Forster Art Complex Ross Gallery: October 24 - December 9, 2022

Tiger Dietz

Christine Tomasino

Christine Tomasino

Christine Tomasino

Christine Tomasino

Rebecca Tobias

Lexie Ross

Mari Wisner

Lexie Ross

Mari Wisner

Mari Wisner

Anita Renaud

Shannon Orr

Shannon Orr

Anita Renaud

Shannon Orr

painting of person working at vent hood with small framed photo mounted on top

Rebecca Tobias

small framed painting of blue gloved hands with syringe

Rebecca Tobias

Abbey Rennaker

The Exquisite Corpse Game

Was a Surrealist artists’ invention from the early 20th century. The Surrealism art movement was founded by Andre Breton when he formalized the idea with his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto. That text called for art that engaged the unconscious by using dreams and automatic drawings as creative fodder. One way of unlocking psychic space, according to Breton, was through games—and he and his cohort were constantly inventing them. One of their favorites was the old parlor game called Consequences, in which players took turns writing phrases that eventually formed an absurd story (sort of like an early version of Mad Libs). Before long, Breton and his compatriots swapped words for drawings, dubbing the new game Exquisite Corpse, after a sentence that emerged during a round of Consequences: “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.”

Art Fundamentals 113 B class played their own version of this game with each folding a sheet of drawing paper into three sheets and then three randomly chosen students would draw their own “exquisite corpse”. The basic guidelines were to use the idea of the top being a head, the middle a torso, and the bottom fold representing the base or legs. Each drawing was done with no clue as to what the preceding artists had drawn; small guidelines were the only clue to the preceding image. Each sheet had a simple word to give some clue as to what the image before might be.

Please enjoy the works from these artists and perhaps be inspired to play your own surrealist drawing games.