Loplop, or more formally, Loplop, Father Superior of the Birds,Waldberg, Patrick (1962) ''Surrealism'', The Taste of Our Time, Vol. 37, Editions D'Art Albert Skira, Geneva, 151 pp. is the name of a birdlike character that was an alter ego of the

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

Surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

artist

Max Ernst Max Ernst (; 2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic trai ...

. Ernst had an ongoing fascination with birds, which often appear in his work.Rubin, William S. (1968) ''Dada and Surrealist Art''. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York. 525 pp. Loplop functioned as a familiar animal.

William Rubin William Stanley Rubin (August 11, 1927January 22, 2006) was an American art scholar, a distinguished curator, critic, collector, art historian and teacher of modern art. From 1968 to 1988, Rubin was a curator at The Museum of Modern Art locat ...

wrote of Ernst "Among his more successful works of the thirties are a series begun in 1930 around the theme of his alter ego, Loplop, Superior of the Birds." Loplop is an iconic image of surrealist art, the painting ''Loplop Introduces Loplop'' (1930) appears on the front cover of the

Gaëtan Picon Gaëtan Picon (19 September 1915 – 6 August 1976) was a French author: essayist, art and literature critic, and art and literature historian. He was director of the ''Mercure de France'' and Director-General of Arts and Letters under André Malra ...

's book ''Surrealist and Surrealism 1919-1939'',Picon, Gaëtan (1977) ''Surrealist and Surrealism 1919- 1939''. Skira/Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. New York. 231 pp. and the drawing and collage ''Loplop Presents'' (1932) was used as the

frontispiece Frontispiece may refer to: * Frontispiece (books), a decorative illustration facing a book's title page * Frontispiece (architecture) In architecture, the term frontispiece is used to describe the Façade, principal face of the building, usually ...

of Patrick Waldberg's book ''Surrealism''.

The series

Loplop first appeared in Ernst's collage novels ''La Femme 100 Têtes'' and '' Une Semaine de Bonté'' in the role of a narrator and commentator,Quinn, Edward, with contribution from Max Ernst, Uwe M. Schneede, Patrick Waldberg, and Diane Waldman. (1977) ''Max Ernst''. New York Graphic Society (Little, Brown, and Company), Boston. 444 pp. followed by a number of works into the mid 1930s, forming an informal series of collages, paintings, and mixed media works. Loplop's image was not a fixed character, but highly variable in appearance and seldom depicted in the same way twice. Typically (but not always), Loplop had the head of a bird, which could be highly abstracted, often a bird with a crest, comb, or

wattle Wattle or wattles may refer to: Plants *''Acacia sensu lato'', polyphyletic genus of plants commonly known as wattle, especially in Australian English **''Acacia'' ***Black wattle, common name for several species of acacia ***Golden wattle, ''A ...

. The body was a square or rectangular space (a canvas, frame, easel, or wall), with the arms and legs being

zoomorphic The word ''zoomorphism'' derives from and . In the context of art, zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It can also be defined as art that portrays one species of animal like another species of animal or art ...

or geometric abstraction in form. Within the "body", an image, a piece of Max Ernst's art is presented (a collage, frottage, painting, etc.) which could be equal to, or function independently from the rest of the work.Schneede, M. Uwe (1974) ''Surrealism''. The Library of Great Art Movements. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. New York. 144 pp. See external links below, The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas: 3 Loplop drawings, for some typical examples. The German art historian Uwe M. Schneede offered his view —

By letting his pictures be presented through an intermediary — his art figure — rather than by himself, Ernst has changed his role, or, better still, he is showing more clearly where he stands in relation to his work. The artist-and-model iconography is adopted and, at the same time, twisted. The artist appears as his own exhibitor and intermediary: he shows his products and thus demonstrates their availability. This seems to indicate a basic change in Ernst relation toward his artistic activity — a kind of coming into the clear. At forty, he seems to have freed himself from the need to pictorialize oppressive childhood experiences and also from the rules of Surrealism, to the point where he can —with sovereign ease — make his liberating creative work (and thus the creative process itself) his main theme.

