Max Ernst

(Click that last thumbnail)

Georges Bataille on Max Ernst:

What is the foundation of the turbulent and violent world of Max Ernst if no the catastrophic substitution of a game, of an end in itself, for the laborious work with a view to a desired result? The serious philosopher conceives philosophy as a laborious activity and in so doing he imitates carpenters and locksmiths ... He constructs his philosophical furniture, a well-oiled philosophy responding as a lock does to the key made for it. The person who recognizes the powerlessness of work, on the contrary is dazzled and fascinated by the play which serves no purpose.

If he announces, if he calls for, the death of philosophy, the philosopher who plays sees in him a brother, Max Ernst. Next to this friend he accepts being swallowed up in this collapse of the real, in which death, half-glimpsed, compellingly represents the decisive move, in which the world, as it ceases to exist, falls apart; where thought is only the measureless applause given to the death of thought.