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Surrealist game of questions and answers

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Author

Authors André Breton, Benjamin Péret, Yves Tanguy

Description

Handwritten manuscript by André Breton, Yves Tanguy and Benjamin Péret, dated December 1933. One section of this session would be published in Documents 34. 

The game of questions and answers, invented during the 1920s, is similar to that of ‘the exquisite corpse’, other than that it works with the meaning of words rather than their juxtaposition. Among the participants in the session presented here we can recognise Péret, Breton, and Tanguy; a few fragments of the exchanges between Breton and Tanguy would be used in ‘Le dialogue en 1934’, published in Documents 34 Intervention surréaliste in Bruxelles in June 1934. The session itself was doubtless held in December 1933, judging from other documents of the same type and on the same paper, which have that date on them. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Surrealist game of questions and answers, undated [December 1933]. 
- 8 in-16 oblong manuscript pages on blue paper in blue and black ink by Breton, Péret, Tanguy and one other participant; the questions and answers are grouped in threes, and the one who answers poses the following questions:

‘1 – What is foolish? 1 – It’s the young married woman. 
2 – What is old age? 2 – It’s a coward.
3 – What is beauty? 3 – It is someone falsely svelte.’ [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Jean-Paul Morel discusses an ‘expanded game of questions and answers, after a visit to the flea market by André Breton and Alberto Giacometti, published as a postscript to an article called “Équation de l'objet trouvé”, in the magazine Documents 34, Brussels, special issue, “Interventions surrealists”, June 1934’. (Mélusine, astu) [Atelier André Breton website, 2013]

Bibliography

- « Le dialogue en 1934 » dans Documents 34, n° spécial Intervention surréaliste, n°1, Bruxelles, juin 1934, post-scriptum à « Équation de l'objet trouvé », p. 24-25.