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Lot Essay
The years 1939 and 1940 were turbulent times for Ernst. Not only was he, like everyone else in Europe, subject to the circumstances of war, but in 1939 he had been interned in camps in France as a "citizen of the German Reich". He was first sent to the prison at Largentière and then to the former brick factory at Les Milles near Aix-en-Provence, where he shared a room with Hans Bellmer. Having been released in late December 1939, Ernst was then taken back to Les Milles early in 1940 on the false allegation that he had sent light signals to the enemy forces. While he was at Les Milles, word reached the French authorities at the camp that the Germans were approaching. It was decided to remove the prisoners on a train that eventually took him to a camp in Nîmes, from where Ernst escaped twice to Saint-Martin. By this time, his lover Leonora Carrington had suffered an emotional breakdown, sold his house for a bottle of brandy, and fled to Spain where she was a schizophrenic patient in a mental hospital in Santander. In the winter of 1940-1941 Ernst was "alone and homeless in a countryside where nearly everyone had turned against him" (J. Russell, Max Ernst--Life and Work, New York, 1967, p. 127). It was shortly after this that Ernst received the offer of refuge in the United States, which he accepted.
It is against these circumstances that Paysage avec lac et chimères should be viewed. There is an overwhelming sense of terror conveyed by the foreboding landscape in which the rocks bear an uncanny resemblance to human bones. Furthermore, this landscape is populated by chimeras--the fire-breathing she-monster from Greek mythology that has a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail--surrounding a lake, the depth of which can only be guessed at. This is a land from which escape is a futile concept.
Regarding the artistic process of décalcomanie that Ernst employed to elicit a reaction of such dread from the viewer, it has been written, "The late 1930s had witnessed his enrichment of Surrealism with a new means of expression, décalcomanie, a fruitful variation on semi-automatic techniques in which a sheet of paper or glass was placed on the painted surface and then pulled away. Other members of the Surrealist group, including André Breton, tried their hand at this apparently "easy" technique, which had already been employed by Victor Hugo. This had the side-effect of bringing about a reconciliation between the poets and painters of Surrealism. Décalcomanie was what might be termed an intersubjective method, comparable to automatic writing, the dream protocols and the cadavres exquis of the 1920s. Yet with Max Ernst, the game led to a marvelous expansion of his visionary world" (W. Spies, ed., Max Ernst, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1991, p. 230).
John Russell has observed:
This had been introduced in 1937 by Oscar Dominguez as a technique for working in gouache, and Max Ernst adapted it to oils with great success. It had a kinship with frottage, in that the point of departure was an image which forced itself on the artist: after a certain stage he was out on his own, as much as with any other technique, but the initial moves were not within his control. Décalcomanie in oils offers a basic matière which is continually suggestive. It is ideal, in fact, for the evocation of substances which are soft, porous, spongey, long-decayed, equivocal and sinister. It is ideal for stone that has been worn to the consistency of old cheese, for vegetation that has been rotting for a hundred years in swamp, for carcasses in which only old bone and horn survive intact, for caverns at low tide, and for architecture that the jungle has had its way with . . . The very act of squashing an area of wet paint on the canvas corresponded to the panic and irreality of the spring of 1940 . . . (J. Russell, op. cit., p. 126).
It is against these circumstances that Paysage avec lac et chimères should be viewed. There is an overwhelming sense of terror conveyed by the foreboding landscape in which the rocks bear an uncanny resemblance to human bones. Furthermore, this landscape is populated by chimeras--the fire-breathing she-monster from Greek mythology that has a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail--surrounding a lake, the depth of which can only be guessed at. This is a land from which escape is a futile concept.
Regarding the artistic process of décalcomanie that Ernst employed to elicit a reaction of such dread from the viewer, it has been written, "The late 1930s had witnessed his enrichment of Surrealism with a new means of expression, décalcomanie, a fruitful variation on semi-automatic techniques in which a sheet of paper or glass was placed on the painted surface and then pulled away. Other members of the Surrealist group, including André Breton, tried their hand at this apparently "easy" technique, which had already been employed by Victor Hugo. This had the side-effect of bringing about a reconciliation between the poets and painters of Surrealism. Décalcomanie was what might be termed an intersubjective method, comparable to automatic writing, the dream protocols and the cadavres exquis of the 1920s. Yet with Max Ernst, the game led to a marvelous expansion of his visionary world" (W. Spies, ed., Max Ernst, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1991, p. 230).
John Russell has observed:
This had been introduced in 1937 by Oscar Dominguez as a technique for working in gouache, and Max Ernst adapted it to oils with great success. It had a kinship with frottage, in that the point of departure was an image which forced itself on the artist: after a certain stage he was out on his own, as much as with any other technique, but the initial moves were not within his control. Décalcomanie in oils offers a basic matière which is continually suggestive. It is ideal, in fact, for the evocation of substances which are soft, porous, spongey, long-decayed, equivocal and sinister. It is ideal for stone that has been worn to the consistency of old cheese, for vegetation that has been rotting for a hundred years in swamp, for carcasses in which only old bone and horn survive intact, for caverns at low tide, and for architecture that the jungle has had its way with . . . The very act of squashing an area of wet paint on the canvas corresponded to the panic and irreality of the spring of 1940 . . . (J. Russell, op. cit., p. 126).