Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement

In 1924, the French writer and poet André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto, which outlined the tenets of the artistic movement. Responding in part to the horrors of the First World War, Breton described an aesthetic that aimed to unleash creative works arising from the unconscious rather than reason. Commemorating the manifesto’s centennial, this short documentary from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (MoMA) explores the surrealist exercise known as ‘exquisite corpse’, in which each participant creates one portion of a body, unaware of how the other participants’ contributions will look. Taking viewers through a history of the exquisite corpse up to today, the piece explores how these projects embody the surrealist emphasis on freedom, community and radical creativity.