Une Semaine de Bonté

Une semaine de bonté ("A Week of Kindness") is a comic and artist's book by Max Ernst, first published in 1934. It comprises 182 images created by cutting up and re-organizing illustrations from Victorian encyclopedias and novels.

The earliest Comic by Ernst, Répétitions and Les malheurs des immortels, date from 1922, the year the artist moved to Paris. They were created in collaboration with poet Paul Eluard. Ernst went on to produce numerous comic-based paintings, and more comic books. The largest and most important before Une semaine de bonté were La femme 100 têtes (1929) and Rêve d'une petite fille qui voulut entrer au carmel (1930).

Une semaine de bonté was completed in 1933 in just three weeks, during a visit to Italy. A few of Ernst's sources were identified: these include illustrations from an 1883 novel by Jules Mary, Les damnées de Paris, and possibly a volume of works by Gustave Doré Ernst purchased in Milan. The completed novel was first published in Paris in 1934 as a series of five pamphlets in a limited edition of 816 copies each. It became more generally available when reprinted in 1976 as a combined single volume of 208 pages (including English translations) plus English preface, by Dover Publications in the US.

Until 2008, the original collages of Une semaine de bonté, which Max Ernst kept throughout his life, had only been exhibited once in their entirety: in March 1936 at the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno (National Museum of Modern Art) in Madrid.

Modern exhibitions:

The work originally appeared in five volumes, but is actually divided into seven sections named after the days of the week, beginning with Sunday. "Ernst had originally intended to publish it in seven volumes associating each book with a day of the week... The first four publication deliveries did not, however, achieve the success that had been anticipated. The three remaining 'days' were therefore put together into a fifth and final book."

The first four published volumes covered a day each, whereas the last volume covered three: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Each of the seven sections is associated with an element, and is provided with an example of the element, and an epigraph. The overall structure of the novel is as follows:

...
Wikipedia