Material Language in Max Ernst Collage Novel Une Semaine De

Home , Collage novel, Simulacrum, Wordless novel

Material Language in Max Ernst Collage Novel

Une Semaine de Bonté

A thesis submitted to the

Graduate School

of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfilment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

in the School of Art

of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

Samuel Morren

B.A. University of Cincinnati

August 2014

Committee Chair: Kristopher J. Holland, Ph.D.

Abstract

In this project, we want to reinterpret Max Ernst’s collage novel, Une Semaine de Bonté (A

Week of Kindness, 1934). Traditionally, this work of art has been studied through a psychoanalytic or formal frame. However, Ernst's work is not just inspired by traumatic childhood experiences.

His work is an observation/critique of a society in chaotic, hopelessness, and incertitude change.

Ernst was a voracious artist, who sought knowledge in all aspects of life, he studied philosophy, art history, history, literature, psychology; abnormal psychology, and psychiatry, as well as theology. These forms of knowledge gave him a deep well from where to draw references, referents, and inspiration to camouflage his message between two unrelated elements in an image.

In our world, meaning is mediated through language, visual culture, and culture, which create a referent, framing our world view. Furthermore, this framed world view, is also mediated by the observers’ experiences through their world. Thus, our interpretation is framed, influenced, and informed through Tony Fry’s concept of ‘human design’ and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum. Thus, trying to go beyond the iconology, iconography, materials; and we ask: Why does Ernst create such images? Why call this a novel when there is a limited narrative? What are

Ernst's concerns when creating these images?

With this project, we demonstrate Ernst's novel is still significant because the novel still asks from us the same questions as when it was constructed. We, still, want to answer the same questions Ernst is asking through this novel.

We, still, need to find beauty within the brutality of life.

Keywords:

Collage, Simulacrum, Image as Text, Language Games, Writing as a plastic material, displacement of visual and verbal, Graphic novel, simulation.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our deepest and sincere gratitude to Salvador “Chavo”

Padilla without whom this project would have never been realized. Chavo mil gracias por todo el apoyo, amor, y golpes que me otorgaste para llegar a donde estoy hoy. ¡Mil besos y abrazos! Por siempre, estaré endeudado contigo. Un caballito más; una plática más; por que quien habla no sabe, y quien sabe no habla. We would also like to thank Dr.

Kristopher Holland who was an essential part of shaping and reshaping this project. Kris, thank you for your friendship; for the pub nights which were essential components for my project to succeed between Mexican cokes and talks. Also, we would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Morgan Thomas whose immense knowledge and grace informed this project and allowed our intense incertitude and the quest for knowledge to flourish and thrive in her classroom. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Ms. Kate

Bonansinga whose guidance and support allowed this project to be completed.

Also, we would like to thank Noel Anderson whose knowledge and friendship helped us to contextualize how an artist's practice, and the artist’s curiosity, leads to interesting plateaus and differ(a)nce (difference/deference). Mark Wilke, thank you for your efforts to improve my writing through your friendship and edits. Matthew Adams, thank you for your friendship, support, and dark humor, which kept us afloat in the low moments. To Dan Dugan, thank you for your friendship, kindness, and weird humor; thank you for your willingness to let me work in your building whenever I had a chance; and lastly, we would also like to thank the infinitude of people that were willing to listen to me talk about this project.

Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………3

Illustration list……………………………….……...... 4

Acknowledgements……………………………………………..5

Introduction……………………………………………………..7

i. The Collage Method……………………………11 ii. Une Semaine de Bonté…….…………………...15

Pictor Doctous……………..……………………………….……20

Writing as Techne…...……………………………………..……26

Conclusion: Bonté Rénové…………..………………..…...……33

Illustrations……………………………………………………..38

Bibliography…………………………………………………….41

List of Illustrations

1. Max Ernst Une Semaine de Bonté, 1934

2. Max Ernst Une Semaine de Bonté, 1934

3. Max Ernst Une Semaine de Bonté, 1934

It is not the glue that makes the collage. —Max Ernst

Max Ernst, Une Semaine de Bonté, 1934 7

In order to make a new beginning, First everything had to be destroyed, Most of all the picture in its gold frame…1

Marcel Janco

Introduction

We live in a world of pretenses where to create an image is to create a world. A world created for us by someone else’s concepts, designs, and ideas. We assimilate and internalize these concepts, ideas, and images to the point we can’t distinguish between real and false; however, we persist to pretend we are original, and our world’s frame is particularly ours. Although, the truth is our world has an unknown to us, a nice golden frame from where we derive our meaning. Hence, we have to destroy the picture/world view in its golden frame.

Tony Fry, a design theorist, describes our frame: “we, as humans, design our world, our world acts back on us and designs us (Fry 1994, p. 93).” Thus, in our impetus to be different, we end up being all the same. We want to be individuals and end up being part of an accepted group where we, all, look exactly the same. The grotesque idea is the general public believes, under a capitalistic/consumerism pretext, we are, all, unique individuals… and the general opinion is, for us, tyranny.

If others control what we see, others control what we think; and if others control what we think, others have absolute power over us and our behavior. Thus, word and image are a binary of social control/tyranny, today. This binary was self-design, by us humans, to control certain aspects of our culture. We labeled/classified humans to distance ourselves

1 Lucy R. Lappard, Dadas on Art, New York, Dover,1971, 37. 8 from one another. We labeled/classified humans first through images, and then, the image gives us the word to label the other. Thus, the hierarchy/binary of word and image. It’s not just necessary to place a label on a person, but in order to illustrate the concept of what the word refers to, we create an image, as it is more effective psychologically to form a concept when we are aware. Or in the French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard’s words: “a word is meaningless because it does not have a referent. An image refers to something that never existed; and thus, it is not real. It’s a self-referent vicious binary cycle. (Baudrillard,

Simulacra and Simulation 1994, p. 3).”

In the art world, we label, classify, and divide ourselves as either a visual artist or a litterateur. Either, one creates a composition to be read; or, one composes an image to be observed. Hence, in the general culture/public, we create this binary between these two terms, and we give hierarchical value to one or the other. We, however, hold that the binary is only a chimera. There is no need for this binary, and in the early 20th century artists were already trying to collapse this binary in their works. The German-born Max

Ernst (April 2, 1891- April 1, 1976) is the most successful artist of the 20th century to do so with his collage novel, Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Kindness, 1934).

