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Lot Essay
In 1953, Max Ernst began to return to France. Although he and Dorothea Tanning frequently returned to Sedona, their isolated home in the United States, another French period had esssentially begun. Painted in 1956, It's a Highway to Heaven marks the end of this dual home period, as Ernst began to truly settle in the French countryside at Touraine. It is a painting that combines both the light and space of his Arizona home with splashes of the decalcomania that he had first used and developed in the late 1930s. The hint of vegetation, of the organic, that this decalcomania implies is reinforced in the various mingling fields, where life appears in shimmering glimpses, a hint of a bird in the painting's upper half, other eyes secreted in other places. Indeed, It's a Highway to Heaven appears as a collage of several of Ernst's techniques and subject matters from various decades, with the palette reminiscent of many of his earlier works.
The Second World War had been an ordeal for Ernst, who had been incarcerated as an alien and then in Occupied France as a fugitive, and had eventually escaped to the United States with the help of Peggy Guggenheim. His return to France was largely coloured by visits to his old friends, many of them who had been even less fortunate than him. As the title suggests, It's a Highway to Heaven documents Ernst's pilgrimage, both as an artist returning to his old styles, techniques and subjects, and as a person returning to his home continent, to his friends and home. The painting also represents a spiritual journey for the artist, as the mysterious symbols known only to him appear in translucent splendour. The strange eyes and hints at figures and faces take on an almost ritualistic tone, taking on an elusive and alien glyphic quality, thus appearing inherently ordered in their own Surreal way. It's a Highway to Heaven is a portal to the mystic world of the painter's mind, Ernst's own invitation to the viewer to take part in a pictorial process that is not merely artistic.
The Second World War had been an ordeal for Ernst, who had been incarcerated as an alien and then in Occupied France as a fugitive, and had eventually escaped to the United States with the help of Peggy Guggenheim. His return to France was largely coloured by visits to his old friends, many of them who had been even less fortunate than him. As the title suggests, It's a Highway to Heaven documents Ernst's pilgrimage, both as an artist returning to his old styles, techniques and subjects, and as a person returning to his home continent, to his friends and home. The painting also represents a spiritual journey for the artist, as the mysterious symbols known only to him appear in translucent splendour. The strange eyes and hints at figures and faces take on an almost ritualistic tone, taking on an elusive and alien glyphic quality, thus appearing inherently ordered in their own Surreal way. It's a Highway to Heaven is a portal to the mystic world of the painter's mind, Ernst's own invitation to the viewer to take part in a pictorial process that is not merely artistic.