In this collaborative collage, seven Surrealist artists and poets assembled an anthropomorphic form by stacking found printed images of mundane objects: an umbrella is the upper body, a trunk is the torso, and nested pots are two thighs, which one participant extended in pencil. The presence of the umbrella recalls a phrase the Surrealists adopted from the poet Comte de Lautréamont (born Isidore Ducasse) as an ideal description of the principle of juxtaposition: "As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table."
Gallery label from Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration, March 14–July 9, 2012.