Thus in the present project, we want to evaluate how Ernst collapses the binary. In

Chapter One, we’ll situate Une Semaine de Bonté in the culture it was created, and the influences Ernst had to create the images. We’ll address the collage method and how it came to be known as fine art. We’ll describe the materials, the structure, the significance of the title, and introduction text in Une Semaine de Bonté. We’ll also pay particular attention to the division of the novel, which plays an important role in our claim of the silent message. We also seek to answer the importance of the origin of the materials Ernst used.

What is its importance? Why go to such an extent to hide the nature of the original image, or did he hide image? Are there any religious connotations within the images or story we are told? Is there a story/narrative after all within these images?

In Chapter Two, we will restate the psychoanalytical interpretation Rosalind

Krauss’ “In the Master’s Bedroom” offers and the formal analysis Renee Riese Hubert offers in her book Surrealism and The Book. To us, both interpretations given seem to miss a fundamental theme within the collages: the silent message by the absence of written language. We’ll show that Ernst’s silent message is a blunt political and accusatory cultural commentary customary within the Dada tradition of anti-art and anti-rational. Thus, Ernst’s collages are art as poetic dialogue – a dialogue that transforms subjectivity and objectivity into a world populated by a didactic playfulness.

In Chapter Three, we’ll explore the importance of written language in the novel. Or better yet, the absence of written language in a novel. Ernst’s “A Week of Kindness” is also a place where image and language collide, annihilating each other’s meaning, intent, or message. For instance, instead of the traditional religious seven deadly sins, we are given seven deadly elements. Two of those elements are fire, and water, which are part of the traditional earthly elements; and then, we are given five other unusual elements. These other elements are only known to an industrialized and mechanized modern society. Thus, what is the message within these images? Why give us these elements? What does their division tell us about ourselves, our consciousness, or our subconscious? What is Ernst’s critique about our society? We’ll seek to answer these questions through the concept of the absence message.

We’ll conclude with a new interpretation that will rupture the vitrine where this novel is incarcerated. Post-Modernist thought would serve as a hammer to break through 10 the glass. This mode of thinking will facilitate our reinterpretation of Une Semaine de

Bonté and demonstrate how Ernst wanted to disrupt the word and image binary. He wants to illustrate a world of pretenses, wherein to create an image is to create a world.

The Collage Method

In the first two decades of the 20th century, the European culture/world was in turmoil, and art was not excepted from this profound change. The industrial revolution ushered in the machine age, which produced larger than human machines. The rapid technological innovations transformed how we obtain information and how we traveled.; It shrunk distances and the world became smaller. The Great War transformed the known world, as the last empires dissolved, and new countries emerged. These changes created political unrest, economical catastrophes, and social revolutions; and mingling in the social incertitude were the artists, who were trying to make sense and find beauty within the brutality of their daily lives.

Hitherto, the artists and their creations went through a metamorphosis. The classical views of art were questioned. Those old rules did not satiate the artistic needs. The artists began to ask: what constitutes an art object? What is art? Is it necessary? Why create beautiful objects in this ugliness? The artists’ questioning became experimentation and exploration, which transformed the perception and production of the art objects. Artists experimented with new methods, materials, and theories of perception of art-making. The continued experimentation created a distinctive new medium: collage. Before the appearance of collage, the assemble works of art were sporadic. When these works were

12 exhibited, their appearance was minimal, reductive, and included such oddities as Victorian valentines2, découpages3, and silhouette assemblages4.

The cubists and futurists embraced the new art medium of collage and gave it new potentialities, especially in Germany and Russia; although, their productions concentrated on typographical contradiction and juxtapositions of images, the cubists’ and futurists’ collages, moreover, have a rustic look to them. Dadaists, on the other hand, gave collage the prestige of fine art. Dadaists’ collages consisted entirely of found images or texts to complete the image. These cut-outs or found images were assembled with such care that the image created a depth, which before was only found in paintings. Moreover, a common characteristic of these artistic circles’ collages shared was: “ready-made.’ These found images were rearranged on a picture frame to create an artistic world with little help from painting, drawing, or frottage. Though the method of production was similar, the resulting images reflected the stylistic diversity of the individual artistic group.

For instance, the cubists’ collages consisted of everyday objects: newspaper, magazines, fabric, discarded wallpaper, and other found objects. Cubists in their works wanted to contrast shapes, figures, and textures to avert the classical view of art, which were dictated by the academy of visual arts, notably, in France. Hence, the cubists’ papiers collés attempted to reconstruct imprecise and unrecognizable objects in varying degrees of abstraction. Cubists’ collages intentionally displayed the ragged edges of newspaper headlines, cut-out of periodicals’ title letters and/or partial words, whole pages of text

2 Victorian valentines were simple sheets of paper with printed or cut-out color illustrations and embossed borders. The sheets were often folded and sealed with wax and mailed to a beloved. Victorian valentines are the predecessors of the modern valentines’ day cards. 3 Découpages, from the French ‘to cut up,’ are decorated surfaces with paper cut-out figures. 4 silhouette assemblages are a black paper cut-out of the outline of someone’s profile glued to a white background. These were usually on paper then framed. 13 appeared in the final image giving the final image its particularly rustic look. The viewer is then forced to constantly ask what s/he sees. Is s/he seeing a complete image or is s/he seeing a fragment of an image?

The futurists’ collages, like the Russian avant-garde and the German Dadaists, incorporated typography in various sizes and colors, words and/or partial words that fall off of the page, letters in various fonts and sizes to produce a visual noise—urban noise, in particular, which fascinated the futurists. The signature futurists’ artistic expression was the collage poem. Randomly, they selected letters, partial words and/or phrases, either clipped, added, or thrown onto a page to form/write and then recited the collage poem as meaningless sounds or noise, as though the words were at the open streets of the city.

On the other hand, in defiance of traditional art processes, Dadaists selected and incorporated found objects and/or images in their photo-collages or what the Dadaists coined: photomontage. As an anti-art statement, particularly in Berlin, the Dada collages carried strong political overtones.

