Center Stage: The Laura Pels Collection | Act I: Fine Art

We would like to thank Dr. Jürgen Pech, the editor of the concluding eighth volume of the Max Ernst catalogue raisonné, for the technical information and for the preparation of the certificate.

Please note that the central painting originally included a painted outer panel, mounted by the artist. This panel, measuring 18 x 14 1/2 inches, was removed by 1996, at the time of its sale at the Binoche auction house in Paris.

Provenance:

Max Ernst, Seillans

Charles Gombault, Villa Montmorency, Paris

Primrose Bordier-Gombault, Villa Montmorency, Paris, inherited from the above, her husband, 1983

Sold: Binoche, Paris, March 8, 1996, Lot 8

Jean-Claude Gombault, Neuilly-sur-Seine, acquired at the above sale

Private Collection

Exhibited:

Venice, Galerie Alphonse Chave, Max Ernst ne peint plus! ... Peintures de décembre 1972 à janvier 1973, March 3 - April 13, 1973, pp. 11; 43, the inner painting illustrated (titled Immobile and with the dimensions 18 x 14 1/2 inches)

Paris, Galerie Alexandre Iolas, Max Ernst: Perturbations Délices et Orgues, November 27, 1973 - January 5, 1974, pp. 12-13, both inner painting and outer panel illustrated

Lot note:

In 1950, Max Ernst and his wife Dorothea Tanning returned to Europe from America for the first time since leaving during World War II, eventually settling in Huimes, Touraine. Shortly after the move, the artist wrote, “It is beautiful and gentle and calm here” (W. Spies and J. Drost (eds.), Max Ernst: Retrospective, exh. cat., Albertina, Vienna, 2013, p. 279). Influenced by the idyllic, verdant landscape of the Loire Valley, his paintings became suffused with a visual harmony and peace, reflective of the natural world. Works began to feature fractured prismatic planes, varied textures, and shimmering surfaces. These effects were achieved by applying layer upon layer of paint that was then partially scraped off in a grattage-like, painterly technique that creates a translucency, revealing grains and patterns that served as stimuli for Ernst’s fertile imagination.  

Completed in 1972, the present work, L'Oiseau à l'Œil de Verre, reveals the continued influence of this process well past the late 1950s. Seemingly illuminated from within, the painting achieves a scintillating depth and complexity of surface that recalls the American Abstract Expressionist movement at its height. Yet it is firmly rooted in nature both by its title and the presence of the whimsical, smiling figure at its center, lending the artwork a clearly representative, if distinctly otherworldly, reality. Although not original, the round bronze frame, perched on bird-like legs and crowned with a pendulum-like lamp, enhances the playfulness of the radiant painting. 

Additionally, with its title translated to The Bird with the Glass Eye, the artwork is neither objective nor decorative, and instead an idiosyncratic example of Ernst’s lifelong fascination with birds. According to the artist, one night when he was young, he woke up and found that his beloved bird had died; a few minutes later, his father announced that his sister 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 favorite bird. The crisis was 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.” (Max Ernst, exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich, 1962, p. 23) This early “confusion” of birds and humans led to the creation of the character Loplop, which first appeared in the artist’s work in the 1930s. Ernst himself described the character as “the Superior of birds, a private creature to whom I am deeply attached and wholly devoted.” (M. Ernst, Œuvres de 1919 à 1936, Paris, 1937, p. 24) As a kind of spiritual alter ego, muse, and guide, Loplop was capable of countless metamorphoses, from the animal kingdom to the realm of things, and acted as an intermediary in the art of Ernst.  

L'Oiseau à l'Œil de Verre exemplifies the artist’s creation of a private mythology by means of formal innovation. The manipulation of techniques, both physical and textual, allows the work to possess a whole variety of meanings and address itself directly to the observer’s powers of association. It reveals Ernst’s ability to understand the profound possibilities of art in the twentieth century and his own place in it, as he continued to transform the bounds of his medium.