Description

Manuscript of the surrealist game from 21 January 1934, by Elsie Houston, Péret, Hérold, Brauner, Tanguy and Breton. On 21 January 1934, Elsie, Péret, Herold, Brauner, Tanguy and Breton play ‘exquisite corpse’ - probably the most famous of the surrealist games, but of which few examples remain in the archives. Once again, beneath social amusement lies a heuristic and poetic mission to reject the straight and narrow paths of reason, in favour of chance and its zigzags full of surprises: this should enable the discovery, not matter how fleeting, of other relationships between things and words. Automatism involved only a single writer and was related more to the unconscious than to chance. In the 1930s, however, the ‘objective chance’ valued by Breton and close to Hegelian memory took precedence over references to psychoanalysis. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005] Autograph texts, 21 January 1934. - 5 pages in-16 oblong handwritten by Breton, Hérold, Brauner, Tanguy, Péret and Elsie Houston on the back of yellow paper in black ink, blue ink, black pencil and red pencil. On the reverse, Breton has noted the date and the names of the participants, twice. The five pages all begin with the same sentence, though in a different order in the original French: "White / bread / will shake / the oblong / breast / that laughs." [Auction Catalogue, 2003]

Creation date	21-janv.-34
Bibliographical material	5 pages in-16
Languages	French
Reference	205000
Breton Auction, 2003	Lot 2192
Keywords	Assemblage or collage, Cadacre exquis, Surrealist Games, Poetry
Set	[Surrealists Games] Cadavres exquis, [Jeux surréalistes] enveloppe Jeux surréalistes
Permanent link	https://www.andrebreton.fr/en/work/56600100078640