http://www.marcelduchamp.net

Dadarts.com has interesting Duchampian photos

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:07:31 GMT

If you want to see some interesting photos of Duchamp and his works go to Dadart.com. Images include Duchamp and his wife, Teeny, with John Cage in 1968 playing electronic chess and an image, shown above of Duchamp in Andy Warhol s New York studio.

Alec Nevala-Lee, author inspired by Duchamp

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 08:07:31 GMT

Alec Nevala-Lee blogs about when the Duchamp inspiration struck: "While doing research on art history at the Brooklyn Public Library, I stumbled across the wonderful book Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? by James Elkins, who explores the issue of why we';re collectively drawn to interpret and tell stories about pictorial works of art..." Read more

What did Marcel Duchamp tell Bill Griffith?

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:07:31 GMT

Alan Bisbort in an interview with underground cartoonist Bill Griffith (a.k.a. Zippy) reveals details about Griffith s brief encounter with Marcel Duchamp when he was 19 years old. Griffith was a student at Pratt . He told the famed artist at the master s restrospective exhibition that he, Griffith wanted to be an artist.

Duchamp s friend, John Cage, Celebrated

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:07:31 GMT

Steven Rosen, City Beat, writes that Carl Solway, recently celebrated his 50th year as a "gallerist" in Cincinnati. Solway spoke to arts enthusiasts at Hamilton';s Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park about "the milestone" of his new exhibition on Marcel Duchamp s friend, John Cage.

Marcel Duchamp on YouTube

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:07:31 GMT

If you search "Marcel Duchamp, artist" on YouTube, there are over 3,000 results. Video interviews with Duchamp are among the must-sees for any Duchamp fan. There are videos of artists whose work is inspired by Duchamp and videos of Duchamp playing or discussing chess.

Portraits of Duchamp on Only Images

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:07:31 GMT

The web site, Only Images, has a good selection of photos of Marcel Duchamp. The site states: "This [web site] is dedicated to the creators who have influenced my creative energy. To the people who have informed my art and moved me. Enjoy as much as I have."

Marcel Duchamp s Exhibition History

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:07:31 GMT

DadaCompanion.com has published a useful list of exhibitions. "The following [list] is offered not as a complete list of exhibitions by Marcel Duchamp, but as a comprehensive selection intended to give a survey of his activities and the way his work came to be known. Invaluable sources for a complete listing are the publications by Francis M. Naumann and Hector Obalk and Timothy Shipe for Arturo Schwarz."

A La Duchamp, Jillian Mayer Chews Off Her Arms For Art Basel

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The title of Jillian Mayer's video submission to Art Basel may be inspired by Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., but her grotesque content certainly takes matters a step further. In H.I.L.M.D.A., a section from Love Trips: A Triptych on Love, Mayer chews off her own arms. Actually, she only physically chews off one her limbs, the first she simply rips off with her as of yet intact other arm. The piece recalls the famous, and armless, statue of Aphrodite (or Venus) de Milo, which S. C. Dumont D Urville had described in Two Voyages to the South Seas, Memoirs of Captain Jules as "a naked woman with an apple in her raised left hand, the right hand holding a draped sash falling from hips to feet, both hands damaged and separated from the body." Mayer's understands the loss of the Aphrodite's arms to be a kind of self-sacrifice, an affected choice, that ultimately becomes the icon of western beauty for centuries. Her project hopes to re-appropriate an original much like Duchamp had done. She elaborates in an interview with the Huffington Post: "like Duchamp's seminal work, H.I.L.M.D.A. also forces viewers to reexamine the living Venus that stands before an audience. It recontextualizes both the accepted meaning of the original work, context, and narrative." Think of it what you will, we'd just rather not have hear those sound effects.

John Morse and the Practical Art

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Art, as Duchamp would have it, can be discovered both everywhere and nowhere in the world around us. Even the most mundane of objects can appear wondrous when an artist elevates their status, granting both title (or in some cases "untitled") and with it a world of implied significance. Conversely, certain art objects are embedded so deeply into everyday experience that we forget them, and the allure of their design disintegrates in the face of their use-value. The New York City Department of Transportation, as NPR informs us, is attempting to reinvigorate the presence of utilitarian art - to draw attention to that which is so often, frequently with dangerous consequences, ignored. Artist John Morse has designed twelve novel traffic signs for the city of New York (ten in English, two in Spanish), each accompanied by a witty haiku. The striking images, executed in bold solid stretches of color, are visually appealing - the stark and occasionally comedic scenes that they portray catch the attention of passersby, who stop to read their subcaptions. Far from trivializing the seriousness of traffic accidents, the humor evident in each crafty haiku is extremely pragmatic. Typical traffic signage is ignored because it is boring; these new experimental designs serve to enliven the passing pedestrian and make him or her more aware of the surrounding environment. While traditional warnings have been completely dulled to us by consistent exposure, these unique, eye-catching works manage to draw us back into the world around us, hopefully avoiding future violent run-ins. If you live in New York City (Manhattan and the boroughs), be sure to keep your eyes out for these comic and attractive new additions to our streetscape.

Who Says a Sandwich Can t Be Art?

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Of all the news posts you could have expected to see here at MarcelDuchamp.net, you probably never imagined that a sandwich would gain our headline. Well, turns out one has. This jewel is composed simply of two pieces of toast containing butter, salt, and pepper (that's all folks); and, it has officially been decreed the cheapest sandwich in Great Britain by a team of scientists (according to NPR). It should go without saying that these scientists are not without senses of humor. They discuss the statement such a "sandwich" is capable of making upon its eaters. You can judge the quality of their puns for yourselves. Here's a snippet from their conversation: Peter: The layers! This is the culinary equivalent equivalent of a Rothko painting. Or it s like a sandwich by Marcel Duchamp! It questions the essence of sandwich and language both! Ian: Hey professor, why don t you find us a painting of bacon in your fancy books? Mike: Ceci n'est pas une delicious. Eva: I'll take my sandwich to Gogh.

An Artist Meets a Composer at a Party...

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

For those interested in collecting trivia, Marcel Duchamp met composer Igor Stravinsky at a party in New York in 1966. As they parted, Duchamp turned to Stravinsky and said: "Maestro, see you in another 50 years."

Huang Yong Ping and Xiamen Dada

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Huang Yong Ping was one of the founding members of the Chinese Xiamen Dada group, inaugurated in 1986 with a series of provocative group exhibitions. Members of the group had accumulated bits of knowledge about the original Dada movement from miscellaneous books and magazines that could be found in the island city of Xiamen. Huang Yong Ping and his friends felt an immediate kinship with the past movement and decided to integrate a number of Dadaist principles, in addition to its name, into their practice. The cultural reforms that began in China during the 1980s asserted a sort of prescribed teleology onto the Chinese populace—the divide between the dreadful past and the glorious future allowed no room for the present, which was left to tangle with the vicissitudes of its situation without help. This backdrop naturally found itself reflected by progressive artists in binary themes that contrasted substance / / nothingness and fate / / chance. As Hou Hanru writes in "Change is the Rule" (2005), implementing these themes permitted the Xiamen Dadaists to "transgress the linear order of things, which is the very core of established modernist culture and is also central to the capitalist and socialist reforms that helped reshape the political, social, economic, and cultural landscape in China in the 1980s." (1) Huang Yong Ping's paintings centered on chance, including "Four Paintings Created According to Random Instructions" (1985), epitomize the Xiamen Dadaists' relinquishment of the notions of artistic substance. Though these paintings are in no way meaningless, the fact that they accrue significance through chance rather than through a series of fateful artistic decisions subverts their true implications. As Huang Yong Ping himself writes in "Xiamen Dada and Chan Buddhism" from 1986-1988, "this means that the artist abandons his false noble image, competition and innovation, and the standard of value." (2) The application of chance in art, as Duchamp and the other original Dadaists well knew, allows both everything and nothing to be a work of art. Ping, who integrates traditional Chinese texts and concepts such as the I Ching and Chan (Zen) Buddhism into his works, illustrates this truth by stating that "Chan Buddhism sees a wooden statue of Sakyamuni both as Buddha and as a piece of firewood. As "Buddha," so as to connect with the living world; as "wood," so as to go beyond it. At this point, "Buddha" and &qupt;art" exist only as an unchangeable meaning in the living world." (3) Please consider this while looking at the Huang Yong Ping's Four Paintings Created According to Random Instructions, which were executed according to instructions printed on the roulette wheel that you can see in the foreground. (1) http://visualarts.walkerart.org/oracles/details.wac?id=2232&title=Writings (2) http://visualarts.walkerart.org/oracles/details.wac?id=2469&title=Writings (3) ibid.

Huang Yong Ping and Xiamen Dada

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Huang Yong Ping was one of the founding members of the Chinese Xiamen Dada group, inaugurated in 1986 with a series of provocative group exhibitions. Members of the group had accumulated bits of knowledge about the original Dada movement from miscellaneous books and magazines that could be found in the island city of Xiamen. Huang Yong Ping and his friends felt an immediate kinship with the past movement and decided to integrate a number of Dadaist principles, in addition to its name, into their practice. The cultural reforms that began in China during the 1980s asserted a sort of prescribed teleology onto the Chinese populace – the divide between the dreadful past and the glorious future allowed no room for the present, which was left to tangle with the vicissitudes of its situation unassisted. This backdrop naturally found itself reflected by progressive artists in binary themes that contrasted substance / / nothingness and fate / / chance. As Hou Hanru writes in “Change is the Rule” (2005), implementing these themes permitted the Xiamen Dadaists to “transgress the linear order of things, which is the very core of established modernist culture and is also central to the capitalist and socialist reforms that helped reshape the political, social, economic, and cultural landscape in China in the 1980s.” (1) Huang Yong Ping';s paintings centered on chance, including “Four Paintings Created According to Random Instructions” (1985), epitomize the Xiamen Dadaists'; relinquishment of the notions of artistic substance in their demand for diversity. Though these paintings are in no way meaningless, the fact that they accrue significance through chance rather than through a series of fateful artistic decisions subverts their true implications. As Huang Yong Ping himself writes in “Xiamen Dada and Chan Buddhism” from 1986-1988, “this means that the artist abandons his false noble image, competition and innovation, and the standard of value.” (2) The application of chance in art, as Duchamp and the other original Dadaists well knew, allows both everything and nothing to be a work of art. Ping, who integrates traditional Chinese texts and concepts such as the I Ching and Chan (Zen) Buddhism into his works, illustrates this truth by stating that “Chan Buddhism sees a wooden statue of Sakyamuni both as Buddha and as a piece of firewood. As Buddha, so as to connect with the living world; as wood, so as to go beyond it. At this point, Buddha and art exist only as an unchangeable meaning in the living world.” (3) Please consider this while looking at the Huang Yong Ping';s Four Paintings Created According to Random Instructions, which were executed according to instructions printed on the roulette wheel (Wheel) that you can see in the foreground. (1) http://visualarts.walkerart.org/oracles/details.wac?id=2232&title=Writings (2) http://visualarts.walkerart.org/oracles/details.wac?id=2469&title=Writings (3) ibid.

John Cage s music for Marcel Duchamp

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

If anyone can be called the Duchamp of the music world, it s probably John Cage. As the grandfather of avant garde music, he pioneered irregular meter, indeterminacy and unconventional use of musical instruments. In 1947, he composed "Music for Marcel Duchamp", and we have a performance of it in the link below. The unpredictable structure and radical selection of tones definitely echo Duchamp s sensibilities, have a listen and determine for yourself whether or not Cage s piece lives up to its title. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMP6aAMatj8

The Perfect Punch Line...

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

In a recent blog entry, visual poet Geoff Huth wrote about the different ways that people come to experience art--when they';re standing directly in front of a painting. Some of us might like to share every thought we have with our companions and devote long minutes to each and every piece on display. And, others of us might prefer to silently ghost about the gallery floor, gliding from one room into another, never stopping for more than a few crucial moments before any single work of art. If you';ve ever been fortunate to experience that pinnacle of romantic fantasy belonging to the cultural savants of New York who happen to still be single and meet the perfect stranger at an exhibition opening, chances are you';ve found that his (or her) personal art appreciation ‘style'; is all too often irreconcilably different from yours. But there is no reason to get discouraged, because maybe one day, just maybe, another Duchamp enthusiast in MoMA might turn to you and quip: “What';s it called when the Cubist girlfriend knocks off her partner';s toupee during intercourse? Nude up-ending a hairpiece!”

Read About Posthastism Post-Haste!

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

There hasn t exactly been a shortage of art movements defined by manifestos that grapple with the role of "speed" in art creation or thought. Take, for example, the Even Slower Poetry manifesto published on a Blogspot in June, 2009. Here is a selection: But what can poetry possibly do to strengthen networks of people involved in the ongoing complexity of getting someone to give a shit about any of this? Well, for one, Even Slower Poetry values communication between author and reader, even when that communication is just the author putting the reader to sleep and then implying he s taken a big risk in doing so. Its strong preference for the personal, the hand-made, the accessible, and anything that I don t have to get off the couch for or think too much about invites broad participation in the idea that potential exchanges in art can be even more excruciating than they were before, esp. when bad sin seems completely thrilling on every level. What do you do? You let the Even Slower Poetry take care of it, and you let the Even Slower Poetry bless you, and you get on with your life. By your good conduct, you will make ashamed those bringing exciting new things into the world. That is what the Even Slower Poetry Manifesto says and that is the way to do it. If you try to fight it and try to swat down every animated idea or breath of fresh air in the world, I promise you, the world will bring forth a thousand more thrilling and fascinating things. You kill five vibrant ideas and you will have five hundred more. Even Slower Poetry values tradition, too, as a way of understanding the past and our familial histories. By tradition I don t mean that we must abide by canonical texts established by literary authority, even though I do mean that. Tradition is nothing more than a contested history of the uses of books and objects that have produced active conversations and responses for particular people who question their identification with the world around them. Can you even believe anyone could write a sentence that torpid? JESUS. How did you even get through it? In an interview with Coline Millard, a contemporary curator from Switzerland, Hans Ulrich Orbst (who, incidentally, became obsessed with the confines and potentials of an interview dialogue after reading a a coulple lengthy conversations in his youth, one of which was between Marcel Duchamp and Pierre Cabann) discussed his own vision for the roles that slowness and speed should play in both art creation and reception: I m interested in resisting the homogenization of time: so it s a matter of making it faster and slower. For art, slowness has always been very important. The experience of seeing art slows us down...The beginning of my whole journey was night trains. It s a slow way of travelling and now we are working with Tino [Seghal] and Olafur [Eliasson] on solar airplanes. They fly at a hundred miles an hour, so it would be a little bit like travelling on a night train. Travelling might get slower again, if it s sustainable. All my shows have been conceived on night trains...Somehow that night train rhythm was an idea factory.

"Air Art --Marcel Duchamp" by Peter Duggan

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

This week's Guardian Artoon by Peter Duggan features Marcel Duchamp in the punchline. We give it five stars here at MarcelDuchamp.net.

How to find Duchamp in 2666

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"The idea, of course, was Duchamp';s. --- All that exists, or remains, of Duchamp';s stay in Buenos Aires is a ready-made. Though of course his whole life was a readymade, which was his way of appeasing fate and at the same time sending out signals of distress. As Calvin Tomkins writes: As a wedding present for his sister Suzanne and his close friend Jean Crotti, who were married in Paris on April 14, 1919, Duchamp instructed the couple by letter to hang a geometry book by strings on the balcony of their apartment so that the wind could ‘go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages.'; Clearly, then, Duchamp wasn';t just playing chess in Buenos Aires. Tompkins continues: This Unhappy Readymade, as he called it, might strike some newlyweds as an oddly cheerless wedding gift, but Suzanne and Jean carried out Duchamp';s instructions in good spirit; they took a photograph of the open book, dangling in midair (the only existing record of the work, which did not survive its exposure to the elements), and Suzanne later painted a picture of it called Le Readymade malheureux de Marcel. As Duchamp later told Cabanne, ‘It amused me to bring the idea of happy and unhappy into readymades, and then the rain, the wind, the pages flying, it was an amusing idea.'; I take it back: all Duchamp did while he was in Buenos Aires was play chess. Yvonne, who was with him, got sick of all his play-science and left for France. According to Tompkins: Duchamp told one interviewer in later years that he had liked disparaging ‘the seriousness of a book full of principles,'; and suggested to another that, in its exposure to the weather, ‘the treatise seriously got the facts of life.';" Selection from: Roberto Bolano, 2666, trans. Natasha Wimmer (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2008), 190-191.

"Too Close to Duchamp s Bicycle"

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

What is Les Liens Invisibles? Apparently, it is an “imaginary” partnership between a pair of Italian artists, Clemente Pestelli and Gionatan Quintini, who focus on creating net art subversive media based art. They have been gaining notoriety an exhibition space in places like the Venice Biennale and the New School in New York, and their work is thought provoking to say the least. In one email interview, the duo discussed their mistrust of the words of their artistic statement, despite their close allegiance to conceptual work. They said, “Words are like a funny playground: you can have a lot of fun with them, but, in times of semiotic saturation and media proliferation, you shouldn';t give words too much importance, especially if we are the ones who spoke them.” Their tone is steeped in the jargon of critical theory: one can';t help but be reminded of Derrida';s discussion of signature and text in the now iconic “Signature Event Context.” One of their pieces of internet art should be particularly interesting to readers of this blog. It';s called “Too close to Duchamp';s Bicycle” and “it';s a poetic declaration about how [they] got too close to Duchamp';s Bicycle. Go visit it here.”

The Maharaja Come to San Francisco

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

When Man Ray photographed the Maharajah Yeshwant Rao Holkar II and his wife the Maharani Sanyogita Devi of Indore, he had to loosen them up by playing them jazz before he could capture their likenesses in the iconic photograph above and in numerous others. The photograph will be displayed as part of an exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco--“Maharaja: The Splendor of India';s Royal Courts”--among over 150 over pieces depicting the splendor and history of the Maharajas rule in India. It begins with the decline of the Mughal Empire in the 18th century and spans through the centuries in the 20th. The show was put together by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and will be open until April 8, 2012.

PIcabia&#39s Work Exhibited Next to Pieces of Classical Antiquity

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

French Dadaist Francis Picabia';s work will be displayed, and contextualized, in conjunction with pieces from classical antiquity as part of an exhibit at Getty Villa called Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico, Leger, Picabia in the Presence of the Antique. The show hopes to investigate the scope of classical art in the contemporary landscape defined by the avant-garde creations of the above listed artists. “Modernism,” according to the co-curator of the exhibition, Jens Daehner, “also influenced how viewers today perceive classical art.” For example, the show highlights Picabia';s “transparencies,” in which he appropriated images from classical art, such as Roman sculptures and Renaissance paintings, and layered components to create transparent panels. Picabia worked on these in the 1920s and early 1930s, and several were displayed in the Rosenberg';s apartment--several of them having been commissioned by Leonce Rosenberg. Be sure to catch these and more at the show in Los Angeles, CA before January 16, 2012 and at Musee Picasso from February 16 to May 20, 2012.

Lady Gaga s Potty Art

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Of course, the next person to create their own version of Marcel Duchamp&#39s hundred year old Fountain (1917) for a publicity stunt is Lady Gaga. The infamous pop star, or self-titled &quotFame Monster,&quot she used Armitage Shanks, the title of her urinal sculpture, as an accessory at a photo shoot for Vogue Homme Japan with the iconic photographer Nick Knight. She signed in black scribble, "I m not fucking Duchamp but I love pissing with you." Lady Gaga has since donated the piece to ShoWstudio.com, where it is currently being sold for $480,000.

Karla Black: Turner Prize 2011 Nominee

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Scottish artist Karla Black';s work, exhibited at Saatchi Gallery and nominated for the illustrious Turner Prize this year, is sensitive to a tradition of performance much in the way Marcel Duchamp';s was. Her audience is welcomed to experience her usually sprawling organic structures as physical commodities, material and commercial monuments. We can';t help but note their use of space, and how much they take up. Her materials, or perhaps “ingredients” would be more apt, are often instrumental in affecting the final product of her work. They are often eccentric for the very fact that they are ordinary supplies commonly found in any apartment or home bathroom. For example, Doesn';t Care in Words (2011) is comprised from cellophane, paint, Sellotape, sugar paper, chalk, powder paint, plaster powder, wood, polystyrene, bath bombs, Vaseline, moisturizing cream, spray deodorant, and brown paper. But don';t be deceived. Despite these largely feminine products, Black does not appreciate being called a feminine artists: “Why do people call it feminine? Because it is light, fragile, pale? Because it is weak, impermanent? When you start going to work on it you realise how ridiculous the description is. How can a work of art be feminine?" (see the article in the Guardian on her exhibition at the Venice Biennale for more.) And nor is her work meant to provoke shock in the viewer or academy as Duchamp';s Fountain was meant to. She is happy to rank herself within the artistic tradition of say Joseph Bueys or Eva Hesse. And despite her pieces'; seemingly careless arrangements--well it turns out they are meticulously wrought, and even allusive to painting. The pieces are provocative in that they beg us to look to the context of the physical, the material, realms rather than than that of linguistic or symbolic jest. In that, she certainly is able to distinguish herself from previous recipients of the Turner Prize like Damien Hirst and Richard Wright. But, however she may choose to set herself apart, she certainly has our vote this year. The Turner Prize is awarded once a year to a British artist under the age of fifty who';s work has been distinguished in an exhibition the previous year. The other nominees this year are Martin Boyce, Hilary Lloyd, and George Shaw.

We re Moving into the Arensbergs

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Hot off the real estate catalog press: Hannah and Walter Arensberg s Upper West Side apartment, where Duchamp stayed in the summer of 1915, is for sale. Marcelduchamp.net is currently looking to purchase the home that saw the birth of New York Dada at the affordable price of 4.75 million dollars. Keep on the lookout for news on future events possibly to be hosted in the Arensbergs "trendsetting kitchen."

What s Duchamp Doing in Starbucks Anyway?

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 08:07:31 GMT

There are many artists, designers, and writers among others that are inspired or incited by Duchamp s work. Richard Kegler is one of them. In 1994, Kegler created the Duchamp typeface by scanning in samples of Duchamp s writing from Large Glass and distributed them on floppy disks to interested customers in museum shops. The idea to create a "readymade" type came to Kegler in graduate school when he was working on an art installation and decided to project Duchamp s writing onto a wall. Things took off from there. He opened a small company called P22 in Buffalo NY and Duchamp became his biggest sell. Now, fans can even find Duchamp adorning the walls of Starbucks coffee shops across the country, not to mention on the NBC sitcom "The Singe Guy."

From Cage s James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:07:31 GMT

In a couple of months, we will be attending a production of James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphebet by John Cage at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (keep an eye out for a forthcoming review, or join us at the event on Friday November 11!). But in the meantime, while we are eagerly anticipating the opening, we';d like to offer you a snippet from describing a dictionary based on photography. Cage quotes from Duchamp';s A l';nfinitif (The White Box), 1967: With films, taken close up, of parts of very large objects, obtain photographic records which no longer look like photographs of something. With these semi-microscopics constitute a dictionary of which each film would be the representation of a group of words in a sentence or separated so that this film would assume a new significance or rather after the concentration on this film of the sentences or words chosen would give a form of meaning to this film and that, once learned, this relation between film and meaning translated into words would be “striking” and would serve as a basis for a kind of writing which no longer has an alphabet or words but signs (films) already freed from the “baby talk” of all ordinary languages. — Find a means of filing all these films in such order that one could refer to them as in a dictionary.” For more information about the radio play turned performance piece see the Richard B. Fisher Center website here.

Alert: Duchamp CD Posted on Rhapsody.com

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:07:31 GMT

It's all in the title. For those who would like to listen to Duchamp read The Creative Act or by interviewed by the recently deceased Richard Hamilton, Duchamp's 2007 CD, The Creative Act, is now available for streaming on Rhapsody.com. Of course, it's only free for a seven day trial, but we recommend you use those seven days those seven days up by listening to that one CD over and over again. You won't regret it. Click here for link:

Looking in the Large Glass

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:07:31 GMT

It&#39s in London and it&#39s called Large Glass. What could it be? Turns out, it&#39 a freshly minted &quotgallop&quot shop. And a &quotgallop&quot shop turns out to be a gallery that also functions as a store, a gallery-shop that offers both a faster pace and objects for sale right beside the art that hangs on the intimate and familiarly museum-white walls. As of July 8th, Large Glass is displaying art, objects, and books by artists such as Alvar Aalto, Jeff McMillan, and Bernard Schobinger. It is surely worth a visit at 392 Caledonian Road, as its name suggests: it was taken directly from Marcel Duchamp&#39s infamous Large Glass / The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even. And if the two share anything in common, we will be sure to drop by to at least one of the many exciting events offered behind their own glass storefront.

Gertrude Stein Autobiography Tops Time s 100 Best Nonfiction Books List

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Gertrude Stein s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas recently joined 99 hyped titles such as Freakonomics, Omnivore s Dilemma, Dreams from My Father, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Fast Food Nation in Time Magazine s new list of 100 Best Nonfiction Books. Many of these titles have graced the Buy 2 Get 1 Free or Summer Reading aisles at Borders, several have been made into documentary films, and many authors have appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or AC 360. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, on the other hand, is hardly nonfiction. Stein wrote from the perspective of her partner in her usual conversational yet staccato jumble, and the events in Stein s life are largely exaggerated and oftentimes fabricated. Hemingway called it a "damned pitiful book," Matisse was outraged by her portrayal of his wife, and Braque thought Stein misconstrued Cubism. But then, was there really any other way for Stein to write a genuine autobiography without employing inventive avant-garde stylistics and causing a stir? Here s what Time had to say: "Writing her lover s autobiography proved a witty way for American author Gertrude Stein to detail her own life as Parisian writer, salon host and arts patron. Ostensibly, readers can take in the book, published in 1933, as Stein writing about Alice B. Toklas (which is what the title suggests) or as Toklas writing about Stein (which is what the book actually is). Either way, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was groundbreaking in its experimentation with form: an autobiography written by another person. Many modernist masters make an appearance in Stein s tome — among them Picasso, Hemingway and Matisse — and their influence on Stein is recounted through vivid anecdotes. For example, Stein s first major publication, Three Lives, was written under the "stimulus" of a Cézanne painting. Although it became the author s best-selling book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was mainly notable for its easier-to-read narrative style (a departure from Stein s favored monologue form), making it a sort of Stein for Beginners."

Harold Bloom vs. the Avant-Garde

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"now marjorie [perloff] was giving a talk based on the last chapter of her most recent book the poetics of indeterminacy the last chapter of which happens to deal with john cage and with me and whatever differences there may be between cage and me and these are considerable we were both obliterated by the righteous wrath of harold bloom who had hardly heard more than our names when he denounced the proceedings as ridiculous and us as nonpoets and stormed off the stage" David Antin, from What It Means to Be Avant-Garde

Are Cliches...

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:07:31 GMT

...just involuntary literary readymades?

Daligramme Done by Lancel is at Galeries Lafayette

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Did you know Salvador Dali created an eight character alphabet for his wife, Helene Dimitrievna Diakonava a.k.a. Gala, in the 1960s? He called the alphabet of love Daligramme, composing it out of redesigned and heavily stylized renditions of the letters G for Gradiva-Gala, D for Dali, and S for Salvador. In 1970 the French fashion company, Lancel, designed a handbag that featured Daligramme characters and a bicycle chain handle. ArtInfo reports that for three weeks beginning today, September 1st, French department store Galeries Lafayette will be exhibiting a new line of Daligramme handbags by Lancel and numerous photographs of Dali with his Gala. If only there was a way for us to attend.

Automatism B: It Was a Failsafe Mechanism for Spandex

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

It was a failsafe mechanism for spandex. All along, if spandex went awry something would be there to rein it in, or so they thought. But it wasn t true, except now it was. People came from Red Hook, Brooklyn to Fish-hook, Brooklyn, to Red Fish Brooklyn, and over to Scared-ville Queens, just to see it. It was a tour-de-force that made no sense at all. Somewhere in the deep store of images that structure a composite of the urban landscape, spandex researchers and bike-spoke engineers and crystal meth addicts and weird-understated sewer-grilles that don t avail themselves of the latest techniques in digital design find out the stuff each other are really made of. It s our version of the middle-American circus that used to really unsettle small town settlers by virtue of reflecting, or rather animating even as it circumscribed, circus-circum, the very I mean the exact freak disposition at the heart of whatever composed I mean structured the small town to begin with. It is the very same principle that underlies the reason why spandex, failsafe or not, is knit under around and through the very substance of why anyone would journey from Redhook, to Red-Fish, to Blue-Fish, to Blue-Point, to wherever the far fringes of industrial design idiocy seem to transpose themselves on the somewhat quixotic act of a writing a hipster children s book.

A Neo-Duchampian Catchphrase

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Hmmm. We do have a slogan for Benrik: Your values are our toilet paper. Or in French: “Vos valeurs sont notre peru." --the creators of The Situationist App (touted as the first Marxist social media tool)

Donald Judd or Cheap Furniture?

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Donald Judd can be quite spectacular. Out in Marfa, Texas for instance, where the minimalist sculptor purchased land, his giant stone boxes eerily offset the empty horizon and rustling waves of yellow grass: a cipher in the landscape. But some of his works do, truth be told, look exactly like cheap furniture. If you doubt this, take the quiz at reverent.org. The point is to guess whether a given image is a priceless Donald Judd sculpture or a piece of cheap furniture. I scored an embarassing 33 percent. Of course one could argue that the test is not exactly fair. Was there minimalist-chic furniture at Wal-Mart in Judd s day, i.e. the 1970 s? The style available to mass-market shoppers today may even, in fact, have something to do with Judd himself.

Picabia Was Also a Post-Impressionist

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Francis Picabia, a good friend of Marcel Duchamp who would have been the cold-veined hitman if Dada had been an organized crime organization, is best known for his allusively erotic faux-machinic diagrams. He once splattered an inkblot on a piece of paper and called it a portrait of the Virgin Mary. But as the blog "Adventures in the Print Trade" points out, he also had a reasonable career etching fuzzy naturalistic prints of boats, people and landscapes, in the style of Pisarro and Cezanne: "It s as if Damian Hirst had begun as a Pre-Raphaelite, or Marina Abramovic were to suddenly unveil a hidden stash of genteel watercolours of flowers in vases." Just one more reminder that avant-gardistes weren t avant-gardistes because they couldn t draw trees right.

Bicycle the Last Artistic Transportation?

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"No other icon in sport or transport has retained such constant or potent significance [as the bike]. The car, once all open road and opportunity, now evokes the dystopia of Jeremy Clarkson and carmageddon. The train has surrendered its Brief Encounter romance to the absurdity of leaves on the line, and the misery of the sweaty commute." -Matthew Wright, in the Guardian Meanwhile: "The centrality of flight to culture and ‘social drama'; might have seemed obvious as late as the 1930s – but it isn';t now" -Julius Purcell, in the Financial Times

Daniel Spoerri s Multiplication d Art Transformable

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The following was written by critic Pierre Restany in 1966 for Daniel Spoerri&#39s Edition MAT&#151 which, for about a decade in the late nineteen fifties through the sixties, offered mass-produced and affordable works of art to the general public:(printed here thanks to Will Brand of Art Fag City) A permanent manifesto of social art. I. MAT is firstly an adventure, an episode in the capricious career of a &quotbeat&quot poet-dancer who is in a perpetual state of wandering, a well regarded topographer-alchemist who goes by the name of Daniel Spoerri. Upon arriving in Paris in 1959, Spoerri set up the first chapter of MAT (Multiplication d&#39Art Transformable). It consisted of an edition of 100 original multiples, all signed and individually priced. To sum up, the artists were: Agam, Bury, Marcel Duchamp, Munari, Dieter Roth, Soto, Tinguely, Vasarely. Subsequent editions were something approximating a mix of avant-gardist Pop and Op tendencies: Arman, Christo, Spoerri, Villagie, Baj and Lichtenstein; Mack, Le Parc, Morrelet, Talman, etc. Marcel Duchamp would later be joined by Arp and Man Ray. II. But the Spoerrian dialectic leads to a general idea: art as a social phenomenon. MAT is above all a manifesto/response to this problem, an affirmation of contemporary art&#39s social calling. The idea of original multiples is nothing new. Born out of the ambiguous visuals of a simultaneous diffusion of individual aesthetic pleasure, it was unviable. Fautrier proved it brilliantly in 1950. Ten years later the situation was different. Spoerri was the catalyst. The choice of the first line-up of artists is significant: whether it was through the intervention of the viewer-consumer, through mechanical animation, or through pure optical effect, the works chosen for the 1959 edition are organically and fundamentally multiples, theoretically infinite in their potential transformations. Thus the full scope of the challenge that MAT presents becomes apparent. The multiplication of an artwork is a specific quality of the dissemination of its message, grasped in its inherent diversity: the creative urge facilitated by mass communication&#151art speaking to as many people as possible. MAT clearly signifies the death of the unique artwork and a move beyond artisanal aesthetics. At the most profound level of contemporary expressiveness, the excellence of a piece of work has made way for the richness of information. As Yves Klein proclaimed, there are no technical difficulties, just answers. From the beginning, MAT was an act of faith, a creed for artworks that can be disseminated thanks to machines and by machines. Today, poets have joined artists in responding to this matter&#151Robert Filliou, Maurice Henry, Andre Thompkins&#151making ideas concrete, visualizing words, rendering syntax into the will of the reader-manipulator. The perspectives are clear: MAT, reedited in 1966 and enriched with MAT-MOT, is today&#39s response to the anachronistic elements of the past that have survived; it&#39s a further step toward the decommercialization of art&#151the logical corollary of its integration into society. Pierre Restany Paris, November 26, 1966.

&quotThis is the Apocalyptic Nature of Our Modernity&quot

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Part of our challenge here at MarcelDuchamp.net is figuring out where to draw the boundaries for what is pertinent to the subjects of “modernism” and “avant-garde.” Personally, I have always found the effort to narrow the historical or general “avant-garde” into a single definition confounding. For anyone who may be experiencing a similar problem, I';d like to propose taking a close look at the following passage. Berkley';s literary theorist Leo Bersani begins his essay, Boundaries of Time and Being: Benjamin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, by formulating a number of questions that circle around the larger question of how to situate the modern against (or within?) the contemporary landscape. The following selection may be long, but I recommend giving it the time it';s due. “the modern…retains an incomparable aura: that of being spiritually stranded, uniquely special in its radical break with traditional values and modes of consciousness. And to say this is to return to the logical problem I raised at the start: if an exacerbated consciousness of the modern is necessarily characterized by the sense of being cut off from the premodern, how can we understand the terms in relation to which, more exactly against which, the modern itself is to be defined? This very problem is perhaps a creation of the modernistic modernity to which I have just referred. If the concept of modernity always implies the sense of a break with the past, of living at moments when certain important thresholds are crossed (thresholds of political or economic modes of organization, of demographic movements and the distribution of social pressures and loci of power, of cultural hierarchies—including the place of religion in a culture';s resources for making its experience intelligible and for guiding ethical choices), it does not necessarily imply that modern times are chiefly characterized by an inability to do something that past epochs were able to do: to make connections and, more precisely, to connect with their own traditions. Now, however, the modern is understood not merely as a break with the past but as an inability to understand the past. The modernity of the twentieth century includes the loss of what other maternities did not necessarily give up when they defined their own distinctiveness: an understanding of the tradition to which that modernity added something new. The break with the past now is marked by a mournful sense of the break itself as unique. We are modern because our modernity makes absolute the notion of discontinuity as a loss of the aptitude for continuities. To speak of the past therefore becomes nearly inconceivable once it is no longer merely a question of describing other customs, other systems of justice, other sets of beliefs, but rather the lost capacity of consciousness to place itself in relation to history. Modern consciousness, in short, is irremediably cut off from other ways in which human beings have understood their modernity, their comparatively limited break with their own past. This is the apocalyptic nature of out modernity, which in this century has frequently been spoken of as if it were a mutation of consciousness rather than the latest in a series of regular turns, accretions, and ruptures within an organically whole tradition. How, then, can we speak of that from which we have mutated? Is the mournful consciousness that describes this evolutionary drama the vestigial remnant of an extinct mode of being?” (Leo Bersani, “Boundaries of Time and Being: Benjamin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche,” in The Culture of Redemption (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 47-48.)

Ai Weiwei exhibition to open in L.A.

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

There are artists that break all the rules, and then there&#39s Ai Weiwei. Activist Ai Weiwei&#39s installation, &quotCircle of Animals/Zodiac Heads&quot, is on exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until February. Although Ai will not be attending the opening of &quotCircle&quot because his bail arrangements prevent him from leaving Beijing, he was in a &quotchatty&quot mood while talking with an L.A. Times reporter. He opened up about his art, health and generally about life outside prison. He&#39s also back on Twitter, although he&#39s not allowed to mention his legal case. The exhibition, according to Ai, is about &quotthe future and the past, and how China is looked at today and how it looks at itself ... it has many, many different layers--is it art or not art, and to what degree?&quot &quotCircle&quot features large-scale statue heads of the Chinese zodiac, and is inspired by similar figures at the Yuan Ming Yuan palace, an imperial garden filled with invaluable antiques that was raided and pillaged by British and French forces in 1860. Ai hopes that the exhibition will appeal to artists and laymen alike. An artist, curator, architect, photographer and cultural critic, Ai has been dealing with the routinely oppressing Chinese government for years, and was finally arrested this year in April. Chinese prison is no picnic: Ai lost 26 pounds, and in 2009 he even had to undergo brain surgery due to beating at the hands of the police. Still charged with tax evasion, Ai is currently living with his wife and young child in Beijing and respecting most of the terms of his bail. &quotTwitter is not allowed,&quot Ai told the LA Times. &quotI have been warned again.&quot

Bolano s Literary Prophecies: Breton Shall Return Through Mirrors

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Vladimir Mayakovksy shall come back into fashion around the year 2150. James Joyce shall be reincarnated as a Chinese boy in the year 2124. Thomas Mann shall become an Ecuadorian pharmacist in the year 2101. For Marcel Proust, a desperate and prolonged period of oblivion shall begin in the year 2033. Ezra Pound shall disappear from certain libraries in the year 2089. Vachel Lindsay shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101. César Vallejo shall be read underground in the year 2045. Jorge Luis Borges shall be read underground in the year 2045. Vicente Huidobro shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101. Virginia Woolf shall be reincarnated as an Argentinean fiction writer in the year 2076. Louis-Ferdinand Celine shall enter Purgatory in the year 2094. Paul Eluard shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101. Metempsychosis. Poetry shall not disappear. Its non-power shall manifest itself in a different form. Cesare Pavese shall become the patron saint of Seers and Lookers in the year 2034. Pier Paolo Pasolini shall become the patron saint of Escapees in the year 2100. Giorgio Bassani shall emerge from his tomb in the year 2167. Oliverio Girondo shall come into his own as a children s writer in the year 2099. The complete works of Roberto Arlt shall be adapted for the screen in 2102. The complete works of Adolfo Bioy Casares shall be adapted for the screen in 2105. Arno Schmidt shall rise from his ashes in the year 2085. Franz Kafka shall once again be read underground throughout Latin America in the year 2101. Witold Gombrowicz shall enjoy great prestige in the environs of the Río de la Plata around the year 2098. Paul Celan shall rise from his ashes in the year 2113. Andre Breton shall return through mirrors in the year 2071. Max Jacob shall cease to be read, that is to say his last reader shall die, in the year 2059. Who shall read Jean-Pierre Duprey in the year 2059? Who shall read Gary Snyder? Who shall read Ilarie Voronca? These are the questions I ask myself. Who shall read Gilberte Dallas? Who shall read Rodolfo Wilcock? Who shall read Alexandre Unik? A statue of Nicanor Parra, however, shall stand in a Chilean square in the year 2059. A statue of Octavio Paz shall stand in a Mexican square in the year 2020. A rather small statue of Ernesto Cardenal shall stand in a Nicaraguan square in the year 2018. But all statues tumble eventually, by divine intervention or the power of dynamite, like the statue of Heine. So let us not place too much trust in statues. Carson McCullers, however, shall go on being read in the year 2100. Alejandra Pizarnik shall lose her last reader in the year 2100. Alfonsina Storni shall be reincarnated as a cat or a sea-lion, I can t tell which, in the year 2050. The case of Anton Chekhov shall be slightly different: he shall be reincarnated in the year 2003, in the year 2010, and then in the year 2014. He shall appear once more in the year 2081. And never again after that. Alice Sheldon shall appeal to the masses in the year 2017. Alfonso Reyes shall be killed once and for all in the year 2058, but in fact it shall be Reyes who kills his killers. Marguerite Duras shall live in the nervous system of thousands of women in the year 2035." --Roberto Bolano, from Amulet

Quay Brothers New Film Opens

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The Quay Brothers, the experimental animators (of Street of Crocodiles fame) who sinisterly blur the line between animation and animism, are coming out with an eagerly awaited new production. It s to be based on swoon-inducingly grotesque Mutter Museum exhibition of alternative anatomy (which includes ballooning esophagi, cadavers with horns, skeletons of conjoined twins, Jibaro shrunken heads, and a screaming woman, somehow, soapified) at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. Oh yes, Quay Brothers material, definitely. Catch it in New York, Philly, or Los Angeles come September. See Morbid Anatomy for the details:

Of Being Numerous, No. 12

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

‘In these explanations it is presumed that an experiencing subject is one occasion of a sensitive reaction to an actual world.'; the rain falls that had not been falling and it is the same world . . . They made small objects Of wood and the bones of fish And of stone. They talked, Families talked, They gathered in council And spoke, carrying objects. They were credulous, Their things shone in the forest. They were patient With the world. This will never return, never, Unless having reached their limits They will begin over, that is, Over and over -George Oppen

Duchamp and the Paradox of Art Spaces, Even

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

In the vein of several recent posts of ours re: the relationship between the readymades and the power of institutions and centrality of art spaces: "post-Duchampian art-beyond-labor reveals itself, in fact, as the triumph of alienated abstract labor over non-alienated creative work. It is this alienated labor of transporting objects combined with the labor invested in the construction and maintenance of art spaces that ultimately produces artistic value under the conditions of post-Duchampian art. The Duchampian revolution leads not to the liberation of the artist from work, but to his or her proletarization via alienated construction and transportation work. In fact, contemporary art institutions no longer need an artist as a traditional producer. Rather, today the artist is more often hired for a certain period of time as a worker to realize this or that institutional project." -Boris Groys, "Marx after Duchamp, Or the Artist s Two Bodies," e-flux

Romania and the Avant Garde

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Romania is not exactly the first country that comes to mind when one thinks of modern art, but exhibitions in Bucharest and Amsterdam are shedding light on this often overlooked center of the avant-garde. The Amsterdam exhibition, “From Dada to Surrealism: Jewish Avant-Garde Artists in Romania, 1910-1938” highlights works of many iconic Jewish Romanian artists. Curated by art historian rabbi Edward Van Voolen and collector Dr. Radu Stern, the exhibition features an impressive collection of pre-Dada, proto-surrealist and avant-avant-garde artists such as Marcel Janco and Victor Brauner that combines experimental modern approaches with Jewish sensibility and Romanian folklore. The Bucharest exhibition, “The Roots and Echoes of the Avant-garde Graphic Collection of the Library of Romanian Academy,” features the permanent collection at the library of the Romanian Academy. It features 72 works of art, 40 vintage books, and “micrographie” in a very academically designed exhibition, and is “probably the first of its kind after the fall of communism.” Some forgotten names like Lazar Zin, Losif Ross and Jean David are featured, along with many women artists such as Milita Petrascu, Margareta Sterian and Nina Arbore. Bucharest was an important epicenter for the avant-garde. Marinetti came to Romania (then Craiova) in 1909 to launch Futurism and enact his famous manifesto, and a great number of literary and avant-garde books and magazines flourished in Bucharest during this pivotal period. However, Bucharest was much better at producing great young artists than keeping them, as most promising Jewish Romanian writers and artists quickly left this “Dada nursery” to establish themselves in Paris, Zurich, London, and Tel Aviv, not necessarily to escape anti-semitism, but simply to pursue life in a non-dictatorial society. This artistic “brain drain” still plagues Romania today, but it also resulted in a particularly eclectic array of inspiration for the pieces in the exhibition.

