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Museum of Resistance and Resilience

Ubu Imperator

The Ubu Imperator was painted by surrealist Max Ernst in 1923. Ernst, born in 1891, was one of the pioneers of the Dada movement in his home country of Germany. He was drafted into WWI, which heavily influenced his later works. He also developed a fascination with visiting insane asylums and viewing the work of the mentally ill. In 1919 he and several others founded the Cologne Dada group. A few years later he moved to Paris and became a part of the Surrealist movement.

The name of the painting comes from imperator, the Latin word for commander, and Ubu, the main character in Ubu Roi, a play written by Alfred Jarry in 1896. The play drew riotous responses because of its obscenity, but also because of the cultural norms which it challenged. It was a satirical commentary on the tendency of the bourgeoise to abuse their power. Ubu was representative of the modern man, who, in the words of Jane Taylor, "... is notorious for his infantile engagement with his world. Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self-gratification". He was portrayed with many other negative traits, ones which Ernst clearly saw reflected in the real bourgeoise of his time, and laid the foundation for Ernst's Ubu Imperator.

Ubu Imperator (1923)

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2. Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) (1929) The surrealist movement surfaced shortly after the Dadaist movement in 1924. The short film Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí aired in 1929 and became one of the most famous films in the surrealist movement. The film’s random imagery and lack of storyline work to protest rational thought in art and encourage viewers to question the purpose of art. In the Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton, the recognized leader of the surrealist movement, Brenton defines surrealism as: “a pure state of mind that allows someone to express thoughts freely without the encumbrance of rational thought and societal rules”. Buñuel and Dalí try to showcase this state of mind in their film. It is said that a lot of the film's bizarre content comes from discussions between Buñuel and Dalí about their dreams. The surrealist movement focuses heavily on expressing dreams because this is where the mind is free from convention, and where our most basic, untainted instincts are stored. Buñuel and Dalí wanted to present the images that came from their "unconscious minds" on screen. The meaning of the film is that it means absolutely nothing. It is not a piece that is meant to be deeply scrutinized or analyzed. Instead, it is about what the random images mean to a viewer and what a viewer feels when seeing them. Buñuel and Dalí put together objects that don't usually go together (the ants in the hand, the woman's armpit, the sea urchin, and the severed hand) to stimulate the unconscious mind. The images that came from the directors' unconscious minds for a specific reason might provoke something entirely different in a viewer’s unconscious mind. But that’s the point. Surrealists argued that this kind of disjunction and randomness prevents viewers from being influenced by the outside world and provokes genuine, original thought. Buñuel and Dalí fade each image into the next to make viewers question what's real and what isn't, literally blurring the lines of reality and convention. The lack of storyline in the film gives the viewer a lack of conscious control, another of Buñuel and Dalí’s attempts to stimulate the unconscious mind in the film.

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Ubu Imperator - 1923