The Facts
Aguttes is offering Max Ernst's 'Projet pour un monument à W. C. Fields' in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The 1957 painting is one of five the artist dedicated to the American comedian W. C. Fields. The work was exhibited at Galerie Creuzevault in 1958 and reproduced in Art International that same year. It dates from a period of renewal for Ernst after his return to Europe in 1953 and his Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale in 1954. The composition features a single enlarged face with uneven eyes, a dark nasal ridge, a red mouth, and a tilted hat, set against deep blues, blacks, and earth tones. The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte holds a larger version of the same subject, inscribed on the reverse '(et à max ernst 1957)'.
The Signal
The work connects Ernst's surrealist practice with the subversive comedy of Fields, whom the artist saw as a kindred spirit in dismantling social conventions. The sale offers collectors a chance to acquire a work from a tightly focused series that bridges the artist's European and American periods, with a direct institutional counterpart at the Bechtler Museum. The proximity of the Fields series to the Leonardo da Vinci monument in Ernst's catalogue raisonné underscores the artist's interest in the visionary resources of the gaze and the freedom of the comic.
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- Artists: Max Ernst, Leonardo da Vinci
- People: W. C. Fields
- Auction Houses: Aguttes
- Galleries: Galerie Creuzevault
- Museums: Bechtler Museum of Modern Art
- Locations: Neuilly-sur-Seine, Charlotte
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