Max Ernst: The Psychoanalytic Sources
fall of Icarus—an image of the mythic hero’s failed aspiration and descent into the water. But this descent into water assumes a positive aspect in the context of the other image of the painting, the Pisces. The painting alludes to an alchemical imagery: the heavenly twins are ruled by Mercury and, as fish, are a symbol of a stage of the alchemical process. The overall somber greyness of the mural, in contrast to the bright colors of the other murals, may represent this stage, with the fish immersed in the corrosive mercury water. Ernst could have found this symbolism in almost any alchemical text. It is illustrated as two fish in the ocean in the famous emblems of the German “Book of Lambspring”…the twins in Ernst’s mural, both as fishes and as men, float in tanks, not in the sea…fish are dissolved in the philosophical vessel.
Max Ernst: The Psychoanalytic Sources
Elizabeth M. Legge
U.M.I. Research Press
1989
