.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Les Asperges de la lune (Lunar Asparagus) is one of a group of around nine major freestanding sculptures that Max Ernst began to make on his return to Paris after an influential visit to Zurich in 1934. Having travelled to the Zurich Kunsthaus to partake in the large group exhibition Was is Surrealismus?, Ernst had been particularly impressed by the sculpture of Arp and Giacometti. On his return he set about making his own freestanding personnages in plaster. In 1973 Max Ernst, together with the help of The Museum of Moder Art in New York, set about casting bronzes from the Museum's paster. Further more Ernst decided to paint the present cast in white to reflect the colours of the original plaster cast. He evidently thought the white colouring of the plaster version of 'lunar asparagus' was appropriate.
Les Asperges de la lune comprises two personnages standing on long thin asparagus-like stems. These forms echo a frottage from his 1925 Histoire Naturelle entitled Fausses positions. They also recall the shapes of those of non-European sculptures such as the wood-carved clubs of Easter Island one of two figures from Lake Sentani in Papua New Guinea belonging to Ernst's dealer Jaques Viot.
Seemingly sprouting into mysterious life from their vegetal beginnings, the twin personages of this work - moon-figures according to their title - have been created by being bestowed with faces. For the eyes of one, Ernst, as he was to do in other sculptures, used casts of a unique found-object he had obtained from Roland Penrose. As Penrose recalled, it was a small pebble that he had brought back from Egypt. 'Polished by the sand, spherical in shape like a cherry stone, it was encircled by horns like the crescent of the new moon. On my return to Paris Max Ernst seized upon it as a surrealist object of significance and putting it in a plush jeweller's box he kept it beside him or exhibited it as a rare treasure trove among his paintings.' (Roland Penrose quoted in exh. cat., Max Ernst sculture, Turin, 1996, p. 67).
Les Asperges de la lune comprises two personnages standing on long thin asparagus-like stems. These forms echo a frottage from his 1925 Histoire Naturelle entitled Fausses positions. They also recall the shapes of those of non-European sculptures such as the wood-carved clubs of Easter Island one of two figures from Lake Sentani in Papua New Guinea belonging to Ernst's dealer Jaques Viot.
Seemingly sprouting into mysterious life from their vegetal beginnings, the twin personages of this work - moon-figures according to their title - have been created by being bestowed with faces. For the eyes of one, Ernst, as he was to do in other sculptures, used casts of a unique found-object he had obtained from Roland Penrose. As Penrose recalled, it was a small pebble that he had brought back from Egypt. 'Polished by the sand, spherical in shape like a cherry stone, it was encircled by horns like the crescent of the new moon. On my return to Paris Max Ernst seized upon it as a surrealist object of significance and putting it in a plush jeweller's box he kept it beside him or exhibited it as a rare treasure trove among his paintings.' (Roland Penrose quoted in exh. cat., Max Ernst sculture, Turin, 1996, p. 67).