Out of an Impasse: Bronze Sculptures by Max Ernst, 1934–1973: Online

"Whenever I reach an impasse in my painting, which happens time and time again, sculpture always offers me a way out."
—Max Ernst

The following text, unless otherwise noted, has been excerpted from Dr. Jürgen Pech in Max Ernst: Plastische Werke (Köln: DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag, 2005), translated in Allison Mosely's Max Ernst: Paramyths, Sculpture 1934–1967, exh. cat. (New York: Paul Kasmin Gallery, 2015).

At the end of May 1936, Max Ernst took part in the Exposition surréaliste d'objets, which was shown in the Charles Ratton Gallery, which actually specialized in African, Oceanic and American objects. André Breton had organized this survey exhibition and structured it through various classifications, which were also announced in an accompanying issue of the journal Cahiers d'Art: mathematical objects, natural objects, wild objects, found objects, irrational objects, readymade objects, interpreted objects, incorporated objects, and moveable objects. André Breton assigned Max Ernst's works to the terms "natural objects," "found objects," and "surrealistic objects." Max Ernst was represented in the exhibition with four works. In addition to Habakuk, which was presented in a showcase together with mathematical wire models, a Kachina doll and objects by Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso, his wooden object Objet mobile recommandé aux familles and the plaster sculpture La belle allemande, and finally Les asperges de la lune could be seen in the garden.

The found object was a stone that a friend, the collector and artist Roland Penrose, had given to Max Ernst after a trip to Egypt: "One of the simplest and most lasting souvenirs I brought back with me was a small stone that I had found. It was sand-polished, spherical like a large cherry pit, and rimmed with horns that corresponded to the shape of the waxing moon…On my return to Paris, Max Ernst picked it up as an important Surrealist object, preserved it in a jewel box lined with velvet or exhibited it together with his paintings as an exceptional treasure." When the found object was shown again at the end of 1937 at the Surrealist Objects & Poems exhibition in London, it was given the name Sphinx Eye in the catalogue. The association with the puzzler of Greek mythology, which goes back to the mythical animal with a human head and lion's body, summarizes the discovery site of the round polished stone and the eye as the central theme in Max Ernst's work.

"Ernst's sculptures are neither truly abstract nor obviously figurative in nature, but often an enigmatic combination of both." —Michele Wijegoonaratna

"The humor also plays out in the gentlest of ways with works such as Dream Rose, a fond and whimsical rendering of his favorite Tibetan dog." —Michele Wijegoonaratna

"Dream Rose" was the name that Ernst and Dorothea Tanning gave to one of their dogs. Over time, the dog became an emblematic animal in Tanning's work; in her memoirs, Tanning mentions the first dog, a Lhasa Apso terrier named Kachina, in her description of Ernst's move into her apartment: "A glory of objects and pictures expanding my rooms, making other worlds out of my walls. And as if that were not enough, the Hopi idols, Northwest coast wolf mask, New Guinea shields. There was a totem pole that just touched the ceiling. A little dog named Kachina came with him and sat trembling…between the two front windows.” 

In addition to disc sculptures such as Dans les rues d'Athènes or Un chinois égaré, three pole sculptures were also created in the years around 1960, whose genealogy dates back a quarter of a century to Les asperges de la lune of 1935. This group includes the two works Sous les ponts de Paris, a monument to a frog designed in a mocking Dada manner, and  mes-sœurs, which is most closely related to the original pair from the 1930s with its division into two parts. Both are overtopped in height by the sculpture Le génie de la Bastille, which with over three meters directs the view upwards.

"With Le génie de la Bastille, Ernst set a bird monument to the pursuit of freedom of the French Revolution."  

In Le génie de la Bastille, the supporting and presenting form of the pole has grown into a column of enormous length. The slight flute of the 1935 prototype has now given way to a strong structuring. Max Ernst achieved the coarse, irregular grid by pouring out a fish trap with plaster. A corresponding mold, taken from everyday reality, can be discovered in a photograph of the studio in Huismes, where it leans against the wall on the left in the background. After the plaster had dried, Max Ernst cut the wickerwork and placed four casts on top of each other for the column shaft. He crowned the top with a bird figure with wide-spread wings. Like the column, this emblem of the artist is also composed of individual parts, which are added together and constructed completely symmetrically. The smooth surface of the animal emphasizes its contrast and independence. The emblem animal consists of three basic forms: wing, half of the body, and head, which at the same time functions as a leg section. The basic forms were each created twice and support the balanced effect in their repeated or mirrored arrangement. In the following years Ernst equipped further casts of the central body part of the bird with eyes in order to create the heads of the frogs of Sous les ponts de Paris and Deux assistants through this transformation.

When the bronze casting of Le génie de la Bastille was placed in the garden of Huismes, an inverted Corinthian capital served as the base. At the end of the 1960s Ernst took up the combination of stone and bronze again for the design of the fountain at Amboise. The end of a Greek column here becomes the carrier of a column and acquires a meaning in terms of content: a new free spirit emerges from a fragment of the past. With Le génie de la Bastille, Ernst set a bird monument to the pursuit of freedom of the French Revolution. The title recalls the state prison in Paris, notorious since Richelieu, which had been stormed and destroyed at the beginning of the revolution in 1789 as a sign of royal tyranny. To commemorate the July Revolution of 1830, the July Column was erected on Bastille Square, bearing the Roman genius of freedom—a male figure that is also winged. 

"Ernst's sculpture unites the exciting contrast of the literary model, the uncertain circumstances of life and the nevertheless self-confident attitude of the fictitious character."
—Dr. Jürgen Pech