Sunday, August 9, 2009

BANK POINTS #2: The Exquisite Corpse



Drawing by G. Knutson, V. Hugo, A. Breton, T. Tzara, 1936
A Drawing Game For Three or more players.

This is the art version of the most famous Surrealist game, much like Heads, Bodies, and Legs in England and Petits Papiers in France.


Each player takes a sheet of paper and folds it into equal sections, as many as there are players. The sheets are smoothed out and each player draws whatever he will in the top section, allowing the lines to cross the crease by a few millimeters. The sheet is then refolded back onto this crease to conceal the drawing and passed to the next player who begins the next section from these lines. And so on, until the last section, when it is unfolded and the result revealed. (The sheet may be passed back for the first player to give it a title before the picture is revealed.)