Max Ernst and Europe after the rain

Max Ernst’s 1942 painting “Europe After The Rain” is a perfect representation of the art form of surrealism. Ernst had spent about two years working on this particular painting during the middle of World War II.
When first looking upon this painting, the setting is unclear, but whatever has happened to this place has left an impression upon the rest of the world. The one thing that seems to have remained in tact are two statues and very intentionally we can not directly tell if these two figures are humans or merely statues of the previous life. Upon first glance at the picture they look like a male and female. Together they seem mesmerized by the damage that has been caused. The bronzed looking man appears as if he is hung from a large pole while the green woman is looking away. Familiarly, the woman reminds me of the Lady Justice, the one who they say is blind.
The next primary feature of this painting is the invisible and metaphorical divide in the picture. The right is tarnished by rubble and the disorder while the left side of the painting is cleaner and well refurbished. The right possibly representing the east side of Europe (Russia) and the Left possibly representing the western countries who will be victorious and can re-establish themselves easily after the war. The emerald green that the middle tower is composed of could represent the economical repercussions of the war. The green tower in the picture seems to be tinted in black creating an image that there is a bomb at the top of it prepared to go off. I think that it is not a coincidence that Ernst had thought of something that could be this devastating to humankind as well as to the people who create such a disastrous outcome. Looking at the picture further there are no particular features in which are completely in tact “after the rain.” The lack of order represents the further implication that post and pre-war Europe will always be disorderly and incapable of recovery.
Next to the two figures lie piles of animals, birds, and human remains. Looking closer we can see that the male figure is not a human, but rather a man with a bird’s head. Ironically, the man who typically represents the brutality of war is turning toward the female figure observing the tragedy who I think represents the art of peace. The “war bird” sees the woman and seems to turn away, maybe frightened by the very notion of peace and harmony.
The colors introduce a sort of perspective that we see in the rubble. The sky, even though it has produced a storm, seems rather unfazed. The sky is cloudy and blue while what remains on Earth is nothing but a mist that can’t even be comprehensively seen with the naked eye. The color yellow, associated in the literary world with cowardly instincts and the sun’s power over humans, acts as a contrast to the bright, humanly blue skies.
The title of the painting is an interesting perspective of what a storm really is. The colors black, blue, green, yellow, and white are the different features of the storm. All these contribute to the paintings effect on the conscious mind, an important guideline to the art form of surrealism. Creating abstract pieces of art using the images you see in your mind helps create what it is we are supposed to be seeing.
Red is an image seen in the left proportion of the painting in the one of the few stable atmospheres present. Evil is evident as the effects of rain and the red associated with the painting is common to devastation. Hate is ever present in the flames of glory. In later allusions to post World War II art and imagery, the skies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are orange and red from the effects that mankind has produced. The painting could be looked as a foreshadowing effort in the world of surrealist philosophy. After all that is what surrealism in essence is, a philosophy in which artists use their own minds to create works of art that channel the outside world.
Ernst, as a Spanish born painter working in Paris during this era, can associate with the horrors that are going on at this same timeframe. Paris, occupied by Nazi forces, was a pioneering player in the field of surrealist arts. They had realized that there cruel lives could be used for such an important cause. They could use their artistic ability to portray the long term effects on the existence of mankind.

Amiri Baraka Research

Amiri Baraka

As I watched the film in class, the mention of Amiri Baraka led me to research not just who he was, but also how he did his work. In order to research these topics I have to know a little about the life of Baraka. Baraka, born Everett LeRoi Jones, grew up in the city of Newark, New Jersey. He would later change his name in 1967 to his current name. He came from a life that was far from perfect, his mother a social worker and his father a postal worker made enough money to get by. Despite his condition, he went on to study philosophy and religion at Rutgers, Columbia, and Harvard and later enlisted in the US Air Force. I next looked into what connects him to the subject of Polis is This, Charles Olsen. The connection lies in his poetry and more importantly in the time period in which he completed some of his most famous works of art. It has been documented that after Baraka’s move to Greenwich Village where he learned about the influence of Jazz. It is believed that this was his first real encounter he had with the Beat era poets and writers such as Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Looking deeper into what Baraka is about I tried looking for some famous quotes from his career including this controversial one that also expands upon his writing style, "Most American white men are trained to be fags. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank. … The average ofay [white person] thinks of the black man as potentially raping every white lady in sight. Which is true, in the sense that the black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has. But for most whites the guilt of the robbery is the guilt of rape. That is, they know in their deepest hearts that they should be robbed, and the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly, viciously popped."
Baraka’s literary style is very moving and at their peak influential. His stanzas are on average only about five to six lines each with little to no rhyming scheme and a heavy use of punctuation. I learned that there is a way to effectively use the punctuation and emphasize not just the mood, but in relation the overall message of a work of writing. As of late, Baraka’s works consist of a politically themed message and more directly the post 9/11 world and the political landscape since then. It was documented in the film, that Olson also carried these same messages in his works that he wrote towards the end of his career and before his death, though his writings delved into the postmodern thought process. These covered events such as the San Francisco Renaissance and the height of beat popularity.
Baraka’s influence was finally achieved after the death of Malcolm X, when he became a nationalist where he traveled back to Harlem and then to his roots where he re-started his life. It was this kind of life-changing experience that empowered his best works which were also collected in series and sold as collective works that usually influenced one after another. At the end of his career, he became even more prominent than he was during what some consider his peak of creativity. As like Olson, it was his exit from the world of art that dominated a cultural movement in mainstream America.
During research, I learned that he was also inspired by modernist writers such as William Carlos Williams, who taught him to speak in his writing and to think when you speak. He taught me that there is such a thing as writing too defensively that there is no such thing as “writing black or writing white,” but writing with soul that is the ultimate test to one writer’s credibility. Also, he says there is a testament to a writer, that being that he can tell the difference between telling a story and giving the reasoning about why one must think this way.
When reflecting back on the movie, I think they could have built a more stable bridge between the two writers, as well as when Farrini came into the classroom to present his piece of art.