Hence, in 1923, Louis Aragon, another member of the surrealists, writes about Max

Ernst, “[is] the painter of illusions, [and] the essential difference between Max Ernst and the cubists collage artists before him. The cubists incorporated postage stamps, newspaper clippings and matchboxes as small indicators of reality. They used such pieces to create a rapport with the purely painted surfaces of the image (Aragon 1965, p. 29), and the essential purpose of the cubist collage artist was to capture reality by using such found objects as recognizable elements of the exterior world. By contrast, Ernst selected component images chiefly as design elements. He was a painter of illusions and his collages, unlike those of the cubists, were truly poetic images.

Hence, collage in the artistic vision of Ernst, reaches the prestige of fine art. Ernst’s collage novel Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Kindness) is subtitled “A Surrealistic

Novel in Collage.” It is a great example of collage as fine art or as Aragon put it: Ernst collages are poetic5 images.

5 We’ll explain the term later in the essay, and we’ll come back often to the term poetic. We believe the collage in this novel are visual poems created with thoughtful precision and calculated intention as visual metaphors, which written language cannot express. These poetic scenes want to create a poetic dialogue. 15

Une Semaine de Bonté

To venture to read/observe Une Semaine de Bonté’s 180 collages, is to venture into a poetic world. Words fail the poet, but images do not fail the visual poet. The collages create a world where violence, murder, and carnage are a poetic norm. The conception of the Une Semaine de Bonté’s images emerged after the Great War. When the war broke in

August 1914, Ernst enlisted in the German army, in the artillery, without knowledge of the horrors which lay ahead. After four years of war, he witnessed the brutality of the modern machine age and the brutality of humanity, which he would later refer to as “Ernst died on the 1st of August 1914 and resurrected on the 11th of November 1914 as a young man aspiring to become a magician and to find the myth of time (Pritzker 1974, p. 7).”

Thus, Ernst angry and frustrated with his society and the war effort, finds himself looking for a way to channel his anger. He wanted to criticize and to divert the political establishment that had brought five horrid years of wanton brutality, death, and destruction.

He found it in an antagonistic group of fellow war veterans who felt like him. To begin their opposition, these war veterans created a literary group and name they settled on for their group: "Dada." The name may mean "hobby horse" in French, or “Yes, Yes” in

Rumanian or Russian or “When, When” in Danish; or perhaps, it is simply nonsense syllables, an appropriate name for an explicitly nonsensical philosophical and artistic group. To the Dadaists, Dada was not an art movement or an art style. Dada is a total expression of disgust and repugnance for rational. Dada, thus, is not an art movement, but a lifestyle.

Dadaists began their protest, to what they saw as a senseless society, with a shared endeavor— “an experiment in how to extend the possible forms of writing, experiencing, deciphering, depicting and above all, thinking, as a collective experience (Caws 2004, p.

18).”

Hence, Dadaists established a publication where they could bump into their collective experience: Littérature, which was imbued with Dada irony. Littérature is not the same as the classical French word ‘literature’ but rather is a humoristic jeux du mots.

Dadaists are mocking themselves, as in the saying Dada is idiotic, and their writing.

Littérature can be read as Lis tes ratures (‘read your leavings’) or as Lits et ratures (‘beds and scrapings’). Clearly, from Dada’s inception, literature, especially jeux du mots, would play a crucial part in Ernst’s creative process. Une Semaine de Bonté, then, is characterized/represented by Dadaist’s humor, spontaneity, negation, and ‘ready-made’ images, which created poetically absurd collages.

Moreover, by the late 1920s, when the novel was composed, German society was in the midst of a tumultuous period. There was inflation, food shortages, repudiations, recriminations, assassinations. There were socialists’ revolts, communists’ revolts, workers’ revolts; complete societal chaos and so are Ernst’s collages. His images seem incomprehensible as the events occurring around him. Consequently, Ernst’s visual language was grotesque, burlesque, at times incoherent and incomprehensible, as Tony Fry states: “culture shapes the way you see the world, its language informs the way you think, its customs structure you as a social being (Fry 1994, p. 105).” And as a social being, in a chaotic Germany, Ernst ’s experiences, and cultural occurrences informed his artistic language and how he tried to make sense of the chaotic atmosphere and the things to come

17 for German society. Nonetheless, Ernst criticizes his society and its extremes, as these were taking shape. He saw that the binary labels created extremes, which would be permissive to the Social Nationalistic ideology’s faulty analysis and logic to perpetrate the atrocities of the Second World War.

Une Semaine de Bonté was then created as an exploration of the German social / moral fiber decay rather than a self-exploration or a psychoanalytical analysis of Ernst’s childhood traumas. The violence perpetrated to the lower classes in economics and political discourse; the church, and the new creation— leisure time, inspired Ernst to create his collages, which are a direct protest to what Ernst viewed as a senseless society.

Hence, the materials used to create the collages came from magazines, periodicals, and popular newspaper novels from the late 19th century. Some came from the pages of scientific and fictional works: La Magasin Pittoresque, La Nature, Catalogue du grand magasin du Louvre, and Magasin des nouveautés, as well as two novels by Jules Mary, Les

Damnés de Paris, and Les Aventures de Monsieur Claude. Ernst disregards the text and keeps the illustrations, which he sometimes uses whole with little alteration of them. Ernst refers to the collision of these materials as “elements of figuration so remote that the sheer absurdity of the collection provoked a sudden intensification of the visionary faculties in me and brought forth a hallucinatory succession of contradictory signs (Pritzker 1974, p.

10)”

The title, Une Semaine de Bonté, is an allusion to the mutual aid association: La

Semaine de la Bonté, founded in 1927 to promote social welfare. Paris was flooded with posters from the organization seeking financial support. Just as each element making up the collages, the title is also "ready-made. (Pritzker 1974, p. 176)” Moreover, the novel was originally intended to be published in seven tomes, corresponding with each day of the 18 week, which alludes to the seven days of creation in the book of Genesis. Every new day brings a new element to discover; where each element adds and enhances the whole creation. In this case, each day adds something new to the narrative created between the collages.

Another Dada particularity of Une Semaine de Bonté is Ernst’s persistence in calling the collage book: a novel6, even though the only written language the novel has is in the titles at the beginning of each section. This language links each weekday to a different earthly element. Ernst uses a subtitle to associate each weekday with an element – a sort of shared symbol with the images to follow - and an example of a figure or theme repeated on subsequent pages. Only in the last book are the days accompanied by selected quotations from Marcel Schwob, Jean Hans Arp, André Breton, Paul Eluard and others (Pritzker 1974, p. 186). Moreover, Ernst uses his contemporaries’ preoccupations with mythological allusions, fairy tales, Genesis, and legends to deepen the image. When the poets add their layer to the image, the collages seem like dreams and poetic worlds. Lastly, Ernst’s favorite themes impregnate the Une Semaine de Bonté: sexuality, anticlericalism, the rejection of the family and the wealthy middle classes, the rejection of patriotism, the rejection of his art as degenerate, and others.

