"Jimmy Ernst, 1920-1984" (later reprinted simply as "Jimmy Ernst") is a tribute to the artist of the same name written for the dinner meeting of the American Institute of Arts and Letters, held on November 13, 1984 and subsequently published in the Proceedings of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Second Series, no. 35 that same year.[1] It was included as the introduction, titled "Tribute to Jimmy Ernst", in Jimmy Ernst: Trials of Silence, Works 1942-1983, which accompanied an exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art from September 11 to November 13, 1994.[2] It was again reprinted in the fourth volume of the Library of America's Vonnegut set in 2016 under the appendix section "Four Essays on Artists".
Summary[]
Jimmy Ernst, photographed by Fred McDarrah
The painter and writer Jimmy Ernst, born in Germany in 1920, died of a stroke on February 6, 1984 at the peak of his powers and, seemingly, happiness. His autobiography had just been published and a show of some of his most successful paintings was due to open soon in New York City. His father Max was also a famous painter, with both achieving greatness in the same field, almost "as though there had never been a Sigmund Freud". The writer Conrad Aiken once said sons will usually compete with their fathers in fields where the elder man was weak, hence why he himself became a poet.
Ernst's mother died in the gas chambers of the Holocaust, a bond for many immigrants in the United States, especially in the art world. Despite this, Ernst lived without hate, a common source of creative energy, nor a need to forgive anyone for wrongs. The painter James Brooks wrote a letter to Vonnegut which celebrated Ernst's helpfulness to other painters, enjoying their creations, bringing them together, and so forth. When he arrived in the United States, his "highly detailed, closely finished work" stood far apart from the burgeoning Abstract Expressionism movement, but by the time of his death he was respected by them and the rest of the painting world. Brooks efficiently described Ernst as "a deliberately unprotected psyche".[3]