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Lot Essay
The motif of two caged birds is one that appears with regularity throughout Max Ernst's entire oeuvre. Signifying notions of the freedom of the unconscious mind trapped in the labyrinth of convention, the image of two birds in a cage usually represents Ernst himself and his lover, who, like two lovebirds in a cage, inhabit each other's worlds, minds and dreams.
In this painting from 1951 appropriately entitled L'éloge de la liberté (The Praise of Freedom), the two birds in a little house-like cage set at the foot of a red-stone Arizona mountain clearly stand for Ernst and his wife Dorothea Tanning and the freedom they found together in their Sedona home. Ernst and Tanning had first moved permanently to the town of Sedona in Arizona in 1946, where they bought a plot of land and set about building their house together. L'éloge de la liberté was painted in 1951, shortly after Ernst's first return visit to Europe after the war. This journey to his ravaged European homeland proved to be a depressing revelation for Ernst, who, on his return to Arizona, revelled in the idyll of his Sedona homestead. With its masterly invocation of the mighty spiritual grace of the ancient red-rock landscape around his American home, this painting appears to be a celebration of this isolated Western life. It is a work that echoes the sentiments of a poem entitled Das Schnabelpaar (The Billing Pair) that Ernst published along with a series of etchings two years later.
'Where a house stood years ago a mountain now stands
Where a mountain stood years ago a star now stands
Where a star stood years ago a billing pair now stands
That one is Max the Beak
And Nightingale, his beloved billing bride…'
In this painting from 1951 appropriately entitled L'éloge de la liberté (The Praise of Freedom), the two birds in a little house-like cage set at the foot of a red-stone Arizona mountain clearly stand for Ernst and his wife Dorothea Tanning and the freedom they found together in their Sedona home. Ernst and Tanning had first moved permanently to the town of Sedona in Arizona in 1946, where they bought a plot of land and set about building their house together. L'éloge de la liberté was painted in 1951, shortly after Ernst's first return visit to Europe after the war. This journey to his ravaged European homeland proved to be a depressing revelation for Ernst, who, on his return to Arizona, revelled in the idyll of his Sedona homestead. With its masterly invocation of the mighty spiritual grace of the ancient red-rock landscape around his American home, this painting appears to be a celebration of this isolated Western life. It is a work that echoes the sentiments of a poem entitled Das Schnabelpaar (The Billing Pair) that Ernst published along with a series of etchings two years later.
'Where a house stood years ago a mountain now stands
Where a mountain stood years ago a star now stands
Where a star stood years ago a billing pair now stands
That one is Max the Beak
And Nightingale, his beloved billing bride…'