These motifs and details give the novel cohesion facilitating a visible separation into paragraphs without text (written language). Masks (a lion's head, a bird's head, etc.) and elements (water, dragon, cockerel, etc.) identify the days of the week. The fact that each book is associated with a color establishes a further distinction. For example, purple on

6 At the time of the novel’s conception, Ernst’s fellow Dada writers influence his works of art, and their interest in the functionality of language, precisely the role of written language in the formulation of reality, played a crucial role in the look of the collages in Une Semaine de Bonté. 19

Sunday represents the clergy, and on Monday, green represents water. Finally, the seven symbolic elements introduced as subtitles – La boue (Mud), L'eau (Water), Le feu (Fire), Le sang (Blood), Le noir (Darkness), La vue (Sight) and L'inconnu (The Unknown) – provide another layer to the images and helps divide the novel even further (Pritzker 1974, p. 176).

In Une Semaine de Bonté, the scenes and events unfolding before our eyes form a striking contrast with the title. Power, violence, torture, murder, and catastrophe are the dominant themes. The scenes of unrest and brutality allude to the alarming political situation of the German society in the late 1920s, and to the rise of dangerous forces. Ernst, again like a Dadaist, reacts against the political establishment, especially the dictatorships in Europe, and the rise to power of the National Socialists, rather than creating a work of art for self-gratification or self-expression.

Thus, with immense artistic vision, Ernst gives us these provocative collages. He sliced them from two different realities and assembled them, using his artistic language, into a new plane, and the collages conveyed a new message. In the end, each collage forms a series of interlinked images to produce extraordinary creatures, which evolve in fascinating scenarios and create a poetically absurd worlds and a sense of new reality

(Pritzker 1974, p. 271). Hence, Ernst creates a world in an image, a visual poem to be deciphered, and to collapse the word and image binary. Then, he offers us a poetically grotesque7 new world to explore.

7 The term grotesque refers to the violence depicted in the images, fantastic human, and animal forms often interwoven with foliage or similar figures that may distort the natural into absurdity and ugliness.

Pictor Doctus

Max Ernst was a pictor doctus (a scholarly painter8), and Une Semaine de Bonté is a poetically grotesque new world, where Ernst, with his subtle technique, combines words and images borrowed from other artists, his surroundings, and everyday life to submerge us in the brutality of human existence. This new world comes from Ernst’s command of history, history of art, language, theology; and his encyclopedic visual language to make his collages, and his oeuvre, an interpretative enigma. Ernst’s scholars have been intrigued by the symbols, color, and icons in the images Ernst produced. These scholars have tried to study and interpret them in several theoretical contexts. However, Ernst tended to withdraw from the process of creation; as though, he had no personal interest in the mechanism, technique, or message of the images he produced. Ernst even once confessed to Werner

Spies, “I followed with amusement the detective work of art historians’ eagerness to track down my sources (Motherwell, The Dada Painter and Poets : An Anthology 1951, p. 32),” and what was his intended meaning in or of his works.

Hence, scholars have tried to interpret Ernst’s images, especially in Une Semaine de

Bonté, through the theoretical views of psychoanalysis or formal analysis. These analyses seem to leave something unmentioned: the absent message of the images. Hence, Une

Semaine de Bonté lends its images to misinterpretation. Ernst camouflaged his inspiration, referents, and references so cleverly that all we have are educated guesses, some may say.

8 Werner Spies, Ernst lustrous biographer, even describes Ernst as an artist with a vast knowledge of Art History, Theology, Physics, and Philosophy. 21

However, to us, there are three aspects overlooked/omitted from the literature encountered. The vast majority of the literature revolves and concentrates on Ernst’s inspiration, historiography, methodology, technique, and the origin of materials used to create the collages; on his intense internal battle with his religious experience early in his life; and war. We want to concentrate on the functionality of the symbols, acts, and absence of writing within Une Semaine de Bonté.

The literature we have encountered focusses on the semiotics and iconography of

Ernst’s collages. Rosalind Krauss’ “The Master’s Bedroom” is an example of this single vision interpretation of the Ernst collage and oeuvre. Krauss states, “The figure is unmistakably established as a set within a fantasy world which is that of the childhood, that is, on archaic foundations. (Krauss 1995, p. 61)” As Krauss analyzes Ernst’s collages, she implies Ernst’s work is a catharsis from his childhood experiences. She gives a particular event in Ernst’s childhood. Krauss states, “the creation of the loplop bird, a man with a bird head, is nothing more than Ernst’s manifestation of a childhood memory. On the night of

1906, Ernst discovers that Hornebom, his beloved pet cockatoo, was dead. Suddenly, his father announced that his sister Loni had just been born. (Krauss, The Master's Bedroom

1995, p. 63)” However, in this psychoanalytical perspective, Krauss’s attempt is to contextualize the image for the viewer through a historiographical context, where the symbolism of the images recontextualizes Ernst’s desire to criticize his society. Although her analysis takes into account Ernst’s knowledge of psychology, the collage novel does more than the surrealism’s intent to describe the unconscious. We believe that Ernst’s collages have more to offer than an archaic longing for childhood warmth, comfort, and safety. She continues, “the world of things that we lost after childhood; when we were children those illustrations, already archaic, must have jumped out at us, just as the 22 surrealistic pictures do now. The action of the montage supplies subjective momentum.

(Krauss, The Master's Bedroom 1995, p. 62)” Even though, Krauss’ analysis is correct for some of the surrealists’ works, and even some of Ernst’s works; we believe Ernst was beyond Freud by the time he constructed the collages, after his return from the war, Ernst was traumatized. His collages are a way to illustrate the brutality he witnessed. Ernst, in

“La Nudite de la femme est plus sage que I'enseignement du philosophe,” expresses how his work is:

“my wanderings, my unrest, my impatience, my doubts, my beliefs, my hallucinations, my loves, my outbursts of anger, my revolts, my contradictions, my refusals to submit to any discipline... have not created a climate favor-able to the creation of a peaceful, serene work.”