Duchamp and the Secret of the Object

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Our last post included the following quote from the cultural critic Jean Baudrillard: "The obscenity of the commodity stems from the fact that it is abstract, formal, light in opposition to the weight, opacity and substance of the object. The commodity is readable: in opposition to the object, which never completely gives up its secret, the commodity always manifests its visible essence, which is its price. It is the formal place of transcription of all possible objects; through it, objects communicate. Hence the commodity for is the first great medium of the modern world. But the message that the objects deliver through it is already extremely simplified, and it will always be the same: their exchange value." For us this evokes the question: what does Duchamp s readymade do for the capitalist object? For in a sense, Duchamp merely took industrial commodities and placed them within a different system of signification: that of aesthetics, beauty, and artistic choice. You could say that he interrupted the "obscenity" of the transparent commodity: the urinal or snow shovel no longer "purely" communicates its exchange value, for this is complicated by its implication in another realm of communication (the realm in which artists communicate with audiences). What is the result? On the one hand, a secretive side of the object reemerges, due to the interruption of the smooth functioning of the commodity system. By definition a commodity depends on its complete interchangeability with all others of its type. But this interchangeability can be foiled: simply by virtue of their artistic selection, the readymades were differentiated from all other identical commodities. Does this begin to expose the perverse magic of the commodity? Does it reinvigorate, to some extent, the "weight" and the "opacity" of the object? I think so...at least the shovel, the urinal, the hatrack et al. present the spectator with their distinctive formal and material properties, in a way that a blender for sale doesn t. "In Advance of the Broken Arm," for instance, has a somewhat baleful, uncanny presence...partly because its obtrusive "thingliness" emerges as it is displayed outside of the unthinkingly legible world of purchasable goods. As such, the fascination of the readymade is the obverse of the fascination of the iPod or necklace in the shop window. The expensive gadget evokes desire with a promise of a precisely calculated benefit (the looter can wish to seize an infinite number, just like money). Meanwhie, an old snow shovel in a museum displays itself while promising nothing; loot it (unlike a verified Picasso) and you have only a piece of junk. The only price that s paid for this game is that it relies on official art spaces, museums, curators, and other holders of proprietary culture (for it is only within the museum that the readymade can speak its paradoxical message.) Therefore the object has once again become legible within the hierarchy of "culturedness," "history" and "appreciation:" a dilemma of modern art since its inception. Move and countermove. The game has perhaps yet to be resolved.

Secret, Object, Ecstasy

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Marx set forth and denounced the obscenity of the commodity, and this obscenity was linked to its equivalence, to the abject principle of free circulation, beyond all use value of the object. The obscenity of the commodity stems from the fact that it is abstract, formal, light in opposition to the weight, opacity and substance of the object. The commodity is readable: in opposition to the object, which never completely gives up its secret, the commodity always manifests its visible essence, which is its price. It is the formal place of transcription of all possible objects; through it, objects communicate. Hence the commodity for is the first great medium of the modern world. But the message that the objects deliver through it is already extremely simplified, and it will always be the same: their exchange value. Thus at bottom the message no longer exists; it is the medium that imposes itself in pure circulation. This is what I (potentially) call ecstasy.", Jean Baudrillard, from "The Ecstasy of Communication," 1983

Even the Exquisite Corpse Festival wonders...

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

...what "exquisite corpse taxidermy" means and why they have it. (Exquisite Corpse is a well-known Surrealist game in which one player draws on a piece of paper, folds over their drawing, and passes the paper to the next player, who repeats). The meaning of exquisite corpse music can be extrapolated pretty easily. But taxidermy? Puzzlement all around.

Duchamp and the Infrathin

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"In the wake of modernity we once again find ourselves in the abyss of the infra-thin, a concept that permeates Marcel Duchamp';s entire oeuvre, a shorthand label for his life-long desire to overcome the distance between Signifier and signified, thing and meaning, love and knowledge, inner and outer, up and down, appearance and apparition, mold and molded, of and in. To be precise, the word “infra-thin” was to him “not a noun but an adjective, although the sign of the accordance might be the perfect exemplification of the infra thin made into a noun. Even as an adjective, ‘infra-thin'; never qualifies a thing or an experience, but rather the difference between two things or experiences. This difference is at its thinnest when those two things are the same." --Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographical Reason "Fire without smoke, the warmth of a seat which has just been left, reflection from a mirror or glass, watered silk , iridescents, the people who go through (subway gates) at the very last moment, velvet trousers their whistling sound is an infra-thin separation signaled"- Marcel Duchamp, Notes, (Translated by Paul Matisse)

The Looting Imperative

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state';s monopoly of armed violence" -Guy Debord

Of Rhetoric and Modern Art

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The onset of modernity, underpinned by the bourgeois revolution, saw art develop into a marketplace commodity sought by many. The critic s pen emerged partly as a substitute for the suspect taste of the buying public. The magazine n+1 recently printed an essay entitled "Against Reviews" excoriating the impersonality and blandness of the whole arrangement (though the author was talking about fiction, and mostly, it seemed, describing bad reviews). But can criticism be taken out of modernism? When the avant-garde came along, criticism and rhetoric took on a new role: to explain and defend the shocking and alien. As quoted in a recent Artnet article, Tzara recalled from his Dada days: "Raymond Duncan, the philosopher who walks about Paris in the costume of Socrates, was there with all his school and came to our defense, quieting the audience. The very best Socialist orators took sides and spoke for and against us." Cubism helped build the careers of countless critics from the poet Apollinaire to Clement Greenberg. (With the increasing valuations of Cubism and Surrealism in the market of course, those competing roles of the modernist critic came to overlap). Today, the bourgeois public is hard to shock; more often in fact the critic has to write simply to convince readers of the relevance of a given work amid the throng. Artists and curators too write more: wall text, artists statements, catalogues, etc. Conceptual artwork frequently comes with lengthy explanations for what it supposed to show or do (thematize the ghostliness of global networks, evoke the instability of language). It seems harder for an artistic gesture to speak for itself. A conceivable next step could be (rather than getting rid of reviewers), to bypass artists and artworks entirely... and for the aestheticians and critics to simply extrapolate probable or possible artworks from the cultural matrix, then critique them. The late Roberto Bolano, (though again with fiction) laid the groundwork for this through his satirical, Borgesesque Nazi Literature in the Americas, which traced an imaginary fascist literary scene.

The Art of Substitution

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"A long freeze seems to paralyze the diners, substituting for the usual ice-cream which as it happens is bad for stomachs which have become so heated in the acrobatic juggling of happiness, alarming mushrooms and dynamic partridges..." -The Futurist Cookbook ("Gelato," or ice cream, is also the Italian past participle of "to freeze": noted in Anti-Diets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art, By Cecilia Movero)

Quotable Avant-Gardes: The Appetite and the Dish.

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"I am against all morals, against discipline. To be a painter, it is necessary to have guts [foi, liver], the sacred fire. Just like eating: first comes the appetite, then the choice of the dish." -George Braque

Capricorn Bicycles Unrolls the Duchamp

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Capricorn, a purveyor of steel bikes handcrafted by Minneapolis s Brad Wilson, now makes Duchamp and Selavy models intended to capture, natural, elegant Euro-style: "bikes on which you would never think to wear lycra." (Whether the designers at Capricorn are appraised of some of the truly awful shorts worn by males around European capitals these days is another matter). The Selavy features an easy-mount step-through frame for the ladies. There is something a bit funny about naming a fully functioning bike after Duchamp, who went so far to deconstruct that conveyance into an icon of purposeless motion. Perhaps this only goes to show that with the avant-garde, what goes around, comes around.

A Comparative Analysis of Duchamp and Dr. Dre.

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Neither Dre nor DuChamp were happy in their circles, however, so they formed new ones. Dre left Death Row and formed Aftermath, while DuChamp formed the Societe Anonyme. These would be the organizations the dudes would stick wit';. DuChamp continued exploring the relationship between the artist and spectator with kinetic mobiles – moving sculptures and conceptual extensions of his readymade works like The Fountain. Dre did the same, rapping on Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath, as well as producing the first album by rap supergroup The Firm. Like DuChamp s readymades, which asked the viewer to reconsider their perception of what is “art,” these albums were so shitty they forced the listener to ask ‘What the fuck am I listening to? Does something actually think this is good? Is this supposed to be hiphop?'; -From "Etant Donnes, or Why I m Still Excited for Detox," on Popular Lemonade

The Sartorialist Celebrates Man Ray s Contributions to Bondage Fashion

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Calling this fashion season s dabbling in BDSM regalia a "perfect storm" of mainstream-meets-subversive, the Sartorialist has put out a photo-slide show documenting the influence of fetish culture on high style (and perhaps the reverse.) Among some of the most provocative entries are Man Ray s still powerful images of bound and submissive women, including a classical greek nude armless and roped tightly. If they d wanted to be a bit less literal, the Sartorialist could have perhaps gone with his "Domaine de Sade" series.

Marjorie Perloff: Endgame and the "End of Art"

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

A bit ago, I posted a selection from Arthur Danto';s “The Physical Disenfranchisement of Art” in which he elucidated upon his conception for the “end of art.” In her book, Radical Artifice, Marjorie Perloff continues in the vein of his initial investigation. She calls upon John Cage, Marcel Broodthaers, and Charles Bernstein for her investigation at the beginning of her first chapter, “Avant-Garde or Endgame?” “But what about ‘the end of philosophy';? The ‘end of criticism';? Wouldn';t these endgames have to follow ‘the end of art';? In conversation with John Cage in 1988, I posed the question: ‘What do you think of the current view that innovation is no longer possible, that indeed the avant-garde is dead?'; Cage reflected a minute and said with a smile, ‘Even them?'; A similar point was made by Marcel Broodthaers in a gallery publication: The aim of all art is commercial. My aim is equally commercial. The aim of criticism is just as commercial. Guardian of myself and of others, I do not know truly who to kick. Touche. Criticism is not somewhere outside and beyond the ‘great arc of disintegration and decay'; within which we live: if art undergoes the commodification of ‘late capitalism,'; so, inevitably, does critical theory. Or perhaps, as I prefer to think, the parameters can be redefined. In a recent essay on postmodernism for the Socialist Review, Charles Bernstein writes: We can act: we are not trapped in the postmodern condition if we are willing to differentiate between works of art that suggest new ways of conceiving of our present world and those that seek rather to debunk any possibilities for meaning. To do this, one has to be able to distinguish between, on the one hand, a fragmentation that attempts to valorize the concept of a free-floating signifier unbound to social significance… and, on the other, a fragmentation that reflects a conception of meaning as prevented by conventional narration and so uses this junction as a method of tapping into other possibilities available within language. Failure to make distinctions is similar to failing to distinguish between youth gangs, pacifist anarchists, Weatherpeople, anti-Sandinista contras, Salvadoran guerrillas, Islamic terrorists, or US state terrorists. Perhaps all these groups are responding to the “same” stage of multi-national capitalism. But the crucial point is that the responses cannot be understood as the same, unified as various interrelated ‘symptoms'; of late capitalism. Nor are the ‘dormant'; practices the exemplary ones that tell the ‘whole'; story." From: Marjorie Perloff, “Avant-Garde or Endgame” in Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 14.

Thing/Thought: Fluxus at MOMA

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Recently we covered the exhibition of editions at the Gallery Perrotin in Paris, which featured catalogs, multiples, and posters, by Takashi Murakami, Joseph Beuys and Marcel Duchamp. The issue came up then as to whether and how the artist-signed reproductions, manufactured series, and microcosmic miniatures (like the Box en Valise, kits which held small versions of Duchamp s entire ouevre), can be vehicles for the democratization of art or simply more efficient means of commodity production and distribution, or both... The September-January Fluxus exibition at MOMA, "Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions," (mostly derived from the museum s tremendous 2009 haul of work from that movement), provides fresh grist for that debate. It showcases Fluxus zines, photography, musical scores, scripts for performances, sometimes stored in Box en Valise-style kits (and indeed Fluxus surely got this idea from grandaddy Duchamp.) None of the Fluxus artists have quite the iconic profile of Duchamp, Murakami or Beuys (partly because their ideology tended to shun individualism). This tends to make their claims to populism seem a priori more plausible, though perhaps the facility of this judgment should be questioned. In any case, witty, sardonic, serious, irreverent, quasi-metaphysical, avowedly ephemeral, strangely persistent Fluxus is a train always worth riding on for at least a while. A further glimpse into MOMA s cache will be a welcome development for the fall.

Annals of the Surreal

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Lilliputia, the MIdget City: If dreamland is a laboratory for Manhattan, Midget City is a laboratory for Dreamland. Three hundred midgets who had been scattered across the continent as attractions at World s Fairs are offered a permanent experimental community here, a bit of old Nuremberg m the fifteenth century. Since the scale of Midget City is half the scale of the real world, the cost of building this cardboard utopia is, at least theoretically, quartered, so that extravagant architectural effects can be tested cheaply. The midgets of Dreamland have their own parliament, their own beach complete with midget lifeguard and "a miniature Midget City Fire Department responding [every hour] to a false alarm -effective reminder of man s existential futility." "But the true spectacle of Midget City is social experimentation. Within the walls of the midget capital, the laws of conventional morality are systematically ignored, a fact advertised to attract visitors. Promiscuity, homosexuality, nymphomania and so on are encouraged and flaunted: marriages collapse almost as soon as they are celebrated; 80 percent of newborn babies are illegitimate. To increase the frisson induced by this organized anarchy, the midgets are showered with aristocratic titles, highlighting the gap between implied and actual behavior. Midget City represents the institutionalization of misbehavior, a continuing vicarious experience for a society preparing to shed the remnants of Victorianism." -- Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York

On Anamorphosis

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Distortion may lend itself...to all the paranoiac ambiguities, and every possible use has been made of it, from Arcimboldi to Salvador Dali. I will go so far as to say that this fascination complements what geometral researches into perspective allow to escape from vision. How is it that nobody has ever thought of connecting this with...the effect of an erection? Imagine a tattoo traced on the sexual organ ad hoc in the state of repose and assuming its, if I may say so, developed form in another state." --Jacques Lacan, "Of the Gaze," The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. "Ennet House alumnus and volunteer counselor Calvin Thrust is quietly rumored to have on the shaft of his formerly professional porn-cartridge- performer s Unit a tattoo that displays the magiscule initials CT when the Unit is flaccid and the full name CALVIN THRUST when hyperemic." --David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

The Art Terrorism Manifesto of Raymond Salvatore Harmon

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Dig it.

Hermetic Duchamp?

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Marcel Duchamp had exhibited found objects as art with his famous urinal. But Duchamp';s art is hermetic, introverted, it doesn';t go out to the viewer. Rauschenberg';s reflects his own personality: it';s extrovert, generous, non-judgmental.” -Ealan Wingate, co-curator of the current Rauschenberg exhibition in Edinburgh

Surrealist Lab: Whose Unconscious? (Part 2)

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

In a recent post, "With A Lunatic Gesture We Forsook Jujitsu" (Automatism A), I tried my hand at some automatic writing. This was a practice codified by the Surrealists under the direction of Andre Breton, but its provenance dates to long before that. Its purpose has depended on the historical circumstance. For instance, it used to be seen by 19th century psychics as a way of channeling supernatural sources, even aliens. For others, namely the Beat poets, it was merely a way of loosening spontaneity and creativity, wine being another. But what I was most interested in was automatic writing in the strict, Bretonian sense. In his first Manifesto, Andre Breton defines "Surrealism" as: "Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations." (Notice, visual art is nowhere referred to in this statement.) The absolutism of Breton s influential statement is both tantalizing and maddening. What troubles me the most is whether there is in fact such a thing as "pure thought," outside of reason or "aesthetic or moral preoccupations." Breton is invoking a kind of reverse Kantianism: instead of the "thing-in-itself" he is trying to pin down "thought in itself." But where do reason/aesthetics/morals end and "thought" as such begin? It was this idea that I had in mind as I began the automatic writing session: that I would be attempting to capture my thought in its "pure" workings, i.e. "disinterestedly" (another term Breton used.) For the purposes of full scientific transparency, I did it in the middle of the night, in the semi-hypnotic state that one reaches right before sleep (Hypnagogia). Lying on my bed, instead of allowing myself to pass into unconsciousness, I woke up, sat down on my desk, and began typing directly into the content management system used by toutfait.com and marcelduchamp.net. I discovered some things in the process. One: at first my writing had what I would call the quality of "gibberish." The sentences appeared to be driven by a certain syntactic or phonetic stylization, meaning they were composed of vaguely interesting juxtapositions of words and had a rhythm to them, but semantically made very little sense. Sheer linguistic detritus made an appearance. I m studying German for instance, and therefore random strings of German words seem to crawling around in my head -- but my grammar is far from competent. So, for some reason I wrote, "etwas unterscheiden zwischen werden Erde gesehen," meaning, according to google translate, "Will differ slightly between Earth seen." Is this "pure" thought? Maybe? It is certainly as disinterested as it could possibly be. But it also seems doubtful that it is what was really intended as the result of the method. Did I perhaps violate some implicit rules, like for instance, "don t write in any foreign languages you don t really speak?" Table that for now. In the second part of the automatic writing experiment something else happened. I reacted to the feeling that I was writing pure gibberish by -- somewhat paradoxically -- trying to sidestep the linguistic oddities that were present to mind and get "deeper" into my unconscious. But what happened then was in one sense the opposite. I became, rather, more self-conscious. What I wrote started to have elements already of a reflection on the process I was undertaking. In the automatic text, the phrase in the fourth line "we felt a little bit meta at a higher level" embodies this shift precisely. It should be incursion by the feeling that I was watching over my own shoulder and trying to already synopsize what was going on for the sake of the particular forum I was writing about (a Journal of Dada and Surrealism). What was odd, of course, is the "we." This could symptomize perhaps the split subjectivity entailed in the contradictory tasks of writing "authentically" from the unconscious, and trying to "understand" what was happening in consciousness in order to write about it. In the most radical interpretation, the "we" might be the voice of that split subjectivity itself, speaking in the first person plural. However, it could simply also indicate a rhetorical performance of split subjectivity; knowing that the pronoun "we" signifies chaos and schizophrenia, I simply used it in order to convey the effect of multiple dizzying layers of thought. Which is the truth of the matter? The only real way to settle it would seemingly be just to ask what I intended! The problem with this is that in accordance with the rules of the experiment, I didn t intentionally intend anything! I wrote automatically, scrupulously avoiding any intentions of which I was conscious. So while it may be that there is a truth here that just can t be recovered, we might instead opt for the hypothesis that there is no precise truth here -- and this is due to the fact that a rhetorical position and an authentic meaning are not fully separable (as decades of poststructuralism have helped us come to grips with). To state the idea as simply as possible: we never simply express, we always write on a particular platform for a particular reason, to a particular audience (even if that audience is just ourselves, at some later point, as in the case of a journal). This is the root of the now classic Derridean notion that writing is difference: it differs from itself by always enmeshing itself in contexts that take it outside of itself. And the real kicker is that this “difference” is not an “accident” that meaning could be protected from: it is the precondition for meaning itself. "There is some secret about rhetoric and truth that s mixed up in the goal of absolute transparent uneditorship that any surrealist editor would do wise to try to ignore," I wrote (or was written) in the automatic writing experiment. Despite myself I was already starting to reflect on the problem. Trying one';s best to ignore the inevitable truth/rhetoric entanglement is, in some sense, necessary for the Surrealist project of “pure psychic automatism.” But paradoxically, it is in automatic writing that the entanglement presents itself most dramatically. This is because it forces the issue. When there is no task at hand other than to write whatever comes to mind, the normally-taken-for-granted (tacit) parameters limiting what one would in fact write loom into view. The question that is necessary to consider here is: is this the stuff of an encounter with “the unconscious?” The answer I think depends partly on a further question: whose unconscious? Perhaps it';s not the orthodox Freudian unconscious of complexes, neuroses, and cathexes, but rather the Lacanian model, in which the unconscious is ordered like a language -- always existing in relation to the Symbolic Order (the extra-subjective system of culture and inherited meanings.) Or instead we might look to the more contemporary idea of the cognitive unconscious: a semi-hierarchical system of information-processing mechanisms that enable us to navigate our environment and regulate our behavior (the domain of psychologists like Piaget and Helmoltz). The artificial intelligence scholar Marvin Minsky uses the metaphor of a “Society of Mind,” in which mental activities are executed by emergent groupings of independent “agents” (or “Daemons,” in the terminology of the philosopher Daniel Dennett). Indeed, a sense of fragmentation/disparateness, leading to dynamic assertion of (somewhat unstable) order, characterized the automatic writing experience. (These various models of the unconscious are not necessarily mutually exclusive; in fact Piaget thought that there would ultimately be a synthesis between his cognitive version and the Freudian.) Whatever the nature of the unconscious mind, it does seem to me that the practice of automatic writing is useful for its exploration--even if it is unable to fulfill the role that the Surrealists envisioned for it. More systematic research should be forthcoming on this subject, at the boundary of aesthetics and psychology,--which need not be erased as a site of inquiry simply because Freud and Breton are no longer dominant in their respective fields.

An Argument for Tactile Art

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"It is clear that the liberative importance of the tactile resides in the fact that it can only be decoded in terms of experience itself: it cannot be reduced to mere information, to representation or to the simple evocation of a simulacrum substituting for absent presences." Kenneth Frampton (from "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance")

Physics Comes to the Defense of Modern Art

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

If Duchamp s "Standard Stoppages" lampooned the precise measuring systems of scientists, a Harvard mathematician is now doing something of the opposite for Jackson Pollack: rescuing him from the perception that abstract expressionists are just random paint-slingers. Through a close data analysis of "Untitled 1948-49," professor Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan uncovered some of the secrets of Pollack s technique: he must have "held his brush or trowel high off the canvas, moving it slowly as he let out a flow of paint that narrowed and sped up as it fell." Mahevedan s study of fluid dynamics tuned him in to notion that Pollack was making use of properties in this field that scientists were decades away from understanding. "Inertial, gravitational, and viscous coiling regimes" are contemporary physicists terms for what Pollack was tapping into -- by throwing, pouring, ladling, slathering, and otherwise dolloping and shoveling paint onto canvases. Of course Pollack did this in the most American, mythopoetic way possible. Perhaps next the physicists should try to put their theories into action?

The Scent of Belle Haleine

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Can the smell of Duchamp s famous perfume be reconstructed? The blog "Olfactory Art" tells all. Unfortunately, even OSX Lion doesn t come with scent-receptors. Time for Steve Jobs to team up with William Gibson...

Picabia s 391, up for sale, sold.

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Francis Picabia s magazine, 391, showcased the one time dadaist s eroto-mechanomorphic diagrams and his anti-aesthete s wisdom. (It still exists in fact, in bastardized digital form http://www.391.org/) Three of the more historical issues went on the market recently, and were offered for around $9000 a piece. They sold almost immediately. Booktryst has the goods:

Indifference: the Musical Score

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

This composer and nonsense aficionado Gary Bachlund sets a short, meaningless verse (cited, or curated, by Douglas Hostfadter in his excellent Metamagical Themas), to a tongue-in-cheek arrangement of chromaticism and diatonic sextuplets.

Surrealist Lab: In Search of Automatism (part 1)

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Cao Fei s "Whose Utopia"

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Among contemporary world artists, the Guangdong new media and video artist Cao Fei is among the most intriguing explorers of the boundaries between the fantastical, the global/political and the everyday. Her recent work "Whose Utopia" unquestionably steals the show at the new Deutsche Guggenheim exhibit "Fantastic Narratives in Contemporary Video," in Berlin. "Whose Utopia" is an elegant triptych, or else a concerto for factory in three movements. It has a distinctly musical symmetry to it. The first segment called "Imagination of Product," mixes the prosaic and the mystifying in the same degrees as its title, a fairly cute reversal of the common phrase "Product of the Imagination," which nonetheless contains a pregnant ambiguity. Is it the human who imagines the product or is it the product that does the imagining? Karl Marx, theorist of the spectral, would have certainly made a case for the latter. As he once wrote of a table, created as a commodity: "It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but...stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing of its own free will..." In the first segment of "Whose Utopia" the lightbulbs (double entendre: ideas?) produced by the factory engage in a stately, lyrical dance, apparently of their free will, down the assembly line, mingling with the machines charged with performing various operations on them. Complete with an uneasy soundtrack and luminescence eerily penetrating the industrial gloom, the result lands somewhere between Chaplin s Modern Times, the Brothers Quay s "Street of Crocodiles," and the popular television series How It s Made. The middle act, however, pursues neither satire, nor grotesquerie, nor dehumanizing functionalism, but something quite different: the poignantly oneiric. As in a fascinating daydream, a ballerina and a tai-qi artist perform their delicate craft throughout the factory spaces. Perhaps the only way to seize the day from the inhuman phantasmagoria of capitalism is with the human fantasy of performative arts? The last section would seem to bear this out in one sense, while also carrying a reminder that what we are seeing is also a resolute reality. it features video portraits of factory employees in front of their equipment staring directly at the camera, and finally, a group of them holding up a sign reading "My Future is Not a Dream." "Whose Utopia" conveys all the above and more, while never seeming politically or allegorically reductive. It has a visual and stylistic specificity that makes it continually new and unsettling, and difficult to forget afterwards.

Painting with James Hyde and a Weekend at Mount Tremper Arts

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Why painting? Or, what is it exactly about the act of lathering, or perhaps even feathering or spilling, paint upon a surface that has intrigued artists, critics, thinkers, and aesthetes alike for thousands of years? And whatever that origin may be, does it grip us in the same way today, in our post-Duchampian era of post-post-modernism, as it did 100+ years ago? The answer, seemingly, is yes. That is, according to New York artist James Hyde. I first encountered Hyde';s work at the opening of Productive Steps, a “little exhibition” curated by Lucas Blalock and Sam Falls at Mount Tremper Arts. “Aliens in the outhouse?”: I thought about the sculpture piece of an outhouse that enclosed an alien barely visible through the cracks of the structure. My subsequent thought, “why on earth would they be hiding in here?” felt disturbingly applicable to my impressions of the exhibit as a whole: why on earth were these works of art hiding on a little mountain in the Catskills? I don';t think I managed to find a suitable answer throughout the evening';s course of pulled pork and performance art pieces. I strolled by every piece as I would on a holiday, and James Hyde';s was no exception. In a sense, everybody lounging around Mt. Tremper really was taking a weekend retreat from the blistering New York City summer. Unfortunately for me and the rest of Productive Steps, Hyde';s work deserved a more attentive audience. In an interview with Phong Bui of the Brooklyn Rail, Hyde remarked, “I think painting is never entirely about being a painted object, nor a medium in the narrow sense. I think painting is, as well, a symbolic and allegorical situation that happens to be made by a particular medium and set of materials.” If Duchamp brought our attention to the “object” of Art—both its object and it as object—then Hyde, it seems, is talking about something quite different. Something that is, perhaps, more classical at heart, yet infinitely more refreshing: he';s talking about painting being as elementary as a relationship(s). “I think painting is basically about attaching particles to surfaces,” he explains. Phong goes on to discuss pieces in which Hyde paints over reproductions of enlarged sections from Stuart Davis';s paintings. She says of the two components, Hyde';s and Davis';s: “they harmonize and sometimes they collide.” This is where their beauty lies. And this was why I had such a hard time encountering a beautiful experience. I could only begrudgingly, if amicably, amble about the grounds. It felt static. Everybody seemed alarmingly at ease, at rest, in repose and the art seemed to suit this background. There was little that was harmonizing, and even less that was colliding. The art simply wasn';t necessary enough in its context and the product left me disenchanted with the experience of it. But upon reading Hyde';s last words to Phong Bui—“there is something which is so durable and fascinating about painting that I think you can do a lot of paintings about disenchanting painting and still find them quite magical.”—I think, perhaps, I could have paid closer attention, while I had the chance, and not been so preoccupied with thinking about the alien, the show, the work as mere product, i.e. fabricated art object, I could have found in Hyde';s piece an activity—capable of posture, conversation, and, who knows, maybe even an ethics. The point here is that there is more to notice in painting than aesthetics: there is mobility and potential for transformation, and there is always more to see than meets the eye. Below is a link a perfunctory review of “Not About Paint,” an exhibit featuring Hyde';s work at Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston.

An Interesting Critique of John Cage

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Music is sound. Some sounds may be music. Silence is the medium in which sounds and music are expressed. Spare me the next crackpot offering of themes and variations on silence. The deaf have ways of understanding sound and appreciating music. Tell me how you would convey the artisitic merit of silence to the deaf??" -Justinae, reader/contributor to the London Telegraph. How indeed could the deaf be made to appreciate "4 33?" A new problem for Cage studies.

With A Lunatic Gesture We Forsook Jujistsu (Automatism A)

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

With a lunatic gesture we forsook jujitsu. Etwas unterscheiden zwischen werden Erde gesehen. The politics of underwriting that I have reclaimed, forsooth my shakespearean liege, a league embedded in the first strategy when I set out for champions, however it may have otherwise seemed. When the natives that combined their energies first of all eschewed gentrification, exclaimed that howeverso things might have first seemed to them symbolically, they would absolutely and hirsutely and astutely perservere beyond the bounds of the, we felt a little bit meta at a higher level surveying what was going on it was like several simultaneous streams, polished, mixed in with a need for publicity and a bit of anthracite, a mixture of the abstract and the really really concrete at two separate leveled. And he wondered whether the fact that he wondered whether this made any sense made any sense, when nested between two does distraction really count? Can anyone really write like this? There is a basic incoherency about the the whole process he felt. What about typos? Could invariably the materiality of the signifier not become an issue? Did they ever actually think about that? Or had they actually outthought it in surreality, a true unconscious that always managed to be a step ahead of its own essence, and so avoid the tautological trap of self-conscious referentiality? There is some secret about rhetoric and truth that s mixed up in the goal of absolute transparent uneditorship that any surrealist editor would do wise to try to ignore....invariably looking back to try to proofread now. Typos, types, typos, topos, Greek stream geek dom. The natural bounds that any artwork would assume, with out being, in some sense lazy the reason why text and context just semantic abandon grammar. Funny how that works, like aphasia, degenerate lettrism i o X u g Yum Zum Zum I H ü Yum R T I q Zawp B gzp d x ü

Secrets of 20th Century Music

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"One of the things that people don t realize about Dad s kind of music is, when you replace a C-sharp with a gunshot, it has to be a C-sharp gunshot or it sounds awful." Spike Jonze Jr., as quoted by Thomas Pynchon

And The Nominees for Le Prix Marcel Duchamp 2011 Are...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Each year, one French artist is awarded the prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp. It does not garner quite the media buzz as the Turner Prize does, but the nominees do get a chance to exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art of Lille for two months, and the winner will have his or her own exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou as well as €35,000 in the bank. This year';s nominees include four impressive artists from very different backgrounds. Damien Cabanes, a figurative painter and sculptor born in 1959, is arguably the most traditional artist in the group. Deeparture, 2005 Mircea Canto, born in 1977, is a well-known installation artist represented by galleries in Paris, Tel-Aviv, and Rome. La Trappe, 2008 Guillame Leblon, born 1971, is another installation artist who works in a variety of media. Samuel Rousseau, born 1971, is an installation and video artist who works with everything from oil and acrylic paints to taxidermied animal.

How To Take A Duchamp Road Trip

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Step 1: Drive to the Philadelphia Art Museum, see the Large Glass and peek like a pervert through the wooden wall at "Entant Donnes." Chuckle at puns like "Fresh Widow." Step 2: Drive around the rest of the country, looking at waterfalls, landscapes, women, bachelors, machines, and windows. Let the memory of the incredible vividness of Duchamp s world subsume all later perceptions, which appear as pale shadows by comparison. Pull up to the Hudson and breathe in Manhattan, which will only exist, finally, as the site of Duchamp s secret late-career atelier. Step 3: Recall, wistfully, that Duchamp owns everything.

Stephen Colbert Suggests Gitmo Might Be Conceptual Art

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

July 14th, 2011: Stephen Colbert proves yet again the edginess of his political satire, making his audience audibly uncomfortable with this strangely avant-garde speculation: "It now occurs to me, could all of Gitmo, in fact be one giant art installation? Take our enemies from the stone-age villages in Afghanistan, fly them half way across the world and drop them into an extra-governmental, intra-liminal space, neither America nor the battlefield, here-in using unchecked executive power in an act of self-critical metarecontextualization...plus, these [hooded detainees] look like they ve been wrapped by Christo. Forget Marina Abramovic, forget Laurie Anderson: the greatest performance artists of our generation are [Bush and Obama]." These somewhat high-flying theoretical acrobatics were, indeed, backed by Colbert s resume as a former conceptual art correspondent, for John Stewart s The Daily Show: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-14-2005/the-gates

Arthur C. Danto: on Hegel and Duchamp

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Arthur C. Danto s conceptions of "the end of art" and "posthistoricism" were quickly adopted as catch-phrases and widely misunderstood by the art world of the eighties and nineties. He did not mean, however, that art could no longer be made, accomplished, nor that any criteria for its judgment was to be doomed--deemed historical. Here, Danto illuminates his complex philosophy--of which art was always and ever the object: "...and it is the historical mission of art to make philosophy possible, after which art will have no historical mission in the great cosmo-historical sweep. Hegel s stupendous philosophical vision of history gets, or almost gets, an astounding confirmation in Duchamp s work, which raises the question of the philosophical nature of art from within art, implying that art already is philosophy in a vivid form, and has now discharged its spiritual mission by revealing the philosophical essence at its heart. The task may now be handed over to philosophy proper, which is equipped to cope with its own nature directly and definitively. So what art finally will have achieved as its fulfillment and fruition is the philosophy of art." "But this is a cosmic way of achieving the second stage of the platonic program, which has always been to substitute philosophy for art. And to dignify art, patronizingly, as philosophy in one of its self-alienated forms, thirsting for clarity as to its own nature as all of us thirst for clarity as to our own. Perhaps there is something to this. When art internalizes its own history, when it becomes self-conscious of its history as it has come to be in our time, so that its consciousness of its history forms part of its nature, it is perhaps unavoidable that it should turn into philosophy at last. And when it does so, well, in an important sense, art comes to an end." Arthur C. Danto, "The Philosophical Disenfrachisement of Art." In The Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste ed. Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn (Amsertdam: Gordon and Breach Publishing Group, 1998), 75-76.

How a Situationist "Draws"

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

British architecture student Ji Soo Han recently made a "Situationist Drawing Device (shown below)" What exactly does this mean? Situationism, the brainchild of expressionist painter Asger Jorn and filmmaker Guy Debord (both accomplished theorists and provocateurs), was in many ways the last stage of an avant-garde progression that began with Dada. Feeling that Surrealist work had been coopted by the bourgeoisie and turned into a commodified style (while Dada was simply unable to gain political traction), the Situationists in the late 50 s forswore making art as such (though Jorn continued in fact to paint wild, semi-figurative canvases). Instead they focused their sights on the urban landscape, plotting to evade its functionalist destiny through disruptive cartographic production and a variety of tactics designed to restore free play, fantasy and mythic discovery to the modern experience (while avoiding the unconscious determinism of which they accused the surrealists). Derive, or the art of intentional wandering through the city, was a major pillar of Situationist practice. Soo Han s work in general employs novel technologies, digital and otherwise, to explore and transcribe the relationships between humans and their local environments; the Rube-Goldberg-like Situationist Drawing Device is supposed to both refashion the pedestrian s perceptual encounters and serve as a "choreographic" record of their movements. Strangely enough, the Situationists might have found the prosthesis redundant: for them (as for the writer Michel De Certeau) the traversing of the city was itself the "drawing," and the subjective transformation of the city engendered by selective path-taking was its own record, its own "inscription."

Few Have Explored This Bewildering Territory

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"The privileged realm located in the boundary-zone between the three fields of power, religion and semiotics...Few people have explored this bewildering territory (by definition a no-man';s land of imagination) with the same energy as René Magritte, the bourgeois surrealist dressed in business suit and bowler hat, the revolutionary explorer who wove together into one strand the activities of showing and saying, geometry and linguistics, painter and poet. In their capacity as full signs, all his works are carefully named, some extremely frightening, the best unbreakably self-referential. The content is everywhere visibly seen and silently heard, the titles by his own admission chosen in such a way as to prevent [the] pictures being put into some familiar context suggested by the automatic flow of thought in order to avoid uneasiness ." The titles are meant as an extra protection to counter any attempt to reduce poetry to a pointless game, [because] the use of speech for ordinary purposes of life imposes a limited meaning on words designating objects. It would seem that everyday language sets imaginary boundaries to the imagination. But it is possible to create new relationships between words and objects and to bring out certain features of language and of objects that are commonly overlooked in the everyday process of living. Magritte was painfully aware that our everyday life is a universe of readymade experiences." Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographical Reason, p. 142

Duchamp s Funeral

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Duchamp s Funeral: posted by darksilenceinsuburbia. liked by structuredstructure. really liked by hyperbolicdude reblogged by yourlaughlinesareshowing. reliked by themasquerademind reposted by newjerseykeepmybones brought to you by the contemporary art blog. rebrought to you by marcelduchamp.net readymade for you by marcel duchamp.

For The Reading List: Man Ray&#39s Montparnasse

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

It';s no easy task for a work of history to dish all the gossip you want hear and still manage to seem culturally and sociopolitically substantial. Man Ray';s Montparnasse, by Herbert Lottman (2001) does just this. Suitable for the beach or the classroom, it manages to maintain the pace of a tight page-turner while encompassing the major personages, relationships, movements and trysts at the center of Paris';s interwar bohemia...rendering them as they might have appeared in the lens of its appointed photographer: a diminutive Jew born in Philadelphia to Russian immigrants. “All of Greenwich Village is parading up and down Rue Montparnasse,“ quipped Man Ray';s friend Marcel Duchamp, (who had already achieved notoriety in New York and was refusing to paint at any price.) Such was then the romantic tug of the 14th arrondisement for American artists, literati and starstuck aspirants, the last category of which included William Faulkner who, unpublished at 28, haunted cafes hoping for a glimpse of Joyce. Even more perhaps than other already-established Yanks, like the macho Hemingway and the insecure Fitzgerald, Man Ray made Montparnasse his stomping ground. Facilitating this was his lengthy affair with Kiki de Montparnasse, the unquestioned doyenne of the district, who had modeled for every major artist around and was a cabaret favorite of visiting sailors. The usefulness and neutrality of Ray';s lens also paved his way socially. He seemed to be one of the few confidantes of Andre Breton—the “pope“ of Surrealism—who never earned wrath or excommunication for his heresies. The author too applies evenhandedness, if never disinterest, to the volatile story of Dada and Surrealism: their hermetic insiderishness, their theatrical gift for hype, their violent schisms and reconciliations, their dalliances with the Communist Party, their discovery and cooptation by the haute bourgeoisie. Through it all he paints their lives and interconnections in richly textured strokes, never failing to acknowledge that they were men and women of passions and of their time, but evoking always how far beyond that they went.

