This game from the 1920s inspired our recent Coffee House activity. Invented by members of the Surrealist group — including Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert and André Breton– they believed games could unlock the unconscious, “the wellspring of the imagination.”

The game can be played with images or words. A sentence created by a group of Surrealists gave the new game its name: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau” (“The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine”). Yes, bizarre. But we gave it a go!

We played using images, with three tables of artists.

Members drew a head on a piece of paper. They then folded the paper to hide the drawing except for small guidelines and passed it to the player on the right. Number two added another part (a torso of a human or animal, perhaps), and so on. The final figure could be fantastical, humorous, lewd, disturbing — or all of the above.

After the first round, folks focused!

Nineteen folks took part with . . . varying degrees of enthusiasm. Interesting to discover people who relish freedom and draw ANYTHING versus those who prefer clearcut rules and guidelines, requiring bodies to be put together . . . properly. So many ways to art (active verb!)

We shared, to laughter and comments.

The next Coffee House will be 19Mar2025 at 7 p.m. at the Sandfield Centre.

Photos by Milo Smith EXCEPT for #5!