I made a promise to the great and esteemed @sjanderson on Twitter that during the Venus Retrograde in Leo I would remedy some of the worst effects that I might endure through the exposition of past artists and their astrology charts. Well, even though I am a highly mercurial person and binding me with in a magical circle of chalk is perhaps one of the trickiest tasks for another soul let alone my soul to undertake, in some way I feel obliged like a man placed under a glass stone eye from the sphinx.
Here is Max Ernst, here is his chart. The chart is the man, that is all. What, would you like me to cut and paste some random surreal images into my explanation? Well then, if I must, i must. You can see that Max was like an Elephant dropped onto an ski slope with a toupe. Yes, you see, right there he has Venus exactly Trine Uranus in Scorpio. Venus at 0º Pisces is speaking of something new emerging into the world something formless and revolutionary.
World War 1
I would like to back up first and note that in his early life Max Ernst was studying art in and philosophy in Paris, he was mesmerized by Matisse, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Gauguin, but his early foray into art and inspiration were cut short by WW1. He served on the side of Germany. in his autobiography, he wrote of his time in the army thus: “On the first of August 1914 M[ax].E[rnst]. died. He was resurrected on the eleventh of November 1918” Now you see that tankie in his chart do you not? Sun and Mercury in the 10th, Ascendant ruled by a Capricorn Moon, Cap Moon Square Sun in Aries, Mars in the 11th giving him enough of a patriotic sense of duty to his Nation and Culture that he went back to Germany to sign up for the war. Well, the War must have been hell for him because during those horrible years of slaughter from 1914 to 1918 he said he died, metaphorically that is, as his Progressed Mercury first conjuncted his Mars and then Squared his Ascendant by Solar Arc Direction.
Madness
Back to his art though, for whatever reason, and we may assume it was madness, because Gemini rules his 12th and virgo rules his 3rd correlating to a type of Madness that he communicates, that he was given by the gods to communicate (Mercury conjunct Part of Fortune for does not the Fortune show what the Gods gave you, rather than the Spirit which shows what you stole from them?) And he was given this mad voice that became surrealist sculpture, paintings, and collages as he sought to express the collective and the madness of the collective.
Are you to doubt this assumption when you witness Pluto and Neptune conjunct the North Node in his 12th house. How could he not be a Surrealist if his Mercury was here to express this to the world, and express it he must at all costs because he has his Sun and Mercury on the 10th, meaning his process of communication is his soul and must be heard and seen by the world.
I do think that the heavy mixture of Water in his Venus and Uranus trine and his Ascendant being Cancer, opposed to his Capricorn Moon gave him a unique sense of trying to piece together formlessness into form through an expression of the absurd, leading him to be a foremost leader in the Dada movement.
Wives
Moon in Capricorn would then give him the self certainty to know what was unchanging emotional work and will to express to the world. This would appear in his experience of relationships too, which not only included many wives coming and going including to Peggy Guggenheim who certainly must have been a Capricorn symbol for old wealth manifesting literally in his 7th. Also note though that the ruler of the 4th is in the 9th which shows living abroad and he spent most of his life living abroad from his native land of Germany. I say this because if you look closer you will see his Moon in the 7th is in the terms of Venus and most of his life abroad was spent married to foreign women.
Going back to that Saturn in the third though we find an inner dwelling that is what I would surmise was the hardship he had with wives, because he was working out his own creative expression and his life’s work (represented by Saturn) in the terms of Venus (again) was to express that inner Dada, to the world. Which he did, while living abroad, finishing perhaps his greatest sculpture of his life entitled “Capricorn”. I leave you the sculpture below for your pleasure.
Capricorn
It is amusing that this piece called “Capricorn” is an inference to marriage with the male possessing the Goat head and the Woman possessing the fish tail. This gestures to the dual nature of a land creature who sees things in terms of form and structure vs a more feminine ocean creature who sees things in terms of the flow of emotions. The staff of authority that the Capricorn seeks to wield as the natural ruler of the 10th house dominates the landscape and the cube that makes the male figure shows the heavy earth influence of the sign, as well as the bondage that a man, even a man as free in his thought as Max Ernst, experiences in marriage.
