La Femme 100 Têtes

Artist Max Ernst (French, 1891-1976)

Publisher Éditions du Carrefour, Paris, 1929

Author André Breton (French, 1896-1966)

Date1929

Dimensionsbox: 11 x 8 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (280 x 216 x 38mm)
book: 9 13/16 x 7 1/2 x 3/4 in. (250 x 190 x 19mm)
page: 9 13/16 x 7 3/8 in. (250 x 187mm)

MediumReproductions: 149 photolithographs of collages, incl. cover Text: letterpress Paper: tinted ivory wove paper

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1979.20

Not on View

Label TextErnst's first collage novel, LA FEMME 100 TETES, contains 147 collages distributed within nine chapters. Its unusual title is a pun that relates to his Surrealist quest for multiple identities and is based on the correspondence between pronunciation of the french word for 100, spelled cent, and the word sans meaning without. This pun established both the name and character of Ernst's main heroine, who has both 100 heads and no head at the same time: a heroine of mystic proportions, she represents the essence of womanhood who bears no single face but is constantly changing. The first of Max Ernst's three collage novels, La Femme 100 têtes (when spoken in French, the title sounds like "the hundred-headed woman," "the headless woman," or "the stubborn woman") consists of 147 collages with enigmatic captions. Ernst, a major figure of German Dada and French Surrealism, used collage to create "ready-made realities" that "bewitch reason." He assembled these collages from fragments of illustrations and reproduced them photomechanically to conceal the seams and integrate the segments. Through this process, strange, marvelous, and improbable images are made to appear, at least momentarily, almost plausible.Exhibition HistoryBetween the Wars; Sept. 5 2008 through Dec.31 2008