74 - Max ERNST. A Week of Kindness, or The Seven Capital Elements. Novel. Paris, Éd. Jeanne Bucher, 1934. 5 in-4 volumes, paperback, covers in different colored paper, publisher’s cardboard slipcase with title label on the spine and an illustration mounted on the front cover, modern blue cloth slipcase.

Max ERNST. A Week of Kindness, or The Seven Capital Elements. Novel. Paris, Éd. Jeanne Bucher, 1934. 5 in-4 volumes, paperback, covers in different colored paper, publisher’s cardboard slipcase with title label on the spine and an illustration mounted on the front cover, modern blue cloth slipcase. First edition. Limited edition of 816 copies: one of 800 printed on Navarre paper (no. 583, on a paper tab covering certain different numbers). The third of Max Ernst’s picture novels, featuring 182 full-page phototyped collages. “One of the characteristics of Max Ernst’s collages is the extreme care and meticulousness with which they are created. The goal is, in fact, to conceal any trace of cut-outs in order to create the illusion of continuity in the image. […] Thus, rather than being viewed as an inevitably degraded version of the original, the reproduction appears in Max Ernst’s collages as the culmination of the creative process, its ideal expression: by completely erasing all traces, it allows the ‘perfect crime’ to be realized” (Antoine Coron). Three booklets have uniformly faded spines. (Coron, From Goya to Max Ernst, no. 47: “The most important and most beautiful of Max Ernst’s collage novels.”)