Parisian Gallery Focuses on Multiples and Editions in New Show

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Perrotin, a gallery on Rue Turenne, in Paris that represents Tatiana Trouve and Matthew Day Jackson among other top contemporary artists, is currently hosting a exhibition entitled "Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, and Takashi Murakami: A History of Editions." By way of inciting general reflection on the issue of multiples and "mass-produced" sets in "fine" art (which really achieved widespread legitimacy only with the arrival of Warhol and Lichtenstein), Gallery Perrotin is showcasing three creators whose contributions in this realm are perhaps lesser known. Duchamp, indeed, was one of the pioneers of the practice of signing and selling reproduced sets of his work. Examples include both the rotoreliefs -- which he produced in new editions in 1953, 1959, 1963 and 1965, distributing them internationally -- and the Box en Valises, leather packages containing miniature replicas of his entire oeuvre: everyone (theoretically) gets one. These Duchamp considered authentic Duchamps every bit as much as say, the Large Glass that now hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is legitimate to ask of course whether this was a clever commercial ploy or a radical stride towards the democratization of art, or both/and. The German Marxist critic Walter Benjamin, in his famous essay "Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility," argued for the liberatory potential of said reproducibility -- on the grounds that it freed aesthetics from the privileged "aura" of the sacral object. However, it is glaringly clear by now that the very industrial phenomenon the Frankfurter trumpeted can lead also to a degree of tedious fetishization (and pedantic argumentation) that would ve embarassed even bygone priesthoods. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/oct/22/what-is-an-andy-warhol/) Luckily, whatever side of the big issue you come down on, there are still plenty of little whimsical gems at Perrotin worth uncovering. These include an excellent collection of dada posters and zines, various Duchamp-related cartoons, and an enigmatic reflective foil square stating A Guest + A Ghost = A Host (a Duchampian phrase once exegized by Stephen Jay Gould in our pages: http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Articles/gould.html)

Oops, They Did It Again

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

During the last hundred years or so there have been numerous attempts, successful and unsuccessful, by pranksters and artists alike, to leave their mark—in other words, urinate—on Duchamp';s upturned Fountain. On the 17th of this month, the latest attempt aired on a Youtube channel. Two artists, positioned across from one another with the Fountain between them as though in competition, relieved themselves over Duchamp';s piece at the Tate museum. Whether or not this particular Fountain was constructed by Duchamp himself or bought as a piece initially meant for that very purpose and later appropriated by him is a subject for debate; however, what is notable in this supposed gesture of insurrection is, well, absolutely nothing. In other words, this has been done. In fact, it has been done better. At the Tate museum, the Fountain stands encased in a glass box on a pedestal, and the “performance artists” couldn';t have come close to reaching their target. Even if they had, what would it have accomplished? Perhaps it might serve to remind us of how fine the line between art and waste can be. Or it might incite us to ruminate on the different ways art should or shouldn';t be experienced, appreciated, understood, or not understood. But there are more intelligent ways of posing these questions, ways that aren';t unnecessarily insensitive to the museum';s janitorial staff. What is lacking here is, to put it in Thierry De Duve';s terms, an insightful “indignation.” I truly can';t help but be saddened and overwhelmed by the “phoniness” of the whole thing. Please don t watch the video here:

Aren t You Bored By Duchamp s Legacy?

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

“Aren';t you concerned that the dialectical equation of art and anti-art might have congealed into a perverse tautology, now that even the middle class collects its products? Aren';t you bored by the phoniness of a good part of Duchamp';s legacy? Don';t you feel the powerlessness of avant-garde art to elicit indignation from a society that is too liberal but still not free enough, too eager to mask its conflict behind pluralism and too anxious to clothe its consent for cultural illiteracy in the rages of dissidence?” --Thierry De Duve, Kant After Duchamp

Beyond Nude Chess: Eve Babitz Embodied Bygone L.A.

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The photograph of Marcel Duchamp playing chess with a nude Eve Babitz has become one of most iconic images of the French artist. In a gallery filled with his works, a well-dressed, gentle-looking Marcel sits opposite a young, voluptuous woman. Her face retreats behind her bangs but her posture is composed and comfortable, and Duchamp himself does not seem to care that his opponent has no clothes on. Behind them is “The Large Glass," or “The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even,” and a number of other significant pieces that fade into the background. The nude and the elderly artist beg to be viewed as another piece of art in the gallery; the viewer remains bewildered and indecisive, however, about how to approach the photo as a whole. It was the perfect portrait of Duchamp and Los Angeles. According to Babitz';s 1991 Esquire essay “I was a Naked Pawn for Art,” her photo-op with Duchamp was actually more of a capricious, attention-seeking young-adult stunt than an artistic statement. Here s what happened: A massive retrospective exhibition of Duchamp';s art was held at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1963. Everyone important was invited to a private viewing, yet Babitz, though she was friends with curator Walter Hopp, was not. Later, at the public viewing, Time photographer Julian Wasser, her younger sister';s date to the private viewing, suggested it would be a fun idea for Babitz to pose naked playing chess with Duchamp. Young, reckless and dying to get revenge on Hopp for his earlier snub, the twenty-year-old Babitz jumped at the opportunity. The next morning, Wasser photographed Babitz playing chess with a very old, very polite and very un-L.A. Duchamp. The shoot itself lived up to neither its hype nor its legacy. Wasser spent ages fixing the lights and Babitz arrived at the gallery dressed in “nunlike severity.” She tried not to think about her stomach, which was puffed up due to the birth control pills she was taking, ran to get dressed soon as Wasser finished the shoot, and succeeded in confronting Hopp. That was all. Wasser was already driving around Hollywood with a police radio in his car in 1963, and he went on to become one of the most successful celebrity photographers of the 20th Century. Babitz became an acclaimed writer who published books and novels about L.A. culture, but she is now more than anything remembered as the naked woman who played chess with Duchamp. Today, Babitz';s literary reputation is borderline nonexistent: all her books are out of print and difficult to find even at libraries. Of the three books Stanford holds, one is held in a non-circulating collection on Californian history, and the other two are buried in “SAL3,” the Stanford Auxiliary Library. A Google search of “Eve Babitz” yields a slew of reproductions and humorous (and awkward) parodies of Wasser';s photo, a few obscure graduate dissertations, blog posts by serious bookaholics, as well as the Myspace page of an British indie goth-pop band called “All About Eve Babitz.” She doesn';t even have a Wikipedia page. However, once upon a time she was the epicenter of everything Los Angeles. She was neither a celebrity nor a wealthy heiress, but it seemed as if everyone who was anyone was somehow magically connected to Eve Babitz. Besides being friends with the aforementioned Walter Hopp, the legendary curator whose gallery hosted the first solo show by Andy Warhol, she was the daughter of an L.A. Philharmonic violinist, and eventually became the goddaughter of a certain visiting musician named Igor Stravinsky. She was one of Ed Ruscha';s “Five girlfriends of 1965” and she also unapologetically slept with Jim Morrison. And through the sheer serendipity of her meeting her sister s date, the media-savvy, impulsive Julian Wasser, Babitz finally and for posterity became the nude girl who played chess with Duchamp. Ironically, the world of Eve Babitz';s writing could not be further from European manners and intellectual French Modernism, and deserves recognition in its own right. It would be a slight stretch to admit her into the canon of great 20th century American writers, but her work definitely packs more punch than that of many writers with Wikipedia pages. Her essays and novels present a city populated by alcoholics, fame whores and Scientologists, a glamorous Sodom without a sense of history and an enforced moral code, whose only oases of any form of purity were vegan, natural food stores decorated in Indian wallpaper and frequented by yoga jocks and sex addicts. These were atheist and political people who worshiped Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor and believed that “fascism is worse than what Oedipus did to his mother.” L.A. was admittedly messy, weird and sinfully delicious; Babitz was not afraid to love every bit of it. Certainly, versions of Babitz';s L.A. can be found in works of a dozen other writers, but unlike Joan Didion or Nathaniel West, Babitz does not attempt to critique L.A. She acknowledges that “what educated people from the East Coast and England take one look at [LA] and think is what is wrong with this place,” but she has no desire to fix it. Writing in a style that is a mix of David Sedaris and Lauren Conrad or Chelsea Handler, she is observant, witty, tactful, efficient and daring. After reading Tolstoy, Austen, Dickens and Camus, she concluded that “the point of these book as far as I, a bleached blond teenager growing up in Hollywood, was concerned was that though the authors thought they were so smart--being from England and the East Coast and so well educated and everything--they were suckers for trashy cute girls who looked like goddesses and just wanted to have fun.” Occasionally she dives into intricate, poetic descriptions or introspective streams of consciousness, but for the most part she is the immensely biting and practical writer who chose to attend L.A. Community College “because you could park, unlike at UCLA.” To Babitz, a flat stomach is worth more than the “tenets of Western Civilization that try to convince us there are higher things,” which “always seemed to [her] just a handful of dust.” The towering necessity of a svelte figure over higher philosophy is thoroughly and nakedly explored in many of her essays, and she does not care if the reader disagrees. Perhaps her biggest flaw is that she succeeded so beautifully in writing records of a disposable culture that her writings became a part of it, and were themselves forgotten as the world she describes vanished and was replaced.

Eye Drawing: Paysant s Art Comes Directly From the Head

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Bypassing the question of the technical skill of the artist was a long-standing target of the Dada and Surrealist movements, from Jean Arp s stochastic collages to Duchamp s readymades, to the "automatic drawing machines" constructed by Jean Tinguely. Perhaps ironically (though perhaps suitably), technological aids and prostheses were always tied in with this tradition. And the French contemporary artist Michel Paysant has taken the scientific solution to the next level with his quite cutting edge "eye-drawing." Using eye-tracking and cognitive imaging software at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurosciences and Intellectual Imagery of the LENA at the Hospital of Salpêtrière in Paris, Paysant produced a series of skull-shaped schema, he has said, by imaging them "internally."The Centre Pompidou recently displayed one of these, entitled Autre Vanite, or the "other vanity." (Skulls, classic memento mori, are known as Vanites due to their recalling that life is but a vanity.) Another vanity indeed seems to be at work here: though relying on eerily post-human technical supplement, the concept of Eye Drawing almost conjures the neo-Romanticist ideal of a work flowing unmediated from the soul of the artistic genius: precisely the sort of heroic vision that Dada would seem to scorn. However, Tristan Tzara in fact at times compared Dada to Romantacism; Hugo Ball, for his part saw the chaos of Dada as serving a new, deeper verity and indeed a transcendental unity.

Lee Miller: More than a Muse

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, titled “Man Ray / Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism,” showcases the long and complicated relationship between the two avant-garde artists. Bringing together the work of Ray, Miller and others from their close circle in an interesting retelling of their story, it documents the various phases of their interconnected lives: as strangers, as mentor and student, as lovers, and finally as friends. Ultimately, it demonstrates how their liaison was critical to each artist';s growth as a Surrealist. If for Miller their encounter meant a foundation for a career in photography, Ray';s oeuvre evinces his strong fixation with her. He created haunting works based on Miller';s body and facial features that are now powerful and classic images, most notably “Observatory Time — The Lovers,” in which Miller';s glorified lips hover in a cloudy sky. Reviewer Chris Bergeron describes such pieces as “visual archetypes for the dream states, subconscious impulses and sense of dislocation Surrealists sought to convey.” These particular works are certainly reflective of such impulses, but they also exemplify what can be understood as the dilemma for Surrealist women: On the one hand, their desire to work as artists themselves, but also the unavoidable positioning of their bodies as objects of desire for their male contemporaries. A beautiful subject, Lee Miller is sometimes seen as merely a muse. The PEM exhibit allows us to better understand her success as an individual, independent of Ray, though still in inevitable interaction with him. Curator of Photography Phillip Prodger explains that part of the goal in telling their story was to represent Miller “on equal terms” with Ray. In removing the hierarchies of master and student, artist and muse, male and female, the show vindicates Miller without diminishing Ray. Yet the exhibit makes clear the degree to which Ray';s work, while stunning, is soaked in masculine desire. It pulls back the veil of lust that flattens Miller into an object of that desire. Ray';s depiction of Miller';s body in whole or in part may create a “sense of dislocation,” but there is perhaps nothing more dislocating than Miller';s work as a photographer/correspondent during World War II. This deserves appreciation in its own right, as it reveals her as not only an authentic Surrealist, but a visual storyteller with integrity and empathy. The show runs through December 4.

Games, Continued

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Games, which as operations are disjunctive, because they produce differentiating events, give rise to spaces where moves are proportional to situations. From the game of chess, an aristocratic form of the "art of war" which came from China and was brought by the Arabs into medieval Western culture where it constituted a very important part of manorial culture, to pinochle, Lotto, and Scrabble, games formulate (and already formalize) rules organizing moves and constitute as well a memory (a storage and a classification) of schemas of actions articulating replies with respect to circumstances. They exercise that function precisely because they are detached from those everyday combats which forbid one to "show his hand" and whose stakes, rules, and moves are too complex. The explicitness of the rules is always inversely proportional to the practical engagement involved. If we observe a formalization of tactics in these games (as has been done with respect to the game of go), or compare to games the technique of divination, whose formal framework has the purpose of adjusting a decision to concrete situations, we gain a preliminary body of material concerning the kinds of rationality proper to the practice of spaces—spaces that are closed and "historicized" by the variability of the events to be treated." "To these games correspond accounts of particular games: people tell each other about the hand they had to play the night before, or the slam they made the previous week. These stories represent a succession of combinations among all those that the synchronic organization of a space, of rules, of deals, etc., make possible. They are paradigmatic projections of a choice among these possibilities—a choice correspond-ing to a particular actualization (or enunciation). Like the bridge or chess articles in The New York Times, the stories could be formulated in a special code, thus making it clear that every event is a particular application of the formal framework. But in replaying the games, in telling about them, these accounts record the rules and the moves simultaneously. To be memorized as well as memorable, they are repertories of schemas of action between partners. With the attraction that the element of surprise introduces, these mementos teach the tactics possible within a given (social) system." "Tales and legends seem to have the same role.They are deployed, like games, in a space outside of and isolated from daily competition, that of the past, the marvelous, the original. In that space can thus be revealed, dressed as gods or heroes, the models of good or bad ruses that can be used every day. Moves, not truths, are recounted." -Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 41

The Quotable Avant-Garde: On (Duchamp) Games and Pataphysics

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"The game is the Pataphysical overture to the world. The realisation of such games is the creation of situations. A crisis therefore exists, caused by the crucial problem which each Pataphysical adept must resolve: s/he must either apply the situlogic method and attack the conditions of the reigning society, or else simply refuse to do anything whatsoever about the situation. It is in the latter resolution to this problem that Pataphysics becomes the religion best adapted to life in the society of the spectacle: a religion of passivity and pure absence." ― from Pataphysics - A Religion In The Making by Asger Jorn, originally appeared in Internationale Situationniste No.6 (August 1961)

Centuries Before Duchamp, Spanish King Elevated Chess Strategy to Occult Art

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The deep affinity between chess and Marcel Duchamp is well known. It s not only that picture of him playing with a nude Eve Babitz, or the striking, abstract set he designed with his friend Man Ray, or even his official decision to abandon art production for a period of 20 years whilst cultivating his tournament game. There is also the sense that the rhythms of chess were deeply intertwined with everything Duchamp did: from the carefully laid Fountain gambit set to trap his opponent the Salon Des Independants, to the fact that, as he once told interviewer Pierre Cabanne, he considered his "greatest work of art" to be his "use of time." (This of course is a point of pride among any professional Chessmaster playing on the clock). Ultimately, one suspects that the universe which swirled around the figure of Marcel Duchamp was structured, fundamentally, like a chess game--and that this is amongst the central secrets of his art. In this respect, there is reason to believe that Duchamp may have had a seminal ancestor in a perhaps unlikely place and time: 13th Century Castile. This is where and when King Alfonso X, known also as Alfonso the Wise, a "lettered" monarch known for his skill at astrology and verse composition, commissioned the Book of Games: an allusive, luminously illustrated text based partly on pre-existing Arabic works. It is among the first known documents to consider in depth the relationship between gaming, aesthetics, and cosmology. Backgammon, dice, chess and others are looked upon not just as diversions, but fundamental ciphers providing insight into the order of things (while also constituting standards of beauty.) One tableau, for instance, allegorizes the dialectic between chance and strategy as a mystical union between dice and chess. One cannot but think of this in relationship to the tricky, faux-stochastic work of Duchamp s: the "Standard Stoppages." These appear to leave measurements to fate, but in fact were most likely carefully, intentionally glued in the precise configuration predetermined by the artist. Seeming to appease the God of chance, while in fact leaving nothing to it: is this not one authentic, if perverse way of manifesting Alfonso s dialectic?

How to Buy a Lawrence Weiner

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 08:07:31 GMT

If Hannah Weiner wrote a poetics that bore witness to a her schizophrenic environment, a spectacle of linguistic topologies, Lawrence Weiner—member of the Postminimalist Conceptualism movement from the 1960s with others including artists Robert Barry and Sol LeWitt—actively constructs his own peculiar conceptual landscape, by inscribing its signifiers into the real. Unlike Hannah, Lawrence Weiner dares his audience to do more than read, he dares us to make. But how? As a “language-based sculptor,” when Lawrence Weiner sells art, he doesn';t hire a van to transfer his texts to their new owner';s location, nor does he part with the concrete performance-work those words might both designate and embody; instead, Lawrence Weiner presents his collector with a certificate that then permits the new owner to reprint his words or construct the sculpture they are led to imagine. Aaron and Barbara Levine recently purchased a Weiner from the Art Basel fair that just closed in Switzerland. They are avid collectors of what they call “immaterial art.” That implies an emphasis and interest that stems from Duchamp';s readymade entries into the art world at the very beginning of the twentieth century: if a signature can transform an already existing object into art, why can';t a signature do the same for something that has yet to be realized? And if that is possible, why does that something need to be realized at all? Charles Bernstein wrote about Hannah Weiner';s work in Jacket magazine, “[it] is an unrelenting synthesis of radical formal innovation and intensely personal content,” and the same can be said of Lawrence';s work. It exists somewhere between the innovative and the intimate—a space in which a publishable copy simply becomes irrelevant. The result of all this can only lead to a perception of artist as God figure, capable of literally remapping his world—whether by blowing craters around California or writing about blowing craters. This, certainly, becomes complicated when the subsequent creations must be made to enter an economy, especially when the transition from the conceptual to the concrete is negated and often reversed. Perhaps at least one intended benefit of Lawrence Weiner';s work is that art appreciation is liberation from fetish: “transcendence can only be completed by the viewer.” Duchamp had said something very similar. But perhaps receiving a gold-starred, stamped certificate of ownership only serves to reemphasize our dependency on a commodity form.

Sometimes Conceptualist Photographer Jeff Wall Charted Crooked Path Past Duchamp

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Today among the most prominent photographers exhibiting in the world, Jeff Wall has navigated a complex route towards the goal of making large-scale photography safe for top art museums. Along the way he has incorporated influences from classic photography (portraiture, documentary, photo-essay), academic modernist painting (like Post-Impressionism), Minimalism (Dan Flavin), and Conceptualism. A new show at the Bozar Palais Des Beaux Arts in Brussels, entitled Jeff Wall: The Crooked Path, attempts to thread these motley sources into a reckoning with the complex accomplishment of an artist who some have accused of losing his edge to success. (A few years ago Sonic Youth even titled an album after his famous Destroyed Room, which is hard to say if it counts for or against the aforementioned.) In a way, it makes sense that the early 20th century work that the Wall exhibition chooses to focus on is Duchamp s Etant Donnes, featuring Manual of Instructions for the Assembly of Étant donnés: 1° La chute d';eau, 2° Le gaz d';éclairage (1966) in one room. Wall, who wrote part of a dissertation on Duchamp at Courtauld Institute of Art in London, shares with Duchamp an element of the provocateur. As Barry Schabsky writes in a recent Nation article, Wall s early-career insistence on blowing up vividly constructed photo tableaux to the size of monumental painting was then a radical salvo in the battle to delimit the role of the photographic medium within the art world. Moreover, Wall, like Duchamp, frequently and ambivalently straddles lines between strict conceptualist manipulations (and deconstructions) of pictorial form and the production of strikingly visual, sometimes panoramic icons. Finally, as Schabsky points out, Wall has risked devolving into a manager of his image and legacy. Here, Duchamp s solution, hiding in plain sight at chess tournaments while toiling away in secret on a final confrontation, can only be upheld as exemplary.

An Epitaph for Immortality: Dali on Potsdamer Platz

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

After crumpling up that poster of The Persistence of Memory for post-college interior redecoration, the specter of an anti-Salvador Dali backlash presents itself. It s all too easy to decide that the wax-mustachioed Spanish showman was a commercial, cliched hype-machine and somehow your adolescent self was tricked into buying the Kool-Aid. The error of such a position, in my view, is revealed time and time again. It s refuted as much as anything by the permanent exhibition showing now over two floors of a blue-green modern-glass gallery in Potsdamer Platz, the former dividing line between East and West Berlin. Potsdamer Platz, which had been leveled by Allied bombing and was rebuilt only recently with a dizzying matrix of luxury hotels, multiplexes and museums, is somehow a fitting site for Dali. It s all disorienting modernist glitz tempered (or underwritten) by recollections of abject destruction, twinkling away into transience. As in Dali s famous In Voluptate Mors, material lust and aestheticism form death s afterimage. Other than the aforementioned, which is displayed right by the exit, the show mostly stays away from the most obvious Dali icons. Instead it displays a rich collection of illustrations, lithographs, anamorphic drawings, and mixed media works. The wiry, comic-book-like Don Quixote sketches are especially worthy, along with the Pantagruel series, in which Dali mimics Renaissance-style illustration in order to animate Rabelais s classic novel. The Adventures of Casanova are portrayed with bulbous, buffoonish eroticism. Finally, on the second floor, Dali s complex geometric symbology, filled with golden ratios, hieratic marks, and 4-dimensional shapes, manifests in his Recipes for Immortality. Metaphysical, heady, and not a melting clock in sight.

Virtual Duchamp and The Paradox of Art Spaces

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Earlier this month I wrote about the journalist Yoav Sivan, who submitted a Duchampesque art concept to the Columbia Arts Initiative exhibition at Lincoln Center: calling his work "The Restroom of King Francis," he proposed to build a replica of the Louvre hall that contains the Mona Lisa, and then hang a Duchamp urinal on the wall next to it; meanwhile, an adjoining men s room would be hung with a copy of the Mona Lisa, perhaps defaced with the infamous moustache. As virtually occurred with Duchamp s Fountain, Sivan s piece was rejected (The Fountain wasn t actually rejected by the Salon Des Independants, which had promised to take all comers, but made a point of hiding the urinal out of sight). In a way, however, Columbia s rejection of Sivan s work isn t precisely the interesting thing about it (though the rejection was key to Fountain s notoriety). Rather, what s worth exploring is the way it reopens the question of art spaces, contexts, and institutions in the "post-avant-garde" age. What s the significance of the gesture of hanging the urinal on the wall next to the Mona Lisa? Like a good midgame chess move, it s over-determined, ambiguous, polysemous. It could be part of several strategies at once: it may suggest a devaluation of high art spaces, such as the Louvre; alternatively, it could emphasize their recrudescence and triumph, having incorporated too the icons of skeptical modernism alongside the classical greats. And to place the Mona Lisa in the restroom, well...that could be a renewed call to take everyday spaces seriously as loci of art. Or else it could be advocating for the cultural diminishment of the Renaissance painting, still tourist-beloved almost a century after L.H.O.O.Q. In a more scatological vein, in could imply there was indeed always something anal-retentive about the physical process of art collecting, going back to the days of King Francis himself. Then there s the additional wrinkle that Sivan s creation exists only in virtual space, in rooms digitally rendered by an artist. There is where the rejection matters; had it been accepted it would have been made physical, the following question neutralized: is a virtual space legitimate for art viewing? Could it somehow be more versatile, better? How many people spend time in Lincoln Center as compared to Second Life or World of Warcraft? (This would be my next recommendation for Sivan: display his work in Second Life.) Does the prestige accrued by physically distinct, culturally blessed institutions such as Lincoln Center diminish as rapidly proliferating images and information (not to mention mimetic worlds inhabited by spatially disparate people), appear to mock geography? Or does the mysterious aura of immobile property simply reassert itself all the more strongly, revealing itself as a transcendent barrier to the nomadic, decentralized utopian dream? Well, it s certainly interesting to think about.

Dollar Store Project Pays Tribute to the Readymade in Texas

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

When Duchamp s confederate wrote in defense of Fountain that the only works of art America had given the world were its plumbing and its bridges, she might have been remiss not to mention the Dollar Store. This mini-mall staple is a bona-fide USA original: no other culture could have spawned the genius that allows the suburban shopper to acquire a condom-packet keychain, 5000 pipe cleaners, a slutty-mental-hospital-inmate halloween costume, and a box of olive-fuschia construction paper in an afternoon, all without having to break out the Mastercard. Now in Corpus Christi Texas, local artists are paying tribute to all the phantasmagoria, convenience, and parsimony afforded by this unique retail institution...and playing around with the now aged Duchampian institution of found art. The Islander Art Gallery in Hamlin Center (which just happens to be next to a Dollar Store), is now displaying work solicited from contributors who were required to provide pieces inspired by or made with Dollar Store products. A plethora of vaguely witty submissions ensued, including the mixed media Untitled Fork and Untitled Spoon (composed of the eponymous plastic untensils) and my favorite, an actual Cambell s soup can stuck in a dollar store frame and hung on the wall. (Through July 2nd.)

Augmented Reality Fertile Ground for Contemporary Surreal?

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Wired magazine s"Beyond the Beyond" blog has kept up a fairly good tally of forays into Augmented Reality, meaning technology-aided fusions of our virtual and terrestrial worlds. Past entries have included a "Top Owl" helmet offering synthetic digital visual aids for pilots, and a computer-generated light-show playing across Sydney s famous opera house and skyline. This cutting edge field is clearly bait for avant-gardists to come. Already a recent post on Beyond the Beyond showcased a piece with some of the self-referential, everyday absurdity that Dada and its successors popularized. Sander Veenhof -- the computer scientist and conceptual artist who received a degree in instable media and has designed, among other things, a web platform to facilitate the stalker-stalkee relationship -- recently designed a "virtual stoplight" for the island of Terschelling in the Netherlands (for the theater festival Oerol). It s merely an iphone app diplaying the floating road-appliance. However if enough smartphone users gawk into their devices, it will in fact bring traffic to a halt...through the well known process of rubbernecking. We eagerly await the further artistic output of Veenhof, and the flowering of A.R.

The Color of Dreams

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

There is something about surrealism that inspires people to cast off their inhibitions, act out their dreams and fantasies, play with words, and invent bad puns. That is exactly what the organizers of the Vancouver Art Gallery';s major summer show, The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art, were counting on. On certain Fridays, the Vancouver Art Gallery hosts live performances—FUSE events—and its June 17th evening of dance, cabaret, and visual art cheekily entitled L.H.O.O.Q (after Marcel Duchamp';s infamous punning title for moustache Mona Lisa) was modeled after the surrealists'; sense of play. Performers, including MOVE, House of La Douche, The Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret and many more, transformed the gallery space with their own works inspired by the Surrealists, either by re-interpreting historical works or inventing new ones. To be sure, gender politics and psychoanalysis were explored and exploited. Sections of Surrealist texts were projected, an early modernist opera performed in drag and historic manifestoes presented along with contemporary speeches. The massive exhibition itself showcases 350 works by André Breton, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Cornell and René Magritte among others—the most comprehensive Surrealism retrospective ever mounted in Canada. The opening gala event was a Surrealist Dinner entitled “Revolution by Night.” It kicked off with a “Prelude to a Dream” (a surreal salad), then segued to “The Illusion” (French onion soup soufflé). The palate cleanser of liquid nitrogen, or Dragon';s Breath, made way for the main dish, which was, of course, entitled The Revolution. A “Cumulus Conclusion” or meringue cloud topped off the meal. Meanwhile, the paintings, sculpture and drawing were supplemented with a film program highlighting early works by Charlie Chaplin, F.W. Murnau and Luis Buñel and tracking surrealism';s influence on the contemporary cinema of David Lynch and Terrence Malick. Bringing the work closer to home, the curator, Dawn Ades, delved into the connection between the mostly European Surrealists and indigenous British Columbia and Alaskan art—presenting actual pieces collected by Andre Breton and Enrico Donati and acquired during pilgrimages made by Kurt Seligmann and Wolfgang Paalens (members of the Surrealist circle from Switzerland and Austria, respectively). Native masks and headpieces from their collections are shown side-by-side with works of Max Ernst and De Chirico. Were the surrealists aesthetically intrigued with these pieces? Did they feel that artists of these cultures were better able to access and authentically interpret their unconscious than Europeans? The exhibition leaves these questions up for speculation. Regardless, this summer';s the time to head to Vancouver to reacquaint yourself with some old art friends and make some new ones: Colour of My Dreams will not be traveling after its closing on September 25th. Don';t forget to bring your unconscious along—it will have more fun than you.

Duchamp Mix Tape

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

McSweeney s Internet Tendency just published, as is their wont, an entire biography of Marcel Duchamp made only of pop single titles. (I m listening to it now on Grooveshark.) How many of the references do you get? (By Dorothy Gambrell) Side A “Parisian,” Brent';s TV “Hop With The Jet Set,” Dead Kennedys “Naked Girl Falling Down The Stairs,” The Cramps “Moving,” Sarah Dougher “New York City,” Cub “Dandy,” Herman';s Hermits “Girls Girls Girls (Part 2),” The Coasters “War,” Edwin Starr “Whole World Lost Its Head,” The Go-gos “Da Da Da,” Elastica “Head Of The Cult,” Kelley Deal 6000 “Readymade,” Beck “Random Rules,” Silver Jews “Gravity Decides,” Folk Implosion “The Girl At The Bottom Of My Glass,” Nick Cave - - - - Side B “I Started Something I Couldn';t Finish,” The Smiths “The Sound Of Broken Glass,” Phantom Surfers “I';ve Been Broken (I';ve Been Fixed),” Beulah “Second Hand Rose,” Fanny Brice “Can';t Change My Style,” The Drags “No New Tale To Tell,” Love And Rockets “Idle Hands,” Murder City Devils “I';m Broke,” Frankie Avalon “Some Kinda Rich Girl,” Beer “Big Boring Wedding,” Guided By Voices “Divorce Song,” Liz Phair “Deeper Into Movies,” Yo La Tengo “Love Comes Creeping,” Gas Huffer “Neat Little Domestic Life,” Of Montreal “New Worship,” Sebadoh “Statement Of Vindication,” Bikini Kill “I';m Dead,” Spider Babies

The Assemblage Alive and Well in, For Example, Virginia

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Assemblage, or sculptural construction utilizing found or mixed materials, was one of the most radical genres invented by the early 20th Century Avant-Gardes. It became a staple of the output of such figures as Marcel Duchamp, Dada s Raoul Haussman, the Constructivist Vladmir Tatlin, and the American Surrealist Joseph Cornell, and it appeared in post-war Pop Art courtesy of Robert Rauchenberg and Jasper Johns. One the earliest and most powerful examples of what the assemblage can accomplish is Umberto Boccioni s Dynamism of a Speeding Horse + Houses (1915), now part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. A rough, hodgepodge relief in cardboard, wood, paint, paper and metals, its apparent primitivism belies the sophistication of its abstraction. A step ahead of Braque and Picasso even, it threw open the pictoral plane to forge a plastic intermingling of figure, time and landscape (in pursuit of the continuity of matter and subject through speed, a Futurist obsession.) Due especially to the philosophical discoveries of Gilles Deleuze, the assemblage came to be used in postmodern thought as a metaphor for the complex, entagled institutions of the contemporary world. The idea was that the constituent parts of nations, cities, ecosystems etc. worked together as temporary, discontinuous "machines," but could be always severed and regrafted (reassembled) in new formations. It s evident that the assemblage still fascinates, and lively artistic production in the field continues. Currently the Charles Taylor Arts Center in Hampton, Virginia is showcasing eye-catching, conceptually rich pieces made by natives of the state. Nancy B. Richard for instance, who often fuses hi and low-tech in her work, employs materials such as paintbrushes, old wooden shoes, glass bottles, yarn and poetic text in "Positive Aspects of Negative." The form that emerges from the chaotic juxtapositions is that of a cart and horse: perhaps harkening back to that venerable patriarch of the assemblage technique.

Yoav Sivan and The Restroom of King Francis

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Yoav Sivan is not primarily an installation artist, but rather a journalist, who recently graduated from the Columbia Journalism School and has written about politics and gay rights for the Huffington Post, The Guardian, Haaretz and Moment Magazine. But he recently decided to enter the conceptualist fray, attempting the subtle science of the Duchampian homage, with suitably mixed results: As detailed on his website, Sivan submitted a work entitled the Restroom of King Francis to the Salon des Independants, er, rather, to the Columbia Arts Initiative s sponsored exhibition at Lincoln Center. The submission appears to have consisted of the idea to construct two rooms: one a urinal-filled men s room with a Mona Lisa hanging on the wall (perhaps mustachio d in the fashion of L.H.O.O.Q); the other, a replica of the Louvre hall that contains the Mona Lisa, only with a replica of Duchamp s urinal hanging next to it.) The title is an allusion to Leonardo Da Vinci s principal patron, the noted humanist who sadly did not live quite long enough to witness the genesis of the flush toilet. In his web post, Sivan emphasizes the strategic elements of an institutional art submission. He rightly compares the original staging of the R.Mutt-inscribed Fountain submission to a chess game in which the moves were carefully arranged. Furthermore, in his account of Duchamp s original proffering of the urinal, Sivan puts forward the coordinates of what he calls a "Duchamp Game...an experiment, played according to the rules, but in which a player attempts to alter the rules of evaluation that apply to the player himself." In general I think this is a good way of putting it, and it would be a worthy task to try to identify further Duchamp games as they might exist in the world: or where in fact they could be played in the future and under what conditions. Yet I think it may be open question whether Sivan played one himself: as he noted, the Columbia Arts Initiative dutifully rejected his submission to exhibit at Lincoln Center. Given the subject matter, Columbia s rejection could well be burnished as a credential for the work. On the other hand, what truly allowed Duchamp to execute a flanking manouvre in his particular game was the fact that he himself sat on the board of the Salon; therefore upon the "rejection" of the urinal he was able to call attention to it by resigning (and had his avant-garde friends write eloquent protests in his favor). Sivan, it could seem, has no similar recourse. And in any case, it s not quite obvious what the significance of Columbia s rejection is. Are they not radical enough? Too radical? What did they even promise to do under their own rules? On yet another hand (now we have three hands), Sivan may have outflanked Columbia from the other side. This has to do with the intersection between space, value and virtuality, a theme which Sivan s work specifically questions. More concretely: what is at stake in having a specific artwork appear in a specific physical space? What is the value, to pick a wild example, of having an object appear at Lincoln Center, stamped with the Columbia Arts Initiative imprimatur? (post to be continued: stay tuned)

Concrete Utopia, and a poem from the Editor

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Concrete Utopia, a "collaborative project space" in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is emerging as an intriguing site for the examination of the legacy of 19th and 20th Century aesthetic and political discourses; though it is also, of course, squarely forward-looking. Their current show (and print publication), "I m not a good enough feminist," grapples with the theory, history, and future of the feminist movement. I generally appreciate C.U. s eagerness to combine artistic production with activism and earnest intellectual debate, along with the current trend they inhabit of breaking down borders between space, text, object, idea and mission. Increasingly there s a sense that an artistic product worth its salt should be able to traverse at least all five. C.U. s founding event was a call for riffs and variations on the classic Avant-Garde theme of the Manifesto, a dying art once much beloved by Communists, Futurists, Dadaists, Situationists, and the semi-fictional Necronautical Society. I submitted a poem (in homage or contestation of Asger Jorn s scathing remark about socialist realism,) "one can only identify accidentally with a poor woman buying fish." (Rethinking Synthesis) A Call To Really Invent Socialist Realism, on the Anniversary of Asger Jorn: One can identify only accidentally with a poor Brooklynite buying fish. One can identify only accidentally…. One must only identify with the accident of buying fish. With the accidental Brooklyn of fish-buying and identity. The identity of fish and the identity of buying. Can each be properly identified? With…what? Brooklynites, countrymen, fish, we must strive for the total unity of identity and accident. With the total marketization of Brooklyn we must buy identities like fish to proclaim them an accident. Unos Dos Tres Fulminates against Yi Er San Hieroglyphs will kick the shit out of Cyrillic Ideograms won';t know what hit them With the total marketization of Babel we must make all textual systems fight to the death in Brooklyn Think of the rarefied European thought systems that fed Marx and then think of what it would be like to be a poor peasant in Brooklyn told that even the accident of buying fish is an identification, an assertion of identity. Can you identify with this? You must, and it will raise a red flag. We must, or it will raise the death of Brooklyn Re: the death of Babylon. A grave accident. A fish graveyard. A transcendental accident that makes a unity of buying and identity. A Re-Babelization of buying that makes the market into poetry A re-concretization of transcendence that makes poetry into fish Ich Ni San will bitch-slap Aleph Gimmel Hay Marx will grow leery Of Concrete Utopia Teach a fish to fish, we proclaim. And you will have fish for life

Cow Clicker: a Fountain for a New Generation of Online Gaming?

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Previously on MarcelDuchamp.net, we posed this question: whether Marx remains inescapable to the formulations of subversion fundamental to the survival of an avant-garde in the present day. Certainly, structuring a leftist mode of critical thought in an era, no longer modern and no longer even post-modern and increasingly defined by the reaches of interconnectivity and globalization, poses numerous difficulties. What, for instance, truly belongs in the scope of the avant-garde? And can an avant-garde retain its potency in both intention and practice? Fortunately, however, we can still find reminders that proto-Marxist investigations are as paramount today as they have been during the last century. And avant-gardists lurk in the least expected spaces. Ian Bogost, professor from Georgia Tech, is responsible for creating the increasingly popular and beguiling new Facebook game--Cow Clicker, "a game about Facebook games." The game&#39s premise is comically simple. Every six hours the player must 'click' on a cow to receive points. These points can later be exchanged for a differently colored cow or other 'rewards' of a similar nature. There is no distinct end to gameplay. There is nothing for the player to accomplish, only an endless string of clicks to look forward to. Yes. It is meta; but, it is also the latest cultural object to put all objects of it&#39s kind to shame, e.g. Farm Ville--another Facebook game that, according to Bogost, offers no challenges and charges very real bank accounts for ultimately worthless hours. Not only does Bogost take pleasure in composing 'chapbooks' of so called 'game poems,' which are, in fact, video games, written in a retro aesthetic for consoles that prefer small file sizes such as the now near extinct Atari. Size is important to Bogost, primarily be size of his insistence on personally controlling every aspect of these poems' production. And this is exactly what poesis entails. A poet, by his being a poet, cannot be a laborer. And Bogost's games do not fall within the latter of Arendt's capitalist work-time / entertainment-time paradigm. It is perhaps, in this, that Cow Clicker shares a quality of avant-gardist insurrection with Duchamp's Fountain (1917). Timothy Morton, English professor at UC Davis, recently blogged on the supposed parallel between Fountain and Cow Clicker. The latter, he writes, "is working with much more basic elements of human and to that extent it's much more sophisticated." He may be right. But, in any case, both men set out to crack a joke at the expense of a dominant institution they believe to be hollow and destitute of meaning. Bogost advertises his app (it costs $0.99) with this introduction: "Cow Clicker Moobile lets you click your cow on the moove. Just open it up and click your cow every six hours on your iDevice. Want to click more often? No problem, just make sure your Cow Clicker account is engorged with mooney and skip your click timer right from the app! ... ...Attention collectors! When you buy Cow Clicker Moobile, you'll get amspecial, limited-edition cow after your first click. You can obtain it by purchasing this app!" Bogost's appealing, even endearing, line of criticism stems from the seemingly inescapable fact that despite our best efforts at interrogating our socio-economic environment, we remain endlessly gratified and mystified by the value-less "click" through the tundra of the Internet: " Maybe it takes a ridiculous cow game to remind us just how weird modern life has become, and how easily we've adopted our newfound home beyond the looking glass."

The God-Trap in the Young European Landscape

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"The Young European Landscape", an upcoming exhibition at the Galerie Wolfsen Aalborg D.K. to be curated by Uwe Goldstein, aims to revive the landscape genre as a "framework for the reception, coordination and mirroring of our present-day lifeworld," with painting, photography and sculptural works by Gabor A. Nagy, Franziska Klotz Peter Hampel, Mirjam Siefiert and others. One subsection, "Into the Wild" focuses on "wilderness as a utopian space, marked by a certain accommodation of post-romantic longings for oneness and unity with nature," but none the less sidesteps nostalgia to contend inescapably with a cultural order immersed in "a maelstrom of contingent information," in which transcendence is always-already blocked. One can thus perceive the continued relevance of the seemingly outdated Romantic form: think of Caspar David Friedrich s Monk by the Sea for instance, which Heinrich Von Kleist famously said made the viewer feel as "as if one s eyelids had been cut away."; the "monotony" and "boundlessness" of that foggy plane appear with a subliminity that can perhaps be recaptured in the apprehension of our vertiginous, multipolar age. The Young European Landscape definitely aims at just this sort of heavy project; on the other hand it is lightened with a dose of existentialist wit. This is most prominent in Horst Waigel s God Trap, a whimsical, vaguely Fluxus style send-up of the notion of locating God in nature (producing an effect similar to making a cut-up collage out of a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay). All ingredients for producing the God Trap are given in Waigel s installation, which also contains instructions. Suffice it to say the the contraption involves a "reversed soup ladle" a fully charged Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner, such "bait" as a Jesus figurine, a hip-flask, and "money." Eventually, God is somehow supposed to be caught in the dreams of your cat via the trap, vacuumed up with the Dirt Devil, and uploaded to the Internet. Please try this at home.

