
Exquisite corpse (from the original French term ', ) is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g., "The ''
adjective
An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...
'' ''
noun
In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...
'' ''
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...
'' ''
verb
A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...
'' the ''adjective'' ''noun''." as in "The green duck sweetly sang the dreadful dirge.") or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.
History
This technique was invented by
surrealist
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
s and is similar to an old
parlour game
A parlour or parlor game is a group game played indoors, named so as they were often played in a parlour. These games were extremely popular among the upper and middle classes in the United Kingdom and in the United States during the Victorian er ...
called
consequences in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for a further contribution. Surrealism principal founder
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...
reported that it started in fun, but became playful and eventually enriching. Breton said the diversion started about 1925, but
Pierre Reverdy wrote that it started much earlier, at least as early as 1918.
[ Exhibition catalogue, ', La Dragonne, Galerie Nina Dausset, Paris (October 7–30).]
The name is derived from a phrase that resulted when Surrealists first played the game, "" ("The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.")
André Breton writes that the game developed at the residence of friends at an old house in
Montparnasse
Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split betwee ...
, 54 rue du Château (no longer existing). Besides himself he mentions
Marcel Duhamel,
Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the Poetic realism, poetic ...
,
Yves Tanguy and
Benjamin Péret as original participants.
Henry Miller often played the game to pass time in French cafés during the 1930s.
In 1932, artists
Frida Kahlo
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by Culture of Mexico, the country' ...
and
Lucienne Bloch created two near-nude exquisite corpses. One is titled "Frida" and the other "Diego" (likely meant to represent Kahlo herself and her husband, muralist
Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957) was a Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican muralism, mural movement in Mexican art, Mexican and international art.
Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted mural ...
).
Picture consequences
Later the game was adapted to
drawing
Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...
and
collage
Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...
, in a version called picture consequences, with portions of a person replacing the written sentence fragments of the original.
The person is traditionally drawn in four steps: The head, the torso, the legs and the feet with the paper folded after each portion so that later participants cannot see earlier portions.
The finished product is similar to children's books in which the pages were cut into thirds, the top third pages showing the head of a person or animal, the middle third the torso, and the bottom third the legs, with children having the ability to "mix and match" by turning pages.
Another variation of the exquisite corpse also called "picture consequences" is
Telephone Pictionary, a game in which players alternate writing descriptions and matching illustrations based on the previous step.
In popular culture
*''The Exquisite Corpse'' (1967) a novel by Alfred Chester.
*''
Exquisite Corpse'' (1996) is a Gothic horror novel by Poppy Z. Brite.
* ''
Space and Time
In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualizing ...
'' magazine builds a community exquisite corpse monthly on their website.
*''
Naked Came the Stranger'' is a 1969 erotic novel written as a
literary hoax to parody American literary trends of the time. The credited author is the fictive "Penelope Ashe", though it was written by twenty-four journalists led by
Mike McGrady, with each author writing a chapter without any knowledge of what the others had written.
* ''Exquisite Corpse'' is a literary magazine founded in 1983 (later in online version from 1999) published by
Andrei Codrescu.
* ''
Naked Came the Manatee'' (Putnam, 1996) is a mystery thriller parody novel. Each of its thirteen chapters was written, in sequence, by a different Florida writer, beginning with
Dave Barry
David McAlister Barry (born July 3, 1947) is an American author and columnist who wrote a nationally Print syndication, syndicated humor column for the ''Miami Herald'' from 1983 to 2005. He has written numerous books of humor and parody, as we ...
and ending with
Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen (; born March 12, 1953) is an American journalist and novelist. He began his career as a newspaper reporter and by the late 1970s had begun writing novels in his spare time, both for adults and for middle grade readers. Two of his ...
.
*''Folio of 28 Exquisite corpse drawings'' collected from Queensland Art Gallery's First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT1) artists' retreat, Bangalow, NSW, 20–23 September 1993. Held in the QAGOMA Research Library collection.
Art
* ''
The Narrative Corpse'' (Gates of Heck, 1995) is a comic book chain-story by 69 all-star cartoonists co-edited by
Art Spiegelman
Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman ( ; born February 15, 1948), professionally known as Art Spiegelman, is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazin ...
and
R. Sikoryak.
* The ''
Breaking Boredom Project'' in graphic design, Cairo (2008).
* ''The Exquisite Corpse Adventure'' (Candlewick, 2011), commissioned by the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
, uses well-known children's authors and illustrators
*
Jake and Dinos Chapman have produced a number of exquisite corpses.
* Eric Croes, ''Cadavre exquis, Chat Santiag'' (2017). Croes used his exquisite corpse drawing to make this clay sculpture.
* ''A Cheese and Tomato Spider'' (1998) and a number of other books by author
Nick Sharratt allow children to construct crazy combinations from images on half-pages.
* ''Exquisite Corpus'' (2023) by Kevin Blackistone uses
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
to create "3d chimeras of the human interior" using
medical imaging
Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to revea ...
data.
Film and television
*
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2000 film ''
Mysterious Object at Noon'' uses this technique with a mixture of documentary and fictional film.
* ''
The Exquisite Corpse Project'' is a 2012 feature-length comedy film written using the exquisite corpse technique.
