A Week of Kindness or the Seven Deadly Elements

Thursday | The Rooster's Laughter and Easter Island

Max Ernst portrays the tale of Thursday in two different ways.

In the first portrayal, the overarching icon is the rooster, ever present through the literal animal, or a rooster man depiction. From the get go, it is incredibly clear there is a violent relationship between the roosters and humans, more prominently women who are portrayed in the nude form of idealized beauty. Roosters become essentially these harbingers of death and misfortune, lurking in the background, or taking matters into their own hands. Roosters are clearly inhuman, yet interestingly Max Ernst places these roosters in a human body, which causes the mind to immediately relate to the imagery. We see these beings, that perhaps were once human, fall to inhumanity.

Likewise, in his second depiction of Thursday in which Ernst utilizes a man with the head of an easter island statue. we see a being that is almost human but not quite. It also tells a similar tale of falling to inhumanity. In the beginning, it is indeed odd that the head is an easter island statue, but it can be overlooked for the human way he acts. However, the head progressively becomes more abstracted as the character falls towards madness.