Cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse)

Cadavre exquis, the exquisite corpse, is a collective method of drawing or writing invented by the Surrealists around 1925. Several participants add a fragment to a shared work in turn without seeing the earlier parts: the sheet is folded to hide what has already been made, leaving visible only the connecting lines. The result is a strange, unpredictable creature or phrase born of the collective unconscious. The name comes from the first sentence produced in the literary version of the game: the exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine. Participants included Andre Breton, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and Joan Miro. The method embodied key Surrealist principles, automatism, chance, the refusal of individual control, and the freeing of imagination from logic. The exquisite corpse became not merely a game but a serious creative tool that influenced later collective and performative practices and is still used in art education to loosen the imagination.