MAX ERNST

(1891-1976)

Méduse circonflexe

Footnotes

Provenance
Richard Feigen Gallery, Chicago.
Leo Orenstein Collection, New York.
Galerie Jan Krugier, Geneva.
(Possibly) Galerie 623, Paris.
Galerie Jeanne Castel, Paris.
Acquired from the above by the previous owner (1990s); their sale, Sotheby's, Paris, 19 October 2017, lot 1.
Private collection, Europe (acquired at the above sale).

Exhibited
London, The Mayor Gallery, Max Ernst Exhibition, 8 June – 1 July 1933, no. 3.
Zurich, Kunsthaus Zurich, Was ist Surrealismus?, 11 October – 4 November 1934, no. 47.
New York, Julien Levy Gallery, Max Ernst, Exhibition Surrealist, 18 November – 9 December 1936, no. 29.

Literature
W. Spies, S. & G. Metken, Max Ernst Oeuvre-Katalog, Vol. IV, Werke 1929-1938, Cologne, 1979, no. 1892 (illustrated p. 167).

The primeval figure who floats suspended at the centre of the present work marries Ernst's interest in Greek mythology and the process of metamorphosis, as well as his fondness for wordplay. Painted in 1933, Méduse circonflexe also looks outward to the seismic events of contemporary Europe whilst showcasing the artist's pioneering grattage technique.

Although he resisted being identified as a full member of the Surrealist group, Max Ernst became one of the key figures associated with the movement, drawn to André Breton's 1924 siren call from the Cologne Dada group alongside Jean Arp and Man Ray. Highly experimental, Ernst would utilise techniques across the spectrum of painting, sculpture, collage and literature to create haunting dream-like compositions prompted by the teachings of Sigmund Freud, aiming to unlock the unconscious mind.

The title of the present work recalls Medusa of Greek mythology, commonly depicted as a winged female with venomous snakes in place of hair, turning those who met her gaze into stone. One of the three Gorgon sisters, Perseus was challenged to behead her. Armed with divine protection from the gods, he attacked, using a polished shield to deflect the reflection of her petrifying stare. Successfully severing her head, he escaped but her power remained even in death, with Perseus using it to turn his enemies to stone. Painted in 1933, Méduse circonflexe coincided with the publication of the first issue of the Surrealist journal Minotaure which 'marked the re-emergence of a mythological theme which would assume increasing importance for Surrealist painting after that date' (W. Chadwick, Myth in Surrealist Painting, 1929-1939, Michigan, 1980, p. 40). The theme of the Minotaur and the labyrinth had already appeared in works by Breton, Ernst, Masson and Picasso; the artists being drawn to the legend by Freud's writing, in which he compared the maze to the mind, the Minotaur symbolising our darker, unpredictable impulses.

Ernst had long been interested in ancient myth and legend and was described by his biographer Werner Spies as one of the best-read people, having studied German, philosophy, Romance languages and the history of art at the University of Bonn from 1910 to 1914. Castor and Pollution dates from 1923, before the inception of the Surrealist movement, and references the twin brothers of classical mythology, Castor and Pollux whilst Leda and the Swan of 1927 and Napoleon in the Wilderness of 1941 illustrate his continued interest – the latter work shows the Emperor reimagined as a Greek hero, 'a horse-faced [figure who] appears on a sea coast as a kind of Odysseus [...] The figure is received by a seductive, sirenlike woman' (R. Bouvier, 'Transformations and Re-Formations, Max Ernst's Representations of the Body', in exh. cat., Max Ernst, Retrospective, Vienna, 2013, p. 117).

That Ernst embraced myth is evident not only in his art but in his literature, writing about himself in the third person in 1936 thus: 'one may discern in him two attitudes, in appearance irreconcilable: that of the god Pan and the man Papou who possesses all the mysteries and realizes the playful pleasure in his union with her ('He marries nature, he pursues the nymph 'Echo' they say') and that of a conscious and organised Prometheus, thief of fire who, guided by thought, persecutes her with an implacable hatred' (Ernst writing in 1936, quoted in W. Spies, Max Ernst, Life and Work: An autobiographical collage, London, 2006, p. 133). Photographs from 1939 show the artist dressed in white robes and holding a trident, in the image of Poseidon. Jürgen Pech believes that he identified with this god in particular through his 'metaphorical description of the artist as a diver into the unconscious' (J. Pech, 'Mythology and Mathematics. Max Ernst's Sculpture' in exh. cat., Max Ernst, sculptures, Milan, 1996, p. 87).

One of Ernst's earliest explorations of Greek myth is to be found in Oedipus Rex from 1922. Rather than a straightforward portrait of the tragic hero, a surreal tableau is formed of giant fingers emerging from a brick wall, pierced through by a needle. In their grasp is a large nut, pierced by arrows, before two birds' heads. Pech explains that 'the pierced hand in his painting Oedipe Rex / Oedipus Rex makes pictorial play on Oedipus' name (= Schwellfuss or Swellfoot) and verbal play on the relationship between solving a riddle and cracking a nut' (ibid. p. 67). 'Oedipus' meant swollen foot or ankle in Greek, referring to his feet being pierced and bound together when abandoned on the mountainside. Wordplay is employed to the same effect in Méduse circonflexe where the ambiguity of the title, referring to both the Medusa of Greek myth and a jellyfish, is reflected in the figure's unclear form, whose tendril-like arms recall both the tentacles of the sea creature and the snakes of the Gorgon's hair and who appears to float beneath the horizon or sea-line.