Even though, as a psychology student at the University of Bonn, Ernst read Freud’s works, and his implementation of psychoanalytical elements in Une Semaine de Bonté’s collages is evident; however, Ernst uses these psychoanalytical elements as a chimera for his contemporaries. At the time of the construction of these collages, Ernst wants to protest the political atmosphere of Germany, or what was left of an empire. He wanted to protest the nationalistic desires permeating the social discourse, and at the same time, he questions what drives humanity to commit atrocities instead of being an archaic subjective momentum. Moreover, the singular point of view Krauss takes to analyze Ernst’s oeuvre excludes Ernst’s Dada influence and his desire to illustrate humanity’s brutality. Ernst was concerned with the future of his society after the hopelessness of the loss of identity and the loss of the war.

As a Dadaist, Ernst claimed that he was not the creator of his works. “A painter may know what he does not want, let him beware if he ever wants to know what he wants, it’s a painter’s lost (Pritzker 1974, p. 14).” The surrealists’ poets and painters, hence, alleged

23 that their work was dictated by factors outside themselves and that the task of the artist was to render the power of inspiration as directly as possible. The surrealists learned this from the Dadaist, Tristan Tzara (April 16, 1896-- December 25, 1963) in his Dada Second Dada

Manifest of 1918 “… Dada, Dada, Dada, a roaring of tense color, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE (Motherwell, The

Documents of Modern Art Vol. VIII: Dada Painters and Poets 1951, p. 82)” Hence, Ernst was inspired by societal events as well as the theoretical knowledge he had gained at the university.

In Renee Riese Hubert’s book Surrealism and The Book, she analyses Une Semaine de Bonté through formal analysis. This way to analyze the collage novel omits the societal history, context, and the intentionality of the artist. Ernst layers his collages with more than icons, which allude or mimic the politicians, clerics, or societal norms. He intentionally uses images from Jules Mary’s, Les Damnés de Paris, and Les Aventures de Monsieur

Claude novels. In Mary’s novels the occurrence of sensual relationships between men and women occur frequently; romantic embraces alternate with licentious seduction and promiscuous displays between prostitutes and elderly “gentlemen.” These novels were known for their bourgeois melodrama, pulp adventures, and old-fashioned pornography.

However, in the hands of Ernst, these images are transformed from pornography to fine art.

Thus, in the first half of the 20th century, Europe was in cultural and political turmoil. The turmoil was on the streets, on the social institutions, and the social structure.

The turmoil created a revolution on the episteme, in the thinking structure of society. In this structural change, the human’s desire and origin turned away from religious constructs to scientific ones, which transformed how people view their role in society. People began to

24 question their behavior and what constitutes their ideals and norms; their existence began to obtain a new light.

Hence, in a formal interpretation of figure I, at first glance, we see a woman

‘pleasantly’ sleeping in her bedroom. Her room is elegantly adorned; her blanket has been pushed down in the inertia of her sleep exposing her breast. Her arms lazily stretched above her head on her heavy pillows; her matted hair hides the extant act of dreams. On the right side of her bedroom, there is a man standing on the other side of her window, he lewdly gazes at her. The heavy curtains hide the desire on his face. He’s trying to find his infinite liquid rainbow; and in the room, everything will burst if the right spark is applied and everything bursts as a tidal wave breaking in the awaking shore. This interpretation seems quite satisfactory; however, a formal analysis omits the grand narrative of the collage.

Jean-François Lyotard, a French philosopher, in The Postmodern Condition: A

Report on Knowledge, described as “the grand narrative” (“le grand récit”) the place where inquiry, knowledge, and power break down. Therein, we find the praxis of Ernst’s creative process, the intangible becomes tangible knowledge. In other words, his intention is known.

Through Lyotard’s “le petite récit,” the collage can be interpreted quite differently.

The collage forces us to confront the cruel reality of ‘the sleeping beauty'. The ‘gentleman' wantonly gazing at her from the other side of the bars/window indicates the woman is not in her bedroom; and moreover, ‘her bedroom' is her prison. The curtain on the upper left corner redefines the woman’s social and economic condition and is a mismatch from the one on the upper right corner. The position of the woman further illustrates her true social status. Her exposed breasts are an invitation for the gentleman to look and see if he approves, clearly stating her profession. The bursting water column, at the side of ‘the sleeping beauty,’ is the ‘gentleman’s’ reminiscence of what would come or what is to 25 come… depending on if ‘the sleeping beauty’ pleases him. Moreover, the collage forces us to question our own morality with the question: ‘Would you pay for sex?’

Ernst transports, in this collage, our subjectivity and objectivity to an uncomfortable place. “People with good moral judgment do not think or speak of such subjects. Those who indulge in such carnal desires have perverted their soul,” Ernst’s contemporary person would say as he or she observed the image. Ernst questions the societal hypocrisy; where the ‘gentleman,’ during the day, upholds his Judeo-Christian values and condemns the woman for her profession, but during the night, he seeks her to satiate his wanton desires.

Ernst collides object and subject and forces the observer to analyze his or her desires, morals, and taboos. Ernst pushes the observer to ask him/herself: What do you value more, the human or the acts humans perform?

Hence, this is an ingenious attack on society and its dogmatic norms. Ernst transports the viewer’s subjectivity and objectivity into a world populated by a playful, didactic, and Dadaist poetic irrationality, where the viewers are pushed by the work of art to recognize they are not sincere, and their pretentiousness is a chimera. General societal preconceived ideas and judgments are called into question. The work of art pushes the viewer/participant into a reevaluation of his/her norms, and what constitutes being human.

Ernst pushes the viewers to recognize their prejudices and morals can be transformed and are movable.

Writing as Technê

Une Semaine de Bonté also investigates written language as a Τέχνη (téknɛ.)9 The

Greek philosopher, Aristotle, defines Τέχνη (technê) (Curd 2005, p. 832-34) as artfulness in every action and decision that seems to aim at some good. To Aristotle, written language is a tangible material, which we, humans, manipulate to create and frame for meaning of our environment. Or in Tristan Tzara’s, a Dadaist contemporary of Ernst, words,

“Order=disorder; ego=non-ego; affirmation=negation: the supreme radiations of an absolute art (Motherwell, The Dada Painter and Poets : An Anthology 1951, p. 78)” In other words, binaries are broken when we try to find “the grand narrative” between polarizing words.

