ADJUSTING THE EYES
T H E A R T O F A M Y E R N S T
Introduction: From One Amy to Another
by Amy Winter, Ph.D.
Director and Curator
The Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College
City University of New York
Essay: Adjusting the Eyes: the art of Amy Ernst
by Stephen Robeson-Miller
Art Historian and Curator
Boston, Massachusetts
© Copyright Amy Ernst 2003. All works reserved, Washington, D.C.
ADAGP, Societe des Auteurs Dans les Arts Graphiques et Plastiques, Paris, France. Contact for
permission: http://www.adagp.fr/ENG/static_index.php
Dürer’s Study II | 1999
Solar Plate Etching on Handmade Paper
A D J U S T I N G T H E E Y E S: T H E A R T O F M Y E R N S T
Some years ago, while visiting a private collector of Old Master paintings in New York City, I was
shown into a magnificently furnished room painted a bright royal blue—as blue as azure—upon
which was a flecked pattern of small gold fleur-de-lis. The owner called this room “the Napoleon
Room,” and with good reason. Every picture, painting, sculpture, or object, every piece of furniture,
down to the design of the blue and gold carpet, either depicted the Emporer of the French,
Napoleon Bonaparte, or was “Napoleonic” in period. The effect was remarkable and today the contents
of that room are divided between the art museums of Yale and Harvard universities. However,
at the time, I noticed that there was one image of Napoleon missing: the wonderful surrealist painting
called “Napoleon in the Wilderness” by Max Ernst, 1941, in the collection of the Museum of
Modern Art, New York. I mentioned this to the collector and promised to send him a postcard of it.
He laughed, but then turned quite serious as he informed me that “one cannot hang modern paintings
next to classical works! Your eyes need time to adjust after going from a Baroque painting, for
example, to a Cubist painting! They simply cannot be hung side by side!” The emphatic nature of
his assertion startled me, but later I thought that there could be something to it. It is true that I
never see a Jackson Pollock drip painting hanging next to a Raphael or a Rubens, for example, in
the Metropolitan Museum, or any other museum for that matter. Everything is pretty much divided
up according to period, style, national school, and so on.
Pretty much divided up and separated, that is, until one encounters the work of Amy Ernst, I
should say!
Amy Ernst is a collagist and printmaker, and has singularly used these media in the creation of
images for which “adjusting the eyes” is part of their fascination. For Amy is primarily an imagemaker,
and her aptitude for the deft placement of one form, one texture, next to another and another,
comes so naturally to her that it seems the resulting images just flow from her fingers. Most
importantly, she knows when to stop, when enough is enough, when a single adjustment can either
make or mar a work of art. The unself-conscious quality that is apparent in her collages also separates
them from the contrivance that befalls the medium when employed by lesser hands.
An excellent eye for composition and design are not themselves enough to make a work memorable,
different, and special, however. For that we must turn to what I would call Amy’s “daring,” and
this is where “adjusting the eyes” comes in. Just as no museum curator seems to want to hang a
Pollock next to a Raphael (even out of curiosity, to see what would happen), Amy can and does do
this all the time in her collages. The idea, expressed by the collector of Napoleana, that one simply
cannot put a “modern work” in close proximity to the “classical” is a notion that Amy regularly turns
on its head. For instance, take her use of a reproduction of a portrait of a woman by the Master of
Flemalle, from circa 1400, upon which she has superimposed a map of the New York subway system!
Clearly, in such a work, the aesthetic of De Stijl can and does meet the Northern Renaissance
in such a way that each gives something to the other which causes in us, the viewers, a moment of
revelation followed by an appreciation for the poetry that these colliding styles produce.
Mapquest | 2003
Computer Collage
The fact that she brings not only divergent styles and aesthetics together, but also mixes artistic periods and ages, points to a theme that runs throughout her work. It is the theme of the passage of time, of transience and the flow of history and memory. In her art, Amy seems to be saying that we cannot sever our links to the past in the effort to create anew, but must incorporate and build on the past in order to discover and reveal our visions. Amy does not set out to break with tradition and self-consciously invent a new “ism” or style, but instead allows her respect for tradition and art history to lead her in the direction of revelation. A case in point would be a series of collages that she has made over the years which incorporate the visage of a lady painted by Petrus Christus. Her obsession with this particular portrait may perhaps be explained as a kind of alterego, for that lady’s physiognomy does bear a certain resemblance to Amy’s own. In multiple transformations— cut, torn, enveloped or shrouded with gauze, mesh, gesso, or superimposed by transparent engravings of other images, painted and printed in various colors—this lady’s face comes back again and again from the past and its layers of history.
Amy Ernst has unlocked many doors in her challenge to “adjust our eyes,” and within each room lie riches awaiting us.
Stephen Robeson Miller; Art Historian and Curator
June 2003
For further information, request a catalog
Click here to read my article by hamptons.com
In Deep Thought | 2003
Collage on Handmade Paper
Many thanks to all who made this catalogue and exhibition possible
Charles Jones, Owner, Carteret Contemporary Art, Morehead City, North Carolina
Robert Baldrige, Photographer, New York, New York
Michael Esguerra, M.E. Graphic Design, mre1@optonline.net
Tom Caruso, Vice President, Michael Graphics, Inc., New Brunswick, New Jersey
This catalogue is dedicated to my father, Jimmy Ernst,
who watches over me from above and to my mother, Dallas Ernst;
without them all this would not be possible.
Many thanks to all who made this catalogue and exhibition possible Charles Jones, Owner, Carteret Contemporary Art, Morehead City, NC Robert Baldrige, Photographer, New York, NY Michael Esguerra, M.E. Graphic Design, mre1@optonline.net Tom Caruso, Vice President, Michael Graphics, Inc., New Brunswick, NJ
This catalogue is dedicated to my father, Jimmy Ernst, who watches over me from above and to my mother, Dallas Ernst; without them all this would not be possible.
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