weimar republicconcept:era modern
The Elephant Celebes
Oil on canvas (1921) by Max Ernst, depicting a large mechanical elephant-like boiler with a bull's head, a headless mannequin, and two fish floating overhead — an archetypal proto-Surrealist visual enigma.
Scholarly Significance
Max Ernst's The Elephant Celebes is a seminal proto-Surrealist work (1921), one of the earliest paintings synthesising Dada irrationality with the uncanny visual logic that became Surrealism.
Notes
- ·Max Ernst (1891–1976) painted The Elephant Celebes in Cologne in 1921, three years before the formal founding of Surrealism.
- ·The title derives from a German children's rhyme: 'The elephant of Celebes / Has sticky yellow bottom grease.'
- ·The central motif — a large riveted metal tank/boiler with a bull skull and hose-trunk — was based on a photograph of a Sudanese corn bin Ernst found in an anthropological magazine.
- ·The headless female nude at the right may reference de Chirico's mannequins; the two flying fish in the upper left are unexplained.
- ·André Breton, who saw the work in Cologne in 1921, considered it an anticipation of Surrealist automatism and dream imagery.
- ·Purchased by Tate in 1975 from the Penrose Collection (Roland Penrose was a key British Surrealist).