Conversation Piece

June 29, 2020

Yale’s architecture is aflutter with birds. Some are phoenixes, some are eagles, more are owls. Yet for the last several years, a mysterious newcomer has been standing watch over Bulldog territory, and it’s certainly no owl.

What it represents, exactly, is difficult to say, and so is its name. It’s a 1970 bronze casting of Max Ernst’s Habakuk (1934), one of four in the world, now positioned on Cross Campus between Berkeley Residential College and William L. Harkness Hall. Nearly 15 feet tall and made of 2.2 metric tons of blackened metal, its body looks like a wobbly stack of flowerpots, with eyes resembling dried peas and a head like a backward speed cyclist’s helmet. According to the National Gallery of Australia, which owns one of the other castings, the sculpture is an avian figure, though on first glance it could easily be mistaken for something else. When asked if he knew anything about the statue, a student responded: “You mean the one that looks like a can opener?”

sponsored by

Habakuk was donated to Yale by Jeffrey Loria, a prominent art dealer and the ex-owner of the Miami Marlins. Installed in 2013 to commemorate Peter Salovey’s inauguration as the university’s president, the plaque at its base includes the artist, the title and a minimal dedication. That’s it.

But a little digging can go a long way. Max Ernst (1891-1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, poet and pioneer in both the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Ernst’s fascination with avians began as a boy, when the death of his pet cockatoo the day before the birth of his sister fused birds with his ideas of death and transformation. He even went so far as to invent an avian alter-ego named Loplop, who appears in several of the artist’s works, including one called Loplop, Superior of the Birds. While birds are readily recognizable—beaks and claws and wings—most of his work was not fully representational, something all too evident in the odd hatchling that now stands on Yale’s campus.

While the sight of it might seem strange and haphazard, the site chosen for Habakuk is highly deliberate. According to former dean of Yale College Mary Miller, roughly forty places on campus were considered for the sculpture. Its final roosting place juxtaposes the interwar modernism the sculpture embodies and the neo-Gothic architecture around it—all of which was built around the time Ernst cast his statue: Berkeley College in 1934, Harkness Hall in 1927 and Grace Hopper College in 1933. The placement pokes some fun at Yale’s own concern with inventing its own grandeur in the western academic tradition, at a time when the western tradition was being severely scrutinized, both by Ernst and other observers of the era.

Ernst didn’t only observe and critique. He got his feet wet in the world, most notably while serving as a soldier in World War I. But he was traumatized by what he experienced. Certain modernist artists, Ernst among them, were concerned about the products of European Enlightenment, the Christian religion and a civilization that at once claimed the moral and intellectual high ground while producing something as base and sickening as trench warfare.

Ernst expressed his dissatisfaction with the state of his civilization by mocking social and artistic conventions and often making sport of religious icons. The statue Habakuk takes aim at the minor Jewish prophet, Habakkuk (spelled with just one “k” in German). In chapter 2, verse 18, of the book of the Old Testament that carries his name, the prophet condemns those who make sculptures: “Of what use is the carved image, that its maker should carve it? Or the molten image, the lying oracle, that its very maker should trust in it, and make mute idols?” In ironic homage to the critic, Ernst may be depicting him as a molten bronze idol.

Yet Habakuk may not just be a jab in a sparring match between a long-gone prophet and a witty sculptor. A broader look at the contents of Habakkuk’s prophecy reveals a second, much more ominous meaning. In the book of Habakkuk, the prophet has a vision of the end of the world: the rise of a fierce and ruthless army and the destruction of animals, land and city. Ernst lived in Germany during the 1930s at a time when the Nazi party was on the rise. Hitler seized control of the country in 1933 and Ernst sculpted Habakuk just a year later. An army was indeed gathering and the “end of the world” was not far off.

If Habakuk is in fact an echo of Habakkuk’s dire prophecy, the message seems faint on a lush green college campus, surrounded by untroubled passersby and self-serious neo-Gothic walls. Onlookers can wander by and wonder with relative tranquility where it came from and what on earth it might be. A penguin? A stack of flowerpots? Or a “can opener”?

Either way, Habakuk really is a bit of a can opener, isn’t it?