Max Ernst: Beyond Surrealism: An Exhibition of the Artist's Books and Prints

Max Ernst, the great Surrealist artist, produced a body of graphic work that surpassed that of any other artist associated with Surrealism. His innovative printing techniques were the equivalent of the semi-automatic image-making procedures used by the painters and poets of his day, and his collaboration with the literary founders of Dada and Surrealism resulted in some of the most beautiful and evocative books of our time. In honor of the donation by Ernst's widow, Dorothea Tanning, of 150 of Ernst's etchings and lithographs--including the magnificent Maximiliana--The New York Public Library has mounted a major retrospective of his works. More than 200 books, prints, collages, and drawings, taken from the Library's collection and from private American and European collections, were selected for this exhibition--which will be displayed at The New York Public Library from October 11 to December 31, 1986, and will travel from there to the University of Michigan Art Museum, Ann Arbor. Max Ernst: Beyond Surrealism--An Exhibition of the Artist's Books and Prints is a fully illustrated catalogue of the Max Ernst retrospective, with three essays documenting and interpreting the artist's books and prints, a chronology, selected bibliography, and illustrated checklist of the works in the exhibition. The first essay, by Robert Rainwater, surveys Ernst's printmaking in all media, from the linoleum cuts produced in his student years at the University of Bonn through the complex intaglio prints and transfer lithographs he created in collaboration with master French printers during the last 25 years of his life. The second, by Evan Maurer, discusses the themes and recurring forms in Ernst's prints and examines the artist's three great collage novels--La Femme 100 têtes (1929), Rêve d'une petite fille qui voulut entrer au carmel (1930), and Une Semaine de Bonté (1934). Maurer views the novels in the light of Ernst's entire career and discusses their sources and motivations. In a third essay, Anne Hyde Greet traces the evolution of the livre de peintre, or artist's book, in 20th-century France. She places Ernst's bookmaking activities in the context of this development, and, in the process, examines all his major illustrated books and gives a detailed study of his collaboration with the Russian futurist poet, printer, and publisher Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevich) on Maximiliana. Not only a guide to the current exhibition, this book will stand as a provocative and insightful study of Max Ernst's contribution to 20th-century print and bookmaking.

Arts & Photography

ERNST, Max

Photography & Video

Oxford University Press

An examination of the surrealistic innovations which characterize the artist's paintings, sculpture, and graphic works

Reference

Maurer, Evan M.

Rainwater, Robert

Greet, Anne Hyde

Words, Language & Grammar

Beyond Painting: And Other Writings by the Artist and His Friends

History & Criticism

Ams Pr Inc

"One of the clandestine classics of our century." — The New York Times This 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 Bonté 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 Bonté 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.

Une Semaine De Bonte: A Surrealistic Novel in Collage

Individual Artists

Dover Publications

This single-volume compilation features four popular opera fantasies arranged for violin with piano accompaniment. Each of these frequently performed pieces was arranged by a world-class artist and offers the convenience of a separate violin part: Carmen Fantasy from the Opera by Georges Bizet,Op. 25, transcribed by Jenö Hubay Fantasia on Themes from Gounod's Faust,Op. 20, transcribed by Henri Wieniawski Fantasie from Mozart's The Magic Flute,Op. 54, transcribed by Pablo Sarasate Fantasie Brillante on the March and the Romance from Rossini's Otello, Op. 11, by Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst This collection is ideal for practice, performance, teaching, and independent study by students, professional performers, and amateur ensembles.

Fantasies from Opera for Violin and Piano: Carmen, Faust, The Magic Flute and Otello (Dover Chamber Music Scores)

Wieniawski, Henryk

Sarasate, Pablo de

Hubay, Jeno

Music

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 Rêve 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.

A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil

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.

The Hundred Headless Woman

Max Ernst: frottages (Art now)

Thames&Hudson

Max Ernst (Twentieth-century masters)

Hamlyn

Max Ernst: A retrospective

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

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