Exquisite Corpse

An Analytical Critique of Two Exquisite Corpse Drawings

By Aaron Kinchen



Two exquisite corpse drawings were completed during Tuesday’s class session, varying wildly in style and appearance. Other than myself, the other two members of the small group included Lisa, the rotund lady from China; and a cheerful, attractive, hirsute young man from Pakistan whose colorful remarks enliven class discussion (unfortunately, his name escapes me.)

The first image seems to caricature a portrait of a man from the late 1500s. The face features a van-dyked gentleman with hair long enough to tuck behind his ears. The forehead is high, with a strong furrowed brow. My initial impression of this grinning face was “Shakespeare”. The Bard’s body is a tree trunk. Over his chest, where his heart should be, there is a hole. This depression appears as a cored out part of the tree where a great branch once embedded its fibers. The rest of the nondescript torso leads the viewer’s gaze down to the hips of the corpse. He appears to be donning gaily decorated tight pants. Around the hips, there are frills accentuating a horizontal line. The garment’s material is full of rapidly struck pen marks, repeating an “x” to create a pattern. The feet look more like cotton blossoms with elongated thorns protruding as phalanges.

The face so clearly masculine, clothing slightly feminine, with the body of a hollowed out tree; these innate elements make it difficult to deduce meaning from this exquisite corpse. Perhaps this man has an urge to wear women’s clothing. Societal pressures force him to repress these feelings. Therefore, where his heart could be, is simply a hole.

The second image depicts a longed necked female’s head, sitting atop a boxy torso. Instead of legs, there is an enormous high heeled shoe with a wheel attached at the metatarsal region. Dissecting this creature from the top down, her hair is large, voluminous, and angular in places. She has a thick head band which covers ears. Her bangs stop at the mid-forehead level, which leaves room to showcase her long eyelashes. Her nose is slight, and her lips are rather large and out of proportion for her face. She has a round jaw, not to pointy, and not much of a chin, either. Her neck is long, nearly twice the length of her head. About two-thirds of her neck is covered in stripes that inch up at intervals from her shoulders. Below her shoulders, there are two circles (meant to be exposed breasts) with dots in the center, to denote her nipples. Overlapping her left breast is a heart, with the letters L O V E oozing out from it toward the floor. Her left arm is much longer than the right arm, and reaches down over her crotch.

From the waist down, she is all stiletto with a wheel. Perhaps this means that she is a woman on the go. Forced to over style her hair and stretch herself to the limit, as is evinced by the overly long arm, it is no wonder that her heart doesn’t hold love.