About this artwork
The so-called cadavre exquis or exquisite corpse, a Surrealist visual game, was created in winter 1925–26, when members of the group gathered in the evenings. If conversation lagged, they invented games to spark the unconscious. The exquisite corpse grew out of one such invention, which reimagined the children’s game of “head, body, legs,” in which each participant adds to a drawing without seeing the preceding contributions, which are hidden by folding the paper. The results are strange, sometimes violent, combinations of images. The Surrealists produced many such drawings (the Art Institute has several; for example, 2018.333, 2018.334, and 2018.335), and these collaborative experiments were profoundly influential. The Chicago-based Hairy Who artists also played the game in the late 1960s, but with more playful results (for example, 2018.684, 2018.685, 2018.686, 2018.687, 2018.688, and 2018.689).
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Status
- On View, Gallery 397
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Department
- Prints and Drawings
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Artist
- Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
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Title
- Exquisite Corpse
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Place
- France (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1928
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Medium
- Pen and black ink, and graphite with smudging, with colored pencils and colored crayons on tan wove paper
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Inscriptions
- Inscribed, verso, upper left, in graphite: “Man Ray / Tanguy / Miro / Morise”; inscribed and dated, verso, upper center, in black ink, in Breton's hand: “"CADAVRE EZQUIS" (1928) / De haut en bas: Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise”; signed, verso, center right, in black ink: “André Breton”; inscribed verso, center left, in graphite: “60”; verso, lower right, in graphite: “68.200”
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Dimensions
- 36.2 × 23.1 cm (14 5/16 × 9 1/8 in.)
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Credit Line
- Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection
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Reference Number
- 2018.333
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Copyright
- © 2018 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris, © 2018 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Extended information about this artwork
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.
