Sculpture: Survival of the Wittiest

SCULPTURE SUrvival of the WittiestOld artists rarely fade away. Instead, they keep producing, often with a wit and wisdom that grow stronger as the years pass by, despite the fact that their styles may seem passe. Two cases-in point are Rene Magritte and Max Ernst, remnants of the surrealist tide that swept Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Ernst, at 76, is exhibiting his lat est sculptures at the lolas Gallery in Paris. Magritte, who died last August at 68, is being honored in his native Brussels with a retrospective that in cludes eight new sculptures designed before and executed after his death.

Magritte did not attempt sculpture until the very end. Still, it was a fore gone conclusion that he would succeed handsomely. His enigmatic painting evoked objects seen in the round, and his bottles, painted in the forms of women, are among the most cherished talismans of the 1930s. The eight sculptures employ ideas Magritte previously used in his paintings, gaining solidity without loss of magic. La Folie des Grandeurs derives from a 1947 fantasy showing three women’s torsos, each set implausibly one inside the other. Souvenir de Voyage shows a coffin reclining gracefully on an Empire couch, in a grisly parody of Madame Recamier.

As for Max Ernst, he has been working in three dimensions ever since 1934, but his later sculptures have grown less spiky and beaky, more solid — and yet, elusive. His most recent series of massive limestone figures, which he Las been working on since 1965, emphasize his profound disillusionment with the state of the world. “If you look at the first page of the newspaper,” says Ernst, “you feel such overwhelming disgust for everything going on in the world that you must echo this.” In his gigantic stone monoliths, Ernst’s angst becomes monumental. The figures are droll and disquieting, monstrous and enchanting. His mammoth Big Brother, wearing a visored cap, or his two Seraphim totems, sticking out their tongues, provoke laughter—and a shiver.