Max Ernst

Repetitions and Misadventures of Immortals represent a collaboration between two of the premier figureheads of the Surrealist movement. In 1921, the French poet Paul luard became acquainted with Max Ernst's artwork. luard wrote a collection of thirty-three poems and then selected a number of Ernst's collages to accompany his poems, which became Repetitions. For Misadventures of Immortals, Ernst initially created twenty collages and then luard began drafting prose poems to both accompany and comment on the collages. On one level, the prose poems were constructed via ekphrasis but the composition process was more synergistic, with artist and poet responding to each other's compositions and modifying them into an organic whole in an iterative revision process. Both works are considered to be premier examples of proto-Surrealism. Both collections were first published separately in 1922.

Alongside Salvador Dal and Andr Breton, Max Ernst (1891-1976) remains one of the most famous names to be associated with Surrealism, and must now be regarded as one of the most original, prolific and best-known artists of the 20th century. Assembled in 1947, when Ernst had attained the height of his artistic powers, BEYOND PAINTING is a definitive autobiographical document of the painter and the creative processes behind his work, enhanced by testaments by many of his friends including fellow Surrealists Andr Breton, Paul luard, Roberto Matta and Hans Arp, as well as others such as New York art dealer Julien Levy. BEYOND PAINTING also contains Ernst's revolutionary experiment in collage, The Lion of Belfort, as well as a preface by New York artist Robert Motherwell and a chronology of Ernst's life written by the artist himself.

Originally published in Paris in 1929, this collage novel by avant-gardist Max Ernst constitutes a seminal 20th-century work of art. The artist's striking combinations of engravings from Victorian-era books and magazines, accompanied by enigmatic captions, offer a universe of mystery replete with all the possibilities of the bizarre dream world of the surreal. Images speak, language illustrates, and the reader's imagination provides the glue. "Irrational, violent, tender, ironic, Max Ernst has invoked the whole kaleidoscope of human phenomena in these collages ... turning them] into stunning proposals for adventure," noted this volume's translator, Dorothea Tanning. The Hundred Headless Woman was the first of Ernst's collage novels, and its classic status ensures a place in modern art history classes. Every visit and re-visit to its pages tells a different story, an endlessly fascinating tale that runs an emotional gamut from keen humor to outright horror.

In the course of browsing an illustrated book of objects--umbrellas, watches, tools, clothes--artist Max Ernst was struck by the items' unusual juxtapositions. By manipulating the Victorian-era engravings into striking tableaux and adding brief captions, Ernst invented the collage novel and transformed banal advertising art into revealing dramas rooted in his dreams and secret desires. A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil was originally published in 1930 as R ve d'une petite fille qui voulut entrer au Carmel. Its hallucinatory visions center on the nightmares of a girl who loses her virginity on the day of her first communion and resolves to become a nun. Ernst, a pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealistic art, blends humor and irony in his exploration of the nonrational but very real intersection of religious ecstasy and erotic desire. A century after its debut, this profoundly peculiar book retains its shock value as well as its imaginative power.

Die hier versammelten Texte und Bilder erzählen von Max Ernsts Visionen und Obsessionen, dringen in die rätselhaften Welten seiner Imagination ein, provozieren, erklären, geben autobiographische Hinweise. Am Dadaismus und Surrealismus beteiligt, war Max Ernst immer ein Abenteurer auf dem Gebiet des Unbewussten und des Wunderbaren. ? Die Geschichte von Max Ernst ist für mehrere Jahrzehnte die Geschichte der europäischen Phantasie.? (John Russell)

"One of the clandestine classics of our century." -- The New York TimesThis is the legendary collage masterpieces of Max Ernst (b. 1891), one of the leading figures of the surrealistic movement and among the most original artists of the 20th century. From old catalog and pulp novel illustrations, Ernst produced this series of 182 bizarre and darkly humorous collage scenes of classic dreams and erotic fantasies which seem mysteriously to lure the unconscious into view: Stern, proper-looking women sprout giant sets of wings, serpents appear in the drawing -room and bed chamber, a baron has the head of a lion, a parlor floor turns to water on which some people can apparently walk while others drown. Une Semaine De Bont is divided into seven parts, one for each day of the week, with each section illustrating one of Ernst's "seven deadly elements." "Oedipus," "The Court of the Dragon," and "Three Visible Poems" are among the startling episodes of Ernst's week. The Dada and surrealist epigraphs which introduce each section appear in this edition in both French and English. Une Semaine De Bont first appeared in 1934 in a series of five pamphlets of fewer than 1,000 copies each, and has never been reprinted before this present edition. Previously available only to a few libraries and collectors, this is a major source and great treat for anyone interested in the surrealists and their work, in collage, visual illusion, dream visions, and the interpretations of dreams.