Harrison To Unveil "Exquisite Corpse" at Canio's

By Joan Baum

For many of a certain age the phrase “exquisite or rotating corpse” may call to mind a paper-folding parlor game that was a staple of childhood arts and crafts: a person draws a head, then folds the paper down so that the next person to contribute can’t see what the first person has drawn. Brief start marks are indicated, and the second person draws a torso or arms, folds that part down, and passes the paper to the next in line, and so it goes until the feet are done. The final picture is a full figure, likely to be weird or comic-monstrous. But as a journalist and art historian Helen Harrison points out and draws on in her debut work of fiction, a murder mystery titled “Exquisite Corpse,” in the hands of artists, “exquisite corpse” came to exemplify attitudes, techniques and subject matter associated with the surrealists, especially those who fled Nazi Europe in the 1930s and settled in New York.

Originally called “le cadavre exquis” and representing a poetry game, the exquisite corpse — when it turned visual — could become serious art, as seen in a color reproduction Ms. Harrison includes in her book, a collaborative pen, ink and crayon drawing executed by Man Ray, André Breton, Yves Tanguy and Max Morise in 1928, and called “Exquisite Corpse.” Ms. Harrison’s book, subtitled “Death in Surrealist New York” and set in 1943, wastes no time linking the idea of exquisite corpse with a dead body that turns up on page one. The body is discovered by the famous surrealist André Breton who is shocked to see that it’s the Afro-Asian Cuban-born painter Wilfedo Lam (1902-1982), and that the body has been decked out to look like an exquisite corpse. (Lam’s gorgeous 1943 gouache on paper mounted on canvas “The Jungle,” in the permanent collection at MoMA, is reproduced in color at the end of the book). Mr. Breton is stunned: who is responsible for Mr. Lam’s death and why? For sure, given the surrealist decoration, it had to be someone from the close community of artists who slept, drank and partied with one another at the time.

The author, the director of The Pollock Krasner House in Springs, says that the novel was a long time coming. “I worked on it on and off for years, it would come to me in fits and starts,” but at least one prompt to finish was her awareness that November was “Write A Novel” month and she was determined to make the deadline. She did, of course, and produced a thought-provoking narrative “ in which historical figures and invented characters interact.” She read a lot of mysteries and was obviously impressed with cliff hanging short chapters (the book has 84).

[caption id="attachment_56183" align="alignleft" width="226"] Helen Harrison.[/caption]

“It was a stretch for me,” says Ms. Harrison, moving from the scholarly world “of scrupulous facts” she still inhabits to one that invited “lying a little.” Though Mr. Lam didn’t die until 40 years after the incidents in the book take place, Harrison killed him off because “ he was such a perfect character. He had the attributes of someone whose story could be wonderfully complicated.” He didn’t live in New York, so his life could more easily be manipulated than the lives of those who hung around the Village. And what a surprise, she adds, when, doing research, she discovered that a cousin of hers had been the Cuban ambassador in the early 1930s.

Her training as a reporter stood her in good stead. “When you write fiction, it’s your obligation to come up with a story that makes sense” and is true to the spirit and reality of the depicted time. Indeed, many scenes in “Exquisite Corpse” take place in Greenwich Village in and around landmark buildings and streets, and also in Spanish Harlem and Chinatown, areas she revisited to check on geography and architecture as they were in the 1943 (“the year I was born,” notes Ms. Harrison). A specialist on Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Ms. Harrison had to include them, if briefly, and here they are --he argumentative, especially when fueled by alcohol, she hostile. Ms. Harrison also included other historical figures, among them Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine, chief medical examiner Milton Helpern, the proprietor of Café Society Barney Josephson, Lena Horne, Willem de Kooning (“given an awkward accent,” says Ms. Harrison), Alfred Barr, the founding director of MoMA , Breton, who was working for Voice of America at the time, the famous critic Harold Rosenberg, the art patron Peggy Guggenheim, presiding over her gallery Art of This Century and perhaps not that well known – until now – the multitalented Roberto Matta and his first wife, Anne who were for about a decade part of the expatriate art community in the city. The book is fun and will likely spur interest to find out more about some of the characters and maybe even revive interest in the old parlor game.

On Saturday, October 8 at 5 pm Ms. Harrison will be reading from her novel at Canio’s Books on Main Street in Sag Harbor. For more information, visit caniosbooks.com.