Le couple (L’accolade) is one of a major series of paintings made by Max Ernst that plays an intricate pictorial and intellectual game based around the imagery of the couple. Ernst had returned from the war disillusioned by the instrumental rationality that had culminated in the mass bloodshed and total destruction he had experienced first hand during his service. The ensuing idiom of anti-rationality that would come to characterize an oeuvre overwhelmingly critical of the traditional themes of Western culture would lead to a series of uncanny paintings made by Ernst between 1923 and 1924, which center around the imagery of the warped couple, and to which Le couple (L’accolade) belongs. These paintings reveal, in one way or another, a sense of strain, which doubtless corresponds to Ernst’s own complicated romantic life. In Long Live Love or Charming Countryside, 1923, a couple seem to suffocate each other with the parasitic passion of their embrace, while the de Chirico-esque vocabulary of Two Girls in Beautiful Poses, 1924, shares its lyrical ambiguities with Le couple (L’accolade).
About the Canvas Prints
Le Couple (L'Accolade) by Max Ernst. Bring your artwork to life with the texture and depth of a stretched canvas print. Your image gets printed onto our premium processed canvases and then stretched on a white maple wooden frame (gallery wrap) or framed inside black maple (framed canvas). Your canvas print will be shipped within 4 days in "ready to frame" condition for normal rolled and "ready to hang" condition for frames and wraps with pre-attached hanging wire and/or mounting points.