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拍品专文
Le peuple des oiseaux belongs to a series of some twenty works of the same subject produced by Max Ernst in 1942 and published in limited edition portfolios by the Surrealist magazine VVV in 1943. These are variations of the motif featured in Ernst’s celebrated 1942 painting Le Surréalisme et la peinture, now at The Menil Collection in Houston, in which composite, bird-like figures are arranged in an array of configurations. The studies were created during a volatile time for the artist—Ernst had been labeled a “degenerate artist” by the Nazi regime in his native Germany, and then interned as an enemy alien in his adopted home of France. In 1941 he fled the carnage of war-torn Europe for the safety of New York, where his marriage to the wealthy collector and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim unraveled shortly after his arrival. The present work, displaying a melancholy yearning for a sense of stability during tumultuous times, demonstrates Ernst’s virtuosity in channeling his deeply personal experiences into a surreal visual language.
Using his innovative frottage technique, the artist placed a terracotta sheet of paper on a textured surface to produce a tactile world into which he inserted the anthropomorphic creatures of his visions. Here, three undulating, interlocking human-bird hybrids nest in the center of the work, gracefully huddled together in a familial, tender scene as the two larger figures appear to protectively shelter the third. The smallest character is perhaps the most human-like, its sinuous form treated in a luminous, silky yellow among the otherwise monochromatic composition. Birds had long exerted an important influence on Ernst’s imagination, and since childhood he had held an unconscious connection between these animals and people. The artist came to identify himself with birds throughout his oeuvre, his preoccupation manifesting through his famous alter-ego, Loplop.
Other works from this series are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Dallas Museum of Art. The present composition was previously in the collection of David Hare, an American artist famed for his Surrealist sculptures who became associated with the movement when prominent members of the group, Ernst amongst them, arrived to New York. From 1942 to 1944, Hare founded and edited VVV along with Ernst, André Breton, and Marcel Duchamp.
Using his innovative frottage technique, the artist placed a terracotta sheet of paper on a textured surface to produce a tactile world into which he inserted the anthropomorphic creatures of his visions. Here, three undulating, interlocking human-bird hybrids nest in the center of the work, gracefully huddled together in a familial, tender scene as the two larger figures appear to protectively shelter the third. The smallest character is perhaps the most human-like, its sinuous form treated in a luminous, silky yellow among the otherwise monochromatic composition. Birds had long exerted an important influence on Ernst’s imagination, and since childhood he had held an unconscious connection between these animals and people. The artist came to identify himself with birds throughout his oeuvre, his preoccupation manifesting through his famous alter-ego, Loplop.
Other works from this series are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Dallas Museum of Art. The present composition was previously in the collection of David Hare, an American artist famed for his Surrealist sculptures who became associated with the movement when prominent members of the group, Ernst amongst them, arrived to New York. From 1942 to 1944, Hare founded and edited VVV along with Ernst, André Breton, and Marcel Duchamp.