Max Ernst

Galerie Michael Hertz, Bremen
Ernst O. E. Fischer, Krefeld (acquired in the 1950s)
Private Collection (by descent)
Sabina Fliri Fine Art, London

Munich, Haus der Kunst & Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Max Ernst Retrospektive, 1979, no. 268, illustrated in the catalogue

Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Oeuvre-Katalog: Werke 1939-1953, Cologne, 1987, vol. IV,  no. 2860, illustrated p. 286

The panel is sound. UV examination reveals some spots of retouching above the horizon. There is a slightly uneven varnish to the lower left quadrant, which lightly fluoresces under UV light. There are a few tiny paint losses to parts of the smoke plumes and some fine drying cracks in places, mainly to the lower centre of the composition. Otherwise, this work is in overall good condition.
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Spectacle (Les Volcans) is a wonderful example of the profound influence that the natural world exerted on Max Ernst's œuvre. Painted in 1950, towards the end of the period he spent living in Sedona, Arizona, the present work is a remarkably seductive image, whose rich and varied texture make viewing it a remarkably stimulating and ever-fluctuating visual experience. It is not by chance that Ernst chose to depict two volcanoes: at once alluring and dangerous, the dialogue between these precarious mountains is clearly a metaphor for the volatility of human lust and relationships. That Ernst was attracted to the volcano as an artistic subject is hardly surprising given his lifelong obsession with the theme of birth and fluctuation. The artist has been described by Réné Crevel as 'the magician of subtle palpitations' and indeed the eruptions of the present work are perfect examples of such magic.

As well as being paradigmatic of many of his most celebrated surrealist themes - among them birth, sex, and the concept of the threshold - these majestic volcanoes also construct a remarkably striking and unusual composition, like cathedrals of the desert. The permanence of the volcano itself serves to accentuate the instability of the dancing dust that springs from it. From the deep blue depths below, life and energy is catapulted up, the lava illuminating the sky with its sensational palette of deep pinks, purples and oranges. The eruptions from the two volcanoes meet in the sky, to form a dialogue imbued with a magnificent sense of ecstasy and tension.

Ernst's application of paint has been more than once described as erotic, and the porous and kaleidoscopic texture of the smoky eruption is testament to the artist's profound engagement with, and experimental approach to, the potential of the medium. The present work demonstrates the technique of grattage, first developed by Ernst in the mid-1920s as a painterly response to the Surrealist concept of automatism. Grattage is the oil paint version of frottage, the technique Ernst first used with pencil and paper: 'One rainy day in 1925, Ernst was first inspired to explore the possibilities of frottage by the look of the grooves in the well-scrubbed floor of his hotel room at the seashore in Pornic. Attracted by the open structure of the grain, he rubbed it, using paper and pencil, and then reinterpreted the results. As he developed the procedure, he used a variety of new elements to start with – stale bread crumbs, grained leather, striated glassware, a straw hat, twine – always transforming the results so that whatever lay below experienced a metamorphosis. The characteristics of these objects got lost in the process [...] the grain of wood became the tossing surface of the sea, the scaly pattern of the weave of a straw hat became a cypress tree [...] These works are sensual and tactile, with images of rubbed objects that appear as ghostly traces of form' (Werner Spies, Nightmare and Deliverance' in Max Ernst: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), New York, 2005, pp. 12-13).