Samantha Kavky stated in the abstract of her journal article ''Authorship and Identity in Max Ernst's Loplop'' —

I suggest that Ernst models Loplop on the father/totem, as defined by
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
in his ''
Totem and Taboo ''Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics'', or ''Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics'' (), is a 1913 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoana ...
'' of 1913. An exploration of Ernst's interpretation of Freudian theory in creating Loplop illuminates the character's surprising complexity and centrality to Ernst's oeuvre. As a totem, Loplop emerges from a primary oedipal conflict on which Ernst structures his artistic identity and practice. Equating traditional notions of creative authorship with various forms of patriarchal authority, Ernst's constructed totem signifies his personal, aesthetic and political rejection of individual mastery in favour of his fraternal allegiance to the surrealist group and his embrace of surrealist automatist practices.Kavky, Samantha (2005). ''Authorship and Identity in Max Ernst's Loplop''
Art History, 28 (3): 357-385 pp.
/ref>

Ernst was familiar with Freud's writing and titled one of his later paintings ''Totem and Taboo'' (1941, private collection).

Partial list of works

* ''Loplop Introducing a Bird'' (1929/1957), plaster, oil, and wood, 102.2 × 123.2 cm.,

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...

, Chicago * ''Loplop Introduces Loplop'' (1930). oil and mixed media on wood,100 x 180 cm.

Menil Collection The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs a ...

, Houston * ''Loplop Introduces a Young Girl'' (1930), oil and mixed media on wood, 175 x 89 cm.

Musée National d'Art Moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou. In 2021 it ranked 10th in the list of ...

, Paris * ''Anthropomorphic Figure and Shell Flowers: Loplop Introduces a Flower'' (c. 1930), oil and collage on wood, 99 x 81 cm., private collection * ''Loplop Presents'' (1930), graphite frottage on paper, 29.8 × 21.6 cm.,

, Houston * ''Loplop Introduces the Members of the

Groupe'' (1931), collage, photographs, frottage, and pencil on paper, 50.2 x 33.7 cm.

The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

, New York * ''Loplop Presents Grapes'' (1931), graphite on paper with gouache mounted on paperboard, 64.8 × 49.5 cm.,

, Houston * ''Loplop Presents la Marseillaise'' (1931), graphite frottage on paper mounted on paper, 31.1 × 22.9 cm.,

, Houston * ''Facility: Loplop Introduces'' (1931), collage and pencil on paper, 65 x50 cm., formerly

Roland Penrose Sir Roland Algernon Penrose (14 October 1900 – 23 April 1984) was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom. During the Second World ...

collection, London * ''Loplop Introduces'' (1932), collage and frottage with drawing, gouache, printed marble paper, paint, and crayon on paper, 50 x 64.5 cm.,

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

, Chicago * ''Loplop Presents'' (1932), collage, botanical lithograph, graphite on pape 63.4 × 49.6 cm.,

, Chicago

Publications

* Spies, Werner (1998), ''Max Ernst, Loplop''. DuMont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern. (German language) * Kavky, Samantha (2005). ''Authorship and Identity in Max Ernst's Loplop''. Art History, 28 (3): 357-385 pp.

Legacy

Rikki Ducornet Rikki Ducornet (; born Erica DeGre; April 19, 1943) is an American writer, poet, and artist. Her work has been described as "linguistically explosive and socially relevant," and praised for "deploy ngtactics familiar to the historical avant-gard ...

's novel ''Phosphor in Dreamland'' (1995) partially concerns the plight of the "lôplôp" bird, endemic to the fictionalized Caribbean island of Birdland. Perhaps deliberately to keep with the variability of Ernst's loplop, Ducornet never describes the lôplôp in detail but instead emphasizes its shape-shifting capabilities, usually into that of a woman with animal body parts.

References

External links

* The

, Houston, Texas
3 ''Loplop'' drawings
(accessed February 14, 2021)
''Attirement of the Bride'' at Guggenheim Museum
{{lit-char-stub Alter egos Surrealism Literary characters introduced in 1929 Fictional birds Fictional familiars