Possession: Intimate Artifice at The Menil Collection

Abstract

The catalogue to The Menil Collection, The Menil Collection: A Selection from the Paleolithic to the Modern Era (1987), reproduces on its frontispiece Max Ernst's Portrait of Dominique [Figure 1], commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil in 1934. This was the painting they had left behind wrapped in brown paper on top of a closet when they left Paris during the war, not liking it sufficiently to ship it to their new home in Houston or to leave it in the care of friends. Indeed, before that, it had languished for more than a year at the frame shop since no one had cared to collect it and no delivery address had been left. It was not until the framer finally put the painting in his store window that a neighborhood priest recognized the image to be of Dominique and the portrait was claimed (de Menil 1964). Long since redeemed from its ignominy, the painting now forms the heart of what has become internationally one of the most significant collections of the work of Max Ernst, which itself forms a part of the 15,000-piece Menil Collection. Acquired over a period of 45 or so years, The Menil Collection is the formerly private collection of Dominique and John de Menil [Figure 2], open to the public since 1987 in the form of a purpose-built museum, designed by Renzo Piano. Considered a very important collection of New York School painting and among the most significant Surrealist collections in the United States, its holdings include pieces from an array of cultural and historical traditions. They have an antiquities collection; a very well regarded collection of Byzantine icons; Oceanic and African art; colonial art from the New World; and the European moderns, including Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Léger, Miró, and [End Page 765] Click for larger view Figure 1 Max Ernst, Portrait of Dominique, 1934, Oil and graphite on canvas, The Menil Collection, Houston.