Hence, in constant conscious contradiction, Dadaists want to turn words into images. To create a visual poem that the observer can enter into a dialogue. In other words,

Tzara, or Dadaists, want us to view our world as an organism in constant instability. Then,

Dadaists wanted to redefine the societal episteme of the early 20th century. If episteme10 is essential to understand our surroundings, Dadaists’ language is/was, then, the clay to the

Dadaist’s world. As Dadaists created texts and images—another tangible language—to criticize their society, Ernst’s collage novel, then, provides another avenue that fusions painting, sculpture or poetry to the exploration of the hopeless society of the early 20th century, and it transcends to our modern society. In particular, the incertitude that lingers around a society that still finds it easy to wage war.

9 Max Ernst does not utilize extended text on his novel to convey his meaning. Hence, Ernst wants us to look at the images and form our own narrative according to one’s own language and imagination. 10 I’m defining episteme as how one knows how to do something. 27

As Ernst moves from Dada to Surrealism, the constant between the two movements is the artists’ eagerness to create a ‘poetic dialogue’ with their images, which as surrealist

Ernst might say, it’s just the beginning of the function of written language. He would add: what does language do scientifically, psychologically, epistemologically, ontologically? Or is this just a jeux des mots, where “the value of creative activity lies in the doing, in the act of making, rather than the aesthetic significance of the thing made.” (Rubin 1968, 43) All those questions are relevant to the role of dada/surrealism in the novel. or to put it in the surrealists’ terms borrowed from Xavier Forneret: “Our thought is an eye.” We see through language, and Ernst forces the viewer to expand beyond the rational and logical waking world into the world of poetical fantasy, dreams, and illusions.

Hence, if we frame our reality through the spectacles of language, what better way to criticize, analyze, contextualize, and create culture than through the interrogation of our assumed reality. In the friction of the interexchange11 of ideas, it’s where new ideas and new culture are created. Hence, Andre Breton’s, surrealism’s founder—the instigator and chief interpreter of the movement—interpretation of the concept: ‘Poetic Surrealism’ is crucial to our claim that in Une Semaine de Bonté the absence of written language creates a new type of dialogue where the binary, word and image, ceases to be perceived as contradictions.

For Breton, surrealism is the possibility to arrive at a point of convergence (in both in the perceived object and the receptive mind) (Caws 2004, p. 16) of the daily and specific on the one hand and the marvelous and universal on the other, has the ability to modify,

11 The interexchange of ideas forms between interlocutors, a new dialogue where we might arrive at a point of convergence where the communicable and incommunicable cease to be perceived as contradictions, which we believe Dada and surrealism are trying to create – a new type of dialogue where traditional modes of thinking are broken. 28 often profoundly, our perception and experience of the world. In other words, surrealism wants to bridge the physical world with that of the human mind. Surrealists intertwined the imaginative and the poetic with analytical and scientific suggesting the possibility of reaching beyond such commonplace dualities as inside and outside, day and night, awake or dreaming. Experience is no longer viewed in opposition terms (binaries) but as complementary and coexistent states. Hence, surrealists fusion of the physical with the metaphysical, the body and mind, are one in coexistence to give us the possibility to arrive at the convergence where the particular meets the universal.

In the 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton wrote “The words, the images are only so many springboards for the mind of the listener.” (Breton, Manifest of Surrealism 1969,

3) What Breton intended with this phrase was to establish a new dialogue: a surrealist’s dialogue where “everything leads to us to believe there is exists a certain point in the mind in which life and death, real and imaginary, past and future, communicable and incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions (Breton, Manifest of Surrealism 1969, p. 23).” Hence, in this friction between concepts, the ‘new surrealists dialogue’ breaks down concepts and creates new ones by remixing the debris of the crushed ones. Surrealists create this remix by trying to free the interlocutors from any obligation of politeness (Caws 2004). Or, they allow interlocutors to affirm their place in the dialogue, which has been taken by dilettantes, journalists, and profiteers, especially in the capitalist atmosphere of the art world today.

Breton, thus, considers the ‘surreal’ to be a dialogue with the other (with what is encountered by way of dreams, coincidences, correspondences, the marvelous, the uncanny; a reciprocal exchange connecting conscious and unconscious thought (Caws 2004, p. 17). Thus, Une Semaine de Bonté forces the viewer to question his/her ideals and evaluate them to see if her/his beliefs hold true in the new visual dialogue the collages 29 create. For Breton, hence, the truth resides in the interexchange itself, as well as in the different things the dialogue brings forth and discovered. The dialogue has to break ideas to create new ones. Hence, Breton’s “adjective of ‘poetic’ to the noun ‘surrealism,’ choice already informs our gaze.

“The poetic is the opposite to the expected—a necessary component for the surrealist creation of the marvelous, that which unexpectedly arouses wonder when we chance upon it or when it chances upon us. Never predetermined, it is created on the spot, in the terrain—like a ‘conducting wire’ fusing the external with the internal world—often through a quest we didn’t know we had or were up to.” (Caws 2004, p. 2)

Consequently, Une Semaine de Bonté creates this interexchange. In the interexchange, the interlocutors would find the answers to create, renovate, solve their inquiries, but also, to transform their current world view.

With this collage novel, Ernst also wants to subvert the notion that to write a novel written language is necessary. Ernst, in his everlasting quest for innovation and exploration, creates a novel with minimal use of written language. Ernst sets off to write something phantasmagorical, fascinating, with similarities to the unknown/known, and the complex simplicity of the gothic novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as Mary’s novels mentioned earlier.

However, Ernst’s Une Semaine de Bonté is not the only ‘wordless’ novel. In the

1920s and 30s ‘the wordless novel’ became a popular of work of art, where dissidents and political critics could express their views in a new visual-sign language. In the early 20th century, the majority of people were still illiterate; thus, the majority of people relied on images to be informed and form ideals about their world, and the political turmoil of post-

Great War Germany, the ‘wordless novels’ became the modus operandi for political dissidents to state their opinions without fear of percussion. Thus, using Lyotard’s notion of

“a word=a move,” where a move is an illustration, Ernst reverses the normative of Lyotard, which would make the collages more than signs on a picture frame or, in Lyotard words in

Painting the Secret in the Postmodern Age: Baruchello, “signs and symbols affixed in the picture surface cannot be translated through concepts and categories.” Hence, to try to peg a theory to the collages in Une Semaine de Bonté seems like a futile task.

