Collage Inspiration: Max Ernst

Max Ernst is without a doubt my favourite collage artist, and an influential one, too: Amongst his admirers were artists as famous as Joseph Cornell (another favourite collagist of mine). Ernst was a man of many talents, a proficient painter and printer next to his acute gift for collaging.
I admire his work because of the way he used established images to create something utterly new and unexpected. He was partly famed for collages he created from 19th century illustrations, most of them wood engravings, which he cut and pasted to create the most surreal scenarios. This act of reinterpretation and recontextualisation is in itself an achievement, but Ernst was a storyteller, too: He calls his collections 'surrealist novels' and to flick through, trying to make connections between the images, is a great pleasure.
Here are a few examples from 'The Hundred Headless Woman':