The Hundred Headless Woman (1929)

"Let’s talk about The Hundred Headless Woman. I’m interested in the connection between photography and print-making – engravings – because somewhere way back when photography took the place of print-making as the principle medium for illustration. In the newspapers. A hundred and fifty years ago engraving was the way you illustrated the world. So these days, if you read the news, you’re looking at photography. But in any case, this book, “The Hundred Headless Woman” by Max Ernst was published in 1929 and it’s a classic surrealist book. It almost completely incomprehensible, but it’s absolutely brilliant! It’s made up of these collages which he culled from 18th and 19th century story books. It’s sort of like an early graphic novel but in a completely whacked out style. You have an engraving of a bird and a bird’s claw grasping a picture and the caption is, “Loplop the swallow returns”. There’s another engraving of a woman being abducted and carried off in a carriage and the caption here is “nothing will stop this passing smile which accompanies heterosexual crime.” Post-First World War, yes, originally published in French. I actually have a first American edition which came out in 1981, translated by Ernst’s wife, Dorothea Tanning. Ernest was married to some interesting women, including Peggy Guggenheim, but Tanning was a surrealist painter and published a couple of novels and poetry. She was also a print maker. She was still making lithographs and etchings in the mid 1990’s. Well the French is “La Femme 100 Têtes” where the “100” would be “cent” which sounds like “sans” – which of course means “without”. So I guess The Hundred Headless Woman teases that pun apart. And there are a lot of women in this strange book!"