Does the Avant-Garde Need Marx?

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

It s official: Marx is back. At least that seems to be an increasingly acceptable veiwpoint within mainstream, English-speaking intellectual circles that would ve not so long ago viewed the great 19th Century economic and political thinker as no more than a passe obsession of the Cold War era, a fetish of sheltered English departments in the ivoriest of ivory towers (about as relevant to contemporary economics as Freud is to cognitive psychology), or a dubious authority to be appropriated in piecemeal fashion by scholars who would never associate themselves with the totality of Marx s critical vision. In a recent article for the London Review of Books, "How Much Is Too Much," on the subject of "Marx s Return," Benjamin Kunkel reviewed several books by David Harvey. He s the geographer and political theorist whose recent book, "The Enigma of Capital," placed Marxist economic interpretations at the center of analyzing global Capital s contemporary crises. Harvey, long a favorite of leftist social scientists, has spent the last several decades documenting globalization, postmodernism, and class warfare with the methodology of Das Kapital always in mind. He has an unusual ability to present Marx s work in non-jargony terms that seem relevant to our current, neoliberal zeitgeist. If there is anyone whose work might be able to bridge the po-mo chasm to a new, broadly populist Marxist mood, I might put my money on Harvey. How is all this relevant to the Avant-Garde? The relation between Marxism and the historical 20th Century Avant-Gardes was always complex. Or, at the very least, it certainly wasn t as straightforward as it appeared in some of its most influential theorizations, especially Peter Burger s Theory of the Avant-Garde and Clement Greenberg s "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." For one thing, Italian Futurism, which clearly stands as one of the core, seminal Avant-Garde movements, is often left out of these left-wing accounts due to its ultimate alliance with Fascism, rather than Marxism. Thus, art-historical analyses are often oversimplified. But it is true that the possiblities of anti-bourgeois politics in the first part of the 20th century are inextricable from the appeal and power of those early Avant-Gardes, from Constructivist attempts to build a genuinely modern, proletarian art form, to Futurist attacks on traditional cultural elites, to the anti-commodity Dada provocations of Tristan Tzara, an avowed Communist. The Surrealist and Marxist movements had distinct affinities which nonetheless failed to coalesce into an outright allegiance (as was so often the case with the left), as the Fascists moved to consolidate power in Europe. Today, of course, any theoretical connection between a revivial of Marxism and artistic avant-Gardism is yet more tenuous and problematic: this is especially due to the cultural backdrop widely known as postmodernism in which (as David Harvey well articulates in one or two places) artistic and sexual experimentation and provocation has been largely permitted and embraced by Capital as a pillar of the neo-liberal superstructure, especially in financial and cultural centers like New York City. Any way forward for the Avant-Garde that might be specifically coupled to the possibilities of left-wing politics is therefore that much more difficult to envision, to say nothing of practice. Although, at core, the concept of a natural connection between Marxism and Avant-Gardism still seems sound. Always, and perhaps now more than ever, global Capital relies on a "phantasmic supplement..." a collective "illusory" or "religious" faith in the essential worth of its institutions and values (such as the faith in the value of money) to function. The fact that Capital has been able to thus far co-opt the challenging and undermining of these institutions by the Avant-Gardes and others is no absolute guarantee that it will be able to continue to do so in the future. Even less is it a guarantee that no gestures of creative, calculated contempt for the bourgeois life-world remain that would appear, in themselves, as Art.

Bill Berkson Dreams

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Stereotypes, whether true or false, would like to have us believe that poets, perhaps above all others, record their dreams for beauty, self-indulgence, or posterity. However, the poets interested in the dream and the logic of the subconscious today, are perhaps not the same poets that inherited the logic of the avant-garde. The surrealists were, certainly, heavily invested in the dream state, but the topic has not stood out as a particular interest since then. Yet, poets and artists like to think about them, and even lie about (complicate) what they claim to remember from them. Jacket2 recently advertised the segmented recording of Bill Berkson';s poems, from Serenade, on PennSound. Berkson read a poem about his favorite dream. And it so happens that this favorite dream features none other than our inescapable Marcel Duchamp. The poem, called Duchamp Dream, reads: “Marcel Duchamp and I are collaborating on a giant wall painting. Duchamp';s part in this work consists of a talking portrait of himself – a profile which appears at the center of a brightly colored rectangle on the white wall. Using a long stick to push the colors around, I demonstrate the niceties of the composition to a large audience standing in a semicircle. ‘You see,'; I say, ‘we (Duchamp and I) are much the same – but mostly at the edges!'; Now the righthand edge of the rectangle explodes in a flashing white light which then ‘bleeds'; into a field of dazzling pellucid orange. The room during this phase of the work has been almost totally in the dark – the only light source being the painting itself – its colors illumined from the inside. Now the room lights up and I am painting the four walls, running back and forth like crazy with my stick. In one corner I draw a huge black gorilla figure and pivoting to face the next long wall, I trace a black line punctuated with a thick gob of paint which sticks out like a fist. I pause, sensing this work is ‘a great success.';” For more dreams from poets, check out the Annandale Dream Gazette.

On Pharmaceutical Conceptualism

Mon, 30 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

To my nearly-non-existent collection of avant-garde and contemporary art has been added a small conceptualist gem: a single translucent red pill inside a plastic bag labeled: Speak, write and read perfect German "inmiatly" (sic). It s by the excellent painter and documentary photo- and video-grapher Adriana Bustos, from Cordoba, Argentina, who happened to be classmate of mine in language study. I can only assume that her lengthy studies in psychopharmacology and neurolinguistics, in addition to Fluxus-style whimsy, have finally yielded fruit. As someone who loves speaking (other) languages but hates studying them, the Matrix-style corruption of the scenario has had irresistible appeal...although I haven t taken the pill yet. To tell you the truth, I m a bit afraid of the side effects. The whole thing is very Alice in Wonderland...

Weston s Aesthetic Vision Poses Alternate Modernist Path

Sun, 29 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges," (probably) wrote Beatrice Wood, an American modern artist and lover of Duchamp, defending the signed urinal he had submitted to the Salon des Independants in 1917. The legacy of the urinal is often understood to be Conceptualism on the one hand -- a paradigm where ideas and gestures resonate over and above the technical skill of the artist -- and on the other, Avant-Garde (anti)-Institutional provocation, establishing a definition of the artist that included the continual reflexive questioning of the boundaries of art from within. But what about, additionally, the extreme formal aestheticism implied by the selection of a mass produced object as an artwork? What if Wood s comment is taken to contain a good dose of earnest praise for American manufacture, in addition to the clear irony? There have been moves to this effect, such as the biographer Calvin Tomkins s claim that "it does not take much stretching of the imagination to see in the upside-down urinal s gently flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance madonna or a seated Buddha,"...in regards to Alfred Stieglitz s famous photograph of the original. Yet none have taken the formalist aesthetics of plumbing as far as the American photographer Edward Weston, an admirer of Stieglitz and a member of the American Modernist circle; for him the toilet was a lifelong favorite subject. "I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty," he wrote in his journal, which has been displayed in a recent exhibit of his work at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington. "It might be suspicioned that I am in a cynical mood to approach such subject matter, my excitement was absolute aesthetic response to form." If Weston s spirit had triumphed over the conceptualist heirs of Duchamp, the avant-garde artist might have come to be seen as less of a thinker, a wit, or a provocateur, but rather a seer, whose role it is to observe -- or rather perhaps whose sight in fact posits -- sublime aestheticism in the everyday built environment.

The Importance of Drinking and Smashing Innumerable Bottles on a Giant Pile of Beer, until It s Gone that Is

Thu, 26 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

It s not an out and out characteristic, or quite a trend, but in the German capital they do seem to love heaps. Perhaps it s because the 350-mile-city itself is so devlishly flat. One of the tallest mountains around is Teufelberg or "Satan s Hill," the tremendous aggregation of wartime rubble just north of West Berlin s lush Grunewald forest. The word, I believe, is still out on whether one of Hitler s secret bunkers is still buried at the core. Thus far it does not appear that "The Recovery of Discovery," a pile of 72,000 full, drinkable beer bottles piled up in Berlin';s KW Institute for Contemporary Art, will have achieved quite the same notoriety, though it definitely had a impish pull. I posted in recent times a reflection on Urs Fischer s "You" the senseless excavation of a gallery floor. This "Recovery" is, in a way, the topological obverse of that, you could say. The mise-en-scene was no less hazardous than a steep crater: shards of broken glass were everywhere (one ripped a chunk out the sole of my hard leather boots: thank Duchamp I didn t wear sandals that day), Hooky playing highschoolers perched on top of the great mound slung half empty bottles around the space, shattering them against walls. I drank two and then hurled an empty myself, discus-style: it was quite satisfying. I can also only imagine the gallery was also a significant draw for Berlin s sizable Turkish population; the beer featured was EFES, very popular between Istanbul and Mt. Ararat. All in all, "Recovery" was one of the more successful recent manifestations of transient, participatory art in the vein of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who invited visitors to abscond with museum-installed candy until the exhibition was no more. There, the ephemerality was explicitly thematized. Here, I took the joy of communal hooliganism to be the primary subject, and one well suited to its general environs.

De la Mora and the Fragile Object

Mon, 23 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

40 year old Mexican artist, Gabriel de la Mora, has shocked, humored, and helmed the Central American conceptual art scene for a number of years now. His pieces are composed from an astonishing amount of different media and materials ranging from 'drawings' composed from human hair strands or alphabet soup to 'sculptures' made from post-it notes: de la Mora describes himself as "an artist who works [particularly] with ideas, possibilities and concepts." And the favoritism awarded to him is not unwarranted. De la Mora's work truly ripens from a source of meticulous and thoughtful insight on the "work' art does to accomplish a genuine state of value and meaning: de la Mora details his process in the language of the avant-garde: "to find a balance between conceptual and formal considerations, constantly playing between concept and chance." It is in these dichotomies that the parodic cultural criticism implicit to his entire oeuvre finds its particular niche. De la Mora strives to continue the examination of the "object" as a potential, and potentially complicated, bearer of value and fetish in today's contemporary society a question first introduced to the art world by Marcel Duchamp in 1915 when he produced the world's first readymade and "found object": the snow shovel, In advance of the broken arm (En prévision du bras cassé). MoLAA, located in Long Beach CA, is currently honoring Duchamp's legacy by displaying 100 or so of de la Mora's small-scale objects on a "work table." The objects are displayed in such a way as to recall the of the artist's private studio. In this, the curators hope to spur a dialogue for and between the objects themselves. Any one of Duchamp's fans, but especially any one especially interested that old talking point of the Frankfurt school the one that investigates the production of culture as a proto-Marxist mythology would do well to pay this exhibit, Gabriel De La Mora: Frágil/ Fragile, a visit it closes on July 3, 2011. More information can be found on the museum's website: www.molaa.org.

Reappraising Rodin s Work at the Musee Rodin

Wed, 18 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

About a week ago an exhibit on modernist French sculptor Auguste Rodin opened at the eponymous Musee Rodin in Paris. As beautiful and monumental as Rodin's work may be, the appeal of the show lies as much in the fresh approach its curators have undertaken to shed a new critical light on the artist's legacy as it does in its scope: the Musee's press release cites their mission as being a "reappraisal" that "stems from the work of critics, art historians, and curators who have introduced the public to an enriched oeuvre by including the plasters, fragmentary figures and assemblages" and it will display approximately 100 larger sculptures and fragments of assemblages found among the detritus of Rodin's studio and 40 pieces by contemporary and modernist artists such as the previously noted Urs Fischer, Jean Arp, Sophie Ristelhueber, and our personal favorite here Marcel Duchamp. Rodin's life and work has consistently suffered the scrutiny of a historical analytic, often within the context of the academy's rejection of much of his work: his insistence on privileging the natural and individual form was always met with disapproval within arts institutions and his is commonly remembered for his persistent clashes with traditional tastes, forms, and symbols. For instance, his sculpture of the young soldier, Auguste Neyt, in "The Age of Bronze" was falsely accused of being actually sculpted from molds taken of the model. Resisting the constrictions and determinacy of a diachronic framework one that would insist on establishing his relevance within the particular situation of his time this particular exhibit seeks to permit its visitors "to choose their own way around and form their own free associations." Click "Source" below for more detailed information on the museum's site.

And the Avant-Garde Gesture of the Micro-Epoch Belongs to: You?

Mon, 16 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

When I think back on the past several years, as to whether there was any artist who came forward with a move that resonated in that the-world-before-and-after, you-can-only-do-it-once sort of way (like say, Duchamp s submission of a urinal to the Salon Des Independants): well, the only thing that really jumps to mind is Urs Fischer s excavation of the entire floor of the Gavin Brown Enterprise gallery. The massive crater he produced out of a piece of pricey NY real estate (an exhibit entitled "You"), and the corollary threat of at least disorientation, and possibly bodily harm it presented to any potential visitor, had an air of the pure, sexy media stunt to be sure. But mixed in it was a punk s menacing sneer, and a subversive spark of Zen: the refusal to comply with the fundamental presuppositions of the cultural game, and present a piece of the void instead. And it made for an oddly sublime image... If anyone s topped that since, well, who was it? In my book, You s the thing to beat.

Fluxus, the Sprightly Godchild of Duchamp, Retrospectivized at Dartmouth

Sun, 15 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Fluxus, the sprightly Godchild of Duchamp, has endless quantities of material around that will keep scholars and enthusiasts of conceptualism, antics, hijinks, and the general dada spirit busy for many years to come. A new exhibit at Dartmouth s Hood Museum: "Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life," presents a fair swath of the witty, irreverent output of this 1960 s and 70 s neo-Avant-Garde. Fluxus works are like philosophic miniatures: very small pieces of really large questions about self, nothingness, art, everyday life and religion. An empty wine bottle is labeled "God." A painting is placed on the floor, inviting viewers to step on it (and there is plenty of dimly lit Baroque portraiture I would truly enjoy grinding a hiking boot over). This last work is Yoko Ono s, who happens to be among my favorite Fluxus artists. I went to an exhibit at the ICA in Philadelphia which had a phone on the wall with text underneath suggesting that Yoko called it once every several weeks. I was disconsolate when it didn t ring while I was there. Then, two weeks later, a man in Manhattan s Lower East Side handed me a card with a hole cut out in it. He said that Yoko Ono wanted me to look, really look, at the sky through that hole. Somehow, this was redemptive. We haven t convered Fluxus much so far at MarcelDuchamp.net, but that should change. Got something interesting to say about Fluxus? Write to us and let us know.

Markopoulos, Late Doyen of Avant-Garde Film To Have Final "Tenemos"

Sat, 14 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

In Paul Auster s novel, the Book of Illusions, a silent movie star pulls a disappearing act after a terrible personal tragedy, and ends up at a secret location making genre-bending, rule-breaking films (which he would subsequently order burned Kafkaesquely). Later, a grief-struck scholar gets pulled into an obsessive quest to unearth the truth of the actor s life. Subtract some of the truly soap-operatic drama and the silent bit, and Auster s narrative has definite parallels to the strange tale of Gregory Markopoulos, one of the most prolific and celebrated avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th Century. As related by Princeton Visual Arts scholar P. Adams Sitney at the American Academy in Berlin last Thursday, Markopolous s career was marked by the paradox of feverish invention and production on the one hand, and radically stingy distribution on the other. The bulk of Markopoulos s tremendous output of films is not widely available. This paradoxical situation was brought about, intentionally, by Markopoulos himself, and his partner Robert Beaver. After they moved back to Greece, leaving the U.S., the country that had most eagerly embraced Markopolous s intricate poetics and innovative, erotic visual language (and offered one of the first art-film faculty posts at the Art Institute of Chicago), the duo refused to allow distribution of Makropoulos s films in North America and went to court to prevent Professor Sitney from including an essay on Markopoulos in reprintings of his anthology of film scholarship. This is despite the fact that Markopoulos had himself published widely on cinematic theory in top International journals. Thus, Markopoulos has, to say the least, faded from the annals of household culture that retain the names Bergman, Goddard and Tarkovsky, despite the Greek auteur s vast contributions to his field. Sitney related a few anecdotes from Markopoulos s bio that might help account for the cineaste s wary, hermetic behavior: one of his early directing projects, Serenity, for instance, was very nearly sabotaged by an Italian producer running a genuine The Producers-style accounting scheme. The producer would send him a camera with the sound not working, or actors that never showed up; for each attempted sabotage Sitney said, Markopolous would innovate a workaround that contributed to his groundbreaking style: labyrinthine superimposed/nested shots, shots separated by anticipatory darkness, uncanny unpeopled spaces and flickering landscapes. Later, the film reel was stolen, and Markopoulos s avant-garde debut showed up as a bastardized, watered down product at an Italian festival, forever instilling him with a cynicism about mass modes of distribution. HIs stint teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago, where his classes were packed with poor Markopoulos imitators, instilled him with cynicism about academia, and perhaps art institutions in general. After retiring to Greece, Markopoulos came up with an idea to circumvent mass modes of distribution entirely, laying the groundwork a near-sacramental viewing event more akin to Wagner s Bayreuth, or seeing Aeschylus at the festival of Dionysus (of course, Markopolous was influenced considerably by Classical poetics, along the writings of Schopenhauer, who argued that music was a direct expression of the noumenal realm). Markopoulos spent the last years of his life producing and editing the Enaios cycles, 80-some hour immersive filmic occasions to be displayed at a Tenemos: a Greek-temple like site dug into the ground in the Peloponnese countryside. He died in 1992, before he could see the completion of the project, but his partner Robert Beaver carried out his vision: Tenemos screenings have already occurred in 2008 and 2004. The next, and I believe final, cycle is to be displayed at the Tenemos site outside the village of Lyssaraia, in the South of Greece, in June 2012. We ll keep you updated with the latest info on that as it comes in. Just as Dada was famously anti-Art (and anti-Dada), as a friend of mine pointed out, Markopoulos is really anti-film; his Tenemos concept is opposed to the very mode of production and distribution that made film the great mass art form of the 20th Century. Indeed, it is likely that the only thing that keeping Markopoulos s films from being outright theater is the fact that they are so resolutely filmic, in the sense that they depend on the materiality of film itself for their revolutionary effects. All and all, this is exactly the sort of provocative semi-paradox that the best of the Avant-Garde is known for.

In Defense of the Sharjah Art Biennial

Fri, 13 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The Sharjah Biennial, the oldest and most respected biennial in the Middle East hosted by the eponymous Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates, is about to close its doors this Sunday, May 16. It remained opened for two months, and has, in that brief time, also become the focus of a whirlwind scandal concerning the contention between the contrarian secularism of modern art and the devout religiosity of the region's general population. The situation that occurred was simply this: the offensive nature of a displayed work, It Has No Importance/Wild Writings by Algerian artist Mustapha Benfodil, passed unnoticed under the eye of director Jack Persekian. The piece was composed of headless figures arranged in a field as though in the midst of a soccer match. The t-shirts worn by one team bore quotes from popular Algerian culture while the other team displayed excerpts from Benfodil's previously written novels, plays, and poems. The offending bit of text adorned just one of the t-shirts. It read: "With each breath of the wind I see a hand on my pants and hymen torn / Every night was a sharp body raid / Vaginal sacrifices for lustful gods / My nights were haunted by the cries of all those virgins whom they had / Scratched, molested, maimed, bitten, eaten / RAPED KILLED / After being blessed / By the penetrating holy word of Allah / The sperm of his Prophets / An the spittle of his apostles." The fact that a text such as this would be offensive to the majority, if not the entirety, of the conservative Islamic population is far from surprising. Abdal Hakim Murad, the Sheikh Zayed lecturer of Islamic Studies at Cambridge University, used this opportunity to discuss the importance of the recent stake modern art has set in the Middle East. He remembered Marcel Duchamp's famous response when asked to estimate how many people he thought actually enjoyed modern art by the art dealer John Bernard Myers: "oh maybe ten in New York, and one or two in New Jersey." The truth of that statement is often underrated: Duchamp's name itself has since become a a stable figure in the most art forums, but his opponents maintain the frustrated voice of those who favor the legacy of a mimetic tradition. This contention between the conceptual and and anti-establishment sensibilities particular to the avant-garde and representational or symbolic art becomes obviously politicized when thrust into the context of an Islamic state such as the UAE. And it is this that the erudite professor, Abdal Hakim Murad would like his democratic and secular Western readership, so quick to decry the removal of an offending work of art, and the careless director, from the biennial exhibition to understand. He is right to note how remarkable it is that: a. the Biennial was never shut down and continued to attract a crowd after the piece and the Biennial's director were removed; b. that so many people, locals included, encountered the piece without there ensuing a larger fiasco; and c. the simple fact that a contemporary art biennial has existed for as long as it did, and continues to do so successfully, in the UAE. He couldn't be more right to remind his contemporary Western audience of how truly amazing it is that the Middle East has truly modernized as quickly as it has.

Revitalized and Analyzed: Elisofon s Duchamp Descends a Staircase

Sun, 08 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Allison Pappas, the 2010-2011 Judith M. Lenett fellow in Williams College';s Graduate Program in the History of Art will speak about her efforts in restoring three early twentieth-century prints at this spring';s Judith M. Lenett Memorial Lecture. Pappas will discuss the interface of photojournalistic prints and museum art, and the her on-going restoration treatment, taxed with art historical research, in mending the work of Lewis Hine';s Lunch Time, Robert Capa';s Allied Entry into Paris, and Eliot Elisofon';s Marcel Duchamp Descends a Staircase (pictured). The lecture, "Let There Be Light: American Photojournalism and the Working Print," will be hosted at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute on May 10, 2011 at 5:30 pm.

How Man Ray Took on Lautreamount

Tue, 03 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

In a recent post I compared Duchamp s assemblage of the bicycle wheel atop the stool to the Comte de Lautreamont (aka Isidore Ducasse) s notorious saying: "as beautiful as the chance meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a table." The latter, I argued, was radically disjunctive in a way that the bicycle wheel was not and furthermore that Lautreamont s image really only makes sense in language. Recently however, I was proven somewhat (I emphasize somewhat) wrong: the surrealist photographer and painter Man Ray was iconoclastic enough to actually attempt to iconize Lautreamont s proto-Dada poetic turn! In "The Image of Isidore Lucasse," which I saw recently at the Museum of Art in Lugano, Switzerland, Man Ray sketches out the hypothetical meeting in a drawing simultanously lifelike, mundane (the style could be that of an illustrated textbook for kids) and perverse. The point that it s not clear what could become of the umbrella and sewing machine together once they met, however, still stands: indeed it is reinforced by Man Ray s example. All he could do is produce a 2-dimensional sketch, with the illusory solidity of an M.C. Escher, portraying something impossible as if it were the most natural thing in the world. When it came to rendering Ducasse s thought as a real world object in typical Surrealist fashion, Man Ray cleverly deferred. He produced a work called "The Enigma of Idore Ducasse": a sewing machine completely obscured by a blanket. The umbrella is nowhere to be seen.

The Great Peeps Extravaganza: A Duchamp edition

Mon, 02 May 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Pioneer Press, a daily running out of St. Paul, just concluded its 2011 Pioneer Press Marshmallow Peeps Diorama and Video Contest.&nbsp. For those of you who do not keep up with local news in St. Paul, Minnesota or with the near cult favorite kingdom of Peeps, the Peeps Diorama contest has been an annual tradition for the inhabitants of the Twin Cities for the past 8 years. And Peeps are those pink and neon colored soft marshmallow candies, often shaped into teeny bunnies and chicks, that are the source of the baffling and pervasive Peepdemic. (For proof, see how a real-life scientist says the threat of a Peepdemic is all too real.) This year';s contest drew 200 participants who created a smorgasbord of stupendous dioramas where Peeps were re-incarnated as Lady Gagas, criminals behind bars, angsty married couples, protestors who braved both Cairo and the Wisconsin State Assembly. They featured scenes from "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet s Nest," etc. Among "Justin Peeper Fever," "Harry Peepdini," "Prince William & Kate Peeps at the Royal Wedding," and "Peeples Fishing," (Look here for more) is "6,146 Cubic Peep," by Chillon Leach of St. Paul--which is described as being "evocative [of] Duchamp s In Advance of the Broken Arm" by Pioneer Press. Leach s inspiration came from the big snow storms earlier this year. Her diorama tried to capture the mountains of snow she shoveled as well as the stolid individuals who tried to dig and plow through them. Leach adorned her peeps with meticulously sewn fur hats and mittens, and more relevant to our interest, accessorized with the gray shovels. The connection between Duchamp and 6,146, not to mention other installments of Peeps may be far-fetched. But one wonders how Peeps could have changed Duchamp s readymades, and how Duchamp would have changed Peeps had Peeps been created previous to the 1950 s. For more entries in the 2011 Pioneer Press Marshmallow Peeps Diorama and Video Contest, check out Pioneer Press's gallery. The Peeps World Record can be found here, where you can find "Most Peeps Balanced On An iPhone" and "Most Peeps Eaten In 30 Seconds." General information on Peeps can be found at MarshmallowPeeps.com.

"Who's Your Dada?": Com&Com Commission a Readymade Baby

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Com&Com's latest project offers to bring a work of art to life. Or perhaps, it would be more apt to say that they aim to transform life into a work of art, quite literally. Last month, the Swiss arts duo, comprised of Marcus Gossolt and Johannes M. Hedinger, proposed this unusual arrangement: they will pay a Russian couple, chosen from applications submitted online, $10,000 to name their baby "Dada." The conditions are simple: the couple must possess Russian citizenship and their baby must be due to arrive in September or October of 2011. Com&Com, which initially stood for Commercial Communication, contend that their contest is more than a publicity stunt. Hedinger steadfastly claims that his group's desire to transform babes into "Dada" is an extension of the readymade concept—first coined by Marcel Duchamp in 1915, the readymade became a flagship for Dada art in New York. Hedinger pronounced of the group's ambition, "In many ways this is a project for life; we are building a new network for these children." Hedinger appears to suggest that with the proper 'curation,' these children can be conceptualized of in alternate fashions, perhaps one that would even enable us to view them as curated works, and thus as art too. Like Dada, Com&Com want to shock their audience. And perhaps, also like Dada, they seek to propound a kind of art that, in the spirit of Dada and perhaps even in the rest of the avant-garde as well, is able to embody an inventiveness that resists ossification and truly sublates an old world museum culture, as it did at the turn of the twentieth century. Gugusdada, the name of the project, is supposed to take place as a part of Moscow's upcoming 4th Biennale of Contemporary Art in September and October of this year. Com&Com, however, hope to broaden their scope, they hope to achieve the births of five or six "Dada"s around the world by 2016 for the centennial celebration of the Zurich nightclub that housed the beginning of the Dada movement in 1916, Cabaret Voltaire. Those interested may apply by filling out this form. More information can also be found on the Gugusdada website.

Duchamp Owns Everything

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Several nights ago, I ate dinner at the apartment of a couple who had pasted a copy of the famous "Art History Poster," up in their bathroom (so there was plenty of time to study it while digesting potato strudel and too much wine). It s the print with a long laundry-list of artists defined on the basis of what they "own": Flavin Owns Neon, Hirst Owns the Pharmacy, Judd Owns Shelves, Picasso Owns the Century, Gilbert owns George, Calder owns Mobiles, etc. Then, at some point it reads: "Duchamp Owns Everything." I d seen this before, but this time it struck me as pretty funny: the real punch line of the whole poster. Duchamp Owns Everything: perhaps He does. For some reason, I was reminded of this line at a concert by the Books I attended the night after. The Books could fairly be considered the Marcel Duchamp of indie-pop; one song from their new album for instance, "Free Translator," was created by taking the lyrics of a folk song, and translating them through the world s major languages, then back to English, using translation software. They then set the results to music: a very Duchampian exercise in writing a song without writing a song. Furthermore, their irreverent, genre-bending tracks are notorious for incorporating found audio/video clips and strange verbiage: at the beginnin of their song "Take Time," from the album The Lemon of Pink, an Italian man is recorded saying "Non e niente naturale in la natura, regazzo mio." "There is nothing natural in nature, my boy." Nothing is natural in nature. This could be another way of saying "Tout-Fait": everything is made (another meaning of the french phrase for ready-made.) It is in the nature of human civilization to construct everything: even (especially) Nature. Nothing is natural. Everything is made. Duchamp was the first to decide that everything made was art (America s plumbing and bridges are its finest works, he asserted); thus he ensured that it would be his art. Everything is made, therefore everything is art; Duchamp Owns Everything. Q.E.D.

Warhol s Self-Portrait to sell at Christie s

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Before Warhol was Warhol, there was Duchamp. In fact Andy Warhol (1928-1987), the arbiter of Pop Art and cool, was greatly influenced by Duchamp';s ready-made concept and redefinition of art. He was the high priest of engaging “ready-made” objects, perhaps photos, with the finer mechanics of art such as acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas; which dominated his oeuvre. Among his seminal works is this four-paneled self-portrait aptly titled Self-Portrait (1963-1964). It was created with picture stamps from a photobooth—an object or a machine everyone presumably had access to. In the process of democratizing the process of producing art, Warhol both paid homage to Duchamp, and charted art into the terrain of massmedia, self-aggrandizement and machine-like/machine induced immortality. Perhaps Facebook would not have existed had Warhol not become Warhol. Andy Warhol (1928-1987) Self-Portrait, Sale 2440 / LOT 22, selling $20,000,000 - $30,000,000 at Christies 11 May 2011 New York, Rockefeller Plaza (Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale)

Vassar Students Explore the Dizzying Effects of Duchamp s Rotoreliefs

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

What s part turntable, part optical-art, part children s toy? A Duchamp rotorelief: a colored, spiral-patterned disk the artist designed to create a three-dimensional visual effect when spun (hence the term "relief"). Duchamp designed them in 1935, and tried unsuccessfully to sell them, not on the art market, but at Concours Lapie, a trade-fair for Inventors. They were first exhibited at jazz club called La Cachette, where they spun at a booth you d otherwise see the house dj at. Duchamp eventually reproduced them many times over, selling them to a variety of collectors. Vassar College, ("A highly selective, residential, liberal arts college located in the heart of the Hudson Valley in New York State,"), has a set of rotoreliefs in their permanent collection; they recently posted on their "Off-The-Wall" blog that students in the art department had been playing with the surrealist toys. While spinning them, even if with one eye closed, such solid objects appeared as "a Chinese lantern, a soft-boiled egg, a table lamp, a Bohemian glass, a Japanese fish circling in a bowl, a hot-air balloon, hoops, corollas, a cage, a snail, a white spiral and a total eclipse." Sounds like about as much fun as one could have at college with clothes on, and within the bounds of the law.

Jodorowsky Contends with the Surrealist Ego

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Those who are not yet familiar with Alejandro Jodorowsky's works would do well to check them out. His surreal, and Surreal, films have always artfully, and pleasurably, wreaked havoc upon their viewers' minds. They are always monstrous to behold and can be absolutely devastating to watch and enjoy. His infamous masterpieces, El Topo (1970) and Holy Mountain (1973) became cult classics almost immediately upon release, however limited those releases may have been. AnOther magazine recently caught up with the now aged and legendary filmmaker and recalled the collage-performance attended by surrealist Marcel Duchamp among others in Paris, "Sacramental Melodrama," performed on March 24th, 1965. "Sacramental Melodrama" starred Jodorowsky himself and featured such extravagant and grotesque histrionics as Jodorowsky slitting the throats of two geese and taping two snakes onto his chest. It was a notorious masterpiece of Jodorowsky's Panic Movement, a name inherited from Pan the god of goats, which sought to reconstitute the 'shock' of the surreal performance. Surrealism had become, simply, too bourgeois. Though he dissolved the Panic Movement in 1973, Jodorowsky remembered Panic in his brief interview during which he criticized surrealism for being too preoccupied with "extreme individualism," the "ego." This may very well be an accurate observation. Just take a look at Duchamp s definition of a ready-made from Andre Breton's Surrealist Dictionary: "an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist." Duchamp, the artist, needed little more than a signature to accomplish this in Fountain (1917). "Today," Jodorowsky contends, "individualism is over." I, if reluctantly, can't help but disagree.

Artist Gets Into the Head of Duchamp, literally

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp';s gesture of drawing a mustache and a goatee on the Mona Lisa in L. H. O. O. Q. (1919) redefined art and our perception of art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At first glance, or using Duchampian rhetoric, “retinal art,” we see only the sexually ambiguous Mona Lisa espoused by her feminine fingers and bosoms, and a masculine, albeit comical, goatee. By that interpretation, Duchamp only redefined art by deconstructing or mutilating ready-mades, which amply sums up the concept of ready-made. Unless we are content with that rakish interpretation, an insult to the integrity and intelligence of the artist, L.H.O.O.Q. deserves another look. (see, for example, an article from ASRL for an analysis on the subject). The complexity of L.H.O.O.Q., however, isn';t the focus of this news bite. It is, though, about the idea of the manifestation of interpretations; of “retinal,” visual perceptions manifested on canvas in the form of a skull sketch by a young Romanian artist name Istvan Laszlo. It follows the reverse trajectory of the analysis to L.H.O.O.Q. Whereas L.H.O.O.Q. challenges retina interpretation, Laszlo s skull sketches restore it to garner meaning. In his tribute to an eclectic mix of some of the world s most prominent figures, albeit by a somewhat morbid method, Istvan Laszlo, (b. 1981), sketched their skulls. In a series titled “The Anatomy of Skulls,” Laszlo featured the cranium sketches of Pope John Paul, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Lennon, Michael Jackson, Mao, Lenin, Warhol, Beuys, Hitler, and of course, (but actually a surprising choice given the selection of the rest), Duchamp. Laszlo';s sketch of Duchamp';s cranium is easily ascribable as Duchamp. Not only does it follow the observable structure of Duchamp';s skull, but it also is embellished with Duchamp';s identifiable fine and slicked back hair style, as well as his thin, pursed and thoughtful lips. Another amateur dally into the analysis of anatomy from the writer is Duchamp';s frown, as represented by the downward inclined/depressed supraorbital process (?) or the eye sockets, perhaps too, defending the stereotype of that of the pensive artist. Duchamp';s skull sketch isn';t unique being the only one with identifiable characteristics germane to the individual. Laszlo depicted Gandhi with round, enlarged eye sockets and Warhol with his (early) trademark, slick, shiny and platinum gold (to the imagination) locks. If the L.H.O.O.Q. was the emblem of the destruction of retinal interpretation, then Laszlo s skull drawings seems to be the antithesis of it; at least when using the arguments of the weaknesses of visual perceptions. In any case, what s next? Side views of infamous Skulls? Cranium drawing of the Mona Lisa or the L.H.O.O.Q.? The Anatomy of Skulls by Istvan Laszlo is in holding at the Sebastian Guinness Gallery in Dublin, Ireland.

The Irony of Institutions: What the Battle over Kafka Can Tell Us about Duchamp (and vice-versa)

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Duchamp, Kafka. Kafka, Duchamp. Seemingly an odd pairing, though both famed modernists. But bear with me. Duchamp was many things, but always French. Kafka on the other hand, wasn t Czech or German. In fact, neither country existed when Kafka was doing the bulk of his writing. The author lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a polyglot territory stretching from Bohemia to Transylvania. Neither was Kafka Israeli; in fact he had a notorious falling out with a good friend over the latter s Zionism. So, surely there s some way to ultimately determine Kafka s nationality once and for all, even if the details are a bit thorny? Weren t even the Austro-Hungarian peoples basically nations-in-waiting, ready to awaken and seek self-determination as soon as the Austrian emperor took his boot-heel of their necks? Not according to Swarthmore College s Professor Judson, a current fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Professor Judson, an expert on the Hapsburg Monarchy, is working on a book project challenging received notions about nationalism in Central Europe, particularly the common narrative that places the emergence of nationalist consciousness at the core of the Empire s history. For example, he marshalls many sources demonstrating that what language an Imperial subject chose to speak or write was hardly an indicator of Nationalist loyalty, as it later came to be seen. So, when Kafka wrote in German, was this a betrayal of his Czechoslovakian roots, as commonly thought? Not really. There was no Czechoslovakia yet! In Bohemia, home to both languages, whether an individual chose to speak German or Czech depended on a host of factors, pointed out Judson in a recent lecture. So can t we just say that Kafka was neither this nor that, but betwixt and between, as he famously experienced himself? We could, articulated Judith Butler last month in the London Review of Books, were it not for Big Money and the Force of the Law. Kafka s archived papers are literally sold by weight, worth almost as much in gold, and everybody wants them. Der Spiegel dishes the best gossip on the origins of this convoluted scandal. Butler, on the other hand, gives the best account of how the need for economic valuation and juridical standards highlight strange and intractable paradoxes that inhere in the post-19th Century Wilsonian insistence on grouping everything under the concept of nationhood. And the irony that everybody seems at least vaguely aware of: it was Kafka s own works that most keenly satirized the absurdities arising from the application of legalism and institutionalization to the "swamp world" (as Walter Benjamin called it) of messy reality. Duchamp may have beat Kafka; he satirized modern institutions and caused one to erupt in controversy at the very same time (Kafka had to wait for posterity). I m referring of course to his submission of a signed urinal to the Salon Des Independants in 1917. Was this art, or just a manufactured product? You could argue that Art as such (meaning Art as a transcendent category separate from any technique, skill, or social utility) was, like the nation state, an invention of the 19th Century. So you could reject the false choice by rejecting its metaphysical presupposition. However, now we have a judging institution that must decide the undecidable, and Big Money (which the art market had become) is on the line. Thus, subversion. Thus, chaos. Thus, irony. And a prophetic rehearsal for the current Kafka brouhaha.

Alfred Jarry Celebrated in Philadelphia

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The first of April marked the opening of The Insolent Eye: Jarry in Art at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia, PA. Beautifully curated, it fulfilled its promise: "to recreate the beguiling atmosphere of Jarry's absurdist scenarios" and ground them in a "historical prologue." In other words, the exhibit centers around the re-imagination of the 'Ubu landscape' by contemporary and modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso, Thomas Kentridge, and, our personal favorite here, Marcel Duchamp. The work ranges from comical illustrations of the Jarry's infamous masked and grotesque Pere Ubu, lead in the absurdist play that propelled him to fame in fin-de-siecle Paris, Ubu Roi. Jarry's style would quickly became synonymous with avant-gardism, spurring countless imitations and responses. Jarry was renowned for his irreverent escapades (he was known to appear in the streets of Paris in slippers, a fur tiara, a ripped up overcoat, armed with a stick and revolvers): after one of which he is said to have mused, "isn't it as beautiful as literature." Marie-Claire Groeninck notes in the exhibit's catalogue essay that it is in those instances, in which Jarry's personal life would become indistinguishable from his art, that became precursors to Duchamp's ready-mades. Oddly enough, though none of Duchamp's ready-mades made it into the show, his Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even and Green Box did. The relation between Jarry and those two particular pieces is not as explicit as it is with many of the other works there. Actually, it is rather tenuous. Groeninck explains that Duchamp and Jarry socialized and worked in the similar circles, and consequently Duchamp must have been familiar with Jarry's oeuvre. So, when Man Ray photographed The Bride Stripped Bare together with the accumulation of three months worth of dust, and Duchamp decided to incorporate it into the sculpture, Groeninck suggests that it is likely he did so knowing of this particular line written by Jarry years earlier, "'tiny little gray boots, with even layers of dust carefully preserved on them, at great expense, for many months past.'" Groeninck does cite another instance of overlapping discourse between the two, this time concerning how you might interpret the watch as an object stripped of its use-value as an indicator of time. As limited as these examples may be--and perhaps they are only limited because they, incorrectly, posit a strictly diachronic relationship of 'inheritance' between Jarry and Duchamp, while a more porous understanding of their work would have been prudent--the curation remains illuminating. Andre Gide had poignantly written of Jarry's influence, "the surrealists, later, never invented anything better, and it is with justice that they recognise and salute in him a precursor." Whether Gide was right or not--it is worth a visit to Locks Gallery to find out and, more importantly, to remember how it felt to read Ubu Roi that very first time. The Insolent Eye: Jarry in Art runs through May 13th.

Picasso s Super-Readymade?

