Wednesday, from 'Une Semaine de Bonté'.
Max Ernst was a famous 20th-century German painter and sculptor, associated with the Dada and Surrealist Movements. He excelled in collage techniques and was a pioneer in frottage and grattage. Ernst also made a significant contribution to comic history with the book 'Une Semaine de Bonté' ("A Week of Kindness", 1934), one of the earliest graphic novels, and also an early example of a collage comic and an intentionally surreal comic book. Through meticulous cut-and-paste work, Ernst cobbled together several realistically-drawn engravings and rearranged them in strange new combinations. He invented the idea of using serious imagery and making it silly by adding new humorous elements. On its initial release, 'Une Semaine de Bonté', didn't sell well, but it gradually achieved a cult status. Today it is recognized as one of the most important artistic books of the 20th century. 'Une Semaine de Bonté' influenced many surrealist comic artists to create similar bizarre, stream-of-consciousness stories. Likewise, several humorous comic artists imitated the idea of taking a deadly serious 19th-century or early 20th-century engraving and adding witty text or extra gags. Together with René Magritte and Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst is one of three early-20th century Surrealist painters who once made comics.
Early life and career
Maximilian Maria Ernst was born in 1891 in Brühl, Rheinland, Germany, as the son of Philipp Ernst, an academic painter and teacher at a school for the deaf. Max' parents gave their son a strict, disciplinary and Catholic upbringing. Between 1909 and 1914, Ernst studied classical philology, philosophy, psychology and art history at the University of Bonn. However, he was more interested in painting, joining August Macke's Rhine Expressionist group. As early as 1912, Ernst held his first exhibitions. Among his main graphic influences were Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Caspar David Friedrich, Vincent van Gogh and Giorgio Di Chirico. In a 1941 issue of the Surrealist magazine View, Ernst presented a list of his 'favorite poets and painters', adding painters Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Baldung, Giovanni Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, Piero di Cosimo, Francesco del Cossa, Carlo Crivelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Leonardo Da Vinci, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, Piero della Francesca, Matthias Grünewald, Henri Rousseau, Georges Seurat, Paolo Uccello, Cosmé Tura and poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Achim von Arnim, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Crabbe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Hölderlin, Victor Hugo, Alfred Jarry, Comté de Lautréamont, Novalis, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Rimbaud, William Shakespeare, Solomon ibn Gabirol and Walt Whitman.
During the First World War, Ernst served on both the Western and the Eastern Fronts. Although he rose to the rank of lieutenant and was lucky to survive the slaughterfield, the horrors of the trenches changed him. In later interviews, he often reflected on his return to civilian life in 1918 as a rebirth. He developed a lifelong hatred for any kind of authority: parental, military, religious and political. Instead of following the life path that his father intended for him, Ernst rebelled by deciding to become an artist.
Max Ernst's Elephant of Celebes painting (1921).
Dada
To Max Ernst's luck, there was effectively a new, radical, subversive art movement that perfectly encapsulated his own taste for rebellion: Dada. Founded in 1916 in the Swiss city of Zürich, the Dadaists had a thrilling disregard for conventionality, fed by the meaningless slaughter of the First World War. Blaming society for getting mankind into this horrible loss of lives, the Dadaists provoked the bourgeoisie and masses with anti-art. They made sculptures, paintings, books and organized happenings that were deliberately silly, strange, subversive and scatological. Audiences were indeed confused and outraged by all this nonsensical filth. In April 1920, the Dada-Vorfrühling exhibition in Cologne caused such an uproar that the police had to intervene and close it down temporarily for obscenity.
Along with Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Éluard and Tristan Tzara, Max Ernst became one of Dada's best-known representatives. He contributed to their happenings, magazines and made provocative paintings. His best-known canvas is 'Der Elefant von Celebes' ("The Elephant of Celebes", 1921), depicting a collage-made elephant in a strange landscape. But it wasn't so much the image that outraged viewers, but the title, which referenced a naughty childhood rhyme about an elephant with a sticky ass, another one who wants to "fuck his grandma" and yet another pachyderm who "can't find the hole". The person Ernst offended the most was his father, who broke all contact with him as a result of his association with Dada. This motivated Ernst to move to Paris in 1922. By that point, Dadaism was already fizzling out, since people started to get used to their provocations, even appreciating them. So Ernst started looking around for another artistic collective to join.
Illustration for Paul Éluard's 'Les Malheurs des Immortels'.
Surrealism
In 1924, Ernst joined André Breton's Surrealist Movement in Paris. The Surrealists made works following their own stream of consciousness, inspired by dreams. In dreams, people often find themselves in abnormal situations which nevertheless look convincing. Surrealists mimic this seemingly normal atmosphere by drawing in a realistic style. Ordinary things are brought together in unusual combinations, often leading to an unsettling effect. The original Surrealists of the 1920s and 1930s were strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theories about dream interpretation, particularly the symbolism of the subconscious. Later, Carl Gustav Jung explored these themes even further. Both Freud and Jung felt that dreams reveal people's inner personality and obsessions, particularly regarding fear and sexuality. In that sense, Surrealist art provides commentary on the human psyche.
