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Raymond Queneau. Exercices de style. Gallimard, 1963
“Queneau and Massin began working together in 1961 with Cent mille milliards de poèmes, a book designed in the spirit of an “exquisite corpse” and first concrete manifestation of the OuLiPo research group, combining mathematics (probabilities) and linguistics (…) In 1963 their mutual understanding le to the illustrated version of Excercices de style (the first edition of the text alone was published in 1947), a Dada-inspired combination of typography and message. A series of ninety-nine short pieces recount the same banal incident (…) The painter Jacques Carelman, a founder member of OuPeinPo (Ouvroir de Peinture Potentielle), suggested adding a series of visual “exercises in style”, drawn, painted or sculpted and presented in parallel to the text, adding a new dimension to the book that would go beyond pure visual translation.”
Laetitia Wolff. Massin. London: Phaidon, 2007 (p. 123)