Capricorn

Artist Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891 - 1976)

Date1948

MediumBronze

DimensionsOverall: 95 1/2 × 82 × 55 1/4 inches (242.57 × 208.28 × 140.34 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Hall Family Foundation, acquired from the Patsy and Raymond Nasher Collection

Object numberF99-33/6

Edition/State/Proof0/V

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Sculpture Hall

Collections

Modern Art

Terms

Gallery Label

Capricorn is an inventive portrait of Max Ernst and his wife, fellow Surrealist artist Dorothea Tanning. On another level, it expresses the duality of male and female.

For the Surrealists, as for the Greeks, the minotaur (half man/half bull) symbolized the battle between rational mind and aggressive instinct. This minotaur figure was probably inspired by a Katsina-a Zuni spirit sculpture-that was owned by Ernst. A mermaid and a dog, with pipe eyes and trowel tongue, rest next to him. The mermaid is also a hybrid. Part woman and part fish, she lives in the sea, a symbol of the feminine unconscious.

Tanning named Capricorn after the constellation. The title hints at astrology, the study of the influence of celestial events upon the lives of humans.

Provenance

Collection of Jimmy Ernst, East Hampton, NY;

Gallerie Beyeler, Basel, Swtizerland;

Collection of Joel Mallin, New York, NY;

Purchased by Patsy and Raymond Nasher [1];

Their gift to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1999.

Notes:

[1] Acquired through the Hall Family Foundation.

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