Illustration from Paul Éluard's 'Répétitions' (1922).
Ernst made many Surrealist paintings, using two distinct techniques: "frottage" and "grattage". With frottage, he rubbed with a pencil or pastel crayon over a piece of paper placed on an uneven surface. He published one entire book with such frottage art: 'Histoire Naturelle' (1926). With grattage, Ernst scratched the chromatic pigment of canvases. Both techniques helped him make his creations more spontaneous. Ernst also became an enthusiastic practitioner of collage art, stitching geometrical shapes and figurative characters together, along with things cut out from books and magazines, or simply found on the street. Some of his art appeared in the official Surrealist magazine La Révolution Surréaliste. His collages also adorned the pages of Paul Éluard's poetry collection 'Répétitions' (1922).
'La Vierge Corrigeant L'Enfant Jésus Devant Trois Témoins' (1926).
Max Ernst's most notorious Surrealist painting still marked his Dadaist roots in terms of subversiveness. In 'La Vierge Corrigeant L'Enfant Jésus Devant Trois Témoins' ("The Virgin Mary Spanking Baby Jesus in Front Of Three Witnesses', 1926), the Virgin Mary beats baby Jesus' behind black and blue, until his halo comes loose. The "three witnesses" are André Breton, Paul Éluard and Max Ernst. The blasphemous canvas understandably caused a huge scandal when it was first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. When the painting was scheduled to be shown that same year in an exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, archbishop of Cologne Karl Joseph Schulte ordered it to be removed. But Ernst didn't just agitate the Church: the work was also a raised middle finger at his estranged parents. They always sang hosannas about the love of God and Jesus and leading a virtuous life, while simultaneously keeping him under their thumb and spanking him if he objected.
'Loplop et la Belle Jardinière' (1929).
As a Surrealist, Ernst also created a fictional bird, Loplop, who appeared in many of his own and other Surrealist works as a mix between a mascot, running gag and alter ego for the artist. The anthropomorphic bird, who debuted in Ernst's collage novel 'La Femme 100 Têtes' ("The Woman 100 Heads", 1929), has no standardized appearance. Basically any character with a bird's head in Ernst's work could be representing Loplop.
Around this time, Ernst also played a robber's chief in Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's art film 'L'Âge d'Or' (1930). Ernst and Joan Miró additionally designed the sets for Sergei Diaghilev's 'Romeo and Julia', scored by Constant Lambert and performed by Les Ballets Russes.
'La Femme 100 Têtes' (1929).
Une Semaine de Bonté
Starting in the late 1920s, Ernst published three collage books: 'La Femme 100 Têtes' ("The Woman 100 Heads", Éditions du Carrefour, Paris, 1929, with a foreword by André Breton), 'Rêve d'Une Petite Fille Qui Voulut Entrer Au Carmel' ("Dream of a Little Girl Who Wanted To Enter Carmel", Éditions du Carrefour, 1930) and 'Une Semaine de Bonté' ("A Week of Kindness", Galerie Jeanne Bucher, 1934). Out of all three, 'Une Semaine de Bonté' has become the most iconic, partially because it has some semblance of a thematic connection, not to mention plot, albeit a very strange one. Ernst made the book during a three-week holiday in 1933 at the Castle of Vigoleno, not far from the Italian town of Piacenza. He was a guest of duchess Maria Ruspoli and took many books from her library, looking up illustrations and cutting them out. Ruspoli recalled that one night her guest's eager snipping even woke her up. Ernst paged through hundreds of illustrated novels, short stories, poetry collections and magazines, deliberately seeking for engravings made in a realistic style. He not only cut out characters, but also entire backgrounds. Ernst rearranged them in strange new combinations: people with animal heads, living rooms on fire and colossal body parts peering out of windows.
Monday, from 'Une Semaine de Bonté'.
An ambitious work, 'Une Semaine de Bonté' contains 182 collages, divided over seven books. Each volume is named after one day of the week, with its own main theme, inspired by the classical elements (earth, water, fire and air). Though in typical Surrealist fashion, Ernst invented his own elements along the way. In chronological order the individual books, or chapters, are Sunday (mud), Monday (water), Tuesday (fire), Wednesday (blood), Thursday (blackness), Friday (sight) and Saturday (the unknown). While the casual reader might expect a completely random and absurd stream-of-consciousness tale, Ernst did show some restraint. Each individual book stays relatively close to its overall theme. In 'Monday', for instance, there are indeed a lot of floods. Ernst also went through the effort of using similar characters in specific chapters. In 'Tuesday', for instance, many humans have wings, while in 'Thursday' they have rooster heads. So, when paging through the book, the reader can easily deduct to which chapter an image belongs. Still, since the entire book is told in pantomime, it's up to him or her to construct the narrative.
Tuesday, from 'Une Semaine de Bonté'.
