Max Ernst

Sale: Ader, Tajan, Picard, Paris, 24th November 1988, lot 88 
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner 

Paris, Galerie Vignon, Max Ernst, 1930, no. 5 or 6 (probably)

Oil on board. The board is stable. There is a loss to the tip of the upper left corner; all three remaining corners have been restored and the lower two corners have been reinforced with small triangular segments of card. There are very faint old repairs to the board at the centre of all four edges. UV examination reveals some scattered spots of retouching concentrated in the blue background in the upper left quadrant and some further intermittent small spots and lines along the lower edge towards the lower left corner and along the left and right edges. There are some older retouchings corresponding to the repairs to the corners of the composition. There are some areas of fluorescence within the brown pigment towards the lower left corner of the composition, which appear to be due to the artist's materials and techniques, or are possibly very old and established areas of in-painting. Otherwise this work is in good condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In the celebrated opening passage of his autobiographical treatise Beyond Painting (1948), Max Ernst recounts an earlier vivid dream in which striations of wood, drawn over a mahogany panel, magically transform themselves into myriad images of animals. As an archetypal Surrealist anecdote, this seemingly fantastical episode on anthropomorphic transformation would serve as a foundation for the painter’s future artistic explorations, where animal and natural imagery would become icons of his distinctive pictorial language.  L'homme et la femme is a visual testament to his ideas concerning wholeness and separation, as well as his interest in ever-fluctuating natural imagery. Ernst uses this imagery in order to ‘investigate new, incomparably expansive areas of experience, in which the boundaries between the so-called inner world and the outer world become increasingly blurred and will probably one day disappear entirely’ (Max Ernst ‘What is Surrealism?’, 1934, in Abstrakte Malerei und Plastik; Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Julio Gonzalez, Joan Mirò(exhibition catalogue), Kunsthaus Zurich p. 198).

Hovering on the border between figuration and abstraction, the present work has an exceptionally thick painterly surface, which is exemplary of the artist’s relentless creativity when it came to manipulating and experimenting with his medium. Seemingly unrelated compositional fragments become whole in a potent final composition, remarkable for its striking sculptural quality. Two distinct elements can be deciphered: the metaphorical figure of a man and woman are composed of abstract, quasi-geometric, bold-coloured forms, locked into a visual embrace. Ernst’s dream of transformation, described in his treatise, here becomes tangible as the viewer is invited to participate in its unfolding narrative. The central painted element, mimicking a wooden texture, emerges as the head of a figure with hollow eyes supported by two vertical legs. This accomplished trompe d’œil wooden element – a technique so beloved by the Cubists - is a simulation of real wood which acts as a nod to Ernst’s celebrated grattage and frottage techniques. Emerging from nocturnal darkness, the rightmost figure is borne organically out of the lower black plane. Ernst artfully conjoins this figure to the leftmost element through interloping lines of flaming red, brown, and golden yellow. These amorphous shapes cause an ever-fluctuating friction resisting any formal geometry. The shape of the upper elements nod to the bird’s beak of Ernst’s famous alter ego ‘Loplop’, which would become an iconic recurring image in the artist’s work from the thirties.

A striking dialectic between darkness and lightness is evoked by the artist in the contrasting planes of black foreground and bright blue background, framing the central figures whilst also lending them spatial depth. Duality is a key theme of the present work and Ernst’s contrasting elements are set into a constant play, a hovering tension between rigidity and fluidity. Man and woman, human and animal, the natural and the fantastic, are all condensed to create an image of great intensity and movement which features many of the artist’s most important and celebrated themes and imagery.