Already a subscriber? Log in
The show opens with some film clips to put you in the mood. Never forget that surrealism is supposed to destabilise you, so we’re shown Buster Keaton falling downstairs as well as the unerotically shaped Marie Dressler as the Prancing Pearl. If that’s not enough, there are various Afghan and Nigerian sculptures lurking in the gloom, as well as de Chirico’s painting ‘The Evil Genius’ and Picasso’s great canvas ‘The Three Dancers’. In the main gallery space to the right of the entrance there are lots of photographs and documentary stuff and a lovely group of Picasso paintings — one of the main reasons to visit the show. ‘Bather, Design for a Monument (Dinard)’ and ‘Two Women Running’, both from 1928 and both magnificent paintings, establish the twin poles of this artist’s surrealist credentials. (All and Nothing.) The extremely odd ‘Bird on a Tree’ adds undoubted piquancy.
Another reason to venture to the South Bank is the group of sculptures on the mezzanine, including Giacometti’s ‘Man and Woman’, some cycladic specimens, several good things by Lipchitz, a Brancusi marble head and a wall of superb Arp reliefs hanging above. Elsewhere on this level are a lovely sequence of Karl Blossfeldt’s photographs of ferns and flowers, a group of strange and marvellous Miró paintings (tough, not sweet as some of his can be), and a room of Massons. These are exceptionally fine, and filled with inspired and inspiring linearity, despite the ostensible subject of butchered horses and abattoirs. Of course, no surrealist exhibition worthy of the designation would be complete without Max Ernst, but his presence here is confined to six exquisite collages from ‘The Hundred-Headless Woman’. Even Dalí is given more prominence. For Ernst we must turn to the private sector for a proper assessment.
Very few commercial galleries can assemble a museum-quality exhibition of one of the great names of modern art, and then offer most of the exhibits for sale. Helly Nahmad currently achieves this feat with a show of Max Ernst’s paintings which is not just impressive but also rather enjoyable. Ernst always claimed he was a better painter than Picasso, and this group of works (many of them top-quality early examples) gives us the chance to test his boast against the paintings by the Spaniard at the Hayward. Some 25 pictures are hanging, though more are reproduced in the sumptuous hardback catalogue, an excellent range of work, which includes some famous images such as ‘Loplop’ (1932) and ‘Aux 100,000 colombes’ (1925). ‘Loplop’, the bird-god and Ernst’s alter ego, greets the visitor at the entrance to the gallery, with a rather more staid still-life, ‘Les Prunes’, hanging to the left. Birds are a constant motif in Ernst’s imagery, sharp-beaked marauders of sense and logic, thieving magpies of chance — the accidental silhouettes of automatism thrown up by the process of working.
In 1925 Ernst produced his first ‘frottage’ — a technique akin to brass-rubbing, in which textures are taken from floorboards, leaves or cloth. Indeed textures are central to his art (a much stronger resource than his colour, which is often badly judged even for a rebarbative effect), and several of the smaller paintings here rely on texture almost entirely for their effect. Look at the carefully rucked and combed paint of ‘Waldbild: Winter’ (1927) or ‘Fôret et lune’ of the same year. Ernst was a master of the collage technique — putting together the previously unrelated to make a poignant new image — and this extended to his use of imagery in frottage and in oil paint. Mineral forests spring up from the humus of his northern imagination: out of the boney land, a dark plantation of skeletal vegetation. A moon rises, a bird falls, a shadow encroaches. It becomes a monster, a scarecrow a gigantic coffin. Meanwhile, in the courtyards of the castle, the blossoms gather. (Look, for instance, at the lyrical accomplishment of ‘Jardin gobe-avions’ of 1935.)
Ernst was not a better painter than Picasso, but was perhaps more original in how he used the stuff (in common with the other surrealists, who delighted in discovering new strategies of paint application, such as écrémage and decalcomania), and he was undoubtedly more thorough in exploiting the wilder excesses of a fevered imagination. ‘Max Ernst is a liar, gold-digger, schemer, swindler, slanderer and boxer’ was the artist’s over-modest self-assessment of 1921. Anyone who’d like to know more should consult Max Ernst: Life and Work, edited by Werner Spies, the leading authority on the artist. Published by Thames & Hudson at £35, it contains over 600 illustrations, and is the supplementary volume to Spies’s eight-volume Ernst catalogue raisonné. It includes Ernst’s own ‘Biographical Notes’, bulked out with writings by others. Composed of letters, photos, poetry and diaries, much of it published for the first time, it is excellent value for the enthusiast who wishes to penetrate further into the topiarian mysteries of surrealism.
Also in Arts Reviews
Also by Andrew Lambirth
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in