Capricorn (Max Ernst)

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Capricorn
Max Ernst , 1948 (original made of cement)
Tinted plaster, 1964, 210 × 247 × 155 cm
National Gallery Berlin , Berlin

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Capricorn or Capricorne (from Latin: Capricornus Steinbock ) is a large-scale sculpture by Max Ernst , which he originally created in 1948 in cement in Sedona , Arizona . After a cast of the group of figures in plaster, which has been in the holdings of the Nationalgalerie Berlin since 1973 as a gift from the artist , a series of bronze casts took place from 1964 onwards. One example can be seen in the Max Ernst Museum in Ernst's hometown Brühl , and another in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The original made of cement is only preserved in fragments. Capricorn is one of the artist's main works.

background

Sedona landscape. The Ernst couple had a similar view from their house.

In 1942 Max Ernst met the young American painter Dorothea Tanning in New York and then separated from his third wife, Peggy Guggenheim . In October 1946, a double wedding was celebrated: Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning as well as Man Ray and Juliet Browner were married in Beverly Hills . Then Max Ernst and his new wife set off for Sedona in the Arizona desert and built the small, lonely house there that they called Capricorn Hill. The plastic Capricorn came about when there was an electrical connection and running water a year after the settlement in the rock wilderness. The concrete mixer that was then purchased was not only used for building houses.

Capricorn with the Ernst couple
John Kasnetzis , 1948
photography

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Max Ernst came into contact with the indigenous people, the Hopi , and studied their art. He was particularly interested in the kachina dolls and the ceremonial masks. The larger-than-life cement sculpture created in 1948, which can also be used as a seat, was inspired by folk art. In the group there are echoes of earlier works: the bull-headed male figure is reminiscent of The King playing with the Queen from 1944 , and the round face and body of the mermaid already appear in sculptures from the 1930s, for example in Belle Allemande (1935) or the wall sculptures of his house in Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche (1938). A photo by John Kasnetzis from the year it was made shows the couple together with the sculpture. Max Ernst stands behind the work, Dorothea has taken a seat on the seated male figure. Ernst's painting Arizona desert after Rain , which shows a visionary desert landscape, was also created around 1948 .

The couple left Sedona in 1953 to return to France, Ernst's adopted home. After the house was sold, Ernst took a plaster cast back to Europe, which was brought into its current shape in 1964. About three bronze casts based on this model were made around 1964, a limited edition of twelve bronzes was created in 1976/77 at Susse, Paris. The cement sculpture in Sedona is no longer preserved. A photograph from 1961 shows the son Jimmy Ernst with his wife Dallas and their two children in front of Capricorn in Sedona. Five fragments - the heads of the figures, the breasts of the woman and the scepter - came into the possession of the Berlin art collector couple Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch , who showed their collection in 2009/10 in the exhibition Picture Dreams at the Nationalgalerie Berlin .

Description and interpretation

The larger-than-life group of figures shows a mighty seated figure on the left with a bull-headed, horned skull, holding a large scepter in the right hand . The left hand holds a small creature that resembles the woman sitting next to him raised. A round-faced dog sits on his lap with its tongue hanging out, resembling an architectural gargoyle . The king's distinguishing features are his feet, gender and a trunk-like snout. The face of the long-necked queen on the right resembles a moon, the lower body a fish body, reminiscent of a mermaid . Her armless torso resembles a string instrument. A hat sits on the head, the feather of which is represented by a fish.

Silver drachma of Knossos with the Minotaur of Crete,
v 425-360. Chr.

The sculpture was not freely modeled, but obtained from cement casts of various objects. The artist formed the scepter from four milk bottles placed one on top of the other, ending with an impression of a Hopi mask . The woman's neck and lower body were made from car feathers.

Engraving of the constellation Capricorn

When asked about the meaning of the work, Ernst replied that it was a portrait of his family. This answer, sometimes meant as a joke, shows his aversion, which comes from surrealism, to clear explanations of the works.

For the Surrealists, the Minotaur - in Greek mythology a being with a human body and a bull's head - was an essential symbol. The shape of the male figure may also have been inspired by a horned kachina doll that the artist had purchased.

Dorothea Tanning named the work Capricorn , after the Latin name of the constellation Capricorn, Capricornus , who is represented as a being with the upper body of a goat and the lower body of a fish. The title indicates the astrological claim that constellations of the constellations affect human life.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Occasionally the couple's sculptures and photographs are dated to 1947, see Dorothea Tanning website . The museums mostly state 1948.
  2. Capricorn ( memento of July 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), nga.gov, accessed on June 23, 2012
  3. The couple in front of the house in Sedona , photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson
  4. ^ Lothar Fischer: Max Ernst , p. 108
  5. Quoted from the web link Petra Kipphoff
  6. ^ Lothar Fischer: Max Ernst , p. 108, 112
  7. Ulrich Bischoff: Max Ernst , p. 80
  8. ^ The King playing with the Queen , moma.org, accessed July 4, 2012
  9. ^ Max Ernsts Capricorne in the Museum in Brühl , db-artmag.com, accessed on July 4, 2012
  10. ^ Arizona desert after Rain , inbruehl.com, accessed March 18, 2013
  11. Quoted from Weblink Image Index of Art and Architecture
  12. Amy Ernst , reverserenaissancestudio.com, accessed November 6, 2012
  13. ^ The Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection ( Memento of February 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de, accessed on June 23, 2012
  14. Ulrich Bischoff: Max Ernst , p. 82 f.
  15. ^ The Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection ( Memento of February 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de, accessed on June 23, 2012
  16. Capricorn ( Memento of February 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive )