Lunar Asparagus, 1935 (casting ca. 1973 – 1974)

About the Work

When Max Ernst made sculptures, he was taking a ‘holiday’ from painting. He found sculptural work “even more playful” than painting. And playful indeed is the idea of erecting two rods on a base and declaring them ‘Lunar Asparagus’. By giving them heads and ‘waists’ in the middle of the ‘bodies’, the Surrealist Ernst endowed them with anthropomorphic features. Like two bizarre night watches, the plaster figures took shape in 1935 on the balcony of the artist’s Parisian studio – by the light of the moon.