Collage as Jokework: Freud's Theories of Wit as the Foundation for the Collages of Max Ernst

Abstract

The debt of the Surrealist artist Max Ernst to Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious lies not in the ‘Freudian’ symbolism it contains, but rather in the verbal devices—such as puns, double entendres and allusions—it describes. Ernst translated these verbal devices into ways of organizing visual material. He collaged bits and pieces of preexisting images, engravings from once-popular magazines and books, into new and often powerful visual sentences. The form or the relationship between these elements gave the finished collage or painting, painted according to the collage method, its impact. Often wordplays in the titles of works interacted with the plays in the imagery. Ernst also took from Freud’s writings his methods of self-analysis, such as the cultivation of spontaneous responses, as methods of locating subjects that would have a significance both personal and modern.

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