Les Asperges de la Lune, 1935
- Medium
- Painted cast resin
- Dimensions
- 65 1/4 x 11 x 8 in. (165.74 x 27.94 x 20.32 cm)
- Accession Number
- 92.83
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of The Capricorn Trust and Mrs. Jimmy Ernst
Max Ernst’sLes asperges de la lune, meaning “lunar asparagus,” hybridizes
animal and vegetable forms by topping spindly stalks with schematically
rendered faces. The scale is average for a person but wildly fantastical for an
asparagus. This surprising, nonsensical crossbreeding exemplifies a central
principle of surrealist art: the juxtaposition of two disparate, contradictory states.
Surrealist objects harness the illogical character of dreams to present unexpected,
irrational forms that, ideally, jolt the viewer’s consciousness. Importantly, Ernst’s
sculpture is not only a pairing of plant and beast, it is also a sexual
coupling. It was inspired by a West Papuan carving of a male and a female pair,
and the vaginal cleft of the left-hand figure’s face, the right-hand figure’s
breastlike eyes, and the phallic form of both bodies can, potentially, shock
the viewer into an awareness of previously repressed, unconscious sexual
fantasies and desires.
