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Truly amazing work by the Surrealist master. This is a great asset in the illustration library that never gets old to review.
Instead, depending on your moods, you'll find multiple meanings. but just open these startling pages of collage & you'll rediscover that it's still just as potent. "Surrealism" is an overused word these days, drained of much of its original power. or you can simply enjoy the experience itself, without trying to find some rational skeleton behind it all. Both disturbing dream & benign nightmare, the non-narrative accumulates in woozy intensity as you immerse yourself in it, swept away willingly by its ghostly flood of images. Like a genuine dream, there are constant, tantalizing hints of unfulfilled meaning -- it almost makes sense, but never quite does -- but that's not frustrating in the least. And if it leads you to more of Max Ernst's work, all the better. Highly recommended.
the novel isn't meant to be consumed, it's a response to the graphic medium where works are meant to be a facile read. which means you're going to be stuck on a single page wondering what it means and how to make sense of it, but ernst didn't intend that, so diegesis isn't really possible
great drawings of big author, worth the have it, but I saw originals in Vienna and must say that I was bit disappointed when I saw the drawings in the book. Second, on original drawings some parts are sticked, and you see that in different shades of paper. I think that they are not to good scanned. Originals have very thin lines and in the book that lines are not so thin, so much detail because of that is lost. And in the book all is on white paper so you cant know which part is collage. Hope that was helpful
You see a guy with a mustache staring at an open mouthed monster with a panther head and human body, standing on some steps, carrying a lantern, and wearing some type of backpack along with a cross shaped medal. Then there's all kinds of random, non-monster sights to see, that feature your classic dark humor. It's actually quite fun.Take for example page 10. The page you view next has little or nothing to do with the page you have just viewed. I've never seen a book as random as this. Each of these Semaine De Bonte pictures looks like it can be a part of a story, but it's up to the viewer to come up with some kind of way that the snapshot picture he or she is seeing could have happened.I'd recommend this book to anybody over 18. Which is kind of a shame, because I think kids would really like all the weird creatures that fill up a good half of this work.I mean, we've got monsters with lion heads, bird heads, Easter Island rock heads, and, well, that's pretty much it for the heads, but there's dragons and other monstery stuff too. I don't know what kind of a maturity rating you'd give the book as a whole, but it definitely isn't for kids.
Not so much that they feature strange creatures, but that they're nothing more than a string of random, isolated scenes that rarely follow any kind of story. In both pictures the panther shaped monster has a backpack and a lantern, but you REALLY have to use your imagination if you are to believe they're the same character since they don't look the same and are standing in completely different backgrounds while engaging themselves in completely different scenarios.It should be noted that the picture on page 11 definitely isn't the only picture featuring nudity. Whether you view it from start to finish, or from finish to start, it makes just as much sense either way. I particularly like this picture where some guy is dropping a bat on the ground from a tray, and another one where a guy is just lying face down on the floor like he's dead while a woman's in the room combing her hair like nothing's wrong.My dreams are a lot like the pictures in this book. Then on page 11, you see neither one of these figures, and instead see a similar monster with a panther head and human body also with a backpack, but this monster is calmly smoking a pipe, and stirring what appears to be some spaghetti-shaped substance on top of the headless body of a topless woman mannequin. Like most surrealist works, this book has its fair share of the stuff. Or perhaps each is a story that never stays around long enough to develop any kind of coherency. It's definitely an interesting, unusual item to have in your own personal library and also a golden opportunity to re-live the long gone European surrealistic fad of the early 20th century.
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