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Max ERNST

Paul ELUARD

L'Aigle, collage original de Max Ernst - Ensemble : le dernier Album de Cartes Postales conçu par Paul Eluard encore en mains privées

S.n., S.l. S.d. (Circa 1930), Cadre : 34x31,4cm / collage : 14x9cm, relié.

Original collage by Max Ernst made from different colored stamps, in the shape of a bird of prey with spread wings. The claws were drawn by the artist in pencil. Framed in a green mat, the collage in postcard format was originally placed on the twelfth plate of the enclosed album that belonged to Paul Eluard. The stamps that we were able to identify were produced between 1906 and 1913. The collage was probably made in the late 1920s or early 1930s. To our knowledge, it is the only bird of its kind made by Ernst from stamps, and it was most likely specifically created by the artist to pay tribute to his friend Eluard and his passion for cartophily. Werner Spies (Max Ernst - Loplop, 1997) also points out the presence of butterflies in other Eluard postcard albums, made using the same technique: "with their bodies and wings cut out of stamps, their legs and antennae added in ink".
The eagle chosen by Ernst echoes a beautiful poem by Eluard entitled "La Malédicition [The Curse]":

"An eagle, on a rock, contemplates the blissful horizon. An eagle defends the movement of the spheres. Soft colors of charity, sadness, gleams on the gaunt trees, lyre in spider web-star, men who under all skies are alike are as silly on earth as in heaven. And the one who drags a knife in the high grass, in the grass of my eyes, of my hair and of my dreams, the one who carries in his arms all the signs of shadow, fell, speckled with azure, on the four-colour flowers.” (Mourir de ne pas mourir – 1924 with a frontispiece portrait of Eluard by Ernst)

 
Throughout the poem, the bird of prey symbolizes the poet; in the collage it could be a self-portrait of Max Ernst. His friends frequently found his features similar to birds. The choice of an eagle motif could also be a political reference to Max Ernst's German origins. In any case, the creation of this collage coincides with the birth of Loplop, "the superior of birds", an alter ego of Max Ernst created after the whimsical figure of Ferdinand Lop.
"Like a mannequin, Loplop successively "tries on" various subjects that must be placed in the general context of an ever-changing creation. This leading figure embodies all genres by abolishing the boundaries between them. Characters, landscapes, flowers-shells, scenery and dramatic elements often appear simultaneously. The Loplop series is dedicated to mixing: combining and associating different motifs is one of the essential goals of surrealism, which tends to broaden the field of representation by disturbing the mind and the senses. [...] The identification with Loplop may have concerned only Max Ernst and been part of his personal mythology, but his Surrealist friends very quickly saw in this bird an alter ego of Max Ernst. Several sources testify to this, including a 1926 poem by Paul Eluard entitled Max Ernst: "Devoured by feathers and subjected to the sea / He let his shadow pass in flight / Of the birds of freedom" (W. Spies, op. cit.)
 
It is also known that Max Ernst was very familiar with Eluard's postcard albums and used the embossed ones to make his famous “fottages” (W. Spies, op. cit., pp. 71-72). Werner Spies goes further and states that Max Ernst contributed to the making of Eluard's albums (ibid, p. 32). This splendid bird collage that he offered him and its presence in our album therefore take on their full meaning here. It is not only a homage to Eluard's collection (using stamps as a reference to the art of epistolary correspondence), but especially a token of fraternal friendship between two prominent figures of Surrealism.

Included:
 
Exceptional album constituted by Paul Eluard, with 498 postcards artistically set on 83 pages. It is the only album in private hands from the famous collection of the poet. The others are now part of the French Musée de la Poste [Postal Service Museum]. This album was exhibited at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in 2008 along with the Max Ernst collage. Eluard's collection represented much more to him than a mere cartophilic whim: it became the means of a true artistic, political, and social expression.
 
Eluard (in Le Minotaure, no. 3-4, December 1933) described his collection as a surrealist manifesto, denouncing the enslavement of the masses by the prosaism of the image:
"Treasures of nothing at all, whose taste was given to the children through chromolithographs, stamps, images on chicory packages, catechism, chocolate wrappers or through those distributed in the Department stores, postcards quickly reached the masses by their naivety and more still, alas! by the kind of “levelling down” they established between the sender and the recipient. Among the billions of postcards [...] that circulated in Europe from 1891 to 1914, only few are beautiful, touching, or curious. We have searched for them relentlessly, trying to reduce as much as possible the enormous part that discouragement could make to the excess of imbecility, to the lowest comic, to the horror, sublimating the reasons of a deep, inevitable pessimism." « Trésors de rien du tout, dont le goût était donné aux enfants par les chromos, les timbres, les images de chicorée, de catéchisme, de chocolat ou par celles, en séries, que l'on distribuait dans les Grands Magasins, les cartes postales plurent rapidement aux grandes personnes par leur naïveté et plus encore, hélas ! par l'espèce d'égalité par en bas qu'elles établissaient entre l'envoyeur et le destinataire. Parmi les milliards de cartes postales […] qui circulèrent en Europe de 1891 à 1914, il en est peu qui soient belles, touchantes ou curieuses. Nous les avons recherchées avec acharnement, en essayant de réduire autant que possible la part énorme que le découragement pouvait faire à l'excès d'imbécillité, au plus bas comique, à l'horreur, en sublimisant les raisons d'un pessimisme profond, inévitable. » (P. Eluard, « Les plus belles cartes postales »)
 The different types of postcards listed by Eluard in Minotaure all appear in our album containing glittery flowers, gaudy butterflies, explicit female nudes, small Napoleons and other jokes revealed by animated cards. Numerous images also bear witness to the racist and sexist stereotypes of the time, featuring the "types" of the colonies or mocking the alleged female ignorance in sexual matters.
The poet recreates an entire microcosm condemning the absurdity of the world and social inequalities:
"Commissioned by the exploiters to distract the exploited, postcards are not popular art. At most, art's and poetry's smallest currency. But this small change sometimes gives the idea of gold." (ibid.)  « Commandées par les exploiteurs pour distraire les exploités, les cartes postales ne constituent pas un art populaire. Tout au plus la petite monnaie de l'art tout court et de la poésie. Mais cette petite monnaie donne parfois idée de l'or. » (ibid.)
"Gold" is precisely the result of this meticulous collection and careful arrangement of "ready-made" images forming a unique poetic language. The album's visual construction alternates between contrasts and analogies, similar to Max Ernst's collage-novels and surrealist “cadavres-exquis”.
Provenance : Collection Paul Eluard - Collection Gala Eluard Dali - Collection Cécile Eluard - Collection Roger Dérieux 

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