Unique matrice en plomb d'un collage inédit de La Femme 100 tête : "Je crois qu'il faudra battre l'eau"

Lead printing block: «Je crois qu'il faudra battre l'eau»

1926 | 11.5 x 16.5 cm | one lead printing block

Exceptional original printing block of an unpublished collage signed and dated 1926 within the form of the block. Although several original collages have been put up for sale, we have not found any mention of other printing blocks that enabled Max Ernst to produce his collage novels.
Only the original collage, signed and dated in ink and bearing the caption on paper glued under the engraving, has been indexed in Benjamin Péret's collection. (As the document attached to the panel stamp shows, inserted in a pocket behind the wooden panel stamp)
This composition fits perfectly into chapter VI of Max Ernst's first collage novel published in 1929: La Femme 100 têtes (he Hundred Headless Woman). Indeed, it has all of the characteristics of the work's other engravings, the size of the panel stamp, the disaster theme, the absurd caption, the size of the font and the exact positioning of the text under the image. It was not, however, used in the novel and we do not know of any print of this work. Only the original collage, signed and dated in ink and comprising the caption in the form of paper glued under the engraving, has been listed in Benjamin Péret's collection (as the document attached to the panel stamp shows, inserted in a pocket behind the wooden panel stamp).
This collage belongs, therefore, to theseries of original works that Max Ernst did not want to include in his collage novels and which he offered to his friends (Eluard, Breton...). However, this particular work differs from the other original collages by several elements that link it to the production of La Femme 100 têtes.
In the first instance, the absurd caption glued on the bottom uses the form and font of the captions in the novel, whereas the other unused collages – that we have been able to consult – do not have captions. However, unlike several of the captions in La Femme 100 têtes, which are Ernst's surrealist creations (indeed he gathered them together in 1959 in the La Femme 100 têtes poem), the caption of the collage offered to Péret originated itself from a textual collage.
It is the beginning of a phrase taken from the short story by the Countess of Ségur, Mémoires d'un âne: «I think that we have to beat the water to get the fish to come over.» We note that this printing block reveals that the caption of the collage – the «letter» – is an integral part of the panel stamp, since it is included in the printing block and not printed separately.
Whereas on the original collages Max Ernst signed in pencil under the engraving; the signature and date in the body of the work are characteristic of the «novel,» most of the plates of which comprise a small scratched surface
where Ernst's signature is found printed on the plate.
It appears, thanks to this printing block, that this deletion of the date and the attribution of the work is carried out after the mould printing, which still includes the date and signature in perfect printing state. However, it is mostly the very production of this block that is the determining element putting this work in an artistic research separate from other unpublished collages.
Max Ernst started working in 1921 on this artistic collage technique, already present in the Cubist works, that used the intrusion of reality in pictorial representation. However, Max Ernst's collages exclude reality by assembling heterogeneous representations of the same nature, wood engravings, without concern for scale or plausibility. The artist, therefore, is not looking to reproduce the Cubist «pasted paper» effect, but rather to create a work in which the external elements blend in entirely with the composition, as Aragon analyses in Les Collages:
«The elements he borrows are mostly drawn elements, and it is the drawing that collages most often replace. Here, the collage becomes a poetic process, perfectly opposable in its objectives to the Cubist collage, whose intention is purely realist. Ernst borrows his elements in particular from printed drawings, advertisement drawings, dictionary images, popular images, newspaper images. He incorporates them so well in the painting that sometimes we do not suspect them, and sometimes the opposite, everything seems collage, both with a meticulous that art the painter applied himself to establish the continuity between the foreign element and his work.»
Yet, this combination of elements will only be accomplished by the fundamental stage of photo-engraving. Indeed, when in 1929 Ernst decided to produce a graphic novel, he changed the perception of his first art works. As Julien Schuh notes in his work, Quelles traditions pour le livre d'artiste surréaliste?: «The original collage, produced with scissors and glue, remains a composite and imperfect object, marked by the difference in the papers used, their thickness, the cutting imperfections, the greyed out text and drawings that appeared transparent.»
The collages that display their creationprocess, therefore retain, despite everything, the structure of the Cubist pasted papers. However, with the intervention of photo-engraving, Ernst creates new homogenous works whose heterogeneous nature is no longer evident at a first glance.
The block reintroduces unity between the elements of the work that once again become one engraving. He thus creates a entirely new work whose aesthetic resonance differs radically from the original collages.
We have not been able to find, for comparison purposes, other collage blocks by Max Ernst, only the original works or the printed works remain on the international market. Yet, our panel stamp highlights Max Ernst's choice to produce these blocks in «relief printing,» in other words only the reliefs are inked, unlike intaglio where the ink builds up in the metal hollows. In this way he reproduces the technique of printing on wood as a raw material and thus ensures perfect graphic fluidity between the elements.
The collage offered to Péret was therefore at a very advanced stage of integration in his collage novel but was, in a sense, incomplete. This lead printing block appears as the last and necessary step in producing Ernst's desired transformation from composite art work to homogeneous graphic art. Finally, in his cuttings, Max Ernst has preserved the name of one of the illustrators, Philippoteaux, which can be found inscribed on the bottom left of the main piece. By introducing his own signature to the body of the engraving at the same level as that of the 19th century illustrator,
Ernst disowns the incomplete work and becomes an illustrator alongside the others, thus liberating the work of its creator: the ultimate Surrealist gesture.
However, in the collage novel, all of the names inscribed on the plates, including his own signature, will be roughly censored by the artist. A last minute damnatio memoriae or the transformation of an individual work showing its creative heterogeneity, into the simple element of a new work, a graphic novel, with origins explicitly denied by the blank left in place of signatures.
Remarkable testimony of the final stage in the creation of Max Ernst's first collage novel. Unique object, as much for its absence in extremis from the final work as for its particularly significant double signature.