Two other hybrid creatures, “Health Through Sport” and “Above the Clouds Midnight Passes…,” were produced in a photographic medium which suggests a document of something unworldly that really exists. The extant collage for “Above the Clouds Midnight Passes” provides a telling example of Ernst’s goal in the instance. On a photograph of clouds viewed from above, he has constructed a strange hybrid female being from details of three black-and-white reproductions: a crocheted form which serves as a bifurcated, wing-like head that surmounts a ball-of-twine torso and the bare legs of a female model in high heeled shoes. The evidence of the cutting and gluing of these three parts and their contrast to the tan color of the cloudscape attract attention to the artist’s hand in the creation of this work. But in the photographic enlargement of this collage (28 ¾ x 21 5/8 inches vs. 7 ½ x 5 1/8 inches), the presence of the artist is removed by the suppression of the collage edges and by the overall black/white tonality of the photograph, further muted by the softer definition of the photographic print. With some visual effort, we may conclude that this strange creature was derived from some sort of photomontage—the tradition had been established early on in history of photography—but that conclusion is not comforting for long in the face of the matter-of-fact presence of this armless creature whose eyes transfix us like those of the enchanted plant creatures in Ernst’s animated landscapes. There is a more convincing quality to that crocheted head than to the human legs, and there is a more convincing quality to this creature overall than to the traditional hybrids of Emil Bayard.
The crocheted head of her male counterpart is likewise more riveting and animated than his body which appears to be an enlarged photograph of a male model in a conventional art studio pose. His murky space is not defined and he is accompanied by a “hockey stick” and a cutaway view of the brain of an alligator held up like a trophy of the hunt.7 Both images seem to be related to their titles. The extended title for “Above the Clouds Midnight Passes…” is long and poetic: “Above the clouds midnight passes. Above the midnight hovers the invisible bird of day. A little higher than the bird the ether extends and the walls and roofs float.”8 The title for “Heat Through Sport” is brief, crisp, and, I suspect, satirical. The “hockey” stick and athletic body seemed commensurate with the title, but what manner of sport is this, and what is one to make of this sportsman with his gruesome trophy and vaguely feline/female head that establishes eye contact with us? Our experience is further complicated by a recognition that the nude model injects the theme of art, especially the classical tradition based on Greco-Roman sculpture.
[The following] summer in the Tyrol was to be a period of fruitful experimentation was to be a period of fruitful experimentation for Ernst. In addition to [a new type of collage composed of nineteenth-century wood engravings], his work consisted of rubbings and more familiar collages employing parts of photographs and reproductions, including additional Fatagagas…The new collages from wood engravings would, however, comprise the bulk of Ernst’s work into the summer of 1922…[The] uniform texture of these engravings—coupled with precision in cutting and piecing the parts together—permitted the appearance of seamless whole, fully as convincing an matter-of-fact as the overpaintings and earlier collages based on photographs and photographic reproduction.