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Lot Essay
For Max Ernst, sculpture represented a vital aspect of his artistic practice. “When I come to a dead end in my paintings, which repeatedly happens, sculpture provides me with a way out,” he explained. “Because sculpture is even more like playing a game than painting is. In sculpture, both hands play a role, just as they do in love” (quoted in J. Pech, op. cit., 2005, p. 8). Conceived during the summer of 1944, Le roi jouant avec la reine is among the most important sculptures of Ernst’s oeuvre, an intriguing, powerful work that exudes tension and suspense in its depiction of a large hybrid figure, the King of the title, in the midst of a chess game.
The idea for the piece first came to Ernst during a stay on the south shore of Long Island, New York. The artist had rented a beach house in Great River with his partner Dorothea Tanning, where he planned on spending several leisurely weeks relaxing and swimming, enjoying an extended break away from the city. However, Ernst was quickly driven indoors by the ever-present clouds of mosquitoes that surrounded the property, leading him to screen off the garage and convert the space into a small studio. Here, he immersed himself in creating sculptures, expanding upon the small plaster forms he had experimented with in France during the mid-1930s, before the outbreak of the Second World War, to create unique carvings in mahogany and dynamic assemblages in plaster.
The artist’s gallerist, Julien Levy, was instantly taken with the originality of these works when he visited Great River with his future wife, the artist Muriel Streeter: “I feel terribly impressed, and I confess in confidence to Dorothea that Max has suddenly become the greatest sculptor in the modern world” (quoted in W. Spies, exh. cat., op. cit., 1998, p. 132). During their time with Tanning and Ernst that summer, Levy and Streeter witnessed first-hand the spontaneous approach to form that shaped the artist’s vision: “Max had taken over the garage as a studio and there he poured his Plaster of Paris into ingenious molds of the most startling simplicity and originality—shapes found among the old tools in the garage plus utensils from the kitchen,” Levy recalled. “One evening he picked up a spoon from the table, sat looking at it with that abstracted, distant sharpness one finds in the eyes of poets, artists and aviators. He carefully carried it away to his garage. It would be the mold for the mouth of his sculpture, An Anxious Friend” (Memoir of an Art Gallery, Boston, 2003, pp. 270 and 271).
An elegant study in pure form and concise volumes, Le roi jouant avec la reine is the most complex sculpture to emerge from these activities. While it is difficult to say precisely which found objects may have inspired different elements in the final construction, the long, angular arms echo flat slats of wood as they connect to the figure’s torso. There is also a strong correlation between certain forms and those found in Native American sculptures and artefacts—Ernst amassed a large collection of painted wooden Kachina figures of the Hopi and Zuni tribes upon his arrival in America, and they proved to be an important stimulus for his imagination during this period. The rectangular head of the King, for example, surmounted by a pair of curving horns, recalls several sculptures from Ernst’s collection, visible in a 1942 photograph by James Thrall Soby. Activating the space between the figure and the chess board before him, Ernst shapes the body in a concave curve, creating the impression that he is leaning over the board, his upper body tense, as he studies the game intensely.
The strategic maneuvering of chess was a subject that fascinated and enthralled Ernst endlessly—he was an avid player and enthusiast of the game, a passion he shared with all three of his companions that summer. Dismayed to discover that no proper chess set was available anywhere in Great River, the artist and Levy created their own, utilizing a series of familiar objects they had discovered around the house for the project. Le roi jouant avec la reine features different pieces from Ernst’s latest designs for chess figures, including the tall, canonical Queen, who towers over the sextet of pieces before her, each awaiting their own turn to move and join the fray. The King’s hand hovers next to the Queen, either readying himself to initiate a move or gently shielding her from harm, as if aware of an on-coming attack by his opponent. There is a palpable feeling of suspense as we await the next move, watching to see how the game will unfold and the dynamics shift.
It was in this aspect of chess, Marcel Duchamp argued, that its true beauty could be found: “A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing… The pieces aren’t pretty in themselves, any more than is the form of the game, but what is pretty—if the word ‘pretty’ can be used—is the movement… In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It’s the imagining of the movement or of the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It’s completely in one’s gray matter” (quoted in P. Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1987, pp. 18-19). In Le roi jouant avec la reine, Ernst enhances this tension by engaging the viewer directly in the game being played—when standing before the sculpture, we inevitably take the position of the King’s opponent, occupying the other side of the chess board.
In many ways, the sculpture is built on the study of opposition and power dynamics, using the rich associations of the game and its history to suggest multiple layers of potential meaning. For example, by allowing the Queen, traditionally the most powerful piece on the board, to be dominated and controlled by the King, Ernst suggests the power hierarchy between the two, in which she has no agency in the proceedings. She holds the ability to protect or eliminate all of the other pieces on the board before her, but remains beholden to the whims of the King’s controlling hand.
