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Lot Essay
Depicting two caged love-birds in oil on a sandpaper ground surrounded by a thick cork frame, Les deux oiseaux is one of a major series of object-paintings on the theme of imprisoned birds that Ernst made in 1925. From the beginning of 1925 Ernst was, for the first time, financially able to concentrate solely on his art, and, almost immediately, a number of recognisable creatures suddenly began to manifest themselves in his work. Les deux oiseaux belongs to an important series of works that Ernst made when he was on the verge of discovering the frottage technique and, like these works, it makes use of a semi-random technique in order to create its imagery. The elaborate pattern of the feathers of each bird, for example, has here been made by repeatedly impressing into the wet surface of the multi-coloured oil paint with a blunt object to create a patterned shell-like relief.
The creatures that emerged from the depths of Ernst’s unconscious, through such experimental processes with his materials, came into being almost as if they had walked out from the shadows of the dark, impenetrable forests that he repeatedly found himself painting at this time. Among these, birds were the most common creatures to appear. Birds had always played a significant role in Ernst’s life. Ernst’s features not only resembled a bird, but, since childhood, as he himself explained, he had made a clear unconscious connection in his mind between people and birds. When only a boy, Ernst’s favourite pet (a bird by the name of Horneborn) had died during the night. That same night, his sister Loni was born. This, Ernst later wrote, led to ‘confusion in the brain of this otherwise quite healthy boy - a kind of interpretation mania, as if the newborn innocent… had, in her lust for life, taken possession of the vital fluids of his favourite bird. The crisis is soon overcome. Yet in the boy’s mind there remains a voluntary if irrational confounding of the images of human beings with birds and other creatures, and this is reflected in the emblems of his art’ (M. Ernst, ‘Biographische Notizen’, cited in exh. cat., Max Ernst, Zurich, 1962-1963, p. 23).
Many of Ernst’s 1925 paintings depict two caged birds, trapped together in close confinement where they were prevented from spreading their wings. In Les deux oiseaux, the two doves appear to be sheltering one another. The delicacy of their forms and of the pattern of their feathers is presented in sharp contrast to the heavy texture of the sandpaper ground, imprisoning bars and the strong cork boundary of the picture-frame. Here a poetic expression of something exotic and precious seems to have been both constrained by as well as born from a heavy, earthy materiality.
Such was the profligacy of Ernst’s depiction of imprisoned love birds in 1925 that it is also tempting to see these works as being in some way expressive of his personal life. In 1925, Ernst had recently returned from Indochina where he had travelled to save the relationship between Gala and Paul Éluard. These were two dear friends with whom Ernst had lived for over a year in a ménage a trois until Éluard had suddenly fled to Saigon in desperation. Now living alone after effectively reuniting Éluard and Gala as a couple, it seems likely that the series of dove paintings that Ernst began to create upon his return, and which more often than not depict either a lone caged bird or, as in this work, a loving couple, to some extent mirror his reflections on the inevitable and necessary break-up and reconfiguring of this important relationship in his life.
The creatures that emerged from the depths of Ernst’s unconscious, through such experimental processes with his materials, came into being almost as if they had walked out from the shadows of the dark, impenetrable forests that he repeatedly found himself painting at this time. Among these, birds were the most common creatures to appear. Birds had always played a significant role in Ernst’s life. Ernst’s features not only resembled a bird, but, since childhood, as he himself explained, he had made a clear unconscious connection in his mind between people and birds. When only a boy, Ernst’s favourite pet (a bird by the name of Horneborn) had died during the night. That same night, his sister Loni was born. This, Ernst later wrote, led to ‘confusion in the brain of this otherwise quite healthy boy - a kind of interpretation mania, as if the newborn innocent… had, in her lust for life, taken possession of the vital fluids of his favourite bird. The crisis is soon overcome. Yet in the boy’s mind there remains a voluntary if irrational confounding of the images of human beings with birds and other creatures, and this is reflected in the emblems of his art’ (M. Ernst, ‘Biographische Notizen’, cited in exh. cat., Max Ernst, Zurich, 1962-1963, p. 23).
Many of Ernst’s 1925 paintings depict two caged birds, trapped together in close confinement where they were prevented from spreading their wings. In Les deux oiseaux, the two doves appear to be sheltering one another. The delicacy of their forms and of the pattern of their feathers is presented in sharp contrast to the heavy texture of the sandpaper ground, imprisoning bars and the strong cork boundary of the picture-frame. Here a poetic expression of something exotic and precious seems to have been both constrained by as well as born from a heavy, earthy materiality.
Such was the profligacy of Ernst’s depiction of imprisoned love birds in 1925 that it is also tempting to see these works as being in some way expressive of his personal life. In 1925, Ernst had recently returned from Indochina where he had travelled to save the relationship between Gala and Paul Éluard. These were two dear friends with whom Ernst had lived for over a year in a ménage a trois until Éluard had suddenly fled to Saigon in desperation. Now living alone after effectively reuniting Éluard and Gala as a couple, it seems likely that the series of dove paintings that Ernst began to create upon his return, and which more often than not depict either a lone caged bird or, as in this work, a loving couple, to some extent mirror his reflections on the inevitable and necessary break-up and reconfiguring of this important relationship in his life.