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

A little while ago on this site I mentioned Flavorwire s slideshow of modern and contemporary bicycle art (http://flavorwire.com/161998/the-unofficial-flavorwire-art-bike-survey), and noted a few omissions. However, I neglected one of the most significant contributions to the field: Picasso s "Bull s Head," from 1942, a blunt yet playful work with a powerful presence, consisting of a bicycle seat juxtaposed with handlebars to evoke the work s titular image (an impassive bull s head). The first time I saw this work was several years ago in Paris, and Duchamp wasn t on my mind. (Picasso s work seems very much its own thing, even if made from found materials; furthermore the Spanish artist has a mythic reputation as a relentless original). But a recent review in the Wall Street Journal quite plausibly draws attention to the way in which the piece could be a reference to (and a riff on) the readymade...particularly the famous bicycle wheel mounted on a stool. Specifically, culture writer Eric Gibson claims that "Bull s Head" in fact not only comments on but transcends Duchamp s signature gesture. This claim relies on Gibson s idea that "Duchamp s combinations are deliberately disjunctive. His bicycle wheel and stool are joined together precisely because they have nothing in common and, together, suggest nothing beyond themselves." Picasso, on the other hand, he argues, maintains a perfect balance on the edge between illusionism and reflexive materialism (i.e. while definitively inhabiting Duchampian territory, Picasso s "ready-made" nonetheless maintains a distinctly Picasso-like commitment to portraiture; the "Bull s Head" never dissolves totally into abstraction.) This is a fine observation, but I also think Gibson is slightly underselling Duchamp: it s too much (or not quite enough) to say that "Bicycle Wheel" is "radically disjunctive." If you want radically disjunctive, take the Comte de Lautreamont s poetic image of the "chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella." By contrast, there actually seems to me to be a strange affinity between the stool and the bicycle wheel, which Duchamp either discovered or, perhaps, created. A dissecting-table and sewing machine can only be combined meaningfully in language. Physically, however, by joining the bicycle wheel to the stool in the real world, Duchamp devised a non-functional assemblage, which is actually one thing, not two. It becomes its own icon, its own concept, and its own formal object, which can be reproduced with variations (and has been). However, it is true that the Bicycle Wheel, unlike "the Bull s Head," is not representational. If Gibson had slightly amended his sentence to read "together, [the bicycle wheel and the stool] suggest nothing but itself," he would have been on the mark. But then he would have been alluding to the true ambiguity and slipperiness of Duchamp s creation, and might not have chosen to argue for Picasso s final supremacy in the realm of "found art."

New History of Puns Rehabilitates Key Avant-Garde Device

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Can t get enough of puns? Do your friends start to cringe and gag when you bust out your idea of a quality joke in their presence? Maybe next occasion, gift them a copy of "The Pun Also Rises," forthcoming from champion punner and communications expert John Pollack. The book seems bent on rehabilitating that most maligned of humor categories; its subtitle is "How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics." (What I want to know is, who will speak up on behalf of Antics?) But no, I support Pollack s project: James Joyce punned big in Ulysses (a wild, gorgeous book cheaply and unconvincingly lambasted in Slate recently)...and he punned, and portmanteaued even bigger in the near-unreadable Finnegan s Wake. Marcel Duchamp too was a die-hard pun enthusiast; two of his most famous are probably the Fresh Widow and L.H.O.O.Q (She Has A Hot Ass), the title of the Mona Lisa with a moustache drawn on. R. Rose Selavy (pronounced like C est La Vie), probably counts too. The machinery of punning brings about the conflation of word and image, signifier and signified: the daily bread of both the 20th Century Avant-Gardes and later poststructuralist theorists. And yet the pun still suffers (often deservedly) a pretty darn poor reputation. The solution I recommend to the dilemma is: please avoid the truly horrible puns (you know who you are) in order to preserve this noble and fertile practice in good standing for the benefit of future generations. Just to play the devil s advocate, however, I present you with a pretty cogent argument that punning is evil in any form, under any circumstances...

recommend: Found Sound

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

For fans of Duchamp, John Cage, and the readymade, this unassuming tumblr is worth a peruse. "Found- sound" collects miscellaneous abandoned recording cartridges, displaying photographs of the casette tapes in various states of disrepair, along with excerpts from the audio contained within. Is it bacon or bagels that go into deviled eggs? This question is raised in one of the stray answering machine tapes procured by the found-sound folks; these comprise one of the more amusing genres the tumblr curates. I also find something uncanny in the heaps of loose plastic tape photographed sans hard cover. In the digital age we re not so often confronted viscerally with the guts of our media... Good found sound stories, links? Post in comments...

Avowed Conceptualism (Gone Awry?) in Berlin

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Outside my apartment in Berlin is Schloss Charlottenburg, a large Baroque palace once occupied by Friedrich the Great, and its manicured grounds hat were designed to ape the gardens at Versailles. Further into the "Schlosspark" is a tangle of woods and wildlife home to sleek foxes and lakebound ducks, geese and swans. On a walk around the lake I came across this greying obelisk, crouched unassumingly in a denuded gove of trees. Naturally I wondered about its significance; the plaque informed me that it signified literally nada. The artist "Braco Dimitrijevic" built it in 1979 "commemorating" the "arbitrarily chosen date" of March 11th. This was specifically done in the spirit of avant-garde provocation, "without fixed content (conceptual art). (i.e. Marcel Duchamp s destabilizing "pure gesture" of raising a urinal to the status of art) Now this obelisk..briliant critique of the momument form? Ever so slightly juvenile and pointless? Either way it enlivened my walk around the bucolic Schlosspark...

Tracking Duchamp s Perfume Bottle

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

In a recent post (http://www.marcelduchamp.net/news.php?id=576), this website mentioned that Marcel Duchamp s 1921 readymade Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette, an empty glass perfume bottle branded by the French scent company Rigaud, was taken from Yves Saint Lauren s collection and sold at a Christie s auction for a bank-breaking 8.9 million Euros. What happened to it then? While the answer is not fully clear, it certainly touched down at Berlin s Neue Nationalgalerie, an art museum designed by the late Bauhaus instructor Mies Van Der Rohe and containing the cream of German Expressionist and Neue Sachlichkeit art, from Kirchner and Franz Marc to George Grosz and Otto Dix. Displaying the cageyness and fleetness associated with its "creator," the Rigaud perfume bottle appeared at the Nationalgalerie for a total of three days, between January 27th or 30th of this year. The only trace it left was a small news report and several eyewitness accounts, which confirm that the whole upper floor of the Van Der Rohe building was devoted to the 6 inch high bottle. Thus demonstrated is the ongoing ability of Duchamp s eccentric selections nearly 100 years ago to colonize art institutions and command valuable brick and mortar space. So where is Belle Haleine now? Write in with sightings...

The poetry that spoke to Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:07:31 GMT

If Marcel Duchamp';s “Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2” (1912) is a song, it might be a down-tempo, acid jazz piece with sound collages assembled from turntable scratching. NDaS No. 2 may also stutter, tap and hiccup in a systematic, almost cerebral rhythm to suit the movement of the soundtrack. If it spoke poetry though, it might as well be XJ Kennedy';s interpretation of it in 1961. In celebration of the National Poetry Month, we revisit Kennedy (b. 1929)';s Nude Descending a Staircase, the poem inspired by Duchamp';s infamous painting of the same name. Poetry and art are both fleeting love affairs and life-long spouses. For one, each depends on the other intermittently out of intrigue and loneliness, but they never divorce each other—only complement. Roman poet Horace (c. 13 BC) once decreed, “ut picture poesis,” or “as is painting, so is poetry.” Even in our functional vocabulary in art criticisim, we deploy phrases such as the “art of the poetry,” or the “poetry in that art work” to make sense of the art work. Other poets who “spoke” art include W.H. Auden to Pieter Brueghel';s The Fall of Icarus, and Nancy Sullivan to Number 1 by Jackson Pollock. In each of these poems, the poet s intent seemed never to be strict interpretation or adherence to the integrity of the painting, but to introduce fresh perspectives and frame of mind to engage the viewer in another dynamic. Nude Descending A Staircase (1961) was XJ Kennedy';s first collection of published poetry that also won the eighth annual Lamont Award of the Academy of American Poets that same year. He will read at the WD Snodgrass Symposium (4/27/2011), an event held in honor of the late University of Delaware faculty member and Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1960. Nude Descending a Staircase Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh, A gold of lemon, root and rind, She sifts in sunlight down the stairs With nothing on. Nor on her mind. We spy beneath the banister A constant thresh of thigh on thigh— Her lips imprint the swinging air That parts to let her parts go by. One woman waterfall, she wears Her slow descent like a long cape And pausing, on the final stair, Collects her motions into shape. X.J. Kennedy Sources: The Poet Speaks of Art, English 205, a project designed for “Introduction to Poetry” at the English department at Emory university.

World readying for John Cage s 100th birthday.

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

John Cage and Marcel Duchamp are often mentioned in the same breath. Not only were they good friends and avid chess partners (Cage once had Duchamp s board electrically wired for a game of musical chess), Cage was an avowed creative disciple of the elder statesman of the avant-garde. Cage carried on Duchamp s predilection for strict Conceptualism and discipline-bending provocation deeper into the world of audio ( Duchamp had indeed already made use of sound media) ; Cage s other ancestral influences include the mechanized noisemakers of the Futurists. Cage is now notorious, perhaps as much so as Duchamp, for controversial works like the fully silent 4 33, and HPSCHD,a complex, chaotic, chance-based and partly computer-generated work. Cage would have been alive for 100 years on September 5th, 2012. In celebration of this centennial "music, poetry, theater, happenings, visual art exhibitions, publications, and more" are being prepared, according to johncage.org. In the meantime, get your dose of the modernist composer by checking out other engaging projects at his eponymous web address, including a app that displays excerpts of his whimsical 1-minute short stories from "Indeterminacy: new aspect of form in instrumental and electronic music."

Rigaud: a Scent in Need of an Author

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

For those that have been following the attention 'scents' have been receiving in the art world, as we have, Christie's auctioned out the most expensive bottle of perfume ever sold, and it never even held perfume. This is is not surprising, for it was designed by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray in 1921. Many designers of perfumery cite "self-expression," the olfactory trace of a scent left behind, as a primary interest and stake. A trace is not unlike a signature, it identifies an owner or author. Duchamp's ready-mades scandalized the art world for being the first to make a point of questioning authorship in the fetish art object, even the signature of fetishized scent. Duchamp's record-breaking perfume bottle, called Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water), initially housed the much loved fragrance Rigaud. It was first displayed in its altered form, as an "assisted ready-made.", at the Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery in 1965. Beautiful Breath features the likeness of Duchamp's female alter ego, Rrose Selavy. It sold in Feb. 2009 for $11,689,968.

Ubuweb s "Uncreative" Poet Speaks About Textual Readymades

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Cabinet Magazine s Gowanus HQ regularly hosts illuminating panels, exhibitions, and lectures on avant-garde practice, conceptual art, and the history of science and culture. Stiff drinks are served in conjunction. March 18th s event was no exception. That typically well-devised evening, titled “Clipping, Copying, and Thinking,” brought together Harvard historian Ann Blair and renegade, Duchampian poet Kenneth Goldsmith, whose site Ubuweb.com has been dubbed "The Wikileaks of the Avant Garde": at least according to Goldsmith s own Twitter feed. The two were there to discourse on strategies of textual appropriation and management in an age of proliferating information (this could refer to the present or Early Modernity, Blair s specialty, a time of publishing expansion). The dialogue was hosted by Cabinet editor D. Graham Burnett, a youngish, pale, elegantly cheekboned Princeton professor sporting a vanishingly narrow tie. Blair, who has written extensively on the subject, kicked off the proceedings with a recounting of notetaking culture from Classical Antiquity to the late Renaissance. The central theme linking these periods was a concern with personal, mental and rhetorical cultivation. Figures such as Quintillian would stockpile and index citations as an arsenal of examples and anecdotes to aid decision-making and oratory. The Renaissance, faced with the trauma of the loss of Antiquity s riches, added preservation and curation as motivating factors for compulsive note-taking, arranging, and intelligent hoarding. All these activities, Goldsmith pointed out when he spoke, were about "selecting the best bits." He was interested in something different. What exactly? Goldsmith is known for such provocations as retyping one complete issue of the New York Times from end to end (Day, 2003) and publishing it as a book of poetry, and transcribing one year s worth of Weather reports (Weather, 2005). He seems interested in highlighting the banal, what is merely there for the taking: in other words, not "the best bits." He has announced the goal of purging himself of creativity by age 40. While Duchamp may have provided "permission" for this practice, as Goldsmith put it, Duchamp himself was focused on a quite selective aestheticism. The Renaissance scholars, for their part, sought to develop and enhance their subjective spheres through systematic assimilation of external material. Goldsmith, on the other hand, appears to want to efface his subjectivity to the point where he is fashioned as a glorified transcriptionist. But of course, there is a paradox. Goldsmith, like Duchamp, expects to receive credit for his rote, plagiaristic works, and indeed he has been the recipient of multiple awards and professorships. In the workshop Goldsmith teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, he assigns his students the task of typing up 5 pages of their choice and turn it in to him, an activity that would lead to disciplinary action anywhere else in the University. According to Goldsmith, the results of this exercise are "very personal." Choices the student makes such as what writing they choose, how faithful they render typography, layout, paper quality, etc. reveals layers of quirk and distinctive individuality. Goldsmith points this out with evident relish. So then, is the point subjectivity after all? The eminent moderator Burnett sniffed out this possibility, and inquired if Goldsmith were not really a crypto- or latent humanist. Goldsmith freely admitted that he was somewhere in between. He said that among his students there were more severe radicals, who advocate the utter expunging of all traces of subjective decision making, thus transcending the Duchampian legacy and that of Renaissance humanism to boot. They have called for the complete transcription of the Internet, an idea which makes Goldsmith shudder. "I m actually kind of old-fashioned," he says. Further into the frontier of post-human poetic practice lies such beasts as "dark data" or symbolic writing produced by computers for computers to read. There is clearly much to be explored further about conceptual/digital/readymade textual practices, and I ll continue to post on the issue. Hopefully, we ll also be able to get Professor Goldsmith over to MarcelDuchamp.net, there are some things we need to discuss with him. We will transcribe the results of the conversation here. Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age, Goldsmith s newanthology, comes out via Columbia University Press in September, 2011.

Local Ready-Mades at Vintage Hardware

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

On March 12th, Vintage Hardware, a hardware and design shop in Astoria, Oregon contributed to the city's 2nd annual Saturday Art Walk by hosting a one-night-only exhibit displaying found art by students from the nearby Clatsop Community College. The burgeoning artists cited, among others, none other than Marcel Duchamp and his ready-mades, as inspiration. Paul and Becky, the shop's proprietors, offer the community their services in interior design and construction respectively. The couple loves to re-appropriate the discarded object, to de-contextualize and re-contextualize ancient household detritus and give it new meaning and fresh purpose in a new home. Paul and Becky recently relocated to the Astor Hotel, a town landmark circa 1922 that stood largely abandoned before its newest owners selected it as the site for their shop's new home. If not anti-instutional or even brazen in intent, the setting for the show provided a fittingly playful atmosphere in which to display the Introduction to Design class's takes on the ready-made. What a great community event for Duchampians in Oregon!

India s Tata Nano to follow the trajectory of Duchamp s Fountaine?

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Any purported parallel trajectory between Marcel Duchamp';s Fountaine (1918) and India';s Tata Nano may strike many as odd. After all, what does the most infamous urinal that rocked the art world in the twentieth century has in common with a compact car produced in India in the twenty-first? If the story of Duchamp';s Fountain largely describes an inconsequential object, morphed into a concept, that has indelicately grown in momentum with time, what could we expect from the Nano and its implications for India and the world: the beginnings of the conceptual automobile, or a fugacious glory run hitched on Duchampian legacy? Introduced first domestically in 2009 by India';s Tata Motors, the Nano is billed as the ultra cheap, “people';s car.” At $2,900, as of last December, it is considered the world';s most affordable compact car. Its appearance is like an American golf car, but with 2 cylinder petrol, four-doors and four-passengers. Some of the quirks of a Nano are its absence of a stereo player, air bags and power steering. For anyone whose childhood dream is to drive on the outskirts of Stuttgart on the German Autobahn while listening to Celine Dion, the Nano might not be the ideal vehicle. The Nano in India, however, is financially within reach of the growing middle class, many of whom are looking to upgrade from motor scooters as a manifestation of social mobility. The Nano, after being introduced in the U.S. in 2010, was adopted by Cornell University';s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art for its Winter 2011 exhibition, "Unpacking the Nano: the Price of the World';s Most Affordable Car.” The exhibition features a dismantled Nano suspended in air and a concept Nano with two used motor scooters. A symposium was held earlier this March examining the car design and the socio-cultural implications of the Nano. Professor Arjun Appadural, one of the keynote speakers, addressed some of the issues concerning the latter. One of his probes revolved around “what does the car want,” arguably recalling Dadaist sensibility. Appadural, currently the Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, began with a curt analysis of the Nano';s potential market outside of India, and the logistics of manufacturing, supplying and distributing the Nano worldwide. What with India';s exploding middle class, the Nano has the potential to create a burgeoning class of drivers who, not only will demand more from businesses as they become accustomed to the role of middle class consumers, but will also demand access to better roads, highways and other amenities (financing, credit, etc) from the government. Appadural asserted, “I am certain that those who buy, use and ride in the Nano will be induced to think more richly about their own social trajectories in an increasingly globalized world. It will give them no choice but to learn more about design, utility, price, energy, credit and other invisible parts of the infrastructure of modernity.” He continued by echoing the wisdom of Jawaharla Nehru, the founding father of modern India, and J. R. D. Tata, who once asserted that “the future is a combination of great technical visions and of great social transformations” both of which are dependent on the “enthusiasm of the masses.” The "enthusiasm of the masses," however, is engineered. It will derive only a small fraction of its vigor from the aesthetic and design of, say, the actual vehicle. Most of it will arise from the confrontation between present exigencies and the solutions of creative minds. India, being the world';s largest democracy and one of the fastest growing economies, not only needs innovative solutions, but needs them to engineer, educate and feed its growing middle class. Engineering its middle class and engineering the "enthusiasm of the masses” is almost like the chicken and the egg; whichever comes first is no longer relevant. The point is about defining and warping an authentic, modern Indian experience. Its middle class families are faced with, not the violence and trauma of World War I that the Dadaists had to confront, but the violence of modernity that has been thrust upon them chaotically. The Nano may bill itself, thus, as the “anti-car.” Everything for which the conventional twentieth-century car stood, the Nano stands the opposite. Whereas the twenty-century automobile was concerned with largeness, speed, efficiency and function, the Nano ignores, or at least prides itself on adhering to what Appadural sees as Indian society s “density, intricacy and manoeurability.” Whereas the titular American car is static, and used as a passive tool of transportation by many families, the Nano is dynamic; it is the yardstick of an Indian family';s learning curve in becoming educated middle class consumers and engaging in their responsibilities as twenty-first century Indian citizens. Appadural also sees the Nano as a tool with which an Indian family can realize their social mobility and sensibilities of modern living. The Nano helps an Indian faily define and navigate the increasingly complicated world of automobiles. "To such a person, and to his or her family, the Nano is a tool for imagining the future,” Appadural continued "The Nano has the potential to spark the Indian taste for packing more into less, not because all Indians are ascetics, or Bauhasians or green philosophers, but because they like the intricacy and the intensity of sociality." The Nano, in Appadural';s words, has become a portal and non-literal vehicle for an Indian citizen to become a stronger, more reflective consumer/citizen. That the Nano “stimulates the capacity of Indian consumers to think about the future as something which they themselves can shape through their daily lives,” he asserted, is an amazing feat and complement of the Nano, to say the least. The social and cultural trajectory that Appadural paved for the Nano continues as follows, “Marcel Duchamp showed us that today s urinal can become tomorrow s found object, in the right artistic hands...[...]” To date, the Nano hasn';t been selling well in India though, nor has it made an appearance in the automobile market elsewhere. It may have been netted in a Catch-22. The cheap price of the Nano has made it affordable for the growing middle class, but that as the middle class grows, its mounting aspiration to live better lives needs more significant if substantive status symbols, which put it at odds with the image of the Nano. For the most part, the most popular and best-selling cars in India are still small, fuel-efficient Japanese-made cars like Maruti Suzuki. At Tato Motors, there are also growing problems with production costs and addressing some of the engineering quirks. Cornell University';s “Unpacking the Nano” exhibition at the Johnson Museum runs until March 29, 2011

Man Ray s underexposed Muse, Lover and Colleague takes the Stage.

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Never attaining the name recognition she deserves, the intrepid photographer Lee Miller cut a swath through the 20th century that few, male or female, can equal. Her life story traversed some of its central dramas: artistic, stylistic, technological, humanitarian, geopolitical. It also included a nude dip in Hitler s bathtub. Now, her forbidable narrative is the subject of Behind the Eye, a new play by Carson Kreitzer. It will debut at the Cincinatti Playhouse on April 2nd, after undergoing development at the Playwright s Center in Minneapolis. Kreitzer is a veteran of the Playhouse, having contributed two prior dramas, including a work about Robert Oppenheimer, so he is well attuned to the historical period. Some of Miller s weightiest accomplishments include her documentation of concentration camps and the napalming at St. Malo as a war photographer for Conde Nast: she had worked her way to this unimaginable position (for a woman then) from the daughter of an amateur photographer in Poughkeepsie, NY, and later a model for Vogue. On the way, she became intimately familiar with Man Ray during an intense period in the early 1930 s, Paris, where she had traveled specifically to seek out the budding Surrealist. She helped him develop important photographic techniques, such as solarization, and is believed to have taken some of the pictures attributed to him. After their separation, she worked commercially in fashion and celebrity; after World War II, during which she established herself indelibly, Miller came to occupy the crux of a lively UK scene. It was frequented by such avant-garde statesmen as Max Ernst, Henry Moore, Jean Debuffet and Pablo Picasso; Miller s own vertiginous and comic portraiture from this period easily held its among this crew. @font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }Behind the Eye, which grapples with this woman s picaresque achievements, will feature, James Saba as Pablo Picasso, Alex Podulke as Paul Eluard, Alan Cox as Man Ray, and Sarah Agnew as Lee Miller herself. Mark Wing-Davey will direct. Through May 1st.

The Center for Olfactory Art Presents...

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp is credited with composing the first ready-made, Fountain, in 1917 and the first art installation, Etant-Donnes (1946-1966). In 1938, however, Duchamp also created what was one of the world&#39s first olfaction-based installations for the International Surrealist Exhibition at the Beaux-arts Gallery in Paris. Duchamp would design the experience of the exhibit: he transformed the main hall into a "subterranean cave" by hanging bags of coal from the ceiling and filling the room with the smell of roasted coffee grounds. Needless to say, visitors of the Beaux-arts Gallery were scandalized. But why should they have been? Most likely, because a visit to a gallery does not necessarily require tremendous involvement: the visitor is usually free to casually either look or not look at whichever works he chooses. But, unless he suffers from anosmia, a visitor to Duchamp&#39s main hall had no choice but to experience the aromas, not to mention the sights, in the room. Isn&#39t that why we find people who wear too much perfume or cologne, or people who don&#39t shower for that matter, so obtrusive? They give us no choice but to smell them. The fact of the matter is that smell, if ephemeral by nature, can be difficult to avoid. If I don&#39t like a painting, I don&#39t have to look at it for longer than I have to. And, I hardly need worry about whether a Monet will give me a headache, induce nausea, or stir memories from my subconscious. But the same cannot be said of smell. Of course, Marcel Duchamp should only approve of such possible side effects to visiting a gallery of scents. But, lamentably, it seems that exploding the walls of mainstream art is not the imperative of Chandler Burr, the curator for the new Center for Olfactory Art&#39s upcoming exhibit, The Art of Scent. Proper ventilation will be installed in the galleries, and museum visitors will have to push a button to catch a whiff of a fragrance before it dissipates. Burr explains, "What I intend to do is strip away the marketing, PR and commercial presentation of what are stupendous works of art—but are not yet understood as such." The exhibit is advertised to be an unaffected exploration of the intricacies involved in olfactory composition. This is not be a particularly rousing raison d&#39être, not to mention one that is diametrically opposed to Duchamp&#39s efforts eighty years ago. Maybe aromas need to be &#39understood&#39 and contextualized before they can acquire substance. But, is it wrong if I&#39d just rather imagine Charlize Theron emerging from a sea of gold when I catch a hint of J&#39adore in the air? The Center for Olfactory Art, an arm of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, is due to open its first exhibit, The Art of Scent 1889-2011, in November 2011. Though guaranteed to be worth the visit, whether the show will be the "game-changer" it promises to be or not remains to be seen. Or, should I say, sniffed out? For more on the place of olfaction in the art world, see Barbara Pollack&#39s article Scents and Sensibility in this month&#39s issue of ARTnews.

shenanigans in Washington Square

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

This picture of Duchamp was caught on the linked webpage by kismet. It brought to mind the story Ralph Gardner of the Wall Street Journal had recently chronicled about his adventure inside the Washington Arch. According to Parks department head preservationist John Krawchuck, Duchamp and his cohort of "Bohemian" artists, such as John Sloan and poet Gertrude Drick, had not only frequented and left their mark in the village, but had once broken into the arch and climbed to its roof: “they had a picnic and a party and drank tea late into the night.” Gardner, today, entered the arch through its western leg with the guide of Krawchuck. The arch sustains a 102-step spiral staircase that opens to a skylight door, the roof and vaulted attic. Close to a hundred years prior, Duchamp had probably done the same thing while ascending the staircase with his jar of crackers and tea sets. He may have seen cars wheezing under through the arch (which became forbidden only since 1971), the rows of Greek revival houses to the north that Gardner saw today, and a white marble fountain, that today has been relocated to the center of the square.

Flavorwire Surveys Bike Art Since Duchamp

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Did the non-functional bike craze begin with Marcel Duchamp?" asks Flavorwire, referring to the bicycle wheel M.D. famously mounted upside down on a stool in 1913, creating what was most probably the first kinetic sculpture. There s no question that creative bike culture is hot. At Critical Mass a couple years ago I saw a bike of the hyper-functional, rather than non-functional variety: it could make waffles while being ridden! (It had everything on it from a cage with chickens for the eggs, to a fully loaded shotgun for protecting such an awesome vehicle). But now, Flavorwire, the culture arm of Flavorpill, has compiled an "Unofficial Art Bike Survey," a slideshow of bikes purposed only for the enjoyment of us aesthetes. It s about time. Highlights include a two-wheeler tastefully crushed flat by Ai Weiwei, and er...a fixie with swastikas for wheels ridden by Olav Westphalen...if highlight can really be said in reference to the latter. (At least mechanically, that one actually worked: artistically, however, it is difficult to say) I might have added Gabriel Orzoco s "Four Bicycles (There is Always One Direction) http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/174/1921 More bicycle art we should check out? Write to us in the comments.

Huws of the "Word Vitrines" Brings Duchamp to (Forest) Life

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Piss Off I m A Fountain," read the eponymous "word vitrine" of Bethan Huws s 2008 London exhibition. The text was laid out in white-on-black on an announcement board, the kind you d see at a post office or a university auditorium. It s actually kind of hilarious spoof on Duchamp s ultimate art-world spoof: the urinal that called itself a Fountain and put itself forward as art. The defiance of the statement "Piss off..." reminds me of the critic Wayne Anderson s contemptuous statement, quoted in Tout-Fait by Francis Naumann, that "modern art...ends its second fifty-year phase with a urinal pretending to be a fountain while asking to be pissed in" ("Wayne Anderson, Duchamp, the Failed Messiah," Tout-Fait, 10/2010). Yet, perhaps "The Fountain" isn t asking to be pissed in, but just the opposite: it s indignantly forbidding it! Huws s piece jocularly suggests this sentiment, while producing another Duchampian provocation: framed text exhibited in a museum. And even though it s meaningless, somehow I can t shake the sound association between "vitrine" and latrine. Of course, there is no relation. A vitrine is a glass case, usually used for displaying valuable objets d art. "Word vitrine" then, means a case for displaying words. Just to clarify, it never means somehow using a word as transparent casing to display something else, which would be interesting in its own right. So, I am behind the gesture: words are valuable. One of Huws classic word vitrines says simply "Hollywood." Hollywood is a very valuable word indeed. The neo-Dada wit animating Huws project should be getting clearer. This pedigree in itself is not distinguishing for a conceptual artist. But Huws is also among the select group of contemporary installation sculptors outlandishly indebted to Duchamp, if not precisely in the tank for him. A note of critique and destabilizing intent, even challenge, is evident throughout Black and White Animals, her new show at Centre International d Art et du Paysage. The exhibit reconstructs several of Duchamp s works, incorporating them in novel formations. In Forest, for instance, she arranges a thicket of bottle racks, referencing the readymade of the same object, in a pattern recalling the conifer woods in the sculpture park on the island of Vassivier, where the Centre International is located. This poetic and paradoxical evocation of landscape in microcosm shows up Duchamp s fairly brusque stab at the form in Etant Donnes, even as it relies on its predecessor for some of its allusive punch. Here is anxiety of influence at its most productive, though perhaps it is the late Duchamp who should be the anxious one. Then, Huws fairly straightforward yet still unsettling take on Duchamp s major installation itself, titled Etants Donnes, is actually just a disembodied arm, which, like that of Duchamp s splayed nude, holds aloft an electric lamp. Here, Huws simply seems to be playing with signification, as well as themes of embodiment and disembodiment. This perhaps befits an artist who removes figuration entirely in favor of verbal shadowboxing And in fact she is again up to her usual tricks with the vitrines. One here reads "Et Duchamp? c est un trou normand." Time to get out your French dictionary...beware of false cognates though. And did you know that Duchamp was a Norman? Through June 19th.

O Hara s Early Homage to Rrose Selavy

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Poets and painters have been in dialogue since as far back as anyone can tell. But, for Frank O&#39Hara (1926-1966), the seminal New York School poet who worked as critic for Art News and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York squat in the middle of the 20th century, art had been of especial significane. O&#39Hara&#39s poems often evoke the artists that had been instrumental to his development as a writer and thinker in their characteristic expression of the intimate and casual details of the poet&#39s personal life. John Ashbery, in his introduction to The Collected Poems of Frank O&#39Hara, notes that O&#39Hara&#39s early poetry "is anything but literary. It is part of a modern tradition which is anti-literary and anti-artistic, and which goes back to Apollinaire and the Dadaists..." (vii). Though most of these painters are the Abstract Expressionists of the 1940s and 50s with whom O&#39Hara was friends, Ashbery&#39s insightful depiction of the poet as an inheritor to a lineage of avant-garde artist-provocateurs can be traced back to Marcel Duchamp among others: O&#39Hara passionately addresses Marcel Duchamp&#39s alter ego and signature, Rrose Selavy in one of his very first poems. Homage to Rrose Selavy, which follows, was written in Cambridge in November of 1949, when O&#39Hara was only 19 years old. It was first published in Generation, Spring 1951, and can now be found in The Collected Poems of Frank O&#39Hara printed by the University of California Press. Homage to Rrose Selavy Towards you like amphibious airplanes peacocks and pigeons seem to scoot! First thing in the morning your two eyes are shining with all night&#39s funny stories and every time you sit down during the day someone drops a bunch of rubies on your lap. When I see you in the drugstore or bar I gape as if you were a champagne fountain and when you tell me how your days and nights seem to you you are my own stupid Semiramis. Listen, you are really too beautiful to be true you egg-beater and the next time I see you clattering down a flight of stairs like a ferris wheel jingling your earrings and feathers a subway of smiling girls a regular fireworks display, I&#39ll carry you to Venice! Frank O&#39Hara

nothingtoodoo, Terrence Koh

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The self-described “Naomi Campbell of the art world,” Terence Koh, has a new solo exhibit at the Mary Boone Gallery titled “nothingtoodoo.” Koh';s past works include a gold-plated ornament of his excrement (Art Basel, 2008) that reportedly was sold for $500,000, a two-headed piano with protruding arms for Lady Gaga at the 2010 Grammy, and a 25 foot long urinal in tribute to Duchamp at the April 2009 “KKK” show at Mary Boone. In nothingtoodoo, Koh circles an 8 feet high mound of salt while on his knees. The immaculate gallery space is purposefully devoid of distracting colors and embellishments, and pushes the visitor to soak in the solemnity and contemplative practice of Koh';s painful act (NYTimes reported that Koh has, since the first week, donned knee-pads). Through March 19, 2011.

Marjorie Strider Paints a New Woman for Duchamp

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Her work hasn&#39t been exhibited in New York for fifteen years, but pop-artist Marjorie Strider has finally returned to Hollis Taggart Galleries where her much anticipated show opened on March 8th. Her art, happily, remains as we remember it. Bikini-clad women, painted in flat blocks of acrylic paint, playfully engage their audience. And these ladies have real &#39depth&#39 to them: in some pieces, the more desirous parts of their bodies physically project out from the canvas. Next to one such relief of a woman&#39s breasts, Come Hither from 1963, hangs the notice: DO NOT TOUCH. It is the only such injunction in the gallery, making Strider&#39s reference hard to miss. In 1947, Marcel Duchamp co-authored a naked and solitary rubber breast, calling it Priere de Toucher or Please Touch. Strider&#39s breasts are markedly different. Firstly, there are two of them. Then, they are clothed. In relief, it also looks as though they have felt the effects of gravity. And, they are truly monstrous in size. Strider&#39s breasts have the strength of a contemporary and distinctly female artist&#151an artist who was not afraid to grow intimate with the male-dominated line of inheritance drawn from the early avant-garde, only to grow past it. Needless to say, Duchamp&#39s name should come up quite often where Strider&#39s work is involved as she appears to draw much of her own conceptual vision from the world&#39s original conceptual artist. For instance, Duchamp&#39s seminal Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (1912) also finds mention on Hollis Taggart&#39s walls: Strider re-imagines its content for her own portrayal of a near-nude woman stepping down the stairs in her aptly titled, Descending (2010). Where it is obscured in Duchamp, the female form in Strider&#39s piece is recognizable, blunt, and transparent. The woman is quite actually stripped bare and made wholly visible. Strider doesn&#39t seem to have the patience for Cubism&#39s disruptive plurality of perspectives. Descending possesses a different kind of mobility: the hyper-sexual woman descends upon her gallery with all the force of a candid act. There is only one perspective here, and Strider renders it inescapable. We have to leave wondering if maybe viewership can really be so much simpler than, at least as women, we want to imagine it to be.

"Alias Man Ray" selected for Art Critics Award

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The Jewish Museum s 2009 exhibit "Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention" brought together an unprecedentedly broad spectrum of output by Marcel Duchamp s friend, co-conspirator and occasional portraitist, Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky). It also contextualized 20th century avant-garde production in relation to the Jewish immigrant experience. The exhibit s different sections catalogued the nomadic wanderings of the man who, much to his chagrin, would become known as the preeminent photographer of Surrealism. It followed his Dada stint in New York as a close ally of Marcel Duchamp in aesthetic rebellion, his move to Paris, and then his flight to Hollywood on the eve of the Fascist takeover. Throughout it demonstrated how Man Ray s profound struggle with the stain of his Jewishness was inextricable from his tactics of erasure, doubling, concealment, cryptography, and other seminal contributions he made to the development of the avant garde and to the postmodern world. Now "Alias Man Ray" has been selected to win the International Association of Art Critics prize for Best Monographic Museum Exhibition. Mason Klein, the curator who designed and executed the exhibition, will be honored in an award ceremony at Cooper Union on March 14th. Other winning institutions, receiving awards across 12 categories, will include the Neue Galerie, The Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Duchamp at the Great Upheaval, Guggenheim

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Guggenheim s new exhibit, "The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim s Collection" (1910-1918), tries to capture and encapsulate the eclectic and experimental art scenes that permeated Europe at the dawn of the tumultuous 20th century. Among the vanguard of this explosive artistic revolution were artists such as Franz Marc, Piet Mondrian, Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp, in this exhibition, is represented by "Apropos of Little Sister" (1911), a painting that testifies to both his awareness of the artistic movements and their theoretical underpinnings, and his growing anticipation to break away from them. “Apropos of Little Sister” is, by all means, not a renegade Duchamp. It did, though, break from his early Impressionist paintings of relaxed brushwork by adjoining the fractured human form (Cubist) to an unstructured background, with a soft Cezanne influenced planar construction in monochromatic palette. "Apropos" also resembles Jean Metzinger';s tone in “Tea Time” (1911), without the geometric precision. Both Metzinger and Duchamp (for a while) were part of the Puteaux Cubists, who rebelled against the conventional Cubist techniques of Picasso and Braque. Duchamp, in time, would break away from the Puteaux Cubists and experiment with non optical art. Concurrent to the Puteaux Cubists was Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group formed by Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in late 1911, which is a central focus of the exhibit. The exhibit takes holdings from the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York (including the rarely seen Duchamps), as well as the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice. "The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim s Collection, (1910-1918)" is showing through June 1.

Looking for Duchamp at the 2011 Armory Show

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

New York&#39s largest premiere world art fair, The Armory Show, just closed its doors after a truly hectic and overwhelming weekend at Piers 92 and 94. Though the fair has been running every spring since its revival in 1994, this year it hosted a truly gargantuan number of contemporary and modern works exhibited by 274 galleries representing 31 countries from around the world. It was, of course, in 1913 that the original Armory Show, otherwise known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art brought Cubism, and with it Marcel Duchamp, to the eyes of the American public. The show featured Duchamp&#39s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912), the painting that scandalized the New York art world and made Duchamp an infamous sensation overnight: Teddy Roosevelt famously hated it, and the New York Times condemned the Nude to being an explosion in a shingle factory. In 2011, though it would have been lamentably easy to overlook a Duchampian gem in a space where all kinds of pantings, sculptures, and installations spanned endlessly in every direction and people streamed through every possible crevice and booth, Duchamp&#39s work was notably absent. His likeness, however, could have been spotted at a booth of modern art in Man Ray&#39s small print, Marcel Duchamp with Nude (1920). Meanwhile, exhibited in the contemporary section at pier 94 by Kavi Gupta, Theaster Gates paid his respects to Duchamp in Whyte Painting (NGGRWR 0014) (2010). The white-porcelain sink basin is part of a series of similar porcelain sink Whyte Paintings that hung beside one another from a white wall. On (NGGRWR 0014), Gates inscribed My Name Goes Here in gold-leaf block lettering. The influence of R. Mutt from Duchamp&#39s Fountain (1917) was transparent as Gates appeared to suggest that Duchamp&#39s legacy simply refuses to wash off, and, in fact, only continues to glisten. There may have been scores of bolder and brighter works than Gates&#39 in the contemporary wing, but his fond and easy parlance with Duchamp resonated for the Armory Show&#39s reincarnation. Click ...more below for the New York Times review of the show.

Found Pop Detritus = Readymade?

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

"Back in 1917, when Marcel Duchamp originated the notion of "found art" by attempting to enter a porcelain urinal into a gallery show as a piece of sculpture, he probably never imagined that someday, hundreds would gather in dark rooms to watch big-haired exercise videos, scary corporate-training films and screamingly unfunny televangelist comedians." The LA Weekly writer Scott Timberg is right. Why, indeed, is Duchamp s spirit being invoked in conjuction with the odd, voguish habit of plundering an unsecured cache of old VHS tapes from an indie video store, stringing together the cheesiest, most-cringe-inducing clips culled from therein, and presenting the result as a noteworthy cinematic occasion? For this is the activity, staged by a group of Brooklynites around the country, that is being reported in the alternative press as a Duchampian homage. Now, I was at one of these found footage shindigs (because, believe it or not, I had a grant to study 90 s media culture), for research purposes, and thus sober. And I can tell you that there was no artistic transgression involved, no institutional critique, and only the vaguest sense of aesthetic uncanniness, deriving from the fact that, well, people twenty years ago looked like buffoons on TV. The queasy mix of second-hand nostalgia and cheap superiority I experienced through exposure to this phenomenon, I can only assume, was not the intended effect of Duchamp s readymades. Now, none other than the Roboprofessor is getting into the act with his Duchamp Found Pop Culture Object Theater: http://kembrew.com/collages/kembrew-presents-the-duchamp-found-pop-culture-object-theater/ What s next? Are these reasonable appropriations of Duchamp s legacy? And am I, therefore, just the sort of culture snob that M.D. was born to annoy? Discuss.

Duchamp at the Anatomy/Academy, PAFA

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in its new exhibition, Anatomy/Academy, in the Fisher Brooks Gallery in PAFA';s Hamilton Building, examines the interface of art and science and its continued role in expanding the frontiers of our knowledge of the human body. The exhibition centers on the seminal work of scientists, artists and doctors (many of whom were members or affiliates of the school) between the founding of PAFA as the nation';s first art school in 1805 and the end of WWI (1918). It looks at, for example, the tie between the academy and early French and Italian art academics, Professor Eakin s studies and artistic interpretations of motion photography and sophisticated medical technologies of the era, and new compositions of figurative forms by artists such as Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp';s Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 (1912) displayed prominently side by side with Thomas Eakin';s Gross Clinic, for example, shattered the human figure. The exhibition runs from 1/29 – 4/17.