Removed from their original literary context, the cut-out images take on a new and vastly different look. Characters suddenly find themselves in outlandish situations, made extra funny by their static, deadly serious expressions. In other illustrations, the surrealness has a more haunting, disturbing undertone, comparable to a hypnotic nightmare. Either way, 'Une Semaine de Bonté' was a very unique and original publication given the time period. Ernst made his collages with such precision and dedication that first-time readers often assume every page in 'Une Semaine de Bonté' is an actual engraving and have to be informed that they aren't. To avoid copyright issues, Ernst deliberately folded the original artists' signatures, so they wouldn't appear in view. Several of the images have been identified, among them Gustave Doré's illustrations for John Milton's narrative poem 'Paradise Lost', alongside works by J.J. Grandville, Marquis de Sade, the 'Fantômas' crime novels, covers of detective books, Jules Mary's 'Les Damnées de Paris' and Adolph d'Ennery's 'Martyre!'. Ernst also borrowed engravings from illustrated articles in scientific magazines, including ones based on Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot's photographs of women suffering from hysterical attacks.
Originally, 'Une Semaine de Bonté' was released in five separate volumes between April and December 1934. Each book had a different color. The final volume combined three chapters into one, since the previous books sold so badly. In 1936, the original collages were exhibited at the Museum of National Art in Madrid, except for five deemed too risqué for the times. Later reprints have made all chapters available in one book. Today, the original collages are privately held in the collections of the French publisher Daniel Filipacchi and the Isidore Ducasse Foundation in New York.
Thursday, from 'Une Semaine de Bonté'.
Over the decades, 'Une Semaine de Bonté' has risen from a cult classic to a milestone of 20th century art. The book is often regarded as one of the earliest graphic novels, decades before it was acknowledged as a genuine literary genre. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were already many artistically ambitious picture stories in existence. But they all had straightforward narratives, intended for a large mainstream audience. 'Une Semaine de Bonté', on the other hand, was more audacious: destined to be too strange and unusual for the average reader. This bold experiment made Max Ernst a pioneer of surreal graphic novels and the godfather of all cut-and-paste comics, a genre that only became a genuine trend in the underground press of the 1960s and beyond. Countless college magazine cartoonists, underground comix artists and punk collagists have used their scissors and glue to create similar strange picture stories. Ernst's manipulation of old-fashioned engravings has proven equally influential. Many cartoonists have imitated the idea. Sometimes indirectly, like Roland Topor's absurd cartoons made in the style of an ancient engraving. Other times, directly, by taking an old engraving and adding mismatched images or ironic speech balloons or text. Among Ernst's spiritual successors in this field have been the cartoons of Harvey Kurtzman (both in Mad and Help!), Glen Baxter, Terry Gilliam, Philippe Geluck, David Malki and Zaza.
'L'Ange du Foyer' (painting, 1937).
Later life and career
From 1934 on, Max Ernst became more preoccupied with sculpting, though he still made paintings from time to time. In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, causing Great Britain to declare war on Germany. Many European countries mobilized. Since Ernst was a German citizen living in France, he was arrested out of precaution and sent to Camp des Milles in Aix-en-Provence, France. However, his friends were able to get him released, but when Hitler invaded France the next year, Ernst was jailed again. Back in 1937, Ernst's art had already been put on display at the Nazis infamous 1937 "Entartete Kunst" ("Degenerate Art") exhibition as a prime example of "ugly, abnormal works". Again, luck was at his side, because he managed to escape and on 14 July 1941, he arrived in the United States. There he kept working on new paintings, sculptures and illustration work, while enjoying his growing status as one of the most acclaimed artists of his lifetime. His wealth increased and in 1948, he received U.S. citizenship. Still, a decade later, Ernst decided to obtain French citizenship too, allowing him to move back to the country he always considered his second home country. He stayed in France for the rest of his life, passing away in 1976, one day before what would have been his 85th birthday.
Recognition
In 1954, during the Biennale of Venice, Ernst received the Grand Prix for painting. In 1959, he was honored with the Grand Prix National des Arts at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. In 1981, a local high school in Brühl was named after him, as well as a Cologne school community. In 2005, a museum dedicated to his life and career opened in Brühl: the Max Ernst Museum.
Legacy and influence
Max Ernst has a far-reaching influence on many surrealist artists. In France, he inspired Roland Topor, in Italy Guido Crepax, in the Czech Republic Jan Svankmajer and in Spain Ceesepe. In the United Kingdom, he was admired by Glen Baxter, Anthony Earnshaw, Brian Lewis and Ralph Steadman, in Belgium by Kim Duchateau, Steve Michiels (Steve) and Herr Seele, while in The Netherlands Cor Blok and Marcel Ruijters are among his followers. In the United States, he inspired Matt Furie, Terry Gilliam, Edward Gorey, Franz Kline, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Cal Schenkel.
His name lives on in the Max-Ernst stipendium for young artists. Set in the 1930s, the Belgian English-language mystery television series ‘This Is Not A Murder Mystery’ (2025) had René Magritte as protagonist, with Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst as secondary characters.
'Punching Ball or the Immortality of Buonarroti' (1920).