The circumflex of the title appears anomalous, referring in grammar to the chevron-shaped accent placed over a vowel, until the viewer sees the inverted 'v' shape created by the tendrils or tentacles of the 'Méduse'. These forms give a sense of languorous, floating movement, at odds with the hot, fiery orange which dominates the work, punctuated by deep red and cobalt blue elements. Ernst's interest in Surreal literature and writing is well documented, a love of typography which is further shown in the Initiales frottage series from the 1960s.

In 1929 Ernst created an extensive collage novel entitled La femme 100 têtes, a similarly ambiguous title which allowed women to be 'hundred-headed', 'headless', 'stubborn', and 'bloodsucking' at the same time, becoming a paradoxical complementary being – a many-head hydra and a beheaded Medusa in one' (R. Bouvier, op. cit., p. 115). The multiple meanings of his titles are reflected in the shifting identities of his subjects, which are frequently presented in the midst of transformation or metamorphosis. In his 1936 La Nymphe Écho for example, Ernst references the myth of the mountain nymph who dissolved into thin air from unrequited love for Narcissus. Relegated as a mere side note in the painting, Ernst instead focuses on another moment of metamorphosis in the tale, as a monstrous green creature formed of vegetation sprawls in the foreground, representing Narcissus, who was transformed into a flower. 'The need to establish constantly fluid boundaries between various stages of being [...] results, in Surrealist painting of the 1930s, in a gradual mythologizing of the metamorphic process' (W. Chadwick, op. cit., p. 34).

The unsettling sense of unknown, fluctuating realities is emphasised by Ernst's use of grattage in the present work, a technique which was developed from his earlier discovery of frottage. Pioneered by Ernst in the 1920s, this method marking a turning point in his stylistic development – spending a rainy day inside whilst on holiday in France in 1925, the artist became fixated by the wooden floorboards in his room: 'My gaze became excited, then obsessed by the sight of the boards, where a thousand rubbings had deepened the groves [sic]. [...] I made a series of drawings by placing on the boards sheets of paper, which I rubbed with black lead. I gazed at the drawings and, surprisingly, a hallucinatory succession of contradictory images rose before my eyes... A series of suggestions and transmutations offered themselves spontaneously' (Max Ernst quoted in W. Spies, Max Ernst: Life and Work, Cologne, 2005, p. 100). This technique allowed Ernst to embrace the unexpected and accidental images which emerged, providing 'a technical means of intensifying the hallucinatory faculties of the spirit in such a way that 'visions' automatically appear, a means of ridding oneself of one's blindness' (Max Ernst quoted in U. M. Schneede, The Essential Max Ernst, London, 1972, p. 73).

Going on to evolve this technique, Ernst created grattage, the act of scrubbing and scraping paint over the canvas rather than rubbing. Objects such as pieces of wood, glass and string would be placed underneath a canvas on which several coats of ground had been applied – the raised parts would then be scraped, revealing the layers of colour underneath in random patterns and textures. The artist would then scratch into the still-wet colours with objects such as a comb, or in his late-1920s Fishbone forests series, with stamped pieces of tin – 'thus the wave-shaped earth tremors or water movements are evoked in formulaic, abstract patterns' (U. M. Schneede, The Essential Max Ernst, London, 1972, p. 101). Schneede could have been talking about Méduse circonflexe in which the paint surface ripples across the canvas in a series of regulated, undulating waves. This pattern gives a sense of constant movement, pulsing life, and animates the surface throughout. Cold white exteriors give way to melding hot red and orange interior forms, revealed through Ernst's use of grattage.

The otherworldly feel of the present work, its abstract nature and vibrant colour, rings true with Werner Spies' analysis of Ernst's oeuvre at this key developmental stage: 'in the course of the following years – years which William Rubin has called the 'heroic epoch of Surrealist painting' – this technique, known as grattage, led to astonishingly innovative imagery. The pictures became more abstract in effect, their formats larger. The dramatic force of these paintings, the richness of their scintillating colour, made them high points of imaginative Surrealist art in the late 1920s' (W. Spies, Max Ernst. A Retrospective, exh. cat., London, 1991, p. 148).

Despite the seemingly inward and self-reflecting nature of the Surrealist genre, it is impossible to fully understand Ernst's work without also examining its historical context. André Breton himself declared, 'I insist on the fact that Surrealism can only be understood historically in relationship to the war, by which I mean – from 1919-1938 – in relation at the same time to the war from which it issued and the war to which it returned' (André Breton, quoted in exh. cat., Max Ernst, Retrospective, Vienna, 2013, p. 219). Painted in 1933, the year the Nazis came into power, the present work echoes Ernst's other landscapes of its time in its renouncement of any decorative or picturesque elements, being reduced to an eerie no-man's land. Ernst embodied the growing tensions leading up to World War II in his figurative works too, depicting the rise of monsters in La horde (1927) and L'ange du foyer (Le triomphe du surréalisme) of 1937. The hot, fiery palette of Méduse circonflexe and its evocation of a monster lurking beneath the surface perhaps reflects the ongoing effect that the First World War had had on the veteran – Ernst said of himself in 1942: 'Max Ernst died on August 1 1914. He came back to life on November 11 1918, as a young man who wanted to be a magician and to find the myth of his era' (Ernst quoted in ibid., p. 204).