©

LARI PITTMAN
with Roy Dowell, Tom Knechtel, and Megan Williams

Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse)

1992
colored pencil, graphite, enamel, and acrylic on paper, with collage
14.25 x 10.25 inches

A cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) is a game-based art form invented by the Surrealists that depends on a formulaic method: adjective, noun, verb, noun, to create poems; head, torso (often in upper and lower parts), and legs for images. Each is based on an accidental or unconscious collaboration of at least two artists, that is, each provides his or her part without knowing what the other has selected. In 1992 The Drawing Center, an alternative space in New York, asked many artists to participate in reviving this form. Pittman was involved in a collaboration with his friends: Roy Dowell provided the head, a characteristic mix of collage elements ranging from photographic to purely abstract; Tom Knechtel's thorax is a radiant, finely rendered heart; Megan Williams created the lower body out of her signature wiggly intestines; and Pittman contributed the feet, pilgrims' hobnailed boots from his current painting series, behind rows of flourishing grass. On the one hand we have again that perfect correspondence between Pittman's work and Dowell's, whose dialogue frames the composition. Knechtel's Renaissance-like heart synecdoche for the chest, and Williams' intestinal trunk similarly complements their style. The conversational ease of this composition suggests a kind of "school" of painting, a familial resemblance that signals more than just amity.

From E. Brown, Lari Pittman Drawings, University Art Museum, UCSB, 1996.

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