Thus, in the collage novel Ernst uses the concept in reverse “a move (image)=a word” visual language as a written language to create something tangible from something intangible or transformed an image into a dialogue. To illustrate, in figure II, a viewer might say, in the image, I see a sleeping woman dreaming about her fear of water. She is in her bedroom and all of a sudden, she falls off her bed into a river and she can’t wake up.

However, in her paralyzing fear, she is holding onto her bedding and chair as she desperately tries not to go under the water. An art historian might read the image through a psychoanalytical lens and state that the woman is in the midst of an erotic dream. The woman’s erotic position is a distinctive indicator of the artist’s intention, and the water is a symbol of her orgasm. The almost exposed breast gives the viewer the feeling of being a voyeur. The other icons in the image only help accentuate the woman’s fragile femininity and her need to satiate her sexual desires. A poet, moreover, might read the image in this manner: the filaments of language, at times, she suffers from insomnia and when it seems precise for her to have a nap; she does not know how to close her eyes; and in a flake off her skin, her wings are broken, and among other things, she does not write with light's ink; she does not know how to distinguish between the complex and the simple; and in the center of the contradiction, she turns everything into white lines on white canvas; and everything begins again in black and white.

These descriptions of Ernst’s collage are the dialogue Ernst has to create. If the three persons sit together and debate the image, a new interpretation of the collage will be created. The idea of the dialogue is to break the hierarchy of signs and symbols we see, to create a self-reflection, rather than to receive an artist’s mandate from his subconscious.

The scenario the collage inspires, at times, is indescribable; in others, the iconology is hard to describe or dismiss, and in others, the image creates a moment of poetic beauty. In Une

Semaine de Bonté, each collage oscillates between the incomprehensible and the horribly mundane. Ernst wants to illustrate what plagues the darkest corner of the human mind and desires. What drives a human to perpetrate certain horrid things like war?

For some scholars, the iconology invokes someone with a mental illness; an unrest of subconscious; others would say that the collages are the representation of a repressed society and the subconscious is passionately taking over the rationale. However, Ernst is after something more practical. He wants to create a space where “the poetic is the opposite to the expected.”

Ernst is having fun with our assumptions on meaning, and this play on meaning is what Lyotard’s concept of “Language Games.” “Language games” refers to the activity of speaking of language, which is part of an activity in a mode of life. In other words, a language is not a pre-existing system or code that we uncover or discover, but rather a product of our ongoing interaction. Thus, Lyotard emphasized the pragmatic use of language, which for us is more useful than syntax or semantics. For in Ernst’s novel, all of this element of language would be an essential inspiration for each image created.

Lyotard describes “language games” as “every utterance should be thought of as a

“move” in a game (Lyotard n.d., p. 10).” Lyotard wants us to think of language as a game; as something where the rules are the structure (grammar) and speech is the "move on" the 32 game board—"there are no rules, there is no game." Thus, if the rules of the game are changed, the moves have to change as well. Thus, without rules, there are no moves.

Hence, a language is a material mineable to create an interpretative reality. In Une

Semaine de Bonté a new reality is created to simulate a dreamlike reality. As Andre Breton would say: "Dada stirs everything;" hence, the images of Ernst's collage novel stirs up questions about the social structure in the post-Great War European society. The rules of the game are changed, and then, the game can't be played with the old rules. The game has a new structure and its moves are different. Thus, the collage images could be thought of as a new move.

As a Dadaist, Ernst wants to subvert the notion the viewer has of what constitutes a novel. Hence, Ernst goes out of his way to exclude written language, but there is a narrative in the structure of the novel. Ernst then wants to evoke the writings of gothic literature, which provoke a phantasmagorical dream-like world. Thus, Aristotle's definition of writing as technê is essential for the interpretation or to understand Ernst's intent in the novel.

Aristotle defines technê as artful and, at the same time, as a craft. If we take the first part of the definition, Ernst is using images as poetry. Consequently, the images have a certain exaggeration of the oppressed reality the European cultures suffered in the early 20th century.

Hence, Une Semaine de Bonté replaces or camouflages written language to thrust the viewer into the world where reality is not important; what becomes important is the moment, the ephemeral moment that comes and goes. The precise moment where she does not know if she is awake or asleep, where all her possibilities are presented at once, where she makes her reality, and meaning is something she will never have. A reality made as

“the poetic is the opposite to the expected.” 33

Bonté Rénové—Conclusion

Dada hurts, Dada does not jest, for the reason that it was experienced by revolutionary men and not by philistines who demand that art is a decoration for the mendacity of their emotions… I am firmly convinced that all art will become Dadaistic in the course of time because from Dada proceeds the perpetual urge for its renovation

Richard Huelsenbeck

Une Semaine de Bonté is the space between two opposing ideas. The friction that occurs between these extreme positions unveils our world of pretenses and an image creates a poetic dialogue. A phantasmagorical world constructed for us by Ernst’s visual language to demonstrate, to us humans, our predilection for brutality. Hence, Ernst wants to assimilate and internalize the collages to the point the observers retune their old definitions of visual reality and to reconcile the exterior and public world with the interior and private world of the unconscious. Ernst wants to reconcile the two equal parts of human existence and turns them into a new poetic world.

What about this new world? To restate Fry “we, as humans, design our world, our world acts back on us and designs us (Fry 1994, p. 93).” So for Dadaists, our world is designed by the redundancy of language; nevertheless, a wildly and intentionally contradiction to convey the repugnancy of rational. For the surrealists, our world is designed by the manifestation of the unconscious in tangible objects, first, a poem or essay, and secondly, through a collage or painting. Thus, the collages Ernst created often exhibit black humor, satire, and sadism as piercing attacks on organized religion and middle-class morality. Thus, with the dynamic plasticity of the collage method, collage is a perfect media to criticize a society in turmoil. A conversation about what we see in the collages, as

34 stated above, can go in different directions, but it’s in the collage, in the friction of norms, ideals, and morals we might perceive our reasoning’s errors, and then, we can change the interior with the exterior through a poetic dialogue.

