'EXQUISITE CORPSE': EXHIBIT BRINGS SURREALISM TO LIFE
Posted on March 1, 2012
The Department of Art and
Design resurrects an old parlor game with Over
My Dead Body: Reviving the Exquisite Corpse, an exhibition opening at 3:30
p.m. March 8 in the Vulcan Gallery, inside Vulcan Hall. The exhibition will remain on
view from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays through March 16. The exhibition is based the
surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, a name taken from the original French term cadavre
exquis, or “rotating cadaver.” “This game is essentially a
sort of social experiment in which a group of people collectively participate
to make a drawing or written phrase, but none of the participants can see or
know what the rest of the group is doing,” explained Valerie Herrero, a fine arts
major and president of the Associated Artists of Cal U. “Only in the end is the work
revealed.” Over My Dead Body will feature paintings, drawings, installations,
prose, poetry and music created by students and faculty in the departments of
Art and Design, Philosophy, and English, as well as the University Honors
Program. Artworks will be unveiled and
installed at the opening event. Most were created by multiple
artists who didn’t see the result of their collaboration until after it was
complete. In one project, for example,
students each blindly contributed a word — a noun, an adjective, a verb — to
create a sentence revealed only after they each had said their piece. Poets, musicians, painters and
sculptors used a similar approach to building collaborative compositions. “Everyone has a different
perspective, and this exhibit will showcase that,” Herrero said. “There are
hundreds of different ideas that play into one central idea of a group working
together. About ‘Exquisite Corpse’
About the exhibit
Cal U
Department of Art and Design faculty members Maggy Aston (left),Todd Pinkham
(center) and junior Valerie Herrero (right) display and work on projects for
“Over My Dead Body: Reviving the Exquisite Corpse.” The collaborative exhibit
opens at 3:30 p.m. on March 8 in the Vulcan Student Gallery, located on the
first floor of Vulcan Hall. The exhibit will then be available for weekday
viewing through March 16 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
