2D Art

Exquisite Corpse Project

"You have to systematically create confusion; it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life." - Salvador Dalí

"Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist." - René Magritte

Theory

We've examined the "emotional power" and poetry that arises when an artist juxtaposes two distant realities and how such is the hallmark of Surrealism. Andre Breton, a father of Surrealism, refers to an essay by the poet, Pierre Reverdy. Breton writes, "The image is a pure creation of the mind. It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two, more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be (and) the greater its emotional power and poetic reality..." (Click here to read the complete Surrealist Manifesto.)

Breton's assertion that art must be "a pure creation of the mind" points to a belief in the importance of imagination whenever we make an image. The Surrealists were masters of the imagination and devised clever strategies to harness its power. One such strategy was a simple drawing game called, "Exquisite Corpse". In this game, a piece of paper is folded into thirds or quarters and then passed from artist to artist, each one taking a turn to secretly fill one folded side with some kind of imagery. Before passing the paper, a tiny bit of line was made across the fold to provide a starting point for the next artist; a sort of registration mark to keep the different parts of the image aligned.

When all of the folded sides were filled, the paper would be unfolded to reveal a surprising image that combined biomorphic, zoomorphic, humanoid, inanimate and mechanistic features. The success of this exercise depends on keeping each artist unaware of what the others had drawn, thereby preventing the drawing from evolving in a logical, sensible way. The end result is an image that resembles something more akin to a dream than to reality. Precious few of these works have survived the intervening 95 years.

Recent Examples

Contemporary examples from an elementary art classroom:

Contemporary drawings emulating the Exquisite Corpse game, but made by solo artists:

Project Description

OBJECTIVE: Use the Exquisite Corpse drawing game as inspiration to create a finished drawing that juxtaposes two or more distant realities. Look to the world around you - animals, objects, people, your own body - to choose realities for your work. Your drawing must be naturalistically rendered with convincing shadows, textures and details. Your exquisite corpse must appear seamless (like the example above of the cat-snake). The effect should be more subtle and convincing than the jarring transitions of an image produced during an exquisite corpse game. It should seem almost as though you've presented the viewer with a strange being that would not be found on this world, but COULD perhaps exist in a different universe where evolution took a very different path or the physical laws are completely different than our own (like the kind of believability that often accompanies bizarre dream imagery).

Examples of Student Works

Note

TECHNICAL: You may use any medium or combination of mediums that you desire, provided your finished work exhibits a FULL RANGE of values, from the darkest-black to the lightest-white, distributed over the expected bell-curve depending on the nature of your subject. As discussed in previous projects, graphite pencil will allow you to generate a wide range of values, as long as you use a wide range of hardness from the hardest H pencil, 8H or harder, to the softest B pencil, 8B or softer. You might find it necessary to combine graphite with charcoal or pen & ink-wash to get the black that you need. Also, use a support that suits your medium: heavy watercolour paper for aqueous mediums; a cold-pressed paper for inherently soft mediums, like Conté and chalk pastels; a hot-pressed paper for hard mediums, like graphite pencils.

Before you submit your work for grading, ensure that it's properly fixed (use the Spray Booth and leave your drawing in there until it's fully off-gassed) and that the support is clean and free of wrinkles and other defects.

AESTHETICS: Your work should address all of the Principles of Composition, including emphasis, variety, balance, movement, unity, rhythm, proportion and scale (these last two may be exaggerated if your subject matter requires it).

Further Research

I would recommend these videos about art from an excellent PBS series:

The Case for Surrealism (Art Assignment, Season 3 Episode 31 | 10m 17s)
Exquisite Corpse - Hugo Crosthwaite(Art Assignment, Season 3 Episode 9 | 9m 34s)

Demos

Artist, Jono Dry, draws naturalistic (nearly hyper-realistic) exquisite corpses with dramatic, chiaroscuro lighting. His technique is instructive because he works primarily with values instead of drawing lines and then filling them in (like a novice might). He manages to create a wonderful sense of illusory space and depth using only graphite powder, pencils and a blending stomp: