- Start with a paper and pen Each player starts with a piece of paper and a drawing tool and sits so that his or her drawing is somewhat hidden from the person in the next seat. The element of surprise at the end is half the fun!
- Start your drawing Each person draws a head and neck. This can be human, animal, alien, robot, whatever.
Explaining Exquisite Corpse, the Surrealist Drawing Game That Just Won’t Die
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky), Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy, and Max Morise, Exquisite Corpse, 1928. © 2018 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. © 2018 Sucessió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
André Masson, Max Ernst, and Max Morise, Exquisite Corpse, 1927. © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Frida Kahlo isn’t known for her humor. But in 1932, the legendary Surrealist made a little-known, irrefutably funny drawing. In it, a cartoonish depiction of her husband—the macho muralist Diego Rivera—shows off droopy breasts, very large nipples, and legs that teeter uncomfortably on high heels. Instead of a paintbrush, he wields a broom.
As it turns out, this delightful bit of satire was a product of one of Kahlo’s favorite games: Exquisite Corpse. Participants play by taking turns drawing sections of a body on a sheet of paper, folded to hide each individual contribution. The first player adds a head—then, without knowing what that head looks like, the next artist adds a torso, and so on. In this way, a strange, comical, often grotesque creature is born.
Kahlo created the caricature of Rivera with her friend and fellow artist, Lucienne Bloch. It was one of several Exquisite Corpse drawings they made together during a trip to New York in 1932 (meanwhile, Rivera was completing his “Detroit Industry” murals back in the Midwest). The weirdest and best drawing of the bunch depicts a miniature head resembling Kahlo’s own, paired with a cleavage-enhancing corset, hairy legs, and a fig leaf from which a peeing phallus emerges.
Jake and Dinos Chapman, Exquisite Corpse (Rotring Club) I, 2000. © Jake and Dinos Chapman. Courtesy of the artists.
Jake and Dinos Chapman, Exquisite Corpse (Rotring Club) IV, 2000. © Jake and Dinos Chapman. Courtesy of the artists.
Advertisement
Amongst her Surrealist counterparts, Kahlo was notorious for her racy, downright erotic contributions to the Exquisite Corpse genre. But like Kahlo, many of the game’s devotees used it to experiment with styles or modes of representation that pushed them beyond their own day-to-day practices. In particular, they were enamored with the exercise’s inherent spontaneity and dependence on chance. As Surrealist poet Simone Kahn, an early adopter of the game, remembered in a 1975 essay, “We were at once recipients of and contributors to the joy of witnessing the sudden appearance of creatures none of us had foreseen, but which we ourselves had nonetheless created.”
Exquisite Corpse was hatched in 1925 by the Surrealists André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, and Marcel Duchamp during one of their ritual hangouts on Paris’s Rue du Château. Breton had effectively founded the movement a year prior, formalizing it 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.”
Surrealists immediately took to the collaborative game. Many of the movement’s practitioners played it regularly, almost addicted to the automatic drawing it inspired.
“The suggestive power of those arbitrary meetings…was so astounding, so dazzling, and verified surrealism’s theses and outlook so strikingly, that the game became a system, a method of research, a means of exaltation as well as stimulation, and even, perhaps, a kind of drug,” Kahn wrote. “From then on, it was delirium. All night long we put on a fantastic drama for ourselves.”
The Combination Man Drawing Game
INSTRUCTIONS
- Start with a paper and pen Each player starts with a piece of paper and a drawing tool and sits so that his or her drawing is somewhat hidden from the person in the next seat. The element of surprise at the end is half the fun!
- Start your drawing Each person draws a head and neck. This can be human, animal, alien, robot, whatever.
We always get such a kick out of seeing the finished drawings!
Have you played the Combination Man (or Exquisite Corpse) drawing game, either yourself or with your kids?
Want More Drawing Activities? Visit the Kids Art Spot where we have a Drawing Workshop for Kids. This online workshop for kids and families features 10 super fun and easy drawing activities, each with a step-by-step video tutorial and printable instructions.
More Drawing Games for Kids
- Double Doodle Art for Kids
- 12 Kids Art Games for Fun and Creativity
- A Back-and-Forth Drawing Game for Kids
- A Simple Heart Drawing Activity
- A Fun Family Drawing Activity That Will Make the Everyone Laugh!
- Magazine Pictures as Drawing Prompts
- The Scribble Drawing Game for Kids
Pin It for Later
Related Posts
The Scribble Drawing Game for Kids The scribble drawing game turns drawing prompts into a fun, interactive drawing game that can…
A Back-and-Forth Drawing Game for Kids This back-and-forth drawing game is so much fun for kids, or kids and adults! Each…
Fun Drawing Ideas for Kids (+ Free Printable!) Drawing prompts are one of our favorite creative drawing ideas for kids. These inspire kids…
How to Use Eye Stickers for Creative Drawing Ideas Create drawing ideas for kids with eye stickers! This is a fun and playful way…
Encourage Childrens Creativity with Drawing Games and Silliness Today I’m interviewing my friend Jeanette Nyberg from Craftwhack about children’s creativity, drawing games for…
The Scribble Drawing Game for Kids The scribble drawing game turns drawing prompts into a fun, interactive drawing game that can…
NEW Work
Jim Moir is a prolific artist producing paintings, drawings and prints on an almost daily basis. His latest works can be found here.
PRINTS
We have a huge range of collectable Limited Edition prints for sale. These are all signed and have been printed using museum quality materials.
THE ARTIST
JIM MOIR
Widely celebrated for his irreverent wit, glorious eccentricity and tremendous creativity, Jim Moir attended the Sir John Cass Art School in London at the age of 22 before becoming a household name in British comedy for tv work including Vic Reeves Big Night Out, Shooting Stars, Vic Reeves Turner Prize Moments, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Coronation Street and House of Fools.
Art has always remained his first love and his original, eccentric and mischievous artwork has been exhibited at institutions including the Royal Academy in London.
The anarchy and wonderful eccentricity for which he is synonymous is evident in his bold, vibrant and often surreal artworks which merge his interest in the natural world and his witty imagination.
‘Moir is a compulsive artist, recording his thoughts and observations with abandon. The imagined and experienced worlds are chronicled in a prolific outpouring of ideas and thoughts beyond everyday life.’
Calvin Winner, February 2018
‘Jim doesn’t just see birds, he looks at them, so intensely that he understands them. That transcends painting or art – it’s not about reproduction, it’s about translation. About being able to speak bird with paint.’
‘The Warhol of bird painting’
Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