Marcel Dzama s Behind Every Curtain: Patterned by Duchamp

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

To say that Marcel Dzama, a French-Canadian favorite of the New York art world, was influenced by Duchamp s preoccupation with chess would not be wholly accurate. Walking through Dzama s latest show, Behind Every Curtain, at David Zwirner, leaves one with the sense that he has been seduced by Duchamp. Dzama had reflected in an interview with David Coggins for the Huffington Post, it s interesting to see Duchamp s patterns, he s actually an aggressive chess player. He s right. The fact is, Duchamp was a hypermodernist, the kind of chess player that wanted to break chess patterns, to examine them at the risk of discovering new patterns and thought processes. (Hypermodern chess strategy challenged traditional dictums in that it favored indirect control over the board s center, a focal point of the beginning and middle games.) Francis Naumann, in his book Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess, notes that Duchamp believed an engagement with art excited a cerebral experience much in the way that chess did. Duchamp, together with much of the early avant-garde, and the Surrealists in particular, found that the improvisatory yet strategic and sequential movement conducted upon the chess board engendered a freedom of thought—the kind of thought that isn t handicapped by pre-existent culturally or socially mandated forms. Dzama s 14-minute black and white film, A Game of Chess, continually screened in a dark room as part of the exhibit, evokes this kind of officious curiosity and places distinctions between the real and the imagined, the strategized and the expressed—between art and chess—at stake. Two men play chess in what appears to be a deserted battlefield and the pieces dance to gruesome deaths in geometrical costumes modeled after Bauhaus artist-choreographer Oskar Schlemmer s Triadisches Ballett. The scenes are surreal and porous. At the end, a black pawn is also the woman who shoots the loser of the match through the head. Dzama s whimsical drawings, like his film, reveal an odd familiarity with the intimacy of the subconscious. The mechanics of sequence, strategy, and premeditation may be as paramount to Behind the Curtain as they are to chess—drawings and storyboards are meticulously recorded with annotations on graph paper and perforated piano rolls—but, strolling amidst Dzama s violent and grotesque battalions, not to mention the larger-than-life-and-rotating sculptures of geometrical chess-warriors, is emotionally devastating. Duchamp had called a life immersed in chess a struggle. Today, Dzama adeptly re-imagines the mania of thinking and feeling on the chess board. He conveys its violence. The result also brings to mind the Theater of the Absurd: it is curious and uncanny. It is also irresistible. Behind Every Curtain is on display at David Zwirner through March 19. On some days, a mariachi band plays the soundtrack to A Game of Chess. Dzama will be signing books tomorrow, March 5. He is not to be missed.

"French Window" in Tokyo

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

The Mori Art Museum, way up at the top of the gleaming Roppongi Hills Mori Tower in Roppongi,Tokyo, is about to host a new exhibit featuring the work of Marcel Duchamp, along with that of rising International art stars who have won the prize tendered in his name. The Prix Marcel Duchamp is a 30,000 Euro award given out every year in conjunction with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which features a work of its recipient. Generally, but not always, Francophone young artists at the forefront of their generation are shortlisted for the honor; past winners have included the Marxist graphic designer Thomas Hirschhorn and the paper sculptor Wang Du. The Mori exhibition, which will run between now and July 3rd, 2011, is called "French Window: Looking at Contemporary Art Through The Duchamp Prize." The title is a reference to Duchamp s punning sculpture Fresh Widow, a miniature reproduction of a french window endowed with bawdy significance through wordplay. Hopefully, unlike the opaque, leather-covered panels of the Fresh Widow, the five sections of the Mori s "French Window" ( Duchamp s Window, The View from The Window, The Window of Time and Space The Window of the Inner Work and Inside the Window, ) will together illuminate the landscape of contemporary French art and its roots in the deviant accomplishments of the early avant-garde. I can say that the exhibit includes at least one piece definitely worthy of Duchamp. Tevau by Camille Henrot, a photograph of a yellow hose wound into an infinity symbol and perched on the skeleton of a table, exudes the uncanny aura of an everyday item made baleful and mysterious: just like the best of the readymades.

See M.D. Move

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Legend has it that Duchamp denounced and abandoned painting in 1923, and chose to spend his time playing chess instead. In the 02-27-11 post on Marcelduchamp.net, we saw how Scott Kildall, computer programmer and chess enthusiast, created a user friendly game that allows players to compete against Duchamp, or rather a computer algorithm of Duchamp';s strategies and errors. Chessgames.com, an online community and chess database, recently catalogued move by move the game between Duchamp and Karel Skalicka at the Prague Olympiad of 1931. The site has a collection of 68 games of Duchamp, beginning in 1922. Duchamp began ordinarily at the Prague game, hauling pawns to d4 and c4, and taking out both Knights at the outset. At move 16, Duchamp made a grave blunder when he exposed and effectively lost his pawn inanely to Skalicka';s bishop. Duchamp tried to salvage the remainder of the game but seemed to have lost momentum thereafter; he was defeated at 36. Dr. Skalica went on to win the individual gold medal.

Malibu Discusses the Gesture Duchampian Fountains Can Make

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

In celebration of Malibu City, CA s March 28th anniversary, local councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich recalled Marcel Duchamp s Fountain (1917), a simple white porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt, when she nominated a community art project in which 20 recycled urinals, toilet seats, and sinks from the Malibu library would be transformed into art worthy of display in City Hall. However, proposal s reception thus far has been less than enthusiastic. The city council hopes that an arts event could supply the much-needed boost to Malibu s public image, and it is in this regard that many find fault with the porcelain-plan. Councilmember Lou La Monte in particular has voiced his concerns that art composed from used lavatories would be met with laughter, as Duchamp s piece often is, and only tarnish the city s fragile reputation. In defense of her proposition, Conley Ulich explained that sewage had been integral to Malibu s establishment just 20 years ago: the city became incorporated in order to prevent existing sewage systems from interfering with community growth. Porcelain fixtures would be additionally relevant in that proceeds from the project would supply funding for the construction of a local water treatment plant. A definitive vote has yet to be held, but other community art events have been proposed as alternatives. Despite this and the embarrassment some members expressed during discussion, Conley Ulich insists that her "commodes" could uniquely help heal the city and do what Marcel Duchamp [did] in his seminal piece of the Dada movement.

Progenitor of cinema and Duchampian innovation at SFMOMA

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Ever enjoyed a photo flip-book? You were on territory pioneered by the great proto-cinematographer Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge made his mark on the late 1800 s by using photographic series to analyze motion. He s most famous perhaps for resolving the question of whether horses raise all four hooves off the ground while galloping (they do). Lesser known is his considerable influence on the avant-garde art of the last century, from the Futurists kinesthetic ambitions to the optical experiments of Bauhaus professor Laslo Moholy-Nagy. Duchamp s abrasive, motion-capturing Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 of 1912 was directly inspired by a Muybridge print. Between now and June 7th, SFMOMA is putting on the first ever retrospective of Muybridge s work, entitled HELIOS: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change. The exhibition will feature his technological achievements, such as an early projector colorfully known as a Zoopraxiscope (the term captures Muybridge s obsession with human and animal locomotion), in addition to photography, notes and miscellany. To learn about his 20th century inheritors like Duchamp, the talk today, March 1st, called "Muybridge and his Legacy" might be a good bet.

How many moves can you last against Duchamp?

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp s unparalled innovation in avant garde art is paralleled by his equally impressive accomplishments in chess. Duchamp, a self-described "chess maniac," even sought to win the French Chess Championship, and although that dream never came to fruition, Duchamp represented France in numerous tournaments and competed avidly throughout the country. He placed first at the 1924 Chess Championship of Haute Normandie, and was duly awarded the title of Chess Master by the French Chess Federation. Now, using records of Duchamp s games and Duchamp s own strategy notes, the cross-disciplinary artist Scott Kildall has created a computer algorithm that mimics the way Duchamp plays chess, down to the mistakes that Duchamp tends to make toward the end of a game. When you register for a game with Duchamp on Kildall s site, you also see the neat 3D chess pieces that Kildall has customized to look like Duchanp s hard-carved originals. After each of your chess moves, an image of Duchamp appears along with the word "Thinking," creating a subtly tantalizing effect of suspension of disbelief that makes you feel as though if you are in a smoke filled, early twentieth century cafe with Duchamp across from you..."thinking" of his next chess move. Results from the site show that Duchamp usually wins, including against the writer of this piece. How many moves can you last against Duchamp? Report your results in comments!

L.H.O.O.Q.: In Bronze and Magnified

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Often appropriating traditional household objects and using them as the base ingredient for large-scale sculpture projects, Subodh Gupta has garnered a significant amount of attention both within his native India and abroad. Gupta';s final installations--even when amassed from hundreds of simple water utensils, as seen in Spill (2007)--are always glistening and grandiose. This juxtaposition between the ordinary and the, somehow, extraordinary is ever at the forefront of Gupta';s thinking as an artist and critic, and draws heavily from conceptualist provocations of the fetishized commodity form. Without leaving or falsifying his contemporary seat, Gupta, unlike the his leftist peers in the art and academic circles of the West, sculpts an aesthetic interrogation of what the amalgam of India';s complex, ancient heritage and the freshly minted influence of mass consumption could become. His debt to the European and American avant-garde, however, is overt: most recently, Gupta has garnered attention for a reimagining of Marcel Duchamp';s L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) in Et Tu, Duchamp? (2009). And while the speaker of the title';s Caesarian query is left unspecified; it should be safe to assume that Gupta himself is accusing Duchamp, the often cited influence on Gupta s work, for settling into the classical artistic space modeled in Et Tu, Duchamp? ';s physical presence--that of a bronzed and immutable, if transgender, bust. Gupta has properly called himself an idol thief: every aspect of Et Tu... is a citational graft. And, the question of whether the newest Mona Lisa belongs to the powerful category of conceptually underived Art, as Duchamp s supposedly had, becomes irrelevant. Perhaps, what remains at stake for Gupta is reinvigorating the avant-garde';s dethronement, and interrogation of what "Art" could mean within the contemporary Indian landscape.

Recreating Etant Donnes at Francis Naumann

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Jasper Johns called Duchamp s Etant Donnes, a sculptural installation of a naked, lifelike female limply sprawled against a lush woodland landscape, "the strangest work of art shown in any museum." Visible only through a peephole in a brick-rimmed wooden door, it has been variously understood as a send-up of nude-in-landscape voyeurism, a reference to the Black Dahlia murder (generally discredited), and a tribute to Duchamp s mistress of the time, the Brazilian sculptor Maria Martins. It has been the subject of countless artistic reinterpretations and intertextual commentaries, including Hannah Wilke s deconstructive performance video Through the Large Glass (1976) and Marcel Dzama s phantasmagorical reimagining, Even the Ghost of The Past (2008). The Brooklyn and Ohio-based artist T.R. Ericsson s entree into this tradition, Etant Donnes 2, may appear more literal-minded than its predecessors. In an exhibition shown recently at the Francis Naumann gallery, Ericsson displayed black and white photos taken of his unclothed wife posed like Etant s prone nude. The deep reported bond between the married couple, and the tender care Ericcson took in the arrangement of the scene, are together offered as a strong editorial on the original: it was really all about love. While this message seems to simplify Duchamp s queasy, overdetermined riddle more than desired, there is also much more going on in Ericsson s creation than meets the eye. For instance, by applying scrupulous photorealism, Ericsson first calls attention to the uncharacteristic opticality of Duchamp s creation. Yet then he plays a very Duchamp-like trick: because of his elaborate manual silkscreening technique, his works turn out to be "more accurately referred to as drawings," as the gallerist writes.

Duchamp down the catwalk?

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Finally, Duchamp';s readymade bares itself down the catwalk at the just concluded London Fashion Week in the form of the urinal dress, a signature piece in Philip Colbert';s AW 2011 Rodnik Band Collection. Colbert has compared his own Duchamp fascination with the inspiration of Mondrian to YSL; each a testament to the channeling of iconic art into fearless craftsmanship. For Colbert';s eclectic AW 2011 Rodnik Band, he also referenced, cross referenced and intersected synergistically the work of Warhol, Dali, Wieselman and other surrealists with the soundtracks of the Sex Pistols, Public Image Ltd. and the Velvet Underground. What s next for the Rodnik Band? Who';s going to map the parameters of “wearable art?”

<Q>Freeing Art History</Q> with a Ready-Print Urinal?

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:07:31 GMT

Thanks to the efforts of Rob Myers and cwebber, Duchamp';s infamous ready-made, Fountaine, can now be reproduced by anyone with a 3D printer and used in service of aesthetics, sanitation, or humor as seen fit. Though the updated version has been criticized for its dissemblance to the 1919 original--R. Mutt';s signature is notably absent--Myers doesn';t pretend to have created a replica. Instead, he offers a ready-print with the intentions and potentials of a Dadaist sensibility authored by Duchamp: at the very least, perhaps, this model can further the discharge of urinals from institutional sterility in the museum chamber. Myers'; urinal can also be purchased by those without 3D printers: Shapeways.com offers a miniature copy that comes in a variety of colors and materials such as White Strong & Flexible.

Noguchi at the Crossroad of the Century

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The list of artists who collaborated with sculptor Isamu Noguchi is long and impressive: Brancusi, Kahlo, Gorky, Graham, Cunningham, Ernst, Duchamp and many, many more. A new exhibit at New York s Noguchi Museum examines his life and origins as an artist in the context of his relationships with his initially more established colleagues in the world of dance, sculpture, architecture and the plastic and visual arts. Duchamp considered him an interesting thinker in the field of chess.

Susan Philipsz and the Non-Hidden Noise

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The description of Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz as a "sound artist" is raising eyebrows among theoreticians who recall Marcel Duchamp s long shadow at the nexus between the ear and the retina -- which is to say, on the conceptual plane. Like Duchamp, Philipsz is a conceptual artist who works with sound to challenge existing categories and stimulate new experiential connections, but the presence of sound is peripheral to her real concerns. What Philipsz does, however, is to take the "Hidden Noise" that Duchamp applied to his sculptural assemblage and make it explicit -- if not, of course, "visible." If it were visible, how could it be sound? Where is the "infra-thin" boundary between visible and invisible noise?

Hanno Otten at JAGR

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Covering the Walls with History

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

An ongoing exhibit of wallpaper in Lausanne highlights a provocative design by Swiss artist Rudolf Herz: alternating portraits of Marcel Duchamp and Adolf Hitler, both photographed by Heinrich Hoffmann. The wallpaper, called Zugzwang -- a forced move in chess -- has prompted comparisons between the two men, but the overall effect is less politically charged than it is meditative.

"Pimping" the Fountain

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Texas sculptor Anthony Thompson Shumate has created a series of objects named after -- and arguably inspired by -- the eternal phrases often recited to artists in lieu of criticism or conventional wisdom. The "pimped out" urinal on display (to use the Houston Press critic s phrase) at the Barbara Davis Gallery is replete with bright industrial paint and fine detailing, and is apparently proudly signed. Its title? "You know I ve seen a piece like that before. Do you even know art history?" In a world filled with anonymous plumbing trading under various signatures and provenances -- official, authentic, falsified, pirated, mass-produced, reappropriated, readymade -- the gesture is relatively novel. Sadly no picture of the object appears to exist online, forcing the interested to experience it for themselves.

New York Art Thief Apprehended

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A New York City chauffeur has been convicted of stealing more than $3 millino in art and other possessions from an elderly poet and Pulitzer heir. James Biear stole artwork including Duchamp s playing card "Mona Lisa," Francis Picabia s portrait of Jean Cocteau and Andy Warhol s ketchup-inspired sculpture Heinz 57. Provenance on at least some of the objects was forged for resale.

Duchampian Alchemy in New Jersey

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A 3,000-square-foot rural New Jersey house has become what the owner/decorator considers "the museum of the new alchemy" due to its many Duchampian flourishes: found objects as trim, readymade sculpture and even ironic plumbing. The architect attributes his inspiration to Beatrice Wood, "mama of dada." While some of the details may veer into kitsch or even retinal territory, the Duchampian impulse appears strong as well. For more, visit lunaparc.com

The Aesthetics of Chance

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Prague Post has a glowing review of Hebert Molderings new study of the impact of random encounters on Duchamp s artistic production, Duchamp and the Aesthetics of Chance. While the review begins with a salute to the again-ubiquitous urinal, it quickly drills down into the deeper implications of the readymade object. The question, we might ask, is not why a urinal, but why this particular urinal? What grand chain of circumstance and accident leads us to select this particular model of utilitarian porcelain to enshrine in the museum, much less copy again and again for more-or-less limited editions? We know that Duchamp was a librarian, an expert stroller and browser, a formidable humorist. In all these functions, chance plays a role.

Hiroshi Sugimoto Pays Electric Tribute

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Mr. Sugimoto, best known as a photographer, has assembled various "assisted" readymades that combine his love of Marcel Duchamp s career with electricity. The rest is a collection of "bachelor machines" that dazzle, intrigue and even startle from time to time. These wheels not only spin but spark. (At New York s Pace Gallery, through December 24.)

"Mustached Mona Lisa" Sells at Christie s

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

No. 21 of a limited edition of 35 copies of L.H.O.O.Q. sold recently at Christie s in New York for $452,000, roughly five times as much as the auction house expected. The image -- hand-doodled by the artist on an existing mass-market reproduction -- comes from the collection of Robert Shapazian, while the auction itself has raised eyebrows (if not mustaches) from as far away as Moscow.

Sotheby s Selling a Man Ray Original

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Next Friday, an auction of rare photographs in the Paris Sotheby s includes a treat for Marcel Duchamp fans: an original portrait of the artist by lifelong collaborator Man Ray, consigned by the Duchamp family itself. The item, bearing Ray s original Parisian stamp, is expected to fetch bids in the 15,000- to 20,000-euro range (roughly $21,000 to $28,000).

Hide/Seek, Rrose Selavy?

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A new exhibition at Washington s National Portrait Gallery, "Hide/Seek," surveys homoerotic art and, by extension, the signs of transgressive sexuality hidden in apparently heteronormative portraiture. As such, the inclusion of a transvestite portrait of Marcel Duchamp by lifelong friend Man Ray reopens provocative questions about the artist s female persona. Who was "Rrose Selavy," really? Did she satisfy Duchamp s insatiable desire to subvert all assumptions about identity, authorship, gender? Or was something else -- tragic, comic, romantic -- going on here? While the show may not answer these particular questions, Duchamp is rarely viewed in this context. (Through February 13; closes before Valentine s.)

Erwin Wurm, Meet Mr. Mutt

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

While arguably not "retinal" art in a conventional sense, the abstractly absurdist sculpture of Austrian artist Erwin Wurm has few explicit points of contact with the rarefied concepts and anti-reification of much contemporary Duchamp scholarship. Wurm s appropriation of the famous Fountain, for example, and his fusion of the urinal with a fanciful representation of its mythical creator, "R. Mutt" himself, is not so much profound as funny. Duchamp also laughed.

Duchamp: First of the Napster Generation?

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Web makes nearly all of us digital pirates whether we try to avoid appropriating copy-protected material or not. Every Youtube video that makes use of pre-existing footage, every snippet of pre-recorded sound, every famous image clipped and copied into a blog is fraught with both legal and metaphysical implications. Where is the original? Who owns it? How much revision is permitted -- or necessary -- before the "found" work of art becomes something to which we can sign our own name for "assisting" the readymade assemblage? Perhaps acutely, avant-garde "freeware" site Ubuweb -- which incorporates significant Duchamp material as well as work from many other artists -- is at the center of these questions. Film journal Indiewire investigates.

Back to the Chess Game . . . Down Under

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Bendigo Art Gallery, located near suburban Melbourne, is hosting both the global Art of Chess exhibition and a special Australia-oriented show spotlighting local artists interactions with the game that famously distracted Marcel Duchamp from the art world . . . and drove him to cross the world in search of a good match. While the Australian boards on display have an overtly figural quality and dubious playability, their humor may well have endeared them to the master. (Through January 30.)

Melancholia and the Bachelors Even

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Critic Gabriel Josipovici is making a few waves by drawing what some call a "bravura" link between Dürer';s Melancholia and Duchamp s Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. But how? For the answers, as yet, one must read his latest book, but the shared presence of so-called "bachelor machines" in both works may have something to do with their apparent kinship . . . and enduring appeal.

Sculpture for Traveling

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Sculpture for Traveling, Duchamp s 1918 camera-composed "sculpture," has received new attention recently thanks to the New York Museum of Modern Art s "The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture" retrospective. Over and above the Duchampian questions of what constitutes the "original" copy of a signed readymade or other "assisted reproduction, the topic introduces nuances about the portability of sculpture. Is the sculptural in itself necessarily location-dependent (and even immobile unless explicitly designated as a "mobile"), while the photographic record lends itself to being carried with us as we move from vista to vista?

Duchamp at El Bulli

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel and Teeny Duchamp were privileged -- or maybe the balance of honor swings the other way around -- to eat the "deconstructed cuisine" at noted restaurant El Bulli. If Duchamp pioneered an art that lurks beyond the "retinal," then Ferran Adria arguably explores a cuisine that goes beyond the gustatory. On the other hand, perhaps his flavored foams and other decoctions marry the mind back to the mouth.

Duchamp and the Mandarins

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A special exhibition at the Israel Museum juxtaposes Duchamp s "Waistcoat for Benjamin Peret" with embroidered Chinese mandarin robes as part of an interrogation of the cultural determination of art. If a "readymade" garment is art, then does that aura translate?

Saying the Least about Marcel Duchamp

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:07:31 GMT

One of the most extraordinary online essays on the subject of Duchamp -- in or outside the precincts of ToutFait.com -- is Yakov Rabinovich s "Duchamp: To Say the Least." From silent comedy to the arch negations of Voltaire (and wheeling back again), this study of how Duchamp s career intersects with all our ancien regimes is both exquisitely playful and essential all at once.

Duchamp DIY Paris

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:07:31 GMT

As a motto, "do it yourself" covers models of production ranging from the arts & crafts movement to IKEA, and from the Sex Pistols to Marcel Duchamp s readymades. The flagship DIY store in France, BHV, is paying tribute to the readymade aesthetic -- "assisted" and otherwise -- with a special retrospective of Duchampiana that opens Thursday. An illuminating segment on France24 provides an unusually literate overview of the readymade universe, its connections to home improvement retail and its antagonism to the tyranny of the retinal. (Following a roughly 3:30 Katy Perry segment.)

Witch s Cradle Returns to Brooklyn

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp was a seminal figure in the avant-garde film world for decades. In 1943, he appeared in a rarely seen short directed by Maya Deren in connection with the Guggenheim "Art of the Century" exhibit. After too long unscreened, this footage -- along with other experimental films of the era -- recently showed in Brooklyn.

Peggy Guggenheim, the Movie?

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A feature film about the life of Peggy Guggenheim, legendary modern art collector, patron and friend of Marcel Duchamp -- not to mention one-time bride of Max Ernst -- is moving into the development stage. Eleanor Cayre is onboard to lead the project through its early phases along with award-winning producer Nikki Silver. No casting details have yet been announced, but as filming is not even scheduled to begin until 2012, news will likely trickle out over the next few years.

Deconstructing Duchamp

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The popular show "Seduction of Duchamp" is coming to the Museums of Los Gatos. While many exhibitions inadvertently become a showcase of Duchamp tributes and swipes, this one wears its influence proudly. Chess demonstrations, lectures and other events add to the ambience.

Reassembling the Readymade

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Chinese artist Zhou Wendou has made his name breaking down barriers between the mass object and the art object, or between the useful and the useless. The Duchampian slant of his aesthetic is on display -- or rather, not on display -- in his recent untitled demolition of a copy of the Fountain and reassembly of the fragments into a porcelain vase.

Bearded Ladies of Minnesota

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A recent benefit gala for the Minnesota Institute of Art featured a circus theme and such diversions as bearded ladies on display and a "wheel of dada" spinning for unique and fetishistic prizes. As local society columnist Maura Ryan put it, "Marcel Duchamp has my back."

Varian Fry: Savior of Thousands (Including Duchamp)

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

New evidence reveals that American journalist Varian Fry, who went to Marseille in 1940 with "a checkbook and a list of 200 names," ended up saving some 4,000 people -- including the leading lights of the then-banned surrealist movement -- from the Nazi regime. Fry helped smuggle Chagall, Ernst, Breton and Duchamp as well as Franz Werfel, Hannah Arendt, Claude Levi-Strauss and thousands of others out of France and into New York, where the surrealists notoriously remained for some time.

Twisted Pair Show Ending With a Flourish

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The highly lauded "Twisted Pair" Duchamp-Warhol retrospective at Pittsburgh s Warhol Museum will end on September 11-12 with a gala symposium of thoughts from scholars like Francis Naumann and Hal Foster and a recital of the music of Duchamp associate John Cage. Not to be missed.

Rijksmuseum Celebrates Jacques Villon

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp s brother Gaston, who painted under the name Jacques Villon, will be the subject of a special exhibition co-curated by the Amsterdamn Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. Villon is best known as a neo-impressionist, but the exposure should put his work into a larger context. (Opening in September.)

The Duchampian Rebus

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Letter and word play is omnipresent in the Duchampian universe. From Rose Selavy and her noteworthy failure to sneeze to L.H.O.O.Q. and the Fresh Widow, Duchamp s titles occupy absurd, almost self-canceling linguistic spaces of their own. In the company of images and objects, they take on an even less scrutable dimension. And the more the audience opens itself to the free play of language, the deeper the puns and puzzles go.

Another Look at VVV

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The 1943 "VVV" portfolio of surrealist art and ideas, co-edited by Marcel Duchamp, is rightfully considered one of the highlights of the movement s New York period. An exhibition of images from that era -- currently at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art -- opens up the extremely limited edition (20 copies were printed and personalized) to perhaps its biggest public ever. Duchamp. Breton. Ernst. Tanguy. Carrington. Masson. Calder. Chagall. Matta and more....

Uncomfortably Reverential?

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Boston-area DeCordova Sculpture Park has created an iPhone app that allows visitors to eavesdrop on pre-recorded auto-commentary on the pieces on display. Notably, the recorded critics found Ilan Averbuch s "Skirt and Pants (after Duchamp)" to be "uncomfortably reverential," although there appears to be some cryptic debate in the database about the work. Such auto-commentary may resemble the silent discourse between the artist as mediator of the work, the audience and the work itself. Or it may simply add a new layer of complication if not noise.

The Patron Saint of Readymades Strikes Again

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Duchamp is invoked in reviews of Paris artist Claire Fontaine s new show in Miami s Museum of Contemporary Art. Like Duchamp, Fontaine enjoys the juxtaposition (and subtle manipulation) of everyday objects to create unique assemblies: stuffed tennis balls, bricks concealed in book jackets, coins with hidden blades. The secret violence lurking the mundane is an omnipresent theme for Fontaine. By contrast, Duchamp s premonition of a broken arm in the form of a snow shovel seems almost innocent of both menace and overt didactic intent. Either way, once the tennis balls get into the museum, they lose their bounce.

Francesca Woodman and Marcel Duchamp

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Duchampian ghost hangs heavy over the work of photographer Francesca Woodman, who is often described as the visual arts answer to Sylvia Plath. But if Plath needed an answer, then the persistence of mystery -- the infrathin sense that resolution is on the tip of the tongue or eye -- in Woodman s heavily conceptual images may only open up new questions.

More from Christian Marclay

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The New Republic notes that the work of "dilettante of near genius" Christian Marclay (currently at the Whitney Museum) is characterized by lightness deriving from the artist s admiration for Marcel Duchamp as both conceptual thinker and gamesman. Video demonstrates the similarities better than still photographs.

The Bride Strips Bare

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Despite lackluster notices, a current video retrospective at the Whitney Museum offers at least one highlight -- Hannah Wilkes 1976 performance piece, "Through the Large Glass." The short video both literalizes Duchamp s seminal assemblage as Wilkes plays the role of the "Bride" stripping bare in front of the malic molds and subverts its masculine point of view. What does the Large Glass entail from the bride s perspective? Can we see the "Bachelors" any better from here?

Another World Show Not Different Enough?

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Surrealists appear to have lost their power to shock the Scottish press. Reviews of the ongoing retrospective at the Edinburgh Dean Gallery have wavered between bewilderment and boredom, with a few dutiful explanations of how the Dalis, Magrittes and Duchamps on display fit into modern art history. Perhaps the trappings of the surreal -- the melting watches, headless hats and especially the museum-grade toiletries -- have simply become more retinal art for art patrons to ponder. But on the other hand, the inner depths of these paintings and assemblies may not yet have been plumpbed -- for example, one review refers to Duchamp s "feminine-facing sculptures." Is this a nervous reference to the Fig Leaf and the Chastity Wedge?

Active Art, Passive Entertainment?

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Duchamp looms large over debates about the role of the observer in art. Is the observer a passive non-participant willing to sit back and be entertained by the work, or is he or she an active partner in the experience? Naturally Duchamp would opt for the latter approach -- even though it renders the artist less central to the process. And of course if both the artist and the observer are actively present, as Maria Abramovic is in her current MOMA show, then the encounter can become intense.

The Bell & The Glass

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Christian Marclay s video tribute to the Liberty Bell and Marcel Duchamp s Large Glass treats the one object like the musical instrument it was intended to be and the other as a species of musical score -- that is, as the visual representation and record of sound. While critics are mixed, the "Cagean-Duchampian" dimension of the work is clear.

The Stolen Exhibit

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

"The ECHO exhibit at the Albright-Knox is about appropriation—borrowing, stealing, ripping off and recycling—in art, and opens with the two modern era pathfinders of the practice, Marcel Duchamp from the first part of the 20th century, and Andy Warhol from the second. "Art always appropriated, in spades, but before the modern era what it appropriated was just art. What is called art. Painting, sculpture, architecture. Styles, forms, subjects. "What the art of Duchamp and Warhol appropriated was everything"

Taking the Readymade Approach out for a Spin

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Philadelphia-area artist Joe Dillon III invokes the legacy of Duchamp s readymades when explaining his mechanically assisted "spin art," but a closer spiritual ancestor may be the rotoreliefs. Dillon s art reproduces the chance operations of the rotating paint spray seen at carnivals on large-format pegboards. The end effect resembles a mandala, which is to say a rotorelief at rest (or enshrined in the museum).

Memories of Paik Nam-June

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Shigeko Kubota, widow of pioneering video artist Paik Nam-June and a noted member of the Fluxus movement in her own right, has published a memoir of her married life. Details of her privileged relationship with Paik (and, of course, vice versa) emerge in the text. For example, apparently her installation Marcel Duchamp s Grave played a significant influence on his own V-yramid.

Lady Gaga Pays Tribute

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Pop diva Lady Gaga, known for her ability to bridge high concepts with bawdy delivery, has paid a characteristically flashy tribute to the work of Marcel Duchamp by having a hand-inscribed urinal delivered to London fashion boutique SHOWstudio.com. The piece -- named Armitage Skanks after its industrial manufacturer -- bears a scatological message from Gaga outlining her relationship to Duchamp and the role of humor in her own career. Although some have reported that the piece is definitely not for sale, SHOWstudio.com simply lists it as "enquire."

Uncurated Art Show Hits Snag

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The "Artomatic" collective of several hundred Washington-area artists will not be able to exhibit together before 2011 at the earliest because, so far, no space large enough to contain their work has been contracted. (Reported early negotiations with a local junior high school may or may not be progressing.) Given the uncurated, unjuried and unrestrained nature of the group s shows, critics have been prone to recollect Marcel Duchamp s early difficulties with (and revenge on) exhibition judges. On the other hand, with so much material on display, the line between museum and everything else tends to blur.

Dennis Hopper, Duchampian

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A major retrospective of the artistic career of late actor Dennis Hopper is receiving uneven reviews. After genuflecting to Hopper s apparent influences and enthusiasms -- a bit of Warhol here, an encounter with Duchamp there, Basquiat, Rauschenberg -- critics are almost invariably forced to reflect on the nature of Hopper as primarily a performer, a non-artist in the visual sense, an amateur. Some mourn the artist that could have evolved out of this slurry of modern and contemporary techniques, media, concerns. So far, none have dared make an explicit comparison between Hopper s Hollywood non-artistic career and Duchamp s career as patron saint of non-artists. Is this a field reserved for professionals?

New Man Ray Found

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Two lost Man Ray pieces -- one a mobile assemblage of wooden coat hangers, the other a postcard -- have turned up in Scotland as part of the Lee Miller / Ronald Penrose estate and will be exhibited in Edinburgh through January. If only lost Duchamp pieces could turn up so often!

The Visual Art of John Cage

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Indeterminacy -- in the sense used by Duchamp in the Standard Stoppages or the Musical Erratum -- was a core compositional value for John Cage. His visual work demonstrates similar impetus, from Not Wanting To Say Anything About Marcel onward. A major retrospective of Cage s paintings and other visual work in the London suburb of Gateshead explores these points.

Both Sides of the 1917 Divide

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Sculptor Derek Morris considers the 1917 exhibition of Fountain as the watershed of modern art, dividing studio-oriented work that went before from the conceptual work that has since conquered the art world. The Norfolk Contemporary Art Society s current show bridges the gap, with "assisted readymades" in the Duchampian mode and more salon-friendly paintings and sculpture.

Echoes of Rrose

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The small 1964 assemblage Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy is on exhibit through October 10 at Buffalo s Albright-Knox Art Gallery, part of a retrospective show called "ECHO." What is exciting about this display of Why Not Sneeze is the emphasis placed on its textual dimension: mirrors allow viewers to apprehend both the work s sculptural character and scrawled title (normally hidden on its underside) simultaneously. The effect keeps both aspects of the Duchampian pun (mot/chose) in the mind s eye.

Fountain in Scotland

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The installation of one of Duchamp s Fountains in a new exhibition of dada and surrealist works at Scotland s National Gallery of Modern Art inspires plenty of local musing about how the sometimes florid sex-and-death conceptions of painters like Magritte and Miro plays into the Presbyterian milieu of formal Edinburgh. As well, there are insights about the Fountain as not so much a work of found sculpture to be appreciated in sculptural terms, but as a work of anti-sculpture, a provocation designed to antagonize. (This particular Fountain, for those keeping score, was brought up from the Tate.)

The Duchampian Echoes of Lindsey Price

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Reflections on Duchamp -- the readymades, chance pieces and general "conceptual" art -- provide a solid backstop to the photography and installations of contemporary artist Lindsey Price. In fact, at least one critic seems more anxious to rehearse the Duchampian than the Pricean aspects of her current show at Baer Ridgway Exhibitions.

Dreams That Money Can Buy

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Hans Richter s 1947 film Dreams That Money Can Buy was revived recently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger and Man Ray worked on the project, making it an extraordinary snapshot of a relatively brief moment in postwar time.

Duchamp and the Long Scroll of Huang Yong Ping

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:07:31 GMT

MOMA s newly reopened contemporary art galleries contain plenty of references -- oblique and direct -- to the role of Marcel Duchamp as father of conceptual art. One piece now on display is Franco-Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping s epic "Long Scroll," which cycles through his artistic genealogy across the span of some 50 feet of classically oriented imagery. Amid the Buddhas and geometric abstractions, careful viewers will find bottleracks and more.

Soup Cans and Fountains

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp was a significant influence on Andy Warhol. From the early readymades to the Pop Art masterpieces, the underlying line of thought is clear: everything can carry the aura of "art." Mass-produced objects can be "art." Advertising images can be "art."

Bride of Bottle Rack

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

While the Fountain is often given pride of place among Duchamp s readymades, the Bottle Rack is the inspiration for a new glass work by Beth Lipman: the Bride. Five tiers of glass, references to the "large glass," a somewhat dark sensibility.

Robert Shapazian Dies in Los Angeles

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Noted art dealer and publisher Robert Shapazian, best known for stewarding the Gagosian Gallery of Beverly Hills since its founding, has died at age 67 of lung cancer. He was an influential Duchamp critic and, in his role as head of the Lapis Press, published innovative studies of Duchamp s work.

Surreal House Weird Enough for Fortean Times

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Fortean Times, noted journal of the bizarre and uncommensurable, has guarded praise for the Barbican s "Surreal House" exhibition. The gallery spaces are the truly disorienting element of the show, writes Jen Ogilvie. The content -- like Duchamp s Please Touch repurposed as an erotic doorbell -- presents only the occasional "funhouse flourish."

The Uncollectable Duchamp

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Is Marcel Duchamp one of the world s least collectible artists? The assertion seems odd given the numinous quality that every scrap of material associated with the artist has achieved in the marketplace, but while the relic hunters are active, supply is constrained. ARTINFO puts him on the uncollectible list.

New Realisms, Readymade in Madrid

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

An enlightening exhibit at Madrid s Museo Reina Sofia weaves together the ruptures of postwar art to focus on the interplay between readymade and spectacle in 1957 through 1962. Duchamp s shadow broods large over the whole, which is punctuated by the death of Jackson Pollack and the dawn of the public careers of artists like Tinguely, Oldenburg, Klein, Johns. Necessary and promethean. (Through September)

The Museum of Good Ideas

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Duchamp s "underground" career -- decades ostensibly away from the art world in pursuit of chess -- is a touchstone for youthful artist Mark Bloch, who has taken the gameboard out of the underground and bck into the museum gallery in his recent series, Storage Museums. There s an element of travel chess here too, not to mention the Museum in a Suitcase...

Stuckists versus the High Concept

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

An "ominous" picture by artist Mark D currently hanging in the British Royal Academy of Art depicts what appears to be a dessicated Marcel Duchamp adrift on a dark and desolate sea. Only carrion birds, volcanic ash and the totemic shark of the Stuckist art movement -- to which Mark D belongs -- punctuate the gloom. The shark, the Stuckists explain, refers to the career of Damien Hirst. Was Duchamp the victim of art history or its instigator? The little boat Rose Selavy looks dubiously seaworthy....

Requiem for the Readydesigner

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Tobias Wong, often considered a successor to the ironic aspects of Marcel Duchamp s career on the margins of art, killed himself late last month at the age of 35. He will be remembered for his "readydesigned" objects, which carry the readymade art concept into the marketplace of contemporary branded mass consumptions. A sensitive recent obituary situates Wong in an explicitly Duchampian theoretical context.

Cage: Sound and Sculpture

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The current show at BALTIC features a response from eight contemporary artists to a piece of work developed while Cage was at the New School of Social Research. And 60 years on, artists are still drawing inspiration from the avant garde composer';s life and work.(Through September 19.)

God Save ... Tu m ?

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Punk is theater, argues Stefany Anne Golberg, and dada was theater. How much does the iconic poster for the Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" single owe to Duchamp s pioneering use of safety pins to hold Tu m together? The pin pierces and intrudes on the picture plane, unifying the composition by subverting its surface integrity.

Fountain to Fountain

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

London s Whitechapel Gallery is exhibiting two versions of Duchamp s "Fountain" -- one of the porcelain replica "originals" and Sherrie Levine s cast-in-bronze tribute -- through September 5. The focus is on materials, corporeal reality, the body and its limitations.

Remembering Duchamp s Meal

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Daniel Spoerri s work with food and its remains has recently returned to the public s attention as the now-80-year-old artist excavates a banquet he buried in 1983. The project has also reminded some critics of his noted "readymade" exhibition of the detritus of a meal served to Marcel Duchamp, with whom Spoerri associated in the 1950s.

Rrose s Shoe (Large)

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A bicycle wheel bisects Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy in William Schinsky s shoe-based work "Duchamp/Selavy," on display in Palm Desert, California for much of this summer. As Schinsky points out, Duchamp was indeed a courageous gentleman who "did things out of the mainstream.

Treating Kitchen Tools Like Readymade Treasure

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Duchampian idea of readymade as household tool abstracted from its useful context receives new nuances in Indian artist Subodh Gupta s "Chimta" series, which assembles thousands of steel bread tongs into monumental aggregates. One such piece, from 2003, will be auctioned off at Christie s in London next week. Estimated sales price is in the $250,000 to $350,000 range.

The Magic of Beatrice Wood

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Notorious Duchamp collaborator Beatrice Wood recently won favorable notice in the New York Times for her "whimsical and playful" ceramic universe. The subversive and often erotic figural work apparently passed without notice but Duchamp scholars will likely find plenty of earthy humor frozen in clay.

Louise Bourgeois, 1911-2010

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Louise Bourgeois, the noted sculptor who knew and worked with many of the seminal members of the surrealist group (including Marcel Duchamp), died Monday in New York. She was 98 years old and had been producing horrors, marvels and enigmas for seven decades.

Making a House Less Like Home

Fri, 28 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Barbican gallery s "Surreal House" exhibit has opened and is drawing insightful reviews, most recently from the Financial Times. If the act of building and maintaining a home reflects the process of being in the world, then the surrealist project subverts that process by making "home" un-homelike.

Reinventing the Wheels

Thu, 27 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

As the curator of a new show at Princeton s Paul Robeson Center of Art points out, sometimes progress is really a matter of circling back around to the origin, only to see the place for the first time. In other words, history can be all about reinventing the wheel. The show, which runs through July 2, takes a new spin on Marcel Duchamp s "assisted readymades" by placing the iconic mounted Bicycle Wheel in a new and mobile context. Can it be spun, and if so, will its path be smooth or jittery? Another highlight is Ji Li s "Duchamp Reloaded," which resituates a copy of Duchamp s wheel in a curbside environment. The piece has already been vandalized.

Readymade or Relic: The Economics of Fine Art

Wed, 26 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

When collectors pay $10 million, $100 million or more for a numinous Picasso, Giacometti or Van Gogh, what are they buying? What value does the artist add through labor, vision, experience and, ultimately, signature? Why do objects with a peripheral or disputed association with a bankable body of work take on something of the aura of medieval relics? Who was R. Mutt?

Christian Boltanski and the Persistence of Duchamp

Tue, 25 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Recent critical reception of conceptual artist Christian Boltanski s work (such as No Man s Land, in which menswear is sifted endlessly) has struggled to invoke the legacy of Marcel Duchamp as patron of the "big questions" about the function of art, or at very least the instigator of the little gestures of art-as-provocation. Boltanski himself appears more conflicted in his relationship to the readymade master, having deliberately erased the portions of his collected press interviews that deal with Duchamp among other subjects. As he notes, "I think I said that I don t like Duchamp, but that is totally stupid because I know that Duchamp is a very important man." Once these conversational witticisms are frozen in print, they become pernicious....

