This painting by Ernst Max from 1937, called _The Barbarians_, is an unusual representation of the genre. But even the ways _The Barbarians_ differs from typical Surrealist art tell something interesting about this genre.
Surrealism was born out of the Dada art movement. Both boasted Paris as their epicenter, but Dada came out of the horrors of the First World War, and its proponents considered existence to be fundamentally meaningless. The Surrealists, on the other hand, adapted Freudian ideas. To them, meaning was beyond the grasp of conscious logic. At first a literary movement, the Surrealists wrote with free association. Later on, artists (such as Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Max Ernst) joined the group, which stayed fairly cohesive under the leadership of André Breton until the outbreak of the Second World War.
Surrealism was not generally political, which is one of the things that sets _The Barbarians_ apart. Using “grattage”, where a painter scrapes off layers of paint, Ernst created this depiction of monstrous birds which seem to be made up of geological shapes. They are menacing, and their encounter likely shadowed Ernst’s apprehension of political events on his horizon. Not every aspect of this painting has an overt link to the conscious world, though. Like other Surrealist masterpieces, _The Barbarians_ is evocative, and differently so for each viewer.
Sources: Jeanne S.M. Willette, Art History Unstuffed, June 17, 2011, “Comparison of Dada and Surrealism” https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/comparison-of-dada-and-surrealism/#:~:text=And%20here%20it%20the%20crucial,one%20finds%20Freud’s%20%E2%80%9Cuncanny.%E2%80%9D, Painting from the NY Metropolitan museum of art, acquisition number 1999.363.21, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm#:~:text=Surrealism%20originated%20in%20the%20late,unbridled%20imagination%20of%20the%20subconscious.
