Human Figure with Two Birds
<p>Like <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/33735">Constantin Brâncusi</a>, Max Ernst was fascinated with birds, and among his earliest works incorporating this motif are some two dozen small, unconventional pictures made around 1925. One of these works was incorporated as a picture within a picture in <em>Human Figure with Two Birds</em>, a painting that set the stage for an extraordinary series of works that Ernst began in 1930, which featured a large, fantastic bird figure that the artist identified as Loplop. In these works, Loplop, the artist’s "private phantom attached to my person," generally holds up a picture for presentation. Here the rudimentary figure outlined in white is an early manifestation of Loplop, Ernst’s playful, surreal concept of self-portraiture by proxy.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1925
- Dimensions
- 116.4 × 39.4 cm (45 7/8 × 15 1/2 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Max Ernst
Artist
Painting
Max Ernst was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, which left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France.
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Record
Verified by WattsOSSource
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified