In this pair of drawings, made in the same collaborative spirit as exquisite corpses, a combination of vigorous mark-making and erasure defaces the subject. Together, the works constitute one of thirty-seven pairs of paintings and drawings Hamilton and Roth produced together over three weeks in July 1976, in Cadaqués, Spain. It was Roth's idea that each work be accompanied by what he called a "certificate," a "separate but component drawn or painted version of each picture, which re-states the qualities (negative or not) of the 'original.'" The artists had very different working methods, and a combination of mutual respect and tension characterized the collaboration, one of several they shared. Roth once said of the pair’s dynamic, "He eats me, I eat him and then we see what's left."
Gallery label from Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration, March 14–July 9, 2012.