The plaster version of Le roi jouant avec la reine made its debut at the acclaimed exhibition, “The Imagery of Chess,” at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in December 1944, and was later given by Ernst to fellow artist and chess enthusiast, Robert Motherwell. It was subsequently cast in bronze over a decade later, and other examples of the sculpture can now be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. The present cast was acquired from Ernst by the German gallerist and dealer Hans Mayer shortly after it was created, and was subsequently purchased by Robert and Patricia Weis in 1979.
The idea for the piece first came to Ernst during a stay on the south shore of Long Island, New York. The artist had rented a beach house in Great River with his partner Dorothea Tanning, where he planned on spending several leisurely weeks relaxing and swimming, enjoying an extended break away from the city. However, Ernst was quickly driven indoors by the ever-present clouds of mosquitoes that surrounded the property, leading him to screen off the garage and convert the space into a small studio. Here, he immersed himself in creating sculptures, expanding upon the small plaster forms he had experimented with in France during the mid-1930s, before the outbreak of the Second World War, to create unique carvings in mahogany and dynamic assemblages in plaster.
The artist’s gallerist, Julien Levy, was instantly taken with the originality of these works when he visited Great River with his future wife, the artist Muriel Streeter: “I feel terribly impressed, and I confess in confidence to Dorothea that Max has suddenly become the greatest sculptor in the modern world” (quoted in W. Spies, exh. cat., op. cit., 1998, p. 132). During their time with Tanning and Ernst that summer, Levy and Streeter witnessed first-hand the spontaneous approach to form that shaped the artist’s vision: “Max had taken over the garage as a studio and there he poured his Plaster of Paris into ingenious molds of the most startling simplicity and originality—shapes found among the old tools in the garage plus utensils from the kitchen,” Levy recalled. “One evening he picked up a spoon from the table, sat looking at it with that abstracted, distant sharpness one finds in the eyes of poets, artists and aviators. He carefully carried it away to his garage. It would be the mold for the mouth of his sculpture, An Anxious Friend” (Memoir of an Art Gallery, Boston, 2003, pp. 270 and 271).
An elegant study in pure form and concise volumes, Le roi jouant avec la reine is the most complex sculpture to emerge from these activities. While it is difficult to say precisely which found objects may have inspired different elements in the final construction, the long, angular arms echo flat slats of wood as they connect to the figure’s torso. There is also a strong correlation between certain forms and those found in Native American sculptures and artefacts—Ernst amassed a large collection of painted wooden Kachina figures of the Hopi and Zuni tribes upon his arrival in America, and they proved to be an important stimulus for his imagination during this period. The rectangular head of the King, for example, surmounted by a pair of curving horns, recalls several sculptures from Ernst’s collection, visible in a 1942 photograph by James Thrall Soby. Activating the space between the figure and the chess board before him, Ernst shapes the body in a concave curve, creating the impression that he is leaning over the board, his upper body tense, as he studies the game intensely.
The strategic maneuvering of chess was a subject that fascinated and enthralled Ernst endlessly—he was an avid player and enthusiast of the game, a passion he shared with all three of his companions that summer. Dismayed to discover that no proper chess set was available anywhere in Great River, the artist and Levy created their own, utilizing a series of familiar objects they had discovered around the house for the project. Le roi jouant avec la reine features different pieces from Ernst’s latest designs for chess figures, including the tall, canonical Queen, who towers over the sextet of pieces before her, each awaiting their own turn to move and join the fray. The King’s hand hovers next to the Queen, either readying himself to initiate a move or gently shielding her from harm, as if aware of an on-coming attack by his opponent. There is a palpable feeling of suspense as we await the next move, watching to see how the game will unfold and the dynamics shift.
It was in this aspect of chess, Marcel Duchamp argued, that its true beauty could be found: “A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing… The pieces aren’t pretty in themselves, any more than is the form of the game, but what is pretty—if the word ‘pretty’ can be used—is the movement… In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It’s the imagining of the movement or of the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It’s completely in one’s gray matter” (quoted in P. Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1987, pp. 18-19). In Le roi jouant avec la reine, Ernst enhances this tension by engaging the viewer directly in the game being played—when standing before the sculpture, we inevitably take the position of the King’s opponent, occupying the other side of the chess board.
In many ways, the sculpture is built on the study of opposition and power dynamics, using the rich associations of the game and its history to suggest multiple layers of potential meaning. For example, by allowing the Queen, traditionally the most powerful piece on the board, to be dominated and controlled by the King, Ernst suggests the power hierarchy between the two, in which she has no agency in the proceedings. She holds the ability to protect or eliminate all of the other pieces on the board before her, but remains beholden to the whims of the King’s controlling hand.
The plaster version of Le roi jouant avec la reine made its debut at the acclaimed exhibition, “The Imagery of Chess,” at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in December 1944, and was later given by Ernst to fellow artist and chess enthusiast, Robert Motherwell. It was subsequently cast in bronze over a decade later, and other examples of the sculpture can now be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. The present cast was acquired from Ernst by the German gallerist and dealer Hans Mayer shortly after it was created, and was subsequently purchased by Robert and Patricia Weis in 1979.