News Detail
Exquisite Corpses
According to art teacher Lucy Nelson, "all art is a reflection, a product, and a creator of the culture and times in which it is situated." She went on to explain to her advanced-drawing students that Surrealism, and its immediate predecessor Dada, provide a powerful example of this. The Tate Modern website describes Surrealism as an avant-garde cultural movement in Europe after WWI that sought to balance rational thought with the unconscious to revolutionize the human experience.
Nelson introduced her advanced-drawing students to work by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Max Ernst. She cautioned her students to notice that even though the art often appears nonsensical or silly, it belies the very serious and political idea that rationalism and logic led to the atrocities of war.
The movement’s artists felt that art should be born out of the irrational realm of the unconscious, free from convention, in order to challenge cultural norms and values. They would often incorporate dreams or themes of childhood wonder in their work.
The concept of the unconscious or subconscious was fairly new in the early 20th century and was coined by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Exquisite Corpse was originally a parlor game based on words. To play, each participant wrote a word or phrase on a piece of paper and then folded it so that the next player could not see the previous contributions. This resulted in nonsensical phrases like “Le cadaver exquis boira le vin nouveau” (The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine), hence the name of the game.
As a drawing game, artists fold a piece of paper three or four times (one section of the paper for the number of players). Each participant draws on their section, then folds it over and passes it on to the next player who can’t see the previous drawings. The resulting figures, like the phrases, involve “elements of unpredictability, chance, unseen elements, and group collaboration--all in service of disrupting the waking mind’s penchant for order.” The directions for this game were first written in the journal La Revolution Surrealiste in 1927.
Nelson introduced her advanced-drawing students to work by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Max Ernst. She cautioned her students to notice that even though the art often appears nonsensical or silly, it belies the very serious and political idea that rationalism and logic led to the atrocities of war.
The movement’s artists felt that art should be born out of the irrational realm of the unconscious, free from convention, in order to challenge cultural norms and values. They would often incorporate dreams or themes of childhood wonder in their work.
The concept of the unconscious or subconscious was fairly new in the early 20th century and was coined by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Exquisite Corpse was originally a parlor game based on words. To play, each participant wrote a word or phrase on a piece of paper and then folded it so that the next player could not see the previous contributions. This resulted in nonsensical phrases like “Le cadaver exquis boira le vin nouveau” (The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine), hence the name of the game.
As a drawing game, artists fold a piece of paper three or four times (one section of the paper for the number of players). Each participant draws on their section, then folds it over and passes it on to the next player who can’t see the previous drawings. The resulting figures, like the phrases, involve “elements of unpredictability, chance, unseen elements, and group collaboration--all in service of disrupting the waking mind’s penchant for order.” The directions for this game were first written in the journal La Revolution Surrealiste in 1927.
Poet Nicolas Calas described these works as revealing the “unconscious reality in the personality of the group.”
© Falmouth Academy. All Rights Reserved.