*
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (CN) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the Cartoon Network, Inc., a sub-division of the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks division of Warner Bros. Discovery. It launched on ...
and
Adult Swim
Adult Swim (stylized as dult swimand s is an American adult-oriented television programming block that airs on Cartoon Network which broadcasts during the evening, prime time, and Late-night television, late-night Dayparting, dayparts. T ...
had created various "Exquisite Corpse" promos, with examples such as ''
Rick and Morty
''Rick and Morty'' is an American Adult animation, adult animated science fiction Animated sitcom, sitcom created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon for Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim. The series follows the misadvent ...
'' 2017 trailer for season 3 titled "Exquisite Corpse" features a sequence to the song "Thursday in the Danger Room" from the album ''
Run the Jewels 3'' by
Run the Jewels
Run the Jewels, also known by the initials RTJ, is an American hip-hop Supergroup (music), superduo, composed of Brooklyn-based rapper and producer El-P and Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike. They released their critically acclaimed Run the Jewe ...
.
* ''Exquisite Corps'' as well as ''And So Say All of Us'' are choreographic versions by filmmaker
Mitchell Rose.
* A sketch in
Limmy's Show Season 3 Episode 1 involves a game of exquisite corpse being played in a bar.
Music
*In the 1940s, composers
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...
,
Virgil Thomson,
Henry Cowell, and
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his for ...
, composed a set of pieces using this same process—writing a measure of music, with 1 or 2 additional notes (sources differ), folding it on the bar line then passing it to the next person. The pieces were later arranged by Robert Hughes and published as ''Party Pieces''.
*The band
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...
include the track "Exquisite Corpse" on their third studio album (''
The Sky's Gone Out'') (1982), which appears to have been created in this collaborative surrealist style. They returned to the method for 2022's "Drink the New Wine", their first new song in 14 years.
*The fifth track on the 1992 album
Sacred City by the British rock band
Shriekback is "Exquisite Corpse".
* The
They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants, often abbreviated as TMBG, is an American alternative rock and Children's music, children's band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years, Flansburgh and Linnell frequently performed as ...
1996 song "
Exquisite Dead Guy."
* The musical ''
Hedwig and the Angry Inch'' (1998) includes the song "Exquisite Corpse".
* The band
Warpaint named their debut EP ''Exquisite Corpse'' (2008) because of their collaborative songwriting style.
*
George Watsky
George Virden Watsky (born September 15, 1986) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, poet, author, and illustrator.
Watsky broke out as a rapper with his viral video "Pale kid raps fast" in 2011, which featured his tradem ...
's 2016 album ''x Infinity'' features the song "Exquisite Corpse" using this technique featuring verses by several artists.
* In December 2019, French alternative-pop-rock band
Therapie TAXI released the album ''Cadavre Exquis'', relating to the artistic visuals and collaborative production of the opus.
*Swedish composer
Anders Hillborg uses the technique in his 2002 orchestral work ''Exquisite Corpse''.
* In September 2020,
Polyvinyl Records
In polymer chemistry, vinyl polymers are a group of polymers derived from substituted vinyl () monomers. Their backbone is an extended alkane chain . In popular usage, "vinyl" refers only to polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Examples
Vinyl polymers are ...
released an 11-track compilation titled ''Exquisite Corpse'', featuring over 45 of the label's artists including
The Get Up Kids,
Jeff Rosenstock
Jeffrey Ernest Rosenstock (born September 7, 1982) is an American musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter from Long Island, New York. He is known for his former bands Bomb the Music Industry! and The Arrogant Sons of Bitches, as wel ...
and
American Football
American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...
, among others. The tracks were recorded remotely in the style of the game during the COVID-19 pandemic and a portion of the physical and digital album sales were donated to the non-profit MusiCares.
* In August 2022, the free improvisation group G.at.0 (
Pedro Alcalde, Núria Andorrà, Marina Hervás, Wade Matthews, Henar Rivière) presented ''17 minutes of free improvisation ("Cadavre Exquis")'' at the ''IF 2022 – Improvisation Festival'', organized and streamed online by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) at the
University of Guelph
The University of Guelph (abbreviated U of G) is a comprehensive Public university, public research university in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1964 after the amalgamation of Ontario Agricultural College (1874), the MacDonald I ...
, Canada. The piece, co-presented by 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos, was an example of collective spontaneous creation, where each performer contributed unpredictably, resulting in a collaborative and experimental sonic work.
Architecture
* In 2018, Simon Weir began producing catenary vaults where a dozen designers collaborate blindly using the exquisite corpse method.
Games
*In ''... and then we died'', players use word-fragment tarot cards to form words to tell the story of their collective deaths.
See also
*
Photoshop tennis
*
Poietic Generator
*
Comic jam
*
Round-robin story
*
Mindmap
*
Surrealist techniques
Surrealism in art, poetry, and literature uses numerous techniques and games to provide inspiration. Many of these are said to free imagination by producing a creative process free of conscious control. The importance of the Unconscious mind, u ...
*
Chinese whispers
*
Mad Libs
*
Reanimated collaboration
A reanimated collaboration (often shortened to reanimated collab or reanimate) is a type of collaborative fan film, usually involving fan-made animation, typically produced as a tribute to an existing film. The process involves each animator rec ...
Notes
External links
*
''Exquisite Corpse''(2006–2014), a collaborative digital illustration by artists James apRoberts and Brian Christopher
{{DEFAULTSORT:Exquisite Corpse
Paper-and-pencil games
Surrealist techniques
Collaboration
Random text generation
Collaborative writing
Language and mysticism