Ernst, Max (1891-1976)
Two figures without gender. Chimeras
1933
Oil on canvas, 65 x 54 cm
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Two figures without gender. Chimeras are a complex motif on several levels. The chimera already turns out to be a complex creature, which in this case has vegetal, animal and human forms in it. Female growths and male genitalia The yellow-orange wing from the figure with the female growths continues in a stylised plant motif on the blue figure. The placement indicates that it is a symbol of the male genitalia. The totality of the two figures is therefore not genderless, but bisexual.
The Surrealists and the androgynous
The androgynous was linked by the Surrealists to an original state from before the dichotomy of the sexes. A state that was more closely linked to the creative power of sexuality and thus an ideal one strove for. In the 1930s, the inspiration from European art was an important catalyst for the Danish artists in the circle around the journal linien. Especially Max Ernst and Two Genderless Figures. Chimeras were highlighted by Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen. But artists such as Ejler Bille, Richard Mortensen and Wilhelm Freddie were also strongly influenced by Ernst and his interpretation of French surrealism. According to Ernst, the random juxtaposition of elements is conducive to the unconscious image-forming process of both the artist and the viewer, where new surprising wholes emerge. Source: Inger Krog, EXHIBITIONTEXT, 14.1.2018
The subject of the picture is two bird-like creatures – also called chimeras – a yellow-orange female bird and a blue-green male bird. The two interfere with each other, so that the female becomes part of the male and vice versa. Together, they form a circular shape: a symbol of the unity between woman and man – the whole person. The erotic, including the bisexual or androgynous, occupied a large place in the Surrealists’ world of thought and imagery. The bird motif also had a personal meaning for Max Ernst and was used in the staging of his alter ego “Loplop” figure, which is identified as the blue bird in the museum’s painting. Max Ernst was a great role model for the surrealistically oriented Danish artists of the 1930s, who knew his art from exhibitions and especially from French surrealist periodicals. Source: Dorthe Aagesen, EXHIBITIONTEXT
In Max Ernst‘s view, the chimera is the symbiotic creature that has become half human half acanthus leaf. The acanthus leaf winds in and out, shapes and forms. The chimeras in Max Ernst‘s surreal universe cast no shadows. Their bodies take on shape and volume through natural shadows, which in one shimmer between green and orange and in the other are made up of the local colour blue in its most saturated state. Like intertwined templates, he and she float across an abandoned city, whose walls at one moment seem to be painted in effective perspective abbreviation, and then immediately transform into surfaces as two-dimensional as the canvas itself. Chimeras, transformation and the two-sex are among the favourite themes of surrealism. The dreams and the subconscious nurtured and inspired this shadowless, erotic universe. Source: Eva de la Fuente Pedersen, CATALOGUETEXT. (SMK)