Max Ernst (1891–1976) was a German artist of the Dadaism and Surrealism Movements. Dadaism is the “art of the happy accident,” a creation caused, for example, by the dropping of a paint-soaked string on a canvas. Surrealism is defined as images from the unconscious mind. It includes irrational placements and compositions. An interesting fact about Ernst is that early in his career, he visited mental hospitals and was captivated by the art the patients created.

Art of these two movements can be loved or despised and it was despised by the Nazis as degenerate art. Ernst’s work was included in a Nazi exhibit in Munich in 1937 aimed at inflaming public opinion against modernism. It worked. Much art was destroyed.

In The Entire City we see a mixture of proportions and a strangely tilted horizon line and plants.  It may be easy to speculate about hanging gardens and a giant moon or sun in a dawn or dusk greenish sky but, truly, who knows what we have been asked to see here?  And this is also a painting of masterful, precise technique.

This work seems an apt metaphor for this Easter Monday. Holy Week presents its own questions and contrasts and might leave us in a somewhat surreal space for a time – a little off center; a little lost to perspective and gravity. Let’s stay there together for a while with this image and see what God does in such a space. Amen.

Sandy Prouty
Minister of Children and Families
Montview Church