Max Ernst. Frontispiece from Monsieur Aa l'antiphilosophe: Volume I from L'Antitête. 1947–49, published 1949

Max Ernst Frontispiece from Monsieur Aa l'antiphilosophe: Volume I from L'Antitête 1947–49, published 1949

  • Not on view

The Anti-Head is a three-volume anthology of poems by Tristan Tzara, the Romanian poet whom Ernst had first befriended through the Dada movement. Ernst’s etchings for the book’s first volume signal a shift in his approach to printmaking after World War II, when he began using sinuous lines to generate biomorphic faces, figures, and bird- and fish-like forms. Tzara had created the titular “Mr. Aa the Anti-Philosopher” early in his career as a mocking, self-referential embodiment of Dada’s antiestablishment ideals.

Gallery label from Max Ernst: Beyond Painting, September 23, 2017-January 1, 2018.
Author
Tristan Tzara
Medium
Etching and aquatint from an illustrated book with 23 etchings (15 with aquatint, eight with drypoint and pochoir)
Dimensions
plate: 3 7/16 × 2 3/8" (8.7 × 6.1 cm); page: 5 1/2 × 4 5/16" (14 × 11 cm)
Publisher
Bordas, Paris
Printer
Lacourière, Paris
Edition
200
Credit
The Louis E. Stern Collection
Object number
1114.1964.A01
Copyright
© 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Department
Drawings and Prints

Installation views

We have identified these works in the following photos from our exhibition history.

How we identified these works

In 2018–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That project has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.

If you notice an error, please contact us at [email protected].

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].