While the goddess Minerva, patron of the arts and crafts, is generally depicted as a young woman wearing a helmet and breastplate, she is a child in this painting.
Infant Minerva, with a bird crown atop her egg-shaped face and small birds on her fingers, smiles innocently through a scattering of cream-colored light mixed with blue and orange facets.
Move closer and you can see that under the scattered colors there are many raised lines that run across the work like a mesh. To make these lines, Max Ernst had first laid his canvas on the floor, hung a can of paint with a hole in its bottom above, and then swung the can like a pendulum. Staring at the resulting mesh pattern, he discovered a shape that had emerged automatically: the child goddess. This method of painting, which Ernst called “child’s play,” reflects one of the principles of Surrealist painting.
(NAKAMURA Naoaki)
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While the goddess Minerva, patron of the arts and crafts, is generally depicted as a young woman wearing a helmet and breastplate, she is a child in this painting.
Infant Minerva, with a bird crown atop her egg-shaped face and small birds on her fingers, smiles innocently through a scattering of cream-colored light mixed with blue and orange facets.
Move closer and you can see that under the scattered colors there are many raised lines that run across the work like a mesh. To make these lines, Max Ernst had first laid his canvas on the floor, hung a can of paint with a hole in its bottom above, and then swung the can like a pendulum. Staring at the resulting mesh pattern, he discovered a shape that had emerged automatically: the child goddess. This method of painting, which Ernst called “child’s play,” reflects one of the principles of Surrealist painting.
(NAKAMURA Naoaki)