A Twisted Pair: Duchamp/Warhol

Mon, 24 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Andy Warhol Museum is holding a special retrospective of the connections between Warhol and Duchamp; as the museum promises, "many Duchamp works" are on loan from the Moderna Musee in Stockholm, and new archival material should generate new insights into how Warhol viewed Duchamp and how their works -- now enshrined on opposite ends of Pennsylvania -- inform each other. (Through September 5; www.warhol.org.)

The Tzanck Check, Duchamp Bonds and Other Art Currencies

Fri, 21 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The line between art and seigniorage, creation and currency fascinated Duchamp and was the focus of several minor works -- notably the Monte Carlo bonds and the little-discussed Tzanck Check of 1919 -- as well as major endeavors like the traveling salesman s Box in a Valise and other readymade reproductions. A recent study of art currencies brings these marriages of concept and commerce into a larger historical context.

Cincinnati Retrospective Highlights Cage and Others

Thu, 20 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A major exhibition of works from the Carl Solway Gallery s 48-year collection highlights the work of conceptual artists like Buckminster Fuller, Nam June Paik and especially John Cage. Solway, now 75, befriended Cage in the late 1960s and eventually published the composer s relatively little-known modular tribute to his own influences, Not Wanting To Say Anything About Marcel Duchamp. Some unsold inventory remains, Solway says. (Through July 30 in Cincinnati.)

Barbican Builds a Surreal House

Wed, 19 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Duchamp s latex breast beckons visitors to the Barbican s "Surreal House" exhibition this summer. In fact, the sculpture -- originally brought to bear as the cover to the 1947 "Surrealism in 1947" show catalog -- serves as the doorbell for a haunted structure designed by London architect firm Carmody Groarke. Once inside, fans of surrealism will be able to view works by Dalí, Bourgeois, Magritte and other giants of the movement as well as films by Buster Keaton, Luis Bunuel, Maya Deren and similar surrealist allies.

Readymade Washing Machine Offered at $5,000

Tue, 18 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Miami s Spinello Gallery recently exhibited a fully functional washing machine and attached clothes line signed by local artist Lee Materazzi and titled "Mother." Although the artist hopes its $5,000 asking price will make it accessible to casual collectors, it has as yet found no buyers despite its obvious Duchampian aura.

Stolen Fountain Chip on Display

Mon, 17 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A pair of Italian artists who spent two years pilfering fragments of various celebrated contemporary art objects are now exhibiting their collection of souvenirs under the heading "Stolen Pieces." Eva and Franco Mattes chipped, clipped and pried bits of works by Oldenburg, Beuys, Warhol, Koons and even Duchamp out of their museum settings and arranged them under glass. The pursuit of these trophies raises poignant questions about the curatorial impulse -- is the museum really just a magpie s hoard writ large? -- and the ontological place of contemporary art objects. Is it still a Duchamp (replica) if the label has been chiseled off? Or is it just another (fake) urinal? At Postmasters in New York through June 19.

National Gallery Show Highlights Modernists

Fri, 14 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

An exhibition opening this weekend at the National Gallery of Art highlights the interest of Deborah and Ed Shein in American modernist art. Among the works on display are Fresh Widow, an assisted and unusually complex replica readymade originally attributed to Rose Selavy. Notably, as the NGA catalog puts it, the windows themselves have been rendered opaque if not shuttered outright.

Duchamp s Influence Reflected in Kathmandu

Thu, 13 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Nepali artist Kapil Mani Dixit alludes to Duchamp among other artistic luminaries in his upcoming show in Kathmandu, "Tribute to the Great Artists." Dixit s engagement with Picasso in particular is a constant in his work; other paintings executed in his distinctive Himalayan-influenced style nod to Frieda Kahlo, Gustav Klimt and others.

Last Original Chess Grandmaster Dies

Wed, 12 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Andor Lilienthal, the last of the original 27 grandmasters honored by the World Chess Federation in 1950, has died in Budapest at age 99. He regularly competed against Marcel Duchamp in tournament contexts and considered the artist the most talented chess player to come out of France.

Sound and Sculpture

Tue, 11 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The emergence of sound art as a critical category has sparked new interest in the "imaginary sound sculptures" of Marcel Duchamp and his disciples like John Cage. Acoustic artist Susan Philipsz is even up for the Turner Prize. But how do these abstract soundscapes differ from the conventional category of music, and how do they converge with the pure Duchampian concept?

Another Duchampian Tribute Wins a Prize

Fri, 07 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

This seems to be the season for Duchamp-inspired sculpture to win awards at regional art exhibitions. Ontario sculptor Arne Roosman recently won the Victoria Wines Award for the "Homage to Marcel Duchamp" he entered in the Art Gallery of Bancroft s recent invitational show. Judge Allan O Marra called the piece "a fun and cheeky marriage of materials" and "a clever nod to art history."

Richard Jackson s Fountainous Bears

Thu, 06 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Often considered a "neo-Dadaist," sculptor Richard jackson enjoys punning themes, the deflation of "art" as a sublime category and intense primary color. His Pump Pee Doo, currently on display in Vancouver, is generally considered a complicated reference to Marcel Duchamp';s famous urinal, Fountain. While some critics dismiss it as a one-note extravaganza, others concede that it s pretty bright. And there are those who ponder what all this has to do with the Pompidou, the seemingly endless well through which art flows.

The Artist as Prankster

Tue, 04 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The legend of Duchamp continues to evolve as it spreads over the world and across the decades. The Deccan Herald of Bangalore recently printed a fairly lengthy appraisal of the artist s career and influence that hits the high points of the Fountain s trajectory in particular. Sometimes it s good to get back to basics.

Chocolate Grinder Tribute Wins Prize

Mon, 03 May 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Joseph Saccio won the "best in show" award at the recent Art of the Northeast competition for his "Flowers for Duchamp." The mixed-media sculpture looks back to the Chocolate Grinder in a new organic format. Playful but sadly non-functional.

Banksy Film Evokes Duchamp

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Reviews of the new film "Exit Through the Gift Shop" often invoke Duchamp as the patron saint of the deadpan artistic fake-out. While it would be simplistic to dismiss the Fountain as what the British would call a "piss take," there is something Duchampian in the play between simulacrum and authenticity that s apparently at stake here.

Duchamp Runs Away With Christie s Sale

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Duchampiania brought in $214,000 at Christie s recent New York sale of "Prints and Multiples," with seven of the eight works on the block fetching higher-than-expected prices. The centerpiece of the auction was a posthumous copy of the Boîte-en-Valise, which sold for $92,500; earlier estimates valued it at $50,000 to $70,000. Other works of Duchampian interest included a copy of the Green Box ($35,000), a "scuffed" set of rotoreliefs ($25,000), two states of the Bouche-Evier (silver and bronze) and posters from the 1959 and 1967 retrospectives of the artist s career.

Joan Bakewell Remembers Duchamp

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Now 77, Joan Bakewell, the BBC news presenter who interviewed Marcel Duchamp in the summer of 1968, remembers him as one of the most "important" people she spoke with during her career. As she notes, Duchamp was "extraordinary, smiled a lot, smoked big cigars." The interview itself is available here.

Museum Mangles and the Fountain

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A recent blog post listing various cases in which museum goers accidentally damaged art on display is amusing, but seems strangely silent where deliberate vandalism or "performance" is involved. Where s Tony Shafrazi s defacement of Guernica? All the efforts over the years to destroy the Mona Lisa? Where s the Fountain? While attempts by Pierre Pinoncelli and others to damage or "intervene with" Duchamp s urinal may not qualify as accidents, they definitely count as occasions when the relationship between art, spectator and museum was "mangled." Likewise, the inclusion of the Fountain itself into a museum context originally mangled something.

Stalking the Infrathin

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Although Duchamp s notes on the aesthetic concept he termed the "infrathin" (or in French, the infra-mince) are fragmentary, in their collective bulk they add up to a significant body of work describing otherwise unmeasurable nuances in art, language, life. Blogger Ethan has been collecting these scattered references for about six weeks now. While the infrathin may not be defined -- the coffee grinder grinds ineffably fine -- it can perhaps be traced.

Drinking Champagne from the Fountain

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Brooklyn Museum s annual gala featured plenty of surrealist-inspired edible art this year, including melting heads sculpted from cheese, a 20-foot Andy Warhol head filled with snack cakes and plenty of dead rabbits to explain painting to. While the champagne fountains were explicitly Duchampian in lineage, they seemed somewhat upscale compared to the original; on the other hand, cycling bubbly through an actual working urinal would probably have presented logistical problems.

Original Reproductions in Tel Aviv

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A recent article on ArtDaily.org promises " Original Reproductions by Marcel Duchamp at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art" and provides a precis of the relationship between authenticity, "assistance" and the readymade that is both elegant and penetrating. However, "its context is not quite clear." Is the Tel Aviv Museum hosting a Duchamp show? There is as yet no sign of this on the museum s site, unless perhaps it is part of the evocative circulating library of reproductions. The nuances would perhaps not be lost on Duchamp himself, who carried his own museum of genuine copies in a suitcase, always ready for a gala opening.

Given: the Waterfall

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The waterfall at Forestay is famous as the backdrop for Duchamp s final work, Etant donnes. But as yet, little formal research has been done on just why the artist picked this particular bit of landscape and what it means. (As the subtitle indicates, the two "given" premises of the work are "the waterfall" and "the illuminating gas.") An upcoming symposium at Forestay aims to fill the gap with lectures and an exhibition of relatively rare Duchampiania, as well as a concert of the artist s "Musical Erratum." (Opening May 7; events continue through June 13.)

Roger Ebert Versus Video Games, Duchamp Against All?

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

In a somewhat bizarre dispute between film critic Roger Ebert and various advocates of video games as art, the shade of Marcel Duchamp has been invoked essentially to argue that "art is in the eye of the beholder." Most of these arguments have been perfunctory, but noted comic book theorist Scott McCloud -- himself a veteran of other "is it Art?" controversies -- has highlighted the notion that games, like readymades (and perhaps with chess as exemplar) are largely experiments in the nature of authorship. In this context, Ebert as defender of the idea of the film maker (or artist) as auteur is on slippery ground. If, of course, that s actually what he s defending.

Picture Windows: The Fresh Widow, the Peephole, Conceptual Art

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Brooklyn illustrator and MFA student Anne Emond says she spends "a lot of time thinking about Marcel Duchamp." Her musings about the artist s persistent fascination are delightful in their own right, but her claim that her own art is a "picture window" and so has nothing in common with Duchamp bears deeper investigation. Surely the readymade is all about the snow shovels, urinals, bicycle wheels ... and even the picture windows themselves?

Musical Sculpture and Sculptural Music

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Composer Bill Fontana draws musical inspiration from Marcel Duchamp s description of the Large Glass as a form of "musical sculpture" in which sonic relationships can be preserved. While Duchamp applied "musical" principles to his malic forms, Fontana takes a "sculptural" approach to sound in the sense of using sonic elements to define space. He s also against complexity for its own sake.

Greetings from Daddaland

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Rubber stamps have a long history as a medium for cheap, easily reproduced and even "guerilla" art, with roots stretching back through the Fluxus movement to dada. A selection of stamps that originally appeared in Picasso "Daddaland" Gaglione s San Francisco gallery uncovers this hidden history and even features a few items of interest to Duchamp fans. At New York s Stendhal Gallery through May 29.

Seoul Curator Vindicated

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The former director of South Korea s National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kim Yoon-soo, has been ruled innocent of what the government claimed was wrongful conduct in the purchase of a copy of Duchamp s Boite-en-valise. Kim reportedly sent a broker a conditional memorandum of understanding that he wanted to buy the miniature compendium of some of Duchamp s most famous works; an incoming cabinet minister seems to have seized the chance to purge appointees of the previous administration. Kim, 74, receives about $73,000 in back pay and the restoration of his reputation. Unfortunately, the miniature museum itself does not appear to be represented on the museum s site at this time.

Fallis in Wonderland

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The work of Abigail Fallis makes gestures toward both environmental and conceptual "relevance," but it is through Fallis absurdist humor that these objects most immediately connect with the viewer. An upcoming show at London s Pangolin Gallery (through July 3) demonstrates this humor through references to the nonsense poetry of Lewis Carroll -- and the occasional nod to the work of Marcel Duchamp.

Duchamp and the Triumph of the Industrial

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Almost a century after Duchamp unleashed the first readymades on the world, the industrial aesthetic -- whether simply reminiscent of the factory or truly "found" -- has in some sense conquered both the museum and the workshops of contemporary sculptors and, perhaps more importantly, has bridged the divide between them. A perceptive review of an ongoing show at the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego (MCASD) explicates this "family relationship" between modern sculpture, the factory and the Fountain. (Through June 20. mcasd.org has details.)

With Hidden Noise

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A blogger who recently visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art was struck by Duchamp s "assisted" readymades -- effectively assemblages -- and in particular the 1916 With Hidden Noise. Sadly the object can no longer be shaken, which makes its title (and the secret noisemaker inside) both poignant and especially compelling. The "noise" is now hidden in the museum forever; it cannot be heard as such, but lurks like an infrathin ghost...or else you can hear it here.

Pompidou Recreates the Workshop of Andre Breton

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

In conjunction with a more general exhibition of epochal works from its modern collection (1905-60), the Pompidou Center is dedicating a wall to art that was originally housed in Andre Breton s studio. Highlights include three Duchamp editions -- including copies of Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy? and the Coin de Chastete -- and numerous works by surrealist comrades like Jean Arp, Francis Picabia and Roberto Matta, along with many, many anonymous sculptures of archaeological significance. (Through June 21.)

Duchamp in the Marketplace

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Debate over the authenticity and resale value of various Duchampian urinals -- copies, appropriations, relics or forgeries -- reveals anxieties around the art market that would otherwise have remained latent. If, as Reuters columnist Felix Salmon points out, the "market" determines the price of a work of art, then these earthenware replicas of working plumbing are worth whatever collectors will pay for them. However, if the artist s (or estate s) certification is required to transform a urinal into a Fountain, what then?Duchamp, we recall, was an occasional art dealer, but not a forger. Is that relevant?

The Retinal & the Triumph of Genre

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

As far as the mass art reproduction market goes, representation still rules. According to a recent article by art student Ide Bouldin, the best-selling genres of digital imagery are still conventional or expressionistic landscapes, with depictions of nudes, dogs, wildlife and other figures crowding the rest of the list. "Abstracts" sell a little worse than seascapes and a little better than pictures of dogs.Bouldin notes that competition for sales would ordinarily push young artists into the popular categories, but points to abstraction as a mode of creating ambiguous imagery that crosses genre boundaries and so can appeal to buyers with varying retinal or sentimental tastes. Duchamp is mentioned as originator of the idea that art is not self-expression, but what would he say about this? Is art a job or no job at all?

Until Something Else ...

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

In his correspondence with Alfred Stieglitz, Duchamp once applauded photography s power to "make people despise painting," but acknowledged that photography itself was only useful until something else comes along to make it, too, "unbearable." From this starting point, culture critic Francisco Ricardo explores various aspects of what this oppositional something else-- the "new medium" -- may yet be.

Bringing Something Else to Kyoto

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A major exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto (MOMAK) highlights many of retiring chief curator Shinji Kohmoto s "favorite" unclassifiable works of art from the collection, including several of Duchamp s readymades.In the exhibit catalog, Kohmoto alludes to these works, which are officially catalogued in the museum s catchall "non-category," as containing a Duchampian "something else" -- a quality that "cannot be contained within classifications (nouns) that are commonly understood." This unclassifiable "something else" seems closely related to Duchamp s "infrathin," Duchamp s quality of the "infrathin," the "little bit extra" or unique aura that mediates between things and their connotations.Kohmoto s career has concentrated on identifying and preserving this aura -- which allows objects into the musem -- in all its ambiguities. As he points out in his farewell catalog, "Professionals working in the system of the museum of modern art are well aware of the meaning behind Duchamp s statement in 1961: Since the tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and ready made products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are readymades aided and also works of assemblage. "MOMAK will have editions of readymades like the Fountain, Paris Air, Bottlerack and the Standard Stoppages on display through May 5, along with a Boite-en-valise, Duchamp s famous "museum in a suitcase." This latter work originally inspired the museum to institute the "non-category" category, since it represents a work of reproduction, assemblage and even sculpture, but primarily the act of curation in itself.(In Kyoto. MOMAK has more details.)

Tweet Nothings: Appropriations of Peter Ketchum

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A new show at the Norfolk, CT library introduces new and old work by Peter J. Ketchum, a New York artist and gallery owner usually pigeonholed into the "folkpop" category. Antique picture postcards relettered and otherwise detourned. Duchampian jokes aplenty. (Through April 30; gala reception April 11. peterjketchum.com has details.)

From Shocking To Merely Poetic....

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Appraisals of the work of Surrealist photographers point out that images that would once have been revolutionary statements of the modern now seem passively dreamlike, dated, nostalgic. ("Twilight Visions" will run at New York s International Center of Photography through May 9.)

MOMA and the Readymade Concept

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Although the Museum of Modern Art s acquisition of the "@" symbol raised eyebrows, the Duchampian overtones of bringing a piece of anonymous typography into the museum are obvious. The act tests the barrier between art and industrial design -- are all marks of punctuation theoretically worth contemplating in the museum context? Can a semiotic element be "owned," or could other institutions claim other versions of the "@"?And what if MOMA s "@" is a forgery?

Unauthorized Fountains Make Waves

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The philosophical ramifications of Marcel Duchamp s estate objecting to the circulation of unauthorized and unsigned copies of the epochal Fountain by Arturo Schwarz are not lost on The Economist. The often-wry weekly journal notes that while Schwarz, who sold a limited edition of 12 hand-crafted replicas of the original urinal, claims that the newly discovered copies were created under Duchamp s supervision, collectors do not relish the mystique of their readymades being diluted by unsigned knockoffs that don t even function as plumbing.More deeply, the question resolves to determining the point at which the Duchampian aura transubstantiates plumbing into art. Noted dealer Francis Naumann says the crucial moment is the signature; if so, the new editions are barely forgeries. Daniella Luxembourg is more open to considerations of objects that were in Duchamp s "vicinity" -- that enjoy some associational link to the artist -- as worthy of collection as "relics." It is also possible that Schwarz, known as a great friend of Duchamp, is propagating these objects as a sort of tribute to the master of appropriation. And in any event, the original is lost.

Exhibitions in a Box

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Independent Curators International has taken up the challenge posed by projects like Marcel Duchamp s Boite-en-valise to present suitcase-sized traveling exhibitions of art. These miniature art collections contain ephemera, video, archival materials and small-scale original works curated to allow display space operators a full ready-to-install show that they can configure to fit their needs.One of the first of these "exhibitions in a box," a retrospective look at the groundbreaking 1972 Documenta show in Kassel, Germany, appears to fit into a large binder. For more information on the project and where the traveling shows are headed, the ICI has details.

Starry Messenger

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Those in central California may find food for thought at a UC-Davis lecture on "Marcel Duchamp s Comet Haircut and Astronomy" coming up next month. Design professor James Housefield will address the suggestive linkages between Duchamp s starry haircut, the artist s lifelong interest in optics, and other uses of astronomical material in art and popular imagery. By inscribing the celestial onto the personal, one might argue, Duchamp bridged the abyss between the invisible and the visible, artist and dandy.(April 21. The Davis Humanities Institute has details.)

Duchamp and Type Treatment

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Richard Kegler created his first font to reproduce Marcel Duchamp s handwriting for his graduate thesis on the Large Glass. Since then, his company P22 has developed hundreds of typefaces and a website that realizes the original thesis through animation.The Duchamp font is no longer available, so those hoping to type in the artist s script will be disappointed...or will simply need to teach themselves to emulate his readymade example.

The Shock of the New (Again)

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The 1982 BBC series Shock of the New is often considered the greatest televised art program of all time, but its observations about post-impressionist artists and their concerns are unavailable on home video. However, out of Robert Hughes sprawling five-hour epic, fragments -- like the eight-minute Duchamp segment -- have been extracted and are available online.

Last Tour for Cunningham Dancers

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

When Merce Cunningham, sometime collaborator with Marcel Duchamp, died last year, his will instructed that his eponymous dance company embark on one last tour and then, possibly, dissolve. That tour is going on now and will conclude on December 31 2011 -- at New York s Park Avenue Armory. After that point, some of his works will be archived; the fate of the rest is as yet unknown.While two explicitly Duchampian dances (Walkaround Time and An Occasion Piece) may not figure on the program, what remains is evidently in the spirit of the regular stoppages and bachelor machines. Schedule at merce.org.

Three-Minute Wonder: The Fountain Returns

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Film director Mike Figgis recently had the chance to install a copy of the notorious Fountain in a Liverpool restroom and recorded reactions from members of the public. The results were suggestive of generations of received critical response and, surprisingly, revealed often ignored aspects of the work s gendered and functional nature. The video, produced on behalf of the Tate Modern Liverpool, is now available.

MONALISA/ L.H.O.O.Q.

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A recent installation of Ida Applebroog s drawings everted the voyeuristic structure of Etant donnes by putting the naked ladies on the outside of the box; visitors were invited to peer inside the doorless "little sanctuary" -- a room of one s own -- at more of the art, which depicts Applebroog s own female anatomy in various degrees of abstraction.

A Glimpse into Montreal s New Dzama Show

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A significant retrospective look at the diorama-driven career of Marcel Dzama offers some of the thrills of the wax museum along with more enduring grist for thought. Dzama s one-time signature installation Even the Ghost of the Past updates Etant Donnes in ways that both expand and circle back on the Duchampian original. While Duchamp s work still appears eternally pregnant, the addition of new figures seems to both personalize the scene and fix it more clearly at a specific moment in time -- less "origin of the world," more the content of a certain dream. Still, provocative and poignant. (At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal through April 25.)

Duchamp Still has the Power to Shock

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Nearly nine decades after Marcel Duchamp and Bronia Perlmutter posed nude as Adam and Eve, the image is still causing trouble. Readers of the Lubbock, TX Avalanche-Journal are debating whether an earthenware interpretation of Man Ray s original photograph is "offensive." Interestingly, the controversy does not revolve around the potentially radical suggestion that the quintessentially modern Duchamp could impersonate the fundamentally archaic progenitor of humanity -- a tempting proposition for would-be heretics -- but that he wasn t pretty enough. The offended reader argues that Adam must have a "perfect physique" to reflect the image of God; the sculpture s defender counters that in fact Adam is "whimsical and well-modeled."Nine decades and more on, the retinal clearly retains its primacy in the world of art.

Design: From Found to Foundry

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A new London exhibition of Ron Arad s readymade-inspired designs segments his work into the "scavenged" or found, the "rolled" or fabricated, and "tinkered" objects in between. This continuum of approaches to raw materials demonstrates his wit and, as the title of the show underlines, the artist s fundamental restlessness.(At the Barbican through May 16.)

Duchamp and Mail Art: SMS

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

In the 1960s, artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement bypassed the gallery system by mailing each other portfolios as boxed "exhibitions." Collector William Copley set up SMS, one of the more famous of these exchanges, which brought together an assortment of surrealists and younger artists: Oppenheim, Ono, Cage ... Duchamp, who designed the covers and table of contents of one of the six "issues" in an echo of the "rotoreliefs" he d created four decades previously.An entire set of SMS is now on display at the California State University-Long Beach Art Museum.(Through April 18. The CSULB Art Museum has details.)

The Nude in a Cubist Context

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Philadelphia Museum of Art s current Picasso show reimagines a 1912-era Parisian cubist salon to include allied works like Duchamp s Nude Descending a Staircase. While the gesture may necessitate some license (the painting was neither exhibited with the cubists nor deeply "cubist" in its concerns), it is still interesting to see cubism as a continuum of practice and a community of thought intimately connected to Picasso, but not yet entirely dependent on him. That said, Duchamp did paint several explicitly "cubist" canvasses -- notably the Portrait of Chess Players and Transition of a Virgin into a Bride -- and it s a shame they re not here in addition or instead.

Richard Hamilton s Modern Moral Matters

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

"As Duchamp s chief British cheerleader, Richard Hamilton influenced not one, not two, but three generations of creatives. Pop art we have noted already. The best British art of the 1970s, from Richard Long to Gilbert & George, was infected, too, by Duchampian logic. As for Brit Art, with its passion for jokes and its obsession with the conceptual denouement, the line of descent that passes from Duchamp to it, via Hamilton, runs straight as a Roman road." -- Waldemar JanuszczakA rare Hamilton show at London s Serpentine Gallery brings together new work with some of his iconic reflections on pop and history. (Through April 25)

Red Grooms: Old Masters & Modern Muses

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

American artist Red Grooms, best known for his large-format and "jokey" multimedia installations of crowds, is receiving a retrospective show at Bryn Mawr College s Canaday Library. The exhibit focuses on Grooms portraits of his fellow artists: Matisse, Picasso, Dali, Goya, Rembrandt, Titian ... Duchamp. Other works on display are of friends and collaborators, the "muses" who inhabit the living artist s life and days. And a selection of self-portraits blur the mirrored line between muse and master.(In Bryn Mawr, PA through June 5. brynmawr.edu has details.)

In Defense of the Fountain

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Confronted with vaguely Kelmscottian complaints that factory methods are somehow less "honest" than the work artists produce by hand, Cambridge student critic Eliot D Silva recently launched a counter-argument that the smooth and shining planed surfaces of industrial manufacture generate readymade pleasures of their own. While the dance appears somewhat improvisational in its apparent digressions, its overall shape rehearses the old interplay between craft and concept, symbol and surface, tradition and innovation. After a brutal winter, spring is clearly in the air.

An Invitation to the 1913 Armory Show

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

An intimate exhibition of artists lists at the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture in Washington, DC captures a moment of poignant trivia for Duchamp scholars. One of the lists is by Picasso and contains his hand-scribbled list of artists worthy of inclusion in the 1913 Armory Show. Much has been made of the fact that Duchamp s name is misspelled, but the context is somewhat less risible: At the time, Ducham(p) was a somewhat promising but insular and most of all minor cubist of sorts, with his most immortal scandals ahead.The ticket to the Armory was the first step, as the outrage over his entry, the Nude Descending, galvanized cubists and academicians alike. Not a snub. An invitation.(Through September 27. The Reynolds Center has details.)

Satie-Duchamp-Cage: Anarchic Happenings

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The reverberations of Erik Satie s 1917 ballet Parade continued to sound well into the 1950s and beyond, thanks to John Cage s efforts to keep the anarchic experimentation of Satie and his collaborators vibrant. Whether such musical circuses are "modern," postmodern or hark as Duchamp in Willem de Kooning s estimation "back to Mesopotamia" is perhaps a question of relative perspective -- a conceptual illusion of sorts.A recent essay by Sheila Christofides celebrates the elegant collaboration (if not the elegant corpse) between avant-garde Paris and the North Carolina Black Mountain School.

Living out of the Suitcase in Miami

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Miami Art Museum will be highlighting works from its permanent collection, including a hard-won edition of Marcel Duchamp s Box in a Suitcase (Boite-en-valise), in its main gallery until it relocates to its new facilities in 2013. By doing so, the museum frees up institutional resources to prepare for the move while reinforcing its reputation as a premier artistic center for Florida and beyond.The otherwise low-profile inclusion of the Duchamp suitcase -- itself a portable museum of his major works -- in the "Between Here and There" installation is especially evocative. The suitcase, of course, evolved as storage on the go for people of no permanent address: tourists, merchants, nomads, refugees. All the comforts and souvenirs of home, folded and boxed. As commentators have noted, every museum-goer is engaged in the construction of such a portable museum of memory. The question is what happens to these personal collections when we re gone.

Peter Liversidge s Duchampian Propositions

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Artist Peter Liversidge works by composing a series of "proposals" to create objects (facsimile dice, neon signage, mobile sculpture) and document situations (visits, encounters, meals); his current exhibition, at Edinburgh s Ingleby Gallery, collects 160 such proposals and their realizations to commemorate "the thrill of it all."While Liversidge s conceptual methodology is obviously in the tradition of Duchamp, Richard Ingleby, who s hosting the current show, is equally intrigued with the (also-Duchampian) investigation of things in themselves that a proposition can provoke. "When you scratch the surface of that and find out a bit more about the person behind them, I absolutely love the conceptual starting point and the lateral thinking, the whole history he has," he says.(Through April 10. inglebygallery.com has details.)

Warhol, from Dylan to Duchamp

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Eric Firestone Gallery in Tucson will be exhibiting photographs by Nat Finkelstein, Carl Fischer, Michael Tighe, Santi Visalli and others associated with Andy Warhol. Some of the images have never been shown before in a public venue. (Through April 11. ericfirestonegallery.com has details.)

The Maori Readymade

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

New Zealand artist Michael Parekowhai has been invited to exhibit his work at next year s Venice Biennale. Much of his work has explored the New Zealand cultural identity (simultaneously imported and traditional) through the recontextualization of images and objects; an early breakthrough was After Dunlop (1989), which reproduced Duchamp s iconic bicycle wheel -- itself either a found object or a painstaking imitation -- in hand-carved wood. Another early work recast a late copy of Fountain as Mimi.Parekowhai reportedly intends to produce "all-new" work for the show.

Readymade Tools for Rebuilding Haiti

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Curators from top museums, galleries and art spaces are banding together to raise money for Haiti through auctioning off readymade objects from nearly a hundred artists, including Jeff Koons, Terence Koh and musician Michael Stipe. Working in the Duchampian mode and organized in a grassroots style by Diana Campbell and Julie Ragolia, the "Tools for Thought" sale will take place on March 15.

Duchamp, Game Theory and the Frame of Being

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Glosses on Duchamp have become popular in game design circles, but the multi-dimensional relationship between the Duchampian career and game theory itself has not enjoyed such high-profile scrutiny. Nonetheless, a recent brief but insightful essay by blogger Stanley Wrzyszczynski pulls together some of the salient questions of how Duchamp conflates the creation of art with the act of framing an aspect of the world -- questions that reflect the inner rules of engagement between art and the real, game-playing itself.

Dorothea Tanning: Beyond "Birthday and Beyond"

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

August will mark the centenary of Dorothea Tanning s birth. Max Ernst knew early on that she was a deep dreamer, a heterodox surrealist and a chess player; she became his fourth and last wife. Barry Schwabsky at The Nation has anticipated the looming 100-year milestone to muse thoughtfully on her long career (she still writes) and sometimes puzzling reticence around the spotlight.

Recycling the Readymade

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

In the tradition of the first readymades, Gallery 705 in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania is showing a collection of assemblages, photos of assemblages and wall sculptures created from "recycled" or discarded objects and other "found" materials. Highlights include Minnesota artist Nick Schleif s monumental portraits of Abraham Lincoln and cigarette mascot Joe Camel, assembled from thousands of pennies and butts, respectively.While Duchamp s Fountain is often invoked as ancestor of contemporary found art, the comparison here is a bit fraught. Many artists working in this mode add substantial value to their materials, either assembling them in new and fixed relationships, sculpting, inscribing or otherwise transmuting trash into semiotically charged works of art that are then eligible for enshrinement in the museum.According to myth, Duchamp simply inverted a urinal, signed it (pseudonymously) and proclaimed it art; his more heavily altered readymade assemblages were "assisted." Is this a different gesture from the painstaking work of collating pennies, stitching rags or etching ice? But if those early readymades were actually simulacra crafted by Duchamp from raw materials, invented and not found, what then? The conceptual bicycle wheel spins.... ("Reclaimed," through March 27 at Gallery 705.)

Dada Against Context

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

According to a new study, we like art better when it has not been interpreted for us -- and that goes for both representational styles and more "difficult" or conceptual work. Kenneth Bordens, a psychology professor of Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne, split 172 students into two groups, neither of which had much formal art background before the experiment began. Members of the first group were simply asked to rate their response to a wide range of art (Renaissance, impressionist, outsider, dada) based on internal criteria; the second group was given a canned explanation of each work and nominal goals before being asked to evaluate it.Armed with a received notion of what art "should" achieve, the second group liked concrete examples of it less; the first group, which had only its unmediated aesthetic impressions to fall back on, was generally more receptive. For both groups, dada works were less appreciated than representational Renaissance or impressionist paintings and sculpture.That said, the eye and brain can still be trained, apparently. Professor Bordens also discovered that familiarity with an artistic style or conceptual vocabulary -- a self-created context -- generates a favorable response: Duchamp s Nude on a Staircase was rated as more closely matching one s internal definition of art, and liked more, when presented after the other Dada works than before."

Fashion Descending the Runway

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

An especially insightful review of Alexander Wang s recent New York Fashion Week runway show compared the designer s deconstruction of his fall line to "Art 101," and the Nude Descending a Staircase in particular. Like Duchamp s nude, the new season s wardrobe becomes visually fragmented on the runway, distributed across the show in a way that invites the audience to not only mentally remix the clothes into new ensembles but to apprehend all the possible combinations and the inevitable transitional states between them. The effect is, as the critic points out, "like seeing a film montage of a woman getting dressed" or like catching a model "in the midst of pulling her dress on." The theme has broader resonance within fashion. The sheer scope of commercial seasonal lines requires designers to enlist multiple models to demonstrate all the garments that are available, effectively allowing the hypothetical buyer to try on everything at once. The closet [or museum] explodes, and so does the idealized self-image; if the experience of wearing one exquisite dress is good, multiple models give the consumer a sense of how much better it would be to wear multiple dresses simultaneously and, when ordinarily each garment has to be appreciated serially and then replaced in turn, how it would feel to enjoy the entire wardrobe "in the round." As the woman walks down Duchamp s staircase, her image multiplies, time compresses and we see her as a montage of both trajectories and unrealized potential -- the woman she is, the women she was and will be, the possible women in between.Naturally the eye rests on those possibilities, the transitional states in which one ensemble flickers into the next. It s the illusion of film, in which the retinal stutter between still frames conspires with the mind to generate a sense of motion, of the woman descending or of these clothes liberated from the rarefied runway environment into the offices, streets and ballrooms of life. Within the transitional stutter, even impossible desires may be realized, not to mention more prosaic daydreams of watching the models between outfits.Duchamp s model, of course, was nude.

Richard Hamilton Remembers Duchamp

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Now 88, Richard Hamilton, father of pop art and transcriber of the notes contained in Duchamp s Green Box, is still active and profoundly influential if not famous. In a recent in-depth interview, he looks fondly back to his encounters with Duchamp ("the most charming person imaginable") while blasting his "ignorant" descendants in the world of conceptual art.

En Plein Air

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A longtime associate of John Cage, painter Ray Kass has explored the reverberations of the retinal for decades through abstraction, chance operations, nature studies and critical work. A recently opened show in New York gallery IR77 Contemporary Art brings together examples of his recent output along with several of the "readymade" paintings of the "28 Trays" series. The "Trays" are especially resonant in a Duchamp-Cage context; while they superficially resemble abstract expressionist compositions, they are the actual trays that Kass placed under his paintings-in-progress to catch the watercolors as they dripped off the paper. As such, they serve as a sort of gravitic derivative of their associated paintings -- non-standard "stoppages" that record the splatter that doesn t make it into the work of art, "twisting as it pleases."(Through March 19. ir77.com has more details.)

Daughter of Dust

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Images like "A cause de l elevage de poussiere" ("Because of Dust Breeding") and the 71-part Fait/Fact series have won Sophie Riselhueber (1949-) a nomination for the 2010 Deutsche Boerse Prize. One of four photographers so honored, Riselhueber began her career as a journalist. After a 1991 insight into the parallels between the dust accumulating on the back of Marcel Duchamp s now-perpetually-damaged Bride Stripped Bare and the wreckage of Gulf War Kuwait, her initially documentary work has evolved into an almost metaphysical exploration of the weight of rubble on a human scale and, abstracted, the planetary landscape.

The Return of "Le Mouvement"

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

After 55 years, the seminal "Le Mouvement" exhibition has returned to remind connoisseurs of the possibilities of sculptural art that employs color, light, motion and time. Duchamp works on display at Basel s Museum Tinguely include Rotary Demisphere/Precision Optics and Rotoreliefs; other artists represented include Yaacov Agam, Jesus Rafael Soto, Victor Vasarely, Pol Bury, Robert Jacobsen, Richard Mortensen, Jean Tinguely himself and Robert Breer, as well as mobile pioneer Alexander Calder.Given the position of cinema as a medium of motion, short films by Duchamp, Man Ray and others will also be screened.(Through May 16. See tinguely.ch for details.)

Readymades, More or Less

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Duchampian gesture of ascribing totemic power -- "art" -- to otherwise arbitrary objects precipitated the inherent tension in the Surrealists relationship to the commodity and its consequences, material and spirit, the everyday and the sublime. But while Duchamp himself appeared willing, even eager to market and re-market his readymades, bypassing the utilitarian function ("job") of his toilets, shovels and perfume bottles to translate them into a personal brand and, ultimately, cash, Andre Breton went another way. On the one hand, the enshrined bicycle wheel no longer spins; on the other, the fetishized crystal ball goes dark.Is the readymade something more than an object or something less? In an extraordinarily insightful essay, Sven Lütticken navigates the forest of signs to contrast various theoretical approaches to the question.

Virtuoso Illusions: The Artist as Transvestite

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A recently opened show at MIT s List Visual Arts Center lays bare the deep associations between cross-dressing and the artistic avant-garde, from classical drama to the (as always somewhat) polymorphous present. Naturally, the labors of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray to give birth to the transvestite persona Rrose Selavy are fundamental; guest curator Michael Rush provides rare insight into how the act both resonates and defies the profound ambivalence with which the core Surrealist group greeted female artists and then-emerging feminist thought.Others with work on display include Pierre Molinier, Andy Warhol, Manon, Brian O Doherty and several contemporary videographers, photographers and performance artists. The pioneering career of Claude Cahun (1894-1954), a contemporary and associate of the Surrealists, is represented through curatorial reference, as is that of Jack Smith (1932-1989).(Through April 4. More details at listart.mit.edu.)

40 Birds

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Celeste Boursier-Mougenot s recent installation at the Barbican Art Gallery, in which 40 small birds were given musical instruments, has both become a Youtube sensation and been compared to the work of Marcel Duchamp. If the comparison is valid, the primary reference is to the chance operations; perhaps an even better link would be to Duchamp s chance-driven musical work.

Infrathin & Infrareal: The Latin Legacy of Marcel Duchamp

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Taking Chilean writer Roberto Bolano s acclaimed novel 2666 as a starting point, the poet Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle hunts the legacy of Marcel Duchamp from readymade through the large glass in a tactical meditation on a few scattered references to the Duchampian category of the "infra-thin." (Naturally, there are several additional references to the "infra-thin" [infra-mince] lurking in unexpected places, but such is the nature of a quality that exists only by example, not as a noun but as an adjective.)

Dancing the Staircase

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

With one foot firmly in the realm of dance and the other arched toward the visual arts, 28-year-old choreographer Jonah Bokaer often looks back to Duchamp -- spiritual godfather of his more immediate mentor Merce Cunningham -- for tactical inspiration. Bokaer has danced with bicycle wheels while the audience threw transit cards at him; other performances have been generated out of chance operations or minutely photographed for publication as flip books.

The Assembled Artist

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The dada family resemblance -- never genetic, always a matter of aspiration and intent -- has been invoked to clarify the ways in which both Marcel Duchamp and Theo van Doesburg treated their artistic personas as performances. Duchamp famously had his Rrose and van Doesburg, best known as the founder of the rigorous Stijl, created "I.K. Bonset," dada poet and provocateur, and others in his efforts to "splinter" himself. (Man Ray, meanwhile, always had "Man Ray.")As in any family, what s interesting is what each artist makes of this or any other common birthright. Having pursued his brothers passion for art into the avant-garde, Duchamp toyed with both pseudonymous characters and artistic movements but ultimately remained Duchamp, courted by many "isms" but owing no allegiance to any of them; it was his brothers who had to change their names. Van Doesburg appears to have used his characters to negotiate between contradictions, partaking in both the ascetic purity of the neoplastic and the smut of dada. (And Man Ray grew into "Man Ray.")

In His Own Words...

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Late in life Duchamp was better known as a commentator and critic than for his artistic production. In that light, the interviews he recorded in 1968 -- here set to archival footage -- set forth his persistent concerns lucidly and illuminatingly. From the early rejection of "retinal" representative art to the secret installation of his last project, the conversation explores and cements the critic s evaluation of his own career. (The Original Roland Collection has more information about the film.)

Duchampian Music in Delaware (and Beyond)

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Despite objections, Marcel Duchamp s legacy is conventionally interpreted within the context of the visual arts -- the empire of the "mere retinal" -- but he did compose two pieces of music and in them, his favorite work, Three Standard Stoppages, and elsewhere he explored the operation of chance in creation, clearing the way for John Cage and other contemporary composers to do likewise in the musical realm. And of course if music is the art most concerned with organizing units of time, then chess (with its rhythmic alternation of "moves" and silences and its inevitable development from opening to mate) is the brother of music.Composer Matthew Hagerty s chamber piece "After Duchamp" is premiering on Saturday in Wilmington, Delaware, performed by early/contemporary fusion ensemble Mélomanie; for more details, melomanie.org. For those who cannot attend, Cage s "Music for Marcel Duchamp" is relatively well known; a full-scale Duchampian opera by Charles Shere was revived recently in California and may be ripe for reinvestigation.

