Being and Birds: Max Ernst’s Loplop as Heideggerian Dasein

Max Ernst. Loplop Introduces Loplop. 1930. Oil and various materials on wood. 100 x 180 cm. The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas

In 1931, the prominent German Surrealist artist Max Ernst completed a series of paintings each titled “Loplop Presents.” The titular subject, Loplop referring to his half-bird, half-man hybrid alter-ego, “The Superior of Birds.” Throughout the series of paintings, Loplop shows his audience a mixed-media procession of objects ranging from flowers to collage portraits of his fellow artistic milieu and in doing so, reveals the “curse” of the human condition. 

Two years earlier and 800 kilometers away in Freiburg, Martin Heidegger would write his dissertation, Being and Time, considered a landmark text in the field of ontology, or the study of being. As a contemporary and student of philosophy himself, we can assume that Ernst would have been familiar with Heidegger, who was quickly becoming established as one of the most important German intellectuals of the early 20th century. Heidegger, who is now understood as an Existentialist, is credited with identifying three primary modes through which his rational avatar, called “Dasein” (“a being for whom being is an issue”), interacts with the world. The first mode is Concern, the interaction between Dasein and inanimate objects, or “Equipment”, which can be either seamless or obtrusive depending on its ease of access. The second is solicitude, the relationship Dasein has to other conscious beings and how the oppressive “Das Mann” compromises Dasein’s ability to be authentic. The final approach is Care, how Dasein experiences himself within his own mind compared to how he appears in the real world. 

In this paper, I propose a reading of Ernst’s Loplop Presents series as an adaptation of Heideggerian ontology. Through texture, technique, and composition, the beastliness of the “Bird Superior” grapples with the consciousness of a man.