However, this dialogue can only happen if we let the collage speak for itself. If we tried to create a frame that incarcerates the conversation, it would be difficult for the collage to produce the dialogue. Hence, when the collage novel is framed through the psychoanalytical or formal lens, the collage loses its plasticity, and the dialogue, or silent message, is absent. Or as Ernst said, “I followed with amusement the detective work of art historians’ eagerness to track down my sources (Pritzker 1974, p. 20),” Ernst’s statement is his insistence that the material or sources he uses to create images are not important; what is important is how the collages provoke a poetic dialogue after the initial shock fades away.

Hence, the collage novel is made in the spirit of Dada. Dada is characterized / represented by humor, spontaneity, negation, in literature and in art, ‘ready-made’ is the absurdity of the movement. To illustrate the absurdity and negation, in fig. III, a young woman is sleeping in her bed. The exposed breast and her facial expression radiate sensuality, harmony, and tranquility. Although her lover is absent, her lover is represented by the cupid hovering on top of her. The water encircles her as an awaiting orgasm. She is about to drown in sensual ecstasy. However, her dilapidated curtains and her faded and translucent night dress demonstrates her social class, and here, is where Ernst’s artistic language is brilliant. The collage is not about erotism or carnal desire. The woman has been swept away by a flood, and although, she seems to sleep peacefully, she has drowned.

Thus, the collage is a blunt accusation to the authorities that let this brutality happen. Ernst holds them responsible for the many lives lost, especially of poor people, in several severe 35 floods in Germany and France in the first half of the 20th century. Here, again, Ernst exhorts the observer to acknowledge the appearance is not sincere. Ernst demands the observer to see and acknowledge the superficiality of reality; thus, a dialogue can begin.

For Ernst, the reality is something beyond the visible… The visible is only a hologram without projection. As Jean Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation, says,

"what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, can be reduced to the signs that constitute faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer itself anything but a gigantic simulacrum - not unreal, but a simulacrum, that is to say never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference (Baudrillard 1994, p. 25).”

Ernst is showing us the simulacrum in his collage, as stated above. The image is not what it seems or, as Baudrillard stated, if we simulate God or faith components, do these still hold some meaning? Ernst’s collage is a great representation of this. He is telling us that the image is not the message. The image is only the beginning. How is this image the beginning? The image is the beginning of a possible meaning. Hence, Ernst is playing with our perception and what would have been conventional knowledge. The image is composed of allusions to a possible religious meaning. He wants us to interpret the collage as a religious critic, but there is something else that is invisible within the visible. He wants us to look beyond the visible and see the invisible message evident if one understands an image is meaningless because the image does not illustrate what it indicates; the image does not have a referent. To find the collages’ intention, we have to go beyond the image.

Thus, in Ernst’s collages, the meaning is mediated by the things we see in the image; moreover, those elements we see could deviate the meaning intentionally. Hence, the absence of a written language adds another layer of instability for the viewer. The meaning manual is not available. Ernst learned this from the Dadaists. He wants to

36 demonstrate that meaning is always mediated by the language, technology, culture, and the viewer's knowledge. Baudrillard illustrates how such subtle language keeps us from accessing reality. The way language is used by those in power hides the truth, that it represented a false consciousness that keeps us from seeing the real workings of the state, of economic forces, or of the dominant groups. We are so reliant on language to structure our perceptions, any representation of reality is always already ideological, always already constructed by simulacra.

Hence, Ernst’s usage of quotidian elements allows him to criticize European society, especially German society, straightforwardly without reproach. He is telling us to think of society as someone with extreme affirmations. To talk about Ernst collages, then, does not simply mean to copy-paste techniques; collage ought and should be understood metaphorically. Elements from different contexts are put together to create a new visual of reality.

Thus, "Word and image are one," said Hugo Ball, in his "Dada fragments", where he and other Dada artists explored and experimented with words and letters liberated from their context. Their visual poems used deaf words; and these words do not insinuate what they mean, and they leave the observer/listener deaf – void of meaning, or, full of meaning.

We have described that the collages made for Une Semaine de Bonté are a poetic world that creates a poetic dialogue. The limited use of written language is as primordial as the iconology and iconography used in the collages.

Thus, the reinterpretation we have given to this collage novel is based on the duplicity of the image itself. The image is not sincere until is placed into words—a dialogue. Hence, among the cultural, dogmatic, and sexual innuendos, the principal message in these collages is the invisible/visible message of cultural criticism from a 37 sensible artist consciousness. The artist intentionally wants us to explore our interior with the exterior stimuli. Ernst cautions us to consider and contemplate the repercussions of what we deem as beneficial progress. Ernst wants us to have a dialogue about the world and image binary and how this binary illustrates a world of pretenses, where to create an image is to create a world; thus, Ernst disrupts our fears and anxieties to create a world where a poetic dialogue is a norm, and "the poetic is the opposite to the expected.”

Fig. I. Max Ernst Une Semaine de Bonté, 1934 Collage

Fig. II. Max Ernst Une Semaine de Bonté, 1934 Collage

Bibliography

Aragon, Louis. 1965. "Les Collages ." Hermani 26-33. Aristotle. 1996. Physics . Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Breton, Andre. 1969. Manifest of Surrealism . Ann Arbor : University of Michigan . Caws , Mary Ann. 2004. Surrealism . London: Phaidon Press. Fry, Tony. 1994. Green Hands Against Dead Knowledge. Remakings . Krauss, Roselind. 1995. "The Master's Bedroom." In Vision and Textuality, edited by Stephen Melville and Bill Readings. London, UK: MacMillan Press LTD. Lippard , Lucy R. 1971. Dadas on Art . Mineola , NY: Dover Publications . Lyotard, Jean-Francois. n.d. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Mineapolis, Minessota: University of Minessota. Motherwell, Robert, ed. 1951. The Dada Painter and Poets : An Anthology. New York, New York : Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc. —. 1951. The Documents of Modern Art Vol. VIII: Dada Painters and Poets. Edited by Robert Motherwell. New York , New York : Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc. . Pritzker, Pamela. 1974. Ernst. London : Spurbooks . Rubin, William S. 1968. Dada and Surrealist Art . New York : Harry N. Abrams, Inc. . The Menil Collection. n.d. Max Ernst Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism. Cologne , Germany: Prestel .