Friday, July the 2nd, 2004
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First, let us consider Ferdinand Lop. During the Fourth Republic in France, Lop was a serial election candidate. Perhaps his most memorable policy was his promise to extend the Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris in both directions until it reached the sea. I am not making him up. So often did his candidacy for various offices appear on ballot papers that he provoked the creation of an anti-Lop party, called, superbly, the Anti-Lops.
Second, Loplop, Max Ernst's “Bird Superior”, which first appeared in 1929. Here it is:
This anthropomorphic bird-man with beaked head and human body (occasionally depicted with wings as well) became Ernst's alter ego in numerous works in different media—collage, painting, and relief. Loplop is sometimes represented as a complete figure, sometimes in abbreviated fashion with disembodied head and hand, as he presents or introduces pictures within pictures—leaves or flowers, a young woman, fellow Surrealists, butterflies or, as in the picture above, other birds.
Third, and still on the topic of birds, we have the lopwit. This bird does not actually exist, although I thought it did. It appears in A Catalogue Of 53 Birds, and pretty much nowhere else. A Google search for “lopwit” elicits four results, two of which are from Hooting Yard. And I was convinced that such a thing as the lopwit existed. Ah well.