The Celebes Elephant: Meaning

The Celebes Elephant is a significant painting that, along with The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí, has become one of the most iconic images of the Surrealist Movement and was the first major work by Max Ernst.

This painting emerged directly from Ernst's use of collage, which he began using in 1919 to produce bizarre combinations of images, although no collage or preliminary sketch was made for it.

The idea of the painting arose spontaneously on the canvas with few changes as it progressed.

Ernst drew on his earlier university studies in psychology and philosophy, in which he became familiar with the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, to provide the basis for a pictorial exploration of the irrational subconscious.

But the story has a bizarre twist: The monster in the form of a caldron to which the title refers is, like the rest of the painting, highly ambiguous.

It has a head with horns and apparently blind eyes, but a pair of tusks projecting to the left suggests the possible presence of a second head on the other side.

Its neck appears to consist of a long spiral similar to a snake emerging from an opening at its top; the top is raised by a colorful construction containing a mysterious eye.

It seems to be in a large open space, but there are also indications that it is embedded in a solid background, while two fish swim in the sky above.

Three vertical objects are around it, while in the lower corner a mannequin figure without a head with an arm raised appears to be waving at the monster in its direction.

The painting was bought immediately after its completion by his friend, the poet Paul Éluard, and later acquired by the artist and art collector Sir Roland Penrose, who owned it until 1975, when he gave it to be sold in aid of the Contemporary Art Institute.

Ernst revealed to Sir Roland that the title 'Celebes' was taken from some obscene couplets popular among German students, which have to do with 'The Elephant of the Celebrities.'