MAX ERNST

(1891-1976)

But in Color

Footnotes

Provenance
Domenique de Menil Collection, Houston (acquired directly from the artist).
Private collection, New York (by descent from the above); their sale, Sotheby's, London, 1 March 2017, lot 48.
Private collection, Europe (acquired at the above sale).

Exhibited
Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Das innere Gesicht, 14 May – 21 June 1970, no. 80 (later travelled to Hanover, Frankfurt, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, Marseille, Grenoble, Strasbourg, Nantes, Houston, Kansas City, Dallas & Chicago).

Literature
W. Spies, S. & G. Metken, Max Ernst Oeuvre-Katalog, Vol. VI, Werke 1954-1963, Cologne, 1998, no. 3613 (illustrated p. 292).
R. McNab, Ghost Ships, A Surrealist Love Triangle, New Haven & London, 2004, fig. 56 (illustrated p. 129).


But in Color issues from a series of cosmological paintings that Max Ernst executed in the early sixties when he looked back to his recent past and reinvigorated some of his earliest subjects and working methods. Suffused by a hot palette of yellow, burnt orange and ochre, the sun-parched landscape is otherworldly yet highly redolent of the desert and crimson Sedona rocks of Arizona, the environment which made such a lasting impression upon the artist during his years in the United States. Painted in 1962, the present work was realised following Ernst's return to Europe in 1953, but the echoes of this 'red-planet' landscape continued to reverberate through his compositions and provide the surreal backdrop to convey his profound interest in the natural sciences and the romance of outer space.

Ernst's sense of wonder at the universe can perhaps first be first attributed to his deep affinity for German Romantic painting, and in the particular, the work of Caspar David Friedrich. Speaking in 1960, Ernst acknowledged his debt to Friedrich's contemplative depictions of man's awe within the natural world: 'The fact is that I've always had Friedrich's paintings and ideas more or less consciously in mind from the day that I started painting.' (Ernst quoted in E. Roditi, 'Ein Mittagessen mit Max Ernst' in Der Monat, March 1960, p. 70).

Later in his career, Ernst described a transition from extraordinary encounters within nature to a new obsession with the extra-terrestrial, an evolution which aptly charts his own geographical journey from the forests of his native Rhineland to the alien landscapes and vast skies of Arizona: 'When you walk through the woods keeping your eyes fixed on the ground you will doubtless discover many wonderful, miraculous things. But when you suddenly look upwards into the sky, you are overcome by the revelation of another equally miraculous world. Over the past century the significance of sun, moons, constellations, nebulae, galaxies and all of our outer space beyond the terrestrial zone has increasingly entered human consciousness, it has taken root in my own work and will probably remain there.' (Ernst quoted in W. Spies (ed.), Max Ernst: A Retrospective, Munich, 1991, p. 10).

The sixties also marked the height of the 'Space Age' when the world was transfixed by the novel developments in man's exploration of the universe. This was catalysed by the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and culminated in with the moon landing in 1969. Ernst's own interest in astrology reached its apogee in 1964 when he published Maximilliana ou l'exercise illegal de l'astronomie, a semi-autobiographical text and homage to the nineteenth century astronomer, Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel, whose peripatetic life was by marked by war, flight and exile, a life trajectory which bore many parallels with Ernst's own.

After moving to Paris in 1922 to join the Surrealists, Ernst was forced to flee Europe in 1941 during the Second World War, having narrowly escaped a second arrest in France by the invading Germans. He fled to America and settled first in New York with his then wife, the fabled art collector, Peggy Guggenheim. Shortly thereafter he embarked upon a new relationship with the American artist Dorothea Tanning, and it was with Tanning that Ernst made his first trip to Arizona in 1943. So entranced were the couple by the Sedona desert that they returned in 1945 and began building their home there the following year.

As John Russell explains, 'Arizona offered isolation, a celestial climate, a way of life that was both economical and free from suburban constraints. It offered the inspiration of supreme natural beauty...Few things are more stirring than the fantastic forms and the irrational colouring of the mountains around Sedona...although Max Ernst had never been a landscape painter, in the ordinary sense, it was deeply moving for him to come upon a landscape which had precisely the visionary quality that he sought for on canvas.' (J. Russell, Max Ernst: Life and Work, London, 1967, p. 140).

The move to Arizona precipitated an enlivening of Ernst's surfaces and a brightening of his palette inspired by his fresh surroundings and a renewed sense of optimism driven by his personal happiness and Europe's post-war recovery. Recalling his impressions of Sedona, Ernst noted that 'the first fascinating thing about the place was its abundance of colour – the intense red ochre of the soil and rocks' (Ernst quoted in W. Spies, op. cit., p. 323). With the yellow orb of the sun, set against a tangerine sky and ground and intersected by a terracotta seam But in Color (as the title suggests) pulses with hot tones and is emblematic of the richly coloured works which defined this post-war phase. The swirling darker whorls of paint to the central part of the composition, so evocative of the rocky outcrops of his beloved desert landscape, also pay homage to Ernst's characteristic technique of decalcomania.

Invented by the Spanish Surrealist Óscar Domínguez in 1935, Ernst adapted this Surrealist method from gouache to oil painting in the later part of the 1930s, making the process uniquely his own. Alongside automatic writing, the recording of dreams and playing cadaver exquis, decalcomania became an integral technique for many Surrealists to facilitate an expression of the subconscious. The effect is achieved by pressing pools of liquid paint between a smooth surface and the painting support and then separating them in a swift movement. The resulting runnels and blots are then examined, the composition of the painting revealing itself to the artist through chance pictorial associations with the subconscious.

Ernst exerted an element of control over these otherwise arbitrary images however, by limiting this technique to set areas within his compositions, suggesting form while also allowing the beholder the freedom to let his imagination decide on the field of action. In the present work, despite the suggestion of a desert landscape illuminated by the hot glare of the sun, the deliberately flattened picture space, tripartite structure and almost geometric composition gestures toward an emphasis on surface and abstraction.

But in Color issues from the collection of renowned art patron and founder of the celebrated Menil Collection in Houston, Dominique de Menil. Ernst had a close friendship with the Menils and the present work was acquired directly from the artist. Born in Paris, oil heiress Dominique Schlumberger met her husband Jean de Menil (layer anglicised to John) in 1930. The couple began collecting art in the 1940s and were initially interested in European Modernism with a particular focus on Cubism and Surrealism. Following the occupation of France during the Second World War the Menils emigrated to the US, eventually settling in Houston. Over the years they formed great friendships with many of the artists that they collected, including René Magritte, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, and were dedicated to promoting modern art through the organisation of exhibitions, including Max Ernst's first solo show in the United States. Over their lifetime Jean and Dominique amassed a collection of over 17,000 objects and works of art, most of which are now housed in the Menil collection and adjacent Rothko Chapel. The collection is often cited as one of the most significant privately assembled art collections in America, alongside the Barnes Foundation and the J Paul Getty Museum.