Max Ernst, an icon of 20th-century European art history, is one of the most important artists of Surrealism. His name is inextricably linked to the techniques collage, frottage and grattage, with which Ernst achieved the peculiar, often fantastic-dreamy effect in his pictures. In some cases the technical procedures overlap, in some cases they can’t be clearly identified in the final work. An incredible technical variety that led to the abundance of dreamy and fanciful images for which the name Max Ernst stands. The "Loplop", the mythical bird that has recurred in Max Ernst's works since the 1920s, is at the whirling center of a rotating pattern in the present work. The bird's eye is the "navel" that emanates the picture’s energy. The "loplop" sees everything, even if we don't see what it sees. Reality and dream, past and present merge into one supernatural reality. Max Ernst chose this painting as template for the color lithograph "L'interdit ramait content" for the portfolio "René Char - Max Ernst, Dent prompte" published by Lucie Weill in 1969. The poem by René Char that goes with our motif reads as follows:
L'interdit ramait content
Lavait risqué le pli
mis en vacances le trimard
Élargi l'orage du front
remis l'eau douce aux fantômes
Peu lui imortait en vérité
Que son dos fût brisé et trahi du soleil
I entrait pur dans la trame