Max Ernst and The Grand Assistant
The Grand Assistant, Max Ernst, Paris
En route to the Pompidou Centre we spotted a familiar old friend, The Grand Assistant* by Max Ernst.
Its rather ugly plinth detracts from this wonderful work of art. It looks rather forlorn. Plonked down in a rather unlovely street. No wonder the half-man, half-bird** looks as if he/it is preparing to take off.
In Amboise he/it reigns supreme over a very fine fountain.
Max Ernst Fountain, Amboise
Max gifted the bronze to Paris (where it was cast) in 1975. Why did it take over twenty years to put it on display? At least it’s near the Pompidou which, unbelievably, unlike Tate Modern/Britain/Liverpool and the art gallery in Tours, does not own any work by him. Unbelievably because Max Ernst was a French citizen who spent most of his life in France (ten years in Huismes near Amboise) and is buried in Paris.
The bird man totem recurs again and again in his work. He once said that when he was a little boy his beloved pet cockatoo died the morning his sister was born. The two happenings merged in his imagination. He thought his sister was the embodiment of the bird. His friend, Henry Miller, said Max was a bird ‘disguised as a man...trying to rise above the outside world.’
Ernst was often in flight: From his home town; lovers and wives; the Gestapo in occupied France; McCarthyism in America; a freezing, post war Paris and from the dust and noise from a cement factory which opened near his house.
We are fond of The Grand Assistant. It is good to know he was conceived in Huismes during the happiest time of his life.
Living in the Loire Valley has that effect on people.
* Also known as The Great Assistant and The Great Genius.
** Max Ernst called it a humanoid.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art), Photography by Mark.
Pamela Shields
Read more about the life of Max Ernst.