Dada Mama on Sale

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A significant collection of work from Duchamp associate, collaborator and "dada mama" Beatrice Wood (1893-1998) is being sold off on Sunday in a California auction house near the town of Ojai, where she spent the last half-century of her life. Wood met Duchamp in New York during World War I and features in several episodes from his first residence in the city; she was a member of the "Arensberg Circle" and co-edited The Blind Man. Films derived from her adventures include Jules et Jim and Titanic.Works on the block include several of Wood s bordello-themed ceramic sculptures -- including the epic Good Morning America -- drawings and other material.

Few Words, Many Pictures

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

While millions of words have been written about Marcel Duchamp, some of the most compelling demonstrations of admiration for his work are wordless or nearly so, letting the images speak for themselves in their own language. An Australian graphic artist recently put together just such a tribute with illustrations from the fairly rare 1991 Kyoto exhibition catalog Marcel Duchamp Graphics. Those who don t read Japanese would have trouble following the word but all can respond to the pictures as they will. Simple, sincere.

The Man Behind the Female Joker, or Where He Gets His Ideas

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Critical and popular prurience surrounding the career of Leonardo da Vinci has reached the point where art historians have asked permission to exhume the artist s earthly remains and compare the parameters of his skull to the features of his famous Mona Lisa, a somewhat literal-minded attempt to ground the "sources" of a work of art in biography and ultimately genetics. At stake is the supposition that Mona Lisa s famously enigmatic allure derives from the figure s origin as a transvestite self-portrait of the artist himself; this androgynous undertow (rendered explicit by Duchamp s L.H.O.O.Q.) is viewed as the key to the painting s fascination under the conventional male gaze: is this love or narcissism?Art history has long concerned itself with similar attempts to see the face of the maker of art buried in the work itself, but the question of La Gioconda s paternity may not be a simple matter of digging up a skull for a computer to map. Is the artist the mother, the father or the midwife of the work? What role does the audience play -- are we attracted to the famous smile because she reminds us of ourselves, or of the artist lurking in the background? Or in the final analysis, is it just the grin on the girl in itself?In any event, the investigators face the daunting task of determining whether the skull interred as Leonardo s is "really" his and not the brainpan of some less famous person. Meanwhile at least one fairly well-documented self-portrait exists for reference.

Influencing Jasper Johns

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The intellectual influence of Marcel Duchamp over Jasper Johns and other painters who came of age in the 1950s is generally known, but decoding the heritage of various Flags, Targets and other "readymade" images on canvas -- not to mention the monumental According To What -- can still provoke surprise and generate insight into Johns career. An ongoing exhibit at Washington s National Gallery of Art does exactly that. (Through April 4 at the National Gallery of Art.)

Muybridge, Marey, Marcel & the Matrix

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The pioneering motion photography of 19th century researchers like Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge (both 1830-1904) had an explicit influence on the epochal Nude Descending a Staircase and its painterly representation of motion through time. A human lifetime later, the stroboscopic universe had evolved into the bullet-time aesthetic made famous in films like The Matrix.

Dali s Chess: Pushing Fingers

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Enthusiasm for chess ran deep in Duchamp s circles, who spent thousands of hours playing the game and, in some cases, constructing their own unique sets. Salvador Dali engaged the game in 1964 by designing a set for the American Chess Federation that alludes to the function of the chess player -- omniscient and eternal from the perspective of the gameboard, meting life and death in pursuit of an abstract agenda -- as surrogate for the divine.Naturally, Dali developed this theme by modeling most of the pieces on himself. "In chess as in other expressions of the human alchemy," he wrote, "there is always the creator -- above all, the Artist as Creator. It is this that I wanted to be represented: the hand of the Artist, the Eternal Creator. How better to express this vision than by sculpting my own hand, my own fingers?" Only the queens (a slight but pregnant variation, cast from the thumbs of Gala and crowned with teeth) and the rooks (hotel salt cellars) break the reflexive scheme. Just as the queen is both the most powerful piece on the board and feminine, Gala Dali was the most important person in the artist s life and so appears on the board under her own aegis (or tooth); esoteric elaborations of chess ascribe the rook to the element of matter or alchemical salt, and so its form here reflects the persistence of the artist s materials in the ongoing process -- the game, the work of art, the life. More self-effacing artists tend to keep their own likeness out of the game. Man Ray, for example, created fine abstract sets, but Duchamp dismissed his friend s chess as little more than pushing wood around the board. If Dali ever played at this set, we can imagine him savoring the irony of pushing his own fingers to push their disembodied representations in pursuit of what Duchamp called the "beautiful problems" of the chess universe. If the artist creates the world, then who created the artist? For that matter, who or what takes the side opposite the artist and wields his own hands against him? And now that Dali is dead, what does it mean to sit down at the board and set these now-necromantic relics of the man to dancing?

Matta in Miami

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A major -- not to mention rare -- retrospective of the work of Roberto Matta sheds new light on the Chilean-born painter s oneiric and somewhat obscure eight-decade career. Miami dealer Gary Nader has assembled 50 canvases that span the 1930s to the 1990s to chart Matta s early Surrealist associations, encounters with Marcel Duchamp, apocalyptic "inscape" period, pre-Columbian and political influences and beyond.(Through February 22 at Gary Nader Fine Art.)

Chess & The Origin of the World

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

On the trail of Marcel Duchamp, art dealer Francis Naumann has diverted his professional attention from chess -- having curated the groundbreaking "Art of Chess" show last year -- to works that, like Etant Donnes, express the character of the vagina. "They are at opposite ends of the spectrum and, as it turns out, opposite ends of the body," he recently told ARTNEWS. "But I see a connection, through Duchamp.""The Visible Vagina" will be on display at both Naumann s uptown gallery and co-organizer David Nolan s Chelsea space from January 28 through May 20. Duchamp, his relations and associates are represented among the nearly 80 artists whose work appears either in the exhibit catalog or the show itself. As Naumann notes, Etant Donnes bridges the gap between worlds in much the same way that a "sealed move" or any undisclosed intent allows the chess master to stay in play even after the game is over.(More details at www.francisnaumann.com.)

Christie s Presents "Art of the Surreal"

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

On February 2, Christie s will hold its 10th annual Art of the Surreal sale dedicated to the work of artists associated with Andre Breton and his circle. Works up for auction include two paintings by Marcel Duchamp s lifelong friend Francis Picabia -- one, Nerii, Duchamp characterized as pointing the way into a third dimension, and is expected to bring $800,000 or more. Multiple canvasses by Max Ernst, Rene Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico are also represented, as are single works by Yves Tanguy and Roberto Matta.The Christie s site has a full listing

Dada South

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Zurich, Berlin, Koln, Paris, New York ... Cape Town. The ambit of dada defied easy geographical classification as well as artistic convention and authoritarian politics, sometimes emerging half a century and half a world away from its Swiss origins. To explore dada s influence on South African "resistance art" and, in turn, echoes of non-Western art on the dadas themselves, the Iziko South African Art Gallery in Cape Town has collected works from the usual suspects (including Sophie Täuber-Arp, Hans Arp, Hans Richter, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray) with dada-tinged art from the anti-apartheid movement.In addition to being one of the first comprehensive dada exhibits in South Africa, the show serves as a rare showcase for the often ethnographically oriented collages of Berlin dada Hannah Höch. South African artists with works on display include Lucas Seage, Neil Goedhal, Jane Alexander and contemporary names like Robin Rhode, Moshekwa Langa, Nicholas Hlobo, Christain Nerf and Donna Kukama.(Through February 28. More detail at www.iziko.org.za.)

Disciplined Spontaneity

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The elegance of chance is on display at New York gallery ZONE: CONTEMPORARY ART, featuring variants on the Surrealist game of exquisite corpse as well as other works created by Jackie Matisse, Sol LeWitt, John Cage and Joseph Beuys. Potentially destructive processes are prominent; one of the Cage pieces was created by pressing glass shards into paper, effectively operating as a meditation on the resultant image as the record of incremental damage to a once-blank surface, while Pilyun Ahn s intricate chocolate sculptures both run the risk of melting and challenge viewers hungry for a snack.(At ZONE through February 20.)

The Magical Films of Joseph Cornell

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

A rare screening of Joseph Cornell s short films provides an occasion to reflect on the apparent relationships between his artistic preoccupations (assemblage, microcosm, memory) and those of longtime associate Marcel Duchamp (assemblage, "the waterfall and the illuminating gas"). The word "dreamlike" is often used to characterize these blind cinematic anecdotes, where significance is elusive, bound primarily by the film frame; the effect is paradoxically neither purely "retinal" nor overtly cerebral, reminiscent of the famously haunted quality of Duchamp s Étant donnés. (Those in the Chicago area may see the films themselves on Tuesday, January 12 at Doc Films; start time is 7 p.m. A commercial DVD is also available.)

"Blind Man" Show in London

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The Institute of Contemporary Art has brought the successful exhibition, "For the Blind Man in the Dark Room Looking for the Black Cat that Isn t There," featuring a new printing of Marcel Duchamp s proto-dada journal Blind Man, to London. Taking its title from a quote attributed to Charles Darwin (who compared the blind man s search to the work of mathematicians), the show celebrates the quixotic and speculative nature of the hunt for facts -- especially the facts of art -- by bringing together aggressively non-retinal works that reflect "the pleasures of finding our way in the dark." Mathematical paradoxes, deliberate ambiguities and outright absurdity dominate the submissions from roughly 20 artists, including Dave Hullfish Bailey and Mariana Castillo (sculpture), Nashashibi/Skaer and Peter Fischli & David Weiss (film), Matt Mullican and David William (installation), and Bruno Munari (photography). Both issues of Blind Man, co-edited by Duchamp in New York (1917) and featuring an exhaustive analysis of the curious circumstances surrounding critical response to artist Richard Mutt s unorthodox Fountain, will be available; at previous iterations of this show, they sold for original cover price (10 to 15 cents). (Through January 31. For more details, visit the ICA site.)

Seduction of Duchamp Opens in San Francisco

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

The extraordinary "Seduction of Duchamp" exhibition that gave 35 Bay Area artists a place to comment on Marcel Duchamp s preoccupations and career is re-opening at ArtZone 461 in San Francisco on Saturday, January 9. Two panel discussions, one on chance operations in art (January 19) and the other on the lingering influence of Duchamp on today s artists (January 31), are planned. (For a thoughtful review of the show in its original venue in a former slaughterhouse in nearby Healdsburg, click here.)

(Masked) Man Ray

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

As art critic Richard B. Woodward points out, the artistic establishment that Man Ray and his Dada compatriots were rebelling against now seems impossibly distant from contemporary concerns, which forces contemporary critics to dig beyond mere provocation as a justification for the work s current relevance. Ultimately, yes, Man Ray was a self-created enigma, revealed through his art and forensic biography. But ultimately, the objects and the images have to speak for themselves, and as Mr. Woodward notes, they are well-crafted indeed.

Dada Drawings of Clara Tice

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Known as "the Queen of Greenwich Village" in her prime, Clara Tice was an illustrator, designer and (along with Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Stella and others) member of the artistic salon that crystallized around collector Walter Arensberg before his 1922 departure to California -- and then, afterward, continuing on without him. An assortment of her mordant ink drawings is currently on display at Meredith Ward Fine Art in New York, through January 15.

Ready-made or Bespoke: The Artist as Dandy

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

Early reviews of an upcoming exhibition of contemporary images of dandyism in art refer to Marcel Duchamp as a "leitmotif" of the artist as appropriator of utilitarian objects (shoes, belts, wheels, urinals) into gestures that liberate the commonplace through the application of taste. Arguably the successful dandy -- and Andre Breton called Duchamp the end of the whole historical process of the development of dandyism -- produces more or less nothing, becoming a commodity much as the commercially successful artist becomes a celebrity. In this context, the Duchampian artist performs as a curator of taste (and often in various other roles, from chess enthusiast to transvestite) without necessarily creating anything beyond his or her own personality.And yet Duchamp made a few things . . . none of which seem to be in this exhibit, although his profile casts long and impeccable shadows.("Sur le dandysme aujourd hui," at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. Through March 21.)

Warhol-Duchamp

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:07:31 GMT

While Andy Warhol cultivated significant creative distance from his dada forebears, that didn t stop him from occasionally documenting the movements of Marcel Duchamp in the 1960s, or from flirting with a more substantial project filming Duchamp on the model of his eight-hour Empire. Those interested in plumbing the connections between the two artists should find plenty to think about at the Warhol Museum s upcoming show, "Twisted Pair: Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol." (May 22 through September 6; Pittsburgh) In the meantime, a retrospective show of the work of Nat Finkelstein, Warhol s unofficial "court photographer," contains portraits of Duchamp and less peripheral figures in Warhol s world. (Idea Generation Gallery, January 20 through February 14; London)

The Tree of Wheels

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

As one online commentator notes, "Duchamp must be spinning in his grave" at the idea of 35 bicycle wheels reassembled in London s Bermondsley Square. The designers hope to inspire more of the city s residents to spin their own wheels instead of taking automotive transport.

Barcelona Showcases Work of John Cage

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Through January 10, visitors to Barcelona can experience the work of John Cage and other artists he worked with or learned from, thanks to the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art s current exhibition, "The Anarchy of Silence."Marcel Duchamp is singled out in the show catalog as "the exceptional artistic example in Cage s life, and thus in the present exhibition" for his use of chance as a creative tool, as well as for his multiple collaborations with Cage across various media.macba.cat has details.

The Seduction of Duchamp

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

A truly extraordinary gallery show recently brought together the work of 35 Bay Area artists in an extended comment on Marcel Duchamp s preoccupations and career, from Nude Descending to

Last Week for "Twilight Visions" in Nashville

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Bringing together over 100 iconic photographs as well as a wealth of Surrealist ephemera, a recent exhibition at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts explores, contextualizes and interprets the dream-life of Paris between the wars. Works on display include images composed by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer and others. Through January 3 in Nashville; the show will then travel to New York and Savannah, Georgia. For more information, fristcenter.org has details.

Major Surrealist Retrospective Coming to Edinburgh

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Next summer the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art will exhibit all of its Surrealist art -- one of the largest public collections in the world -- as part of the extensive "Another World" retrospective show. Works on exhibit will include paintings by Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miro; sculpture by Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp; and previously unexhibited print portfolios by Dali, Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy among others. For more details, contact NGMA via its website.

The Irreverent Object

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The recently closed show at New York s Luhring Augustine Gallery, The Irreverent Object: European Sculpture from the 60s, 70s and 80s, gave connoisseurs a chance to view what amounts to the evolution of the readymade art object and prompted discussion of the family resemblance between the exhibits and the work of Marcel Duchamp. What role does humor play? Does bringing the "irrelevant" object into the museum necessarily entail a certain "irreverent" posture, or is the production of readymade art a deadly serious enterprise?

Man Ray & Africa: Return to Egypt?

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In an evocative review of the Phillips Collection s ongoing exhibition of Man Ray s interest in African art, painter Menachem Wecker ponders whether Ray s use of apparently Egyptian iconography points to a repudiation of his Jewish upbringing -- horses and pyramids skirt the edge of taboo -- or simple coincidence. The exhibit s curator, Wendy Grossman, inclines toward the latter view, since as she notes while Egypt is part of Africa, Ray focused most of his attention on Sub-Saharan art, and putting the masks, headwear, and ceramics of that region in the context of Jewish religious history would have been "far from his conscious concerns." Man Ray, African Art and the Modern Lens is showing through January 10. For more information, visit phillipscollection.org.

Taking Duchamp s Legacy for a Spin

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Nearly a century after Marcel Duchamp mounted a bicycle wheel on a rickety stool, his influence is everywhere in the art world, prompting long-time art critic Sebastian Smee to meditate on the triumphs -- and pathos - of non-retinal art, which both confounds and disappoints the expectations of museum-goers worldwide.

Man Ray/Nowhere Man

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The occasion of the ongoing Alias Man Ray retrospective at the Jewish Museum in New York, along with the accompanying and eponymous biography of the notoriously peripatetic artist, recently prompted newspaper critic Robert Fulford to reflect on how Ray s self-invented life exemplifies the tension between Dada and Surrealist ambitions.

Picabia Brings Top Price at Auction

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

A rarely seen 1935 painting by Francis Picabia led the way at an unexpectedly strong auction of impressionist and modern art at Sotheby s Paris, fetching over 700,000 euros. Three other works by Picabia, including Tournez Rare (ou Sirenes), briefly owned by Marcel Duchamp, sold, as did paintings and sculpture from Man Ray, Picasso and others.

Louise Bourgeois, the Web & the Wheel

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

While Louise Bourgeois knew Miro, Ernst and other members of the Surrealist circle, her work is its own territory and must be approached on its own mordant terms. But as the recent documentary Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine demonstrates, elements of her sculpture bear a family resemblance to Duchamp s -- as when, for example, the plates from her book He Disappeared Into Complete Silence (1947) reflect the figures in the Large Glass, or when a museum curator lifts the skirt of one of the disembodied figures dangling in an untitled 1996 sculpture to reveal a bicycle wheel nestled within.

"Fresh Widow," or the Postwar Paradox

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

While often dismissed as simply an exercise in metaphysical punnery, the perpetually blackened eyes of Fresh Widow become somber when considered as both a memorial of and a barrier against the chaos of World War I, which left 1.4 million French citizens dead and hundreds of thousands of widows in its wake. In this context, Duchamp s instructions that the blind leather panes be polished every morning (to keep the widow "fresh") become both poignant and perverse: the memory so lovingly maintained may not fade, but the prospect of remarriage becomes remote. Blogger Tom Saint Martin recontextualizes the Fresh Widow as a work that poses questions that have yet to find answered. (Link is in French.)

Music for Marcel Duchamp

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

John Cage s 1947 "Music for Marcel Duchamp" (Sonata XIII) extracted from its original visual context --part of the soundtrack for Hans Richter s Dreams That Money Can Buy -- and set against the urban Chilean nightscape.

Retro-Appropriating the Photographic Image

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In what s been called a campaign of "retro-appropriation," Brooklyn artist Dan Fischer minutely reproduces his favorite photographs in pencil, working over a chessboard-like grid that lets him abstract the images from their iconic personal and cultural context. The resulting texture is often described in terms reminiscent of Spanish devotional portraiture -- "velvety," "monkish," and above all "hagiographic" -- subverting the notion that in an era of theoretically infinitely reproducible art, every appropriation of an existing (readymade) image is somehow "postmodern" or at least pop. Rather than callow copies of copies, these images seem reanimated through love.(Appearing at the Derek Eller Gallery in New York City through December 19.)

Children of Mutt

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The recycled provenance of Fountain and other objects associated with Marcel Duchamp exerts considerable theoretical influence over contemporary artists who incorporate found or discarded materials into their work. But is personal authorship the factor that derives art from trash or, as sculptor/curator Pat Buckohr puts it, something from nothing? Duchamp argued that all creative acts are collaborations, and so the true parentage of a work of art is always in some sense complex and overdetermined: the artist s role is as a "medium" (possibly -- perhaps always -- only one of several) through which the materials are refined.In this context, the pseudonymous character of "Richard Mutt" opens up new questions about the ecology of artistic creation but of artistic identity as well. Where do the raw materials that constitute the artist come from? Where do they go when the artist s career ends? How does post-Duchampian art (a loaded term) struggle with the tension between re-recycling the work of Mutt and the imperative to express something else?

"Cage & Cunningham" in Wisconsin

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The long partnership between John Cage (1912-1992) and Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) generated a rich body of work and relationships through endless experimentation, paradox, and chance encounters like Cage s 1942 meeting with Marcel Duchamp. Cage, reportedly, was crying, having had a fight with Peggy Guggenheim. Duchamp was smoking his omnipresent cigar.The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is now holding a retrospective of Cage and Cunningham s artistic milieu and legacy, bridging both time and space from the Surrealist scene and the pop era and including rarely seen work from Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and other disciples of the readymade aesthetic. (Through May 9, 2010.)

Opening Up The Red Valise

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

As part of a year-long ambit through the Portland Art Museum, Oregon-based bloggers LaValle and Amy are taking an extended look at the 1960 ("red") copy of Boite-en-valise housed there. The process of "unpacking" Duchamp s miniature retrospective has prompted discussion of Rrose Selavy s nebulous co-authorship of two of the works on display, personal reflections on the seductions of chess, and a satisfyingly dense array of portraits, links to audio and video, and, of course, a few of the individual works within the Valise itself abstracted from their museum environment.

The Art of Chess: Duchamp + Matisse

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The recent reprise of "Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess" at Art Basel Miami Beach provided another opportunity to reflect on the hand-painted chess sets of Sophie Matisse (b. 1965) in the context of her step-grandfather Duchamp s lifelong pursuit of the game. Most of the attention paid so far to these gameboards (which have also been exhibited separately) has focused on the way they use fields of pure color to liberate the black-and-white grid of the chess player s universe -- a tactic normally associated with the artist s great-grandfather, Henri Matisse. For her part, Matisse acknowledges the decorative aspect of her work, but seizes the chance to transcend what Duchamp would have considered mere "retinal" art. Her hope, she says, is to reconcile the ornamental with the conceptual, to create a game that "not only pleases our senses, but also challenges our intellect." While bold, the abstract design never quite overwhelms usability: these objects still support actual play and are sold as both art objects and working boards. (By comparison, Yoko Ono s all-white chessboard, also on display at the Miami Beach show, is beautiful but wholly conceptual: useless for the exercise of chess in itself.)

Spinning His Wheel(s)

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

While Marcel Duchamp was fond of giving the first versions of his Bicycle Wheel a good turn in his studio, "do not touch" policies ensure that reproductions enshrined in the world s public art collections remain at rest. By 1961, the artist himself had to ask a museum attendant for permission to reposition one of these replicas in order to facilitate a photographic record of the exhibit. (The guard reportedly replied, "Don t you know you re not supposed to move things in the museum?") In any event, the original wheels Duchamp once spun are lost....Art historian Lars Blunck, author of Duchamps Präzisionsoptik, meditates on the trajectory of the wheels and the tension between their notional function (to spin, albeit precariously) and current status as immovable objects of art, concluding that "the turning wheel of history has made the Bicycle Wheel an artefact. Reciprocally, the latter has lost its drive."

Invoking the Readymade: New York abstractionists take modern painting by its roots

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

At least one review of "Besides, With, Against, And Yet: Abstraction and The Ready-Made Gesture" (at New York s The Kitchen through January 16) flirts with the Duchampian pun of the exhibit s subtitle as a comment on both the artist s appropriation of mechanically reproduced ("readymade") objects and imagery and the role of received ("readymade") critical vocabularies in the way any work is conceived and appreciated. As the perceptive critic notes, nearly every work of art confronts expectations, constraints, and opportunities generated by what has gone before, reinventing what s given ("étant donnés") in an ongoing negotiation between influence and innovation: imitation, rejection, and synthesis. And nearly a century after the elevation of the first "readymades" to the status of art, surprises are still possible. Visitors to the Kitchen exhibit discover that an abstract image isn t a painting at all, but a high-definition reproduction; the historian concludes that Duchamp s allegedly "found" objects were constructed by the artist himself. The boundary of art -- "retinal" or otherwise -- keeps sliding. As the critic concludes, there may never be "enough to look at," but there s still "plenty to think about." ("Besides, With, Against, And Yet: Abstraction and The Ready-Made Gesture" is on display through January 16 at The Kitchen, 512 W 19th Street, New York City.)

Peepholes and Desire: Two Painters Reflect on Recent Philadelphia Exhibition

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Painters Matthew Weinstein and Carroll Dunham made a pilgrimage to tour the Philadelphia Museum s anniversary exhibition of source material for Marcel Duchamp s enigmatic twenty-year project Étant donnés: 1. la chute d eau / 2. le gaz d éclairage. Afterward, they played a question-and-answer game of their own, touching on the ambit of desire, the way art focuses the spectator s gaze, and the miraculous appearance of the body as nude in nature. As Carroll Dunham notes, "I think Duchamp set out to make physical an image that more or less existed in his head."

Home is where the art is

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Raafat Ishat s 20-painting series Emergencies, Accidents and Congratulations, part of Brisbane s upcoming sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, is also a journey in art history, with references to modernism, Italian Renaissance architecture, Russian contructivism and cubism -- one work is immediately recognisable as a reference to Marcel Duchamp s famous cubist work Nude Descending A Staircase.

Alias Man Ray: Mercurial Jester, Revealing and Concealing

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Alias Man Ray" doesn t challenge the long-held view that photography was Man Ray s most enduring contribution to modernism. But it does change our picture of the artist. Duchamp was supposed to be the elusive one, but here it is Man Ray who slips among cities and mediums and personas -- and, finally, out of Duchamp s shadow. "Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention" continues through March 14 at the Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York City); (212) 423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org.

Glass sculptures show modern influences

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:07:31 GMT

To honor a condition of a Houston Arts Alliance grant artist Michael Crowder received — that he exhibit his recent work by year s end — Crowder and gallerist Wade Wilson had to scramble to squeeze a short-lived exhibit into Wilson s already full roster. But the result, L heure bleue, looks like anything but a rush job. Crowder s masterful trompe l oeil glass sculptures like Air amusé (Amused Air), are witty, lovingly crafted homages to such modernist influences as Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brancusi. And the exhibit s drop-dead gorgeous staging draws on Crowder s day job as a preparator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. But the result, L heure bleue, looks like anything but a rush job. Crowder s masterful trompe l oeil glass sculptures like Air amusé (Amused Air), are witty, lovingly crafted homages to such modernist influences as Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brancusi. And the exhibit s drop-dead gorgeous staging draws on Crowder s day job as a preparator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. This must-see show is up through Saturday at Wade Wilson Art, 4411 Montrose, Suite 200; 713-521-2977.

Against all Reason. Surrealism Paris - Prague

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:07:31 GMT

With over 300 works, this large-scale exhibition takes a fresh look at Surrealism as an international art movement involving major contributions from eastern Central Europe. The organisers, the City of Ludwigshafen and BASF SE, are not only showcasing major works at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum by Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, André Masson and Meret Oppenheim, but also numerous works by artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini and Victor Brauner. Interesting new discoveries are waiting to be made by the visitor, in particular the works of Jindřich Heisler, František Hudeček, Mikuláš Medek, Jindřich Štyrský, Karel Teige and Toyen. The Kunstverein Ludwigshafen has focused exclusively on the medium of photography, featuring works by Man Ray, Brassaï, Jindřich Štyrský and Emila Medková, among others. With Czech Surrealism placed centre stage for the first time in a major exhibition of this kind, and by encompassing works as late as 1969, one provides a unique viewpoint on the Surrealist movement. "Against all Reason" presents artworks from two major centres of Surrealism - Paris and Prague - and especially highlights the cross-genre connections between West and East. Thus for instance short animations by Jan Švankmajer, the celebrated Czech film maker, will be shown. Another highlight at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum is Salvador Dalí s imposing 9x14 metre stage curtain "Bacchanal", exhibited for the first time in Europe.

Archived BBC Footage of Marcel Duchamp

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The video below is an excerpt from archived footage of Marcel Duchamp including many of his works and an interview with him in his studio. It was filmed by the British Broadcasting Company for an unknown program.

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The constant motif of Man Ray';s life was liberation, change, and transgression: whether in name, medium, style, or content, he sought to free the object or subject of its limitations, just as he sought to free himself from his own personal origins and outsider past. The exhibition will demonstrate how the artist';s assimilation, his emergence from an immigrant world of stereotype, ethnicity, and fixed identity, produced a dynamic polarity of revelation and concealment. It will examine the myriad means he used to create this willful construction of veiled identity, revealing a hide-and-seek game of encrypted self-reference seen throughout his oeuvre. His relentless chronicling of his career through self-portraits exemplifies this conundrum, as does his autobiography, “Self-Portrait,” which, without dates or reference to his family or origins, purported to chronicle his life. Alias Man Ray argues that issues of identity are central to the interpretation of Man Ray';s work, and that through his lifelong need for anonymity, his constant self-remaking and chronicling, the artist managed to shadow if not totally occlude his personal history. - The Jewish Museum Man Ray was one of Duchamp s friends, working closesly within the Surrealist circle. They collaborated often and were sources for each others inspirations.

Tears of Eros Exhibition opens in Madrid

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid presents "Tears of Eros" opening October 20, the title of the exhibition is borrowed from Les Larmes d eros (1961), Geoge Bataille s last book before his death. Bataille explores the connection and similarities between sex and death, examining their parallel sensations as written about in ancient mythologies. Likewise, the artworks in the exhibition adhere to this connection, a handful of artworks are selected to illustrate each of Bataille s chapters based of different mythos. It comes to no surprise that a majority of the artists were members of the Surrealist circle and Bataille s contemporaries. Artists include : Man Ray, Gustave Corbet, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Bill Viola, Marina Abromnovic, and Cindy Sherman among others.

Artnet Launches Modern + Contemporary Art Sale

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Artnet Online announces it s launch of their Modern + Contemporary Art Sale. The sale will start today and last until November 12, 2009. Artnet serves as a price database for sale and auction results from thousands of galleries worldwide. It was not until recently that they had started their own online auctions. This auction will feature 70 artworks from Modern and Contemporary Artists including: Damien Hirst, Sol Lewitt, Robert Rauschenberg, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Kenny Scharf, Julie Mehretu, David Hockney and Nam June Paik to name a few. Among the works featured is "Bouche-évier" a small stainless steel sculpture mounted on a plexiglass stand by Marcel Duchamp dating 1964. The bids will begin at $2,800 and is estimated to sell for between $3,500 and $4,500.

MIDNIGHT at the MUSEUM with RV & HIS DEAD FRIENDS HALLOWEEN NIGHT

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Art meets Halloween in an adults-only fundraiser at the Lake Eustis Museum of Art, where Orlando artist Robin Van Arsdol will present his live homage to Yves Klein. Here s more: Please join us at Lake Eustis Museum of Art Halloween (Saturday Oct. 31, 2009, 9 p.m. - 1 a.m.) for an ADULTS ONLY fund raising event featuring Robin Van Arsdol with his infamous Live Homage to Yves Klein at Midnight at the Museum. Tickets are $40 each in advance or at the door. Come as your favorite dead artists for the costume contest. If you look younger than 40 bring a picture ID to prove you re over 21 for the martini/wine bar. Mingle with artists living and dead. Fabulous food. The coinciding exhibit, RV & HIS DEAD FRIENDS runs through Dec. 13, and features works by RV and part of his art collection including Keith Haring s $1 million Pop Shop Sign, Marcel Duchamp s final readymade, Yoko Ono s art tribute to John Lennon much more. www.LakeEustisMuseumofArt.org, 352-483-2900

Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons: An Exercise in Circular Reasoning

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Author, curator, gallerist and historian Francis M. Naumann will host a lecture "Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons: An Exercise in Circular Reasoning" Wednesday, Nov. 4. The lecture will be held at UGA Chapel, North Campus in Athens, Georgia at 6:30 pm.

"The Art of Chess" at Francis Naumann Fine Art Reviewed in New York Times

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In the 1920s the buzz was that Marcel Duchamp was taking early retirement from art to devote himself to chess. Duchamp neither confirmed nor denied the story, but by then he had stopped painting and had dropped out of sight of the art world, sailing to Buenos Aires, where he spent a year or so plotting games, designing his own chess set and generally living the life of what he called a chess maniac. Was he really finished with making art? No. Was he really devoting a huge chunk of his time and energy to chess? Yes. Were the two activities reconcilable? They were, according to a fantastic exhibition called “Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess” at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art. More than that, they were complementary, an ideal intersection of brainpower and beauty. Chess was art; art was chess. Everything was about making the right moves. The show, which originated at the St. Louis University Museum of Art and has been shoehorned into the modest Naumann space, demonstrates these propositions with a trove of Duchamp relics. He had first played chess in his teens with his family in France. And the show';s earliest and choicest piece, a large, Cubistic 1911 drawing called “Study for Portrait of Chess Players,” depicts the two older brothers he played with, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, bent over a chessboard. Nearby you';ll find a pocket-size chess set with stick-on pins that permitted Duchamp to play while on the move. There';s also a poster he designed in 1925 for the Third French Chess Championship, in which he competed, and a letter to the art dealer Julien Levy with rubber-stamped chessboard diagrams indicating moves to be made long-distance. To gain an understanding of exactly how chess and its principles wove through Duchamp';s life and art, I refer you to the excellent book written by Mr. Naumann and the St. Louis University art historian Bradley Bailey for the show. Its ideas are well argued, its writing is lucid, its small size a boon, making it a significant addition to the voluminous Duchamp literature. And the inclusion of analyses of 15 Duchamp chess games by Jennifer Shahade, a two-time American women';s chess champion, is a captivating bonus. One life lesson that Duchamp took from chess — that patience and restraint could be keys to success — has stood him in good stead. If his career was something of a sleeper during his lifetime, since his death in 1968 he has become one of the most influential and versatile of all modern cultural figures. Artists have related to him in countless ways, and one of those ways is through chess. To give a sense of this, the Naumann gallery has supplemented its Duchamp display with work by contemporary chess maniacs, from conceptual grand masters like Yoko Ono and Mike Bidlo to younger contenders like Charles Juhász-Alvarado, Trong Gia Nguyen and Sophie Matisse. Some of the work is participatory; pull up a chair and play.

Playing with Chance: Duchamp, Chess and Roulette

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp was among the most influential artists of the 20th century. He was also a dedicated chess player who saw strong correlations between his art and the game, famously remarking to the New York State Chess Association that, "I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists." At 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis will present "Playing with Chance: Duchamp, Chess and Roulette." The event — held in conjunction with the exhibition Chance Aesthetics — will begin with a live game combining roulette and chess played in the museum s atrium by the newly crowned 2009 U.S. Women s Chess Champion as well as a special guest. Immediately following the match, at 7 p.m., will be a gallery talk about Duchamp s work by Bradley Bailey, assistant professor of art history at Saint Louis University. Bailey recently co-authored — with Jennifer Shahade, the 2002 and 2004 U.S. Women s Chess Champion, and independent scholar Francis Naumann — Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess (2009), the first English-language study exploring the links between Duchamp s art and chess activities. He also curated the exhibition Marcel Duchamp: Chess Master, on view last summer at the Saint Louis University Museum of Art. For the Oct. 14 match, the players will employ a specially designed roulette wheel to determine their moves — thus combining the ultimate game of strategy with the ultimate game of chance. "The game features a merging of roulette and chess that I created with curator Larry List," explains Shahade, who will be in attendance. "The idea was inspired by roulette- and chess-crazed Duchamp s wish that somehow chess and gambling could meet in the middle." The 2009 U.S. Women s Chess Championship, which began Oct. 3 at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, 4657 Maryland Ave., includes 10 of the nation s elite players. The final round of play will take place Oct. 13, with the winner crowned that evening. For more information visit www.saintlouischessclub.org. Chance Aesthetics, on view at the Kemper Art Museum though Jan. 4, 2010, features more than 60 artworks by more than 40 avant-garde artists — including Duchamp — from Europe and the United States. Organized by Meredith Malone, the museum s assistant curator, the exhibition investigates the use of chance and randomness as key compositional principles in modern art.

Miro and Surrealism

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Joan Miro Museum in Barcelona presents "Miro and Surrealism," an exhibition dedicated to Miro s influence on and by the Surrealism movement. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, photographs, etchings, collage, sculpture and other ephemera related to Miro s involvement with the Surrealists. The exhibition also includes paintings by other surrealists such as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Klee, Francis Picabia, Andre Masson, Victor Brauner, Roberto Matta and Man Ray. The exhibition opens today and will run through January 31.

Subodh Gupta the "Sub-continental Marcel Duchamp"

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Currently on view at London s Hauser & Wirth Gallery is the solo exhibition "Common Man" by Subodh Gupta. Gupta has been dubbed the "Sub-continental Marcel Duchamp" for his experimentation with appropriation and incorporation of everyday ubiquitous objects into his artwork. Among the works in the exhibition, Gupta has specifically made a three-dimensional reworking in bronze of Duchamp s "L.H.O.O.Q." While Gupta is most known for incorporating everyday objects into his work, for this particular exhibition he has specifically factory reproduced objects transformed in scale and medium, transforming the works from being readymades to site-specific artworks. Their website includes installation views as well as a virtual tour and talk by Subodh Gupta himself. 1 – 31 October 2009, Hauser & Wirth London, Piccadilly and Old Bond Street During Frieze, in addition to our normal hours, both galleries will be open at the following times: Sunday 11 October, 10 am – 6 pm Monday 12 October, 10 am – 6 pm Thursday 15 October, 10 am – 8 pm Sunday 18 October, 10 am – 6 pm

Philadelphia Museum of Art to Present Two Nauman Installations

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

From November 21 through April 4, 2010 the Philadelphia Museum of Art will host two installations by Bruce Nauman, Days and Giorno (2009). The installations were orignally conceived for the 53rd Venice Biennale. The installations consist of seven flat paneled speakers that span from floor to ceiling, emanating from each are the days of the week in both English and Italian. The layout of the space and abundance of speakers distorts and rearranges the sound, described by artdaily.org as "creating an orchestration of sound that is moving, forceful and unrelenting." It will be exciting to view Nauman s work within the same context of Duchamp, whose work is a major component of the Museum s collection. Nauman s heavily conceptual and textual work is clearly indebted to Duchamp, and their exhibitions close proximity will encourage further scholarship on their comparison.

Recent submission to Toutfait.com!

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

An exciting second addition has been added to Toutfait.com. Kurt Godwin s article "Spring, 1911 Where It All Begins" chronicles the production and sources of imagery of Duchamp s painting Young Man and Girl in Spring. "Spring" was painted in 1911, and shortly after a larger second edition was painted and exhibited in the Salon d Automne in 1911. No photograph of the second edition exists, and it was repositioned horizontally, and used as the backdrop for Duchamp s 1914 painting Network of Stoppages. Godwin explores Duchamp s constant reworking of imagery and themes and investigates whether the composition and subjects in "Spring" may infact be a possible origin for Duchamp s later masterpiece Étant donnés (Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas). He delves into the psychology behind Duchamp s imagery and breaks apart all symbolic meaning to help the reader better understand Duchamp s work process, sources of appropriation, and visual language. The essay is illustrated with detailed analysis of the painting as well as references to similar artworks that reuse and recycle the same imagery. Please read on and enjoy Godwin s submission.

Alexander Calder s big-top talent

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The current Alexander Calder exhibition at Toronto s Art Gallery of Ontario is about as light-hearted an affair as you can imagine. Spend a few moments in the projection area where Jean Painlevé s 1953 film of the Calder Circus is on view – a loving document of Calder s miniature, handmade replica of a circus complete with a sword-swallower, a tamed lion, a dancing elephant and trapeze artists made from wire, cloth, rubber hoses, string, bits of wood and other found objects – and you will see young and old, rich and poor, male and female united in a common experience of Calder s surprising, comic and metamorphic vision. Everybody s smiling. This might lead one to assume, as many have done, that Calder is a lightweight, art-historically speaking. But the Whitney Museum of American Art s Joan Simon and Brigitte Leal of the Centre Pompidou – the curators of Alexander Calder: The Paris Years 1926-1933– would argue with that assertion. Levity and shallowness are not the same. Calder is serious play. Best known for the creation of the mobile (a term coined by Marcel Duchamp, a friend of the artist), Calder started his working life as a mechanical engineer, mastering the laws of physics that would animate many of his sculptures to come. Defecting from engineering, he sought work as a commercial illustrator, working for many of the major periodicals in New York and, in his free time, sketching animals in the Bronx and Central Park zoos. Both of Calder s parents were artists, but he was 28 before he took the plunge into fine art, heading to Paris to immerse himself in the leading avant garde movements of the day. There, he floated between Surrealist circles (where he was befriended by Duchamp, Man Ray, and Joan Miro) and members of the loose-knit group Abstraction-Création (Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo, Jean Arp), crisscrossing the Atlantic on frequent trips and developing the pivotal body of work that this exhibition captures.

Pop-Up Gallery "Paradise Row" to Open in London

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Paradise Row and Prakke Contemporary presents a new pop-up gallery space in London; opening October 9 with its most recent exhibition "Play," a group show and series of performances themed on the subject of play. The curator brings together more historically established artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Sol Lewitt with a new generation of breakthrough artists. The program consists of not only a group exhibition, but a series of performances, talks and lectures. The exhibition will run until November 3. Artists include: Johanna Billing, David Birkin, Justin Coombes, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Shezad Dawood, Todd DeLuca, Marcel Duchamp, Edward Fornieles, Margarita Gluzberg, Stephane Graff, Nicholas Hatfull, Jeppe Hein, Carsten Holler, Evan Holloway, Sol LeWitt, Ross McNicol, Gosha Ostretsov, Guillaume Paris, Fedor Pavlov-Andreevich, Barry Reigate, Gary Webb, Ulrik Weck, Douglas White, Conrad Shawcross, Tim White-Sobieski, Richard Wentworth and Aaron Young. 9 October - 3 November 2009 50 Upper Brook Street, London W1K 2BS Opening Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12pm - 6pm During Frieze Week: Wednesday 14th - Sunday 18th, 10 am - 7pm

New Article on Toutfait.com!

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

We re pleased to announce Toutfait.com has published our most recent submission by Francis M. Naumann. Click here for article. This text was first published as the entry for Duchamp s "Belle Haleine: Eau de violette" in the sales catalog for the Christie s auction of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge s Collection in Paris, February 23, 2009. This essay not only itemizes and details the work s history but deeply explores the psyche of Duchamp s alter ego Rrose Selavy and his/her motivations for the work. For those unfamiliar, Duchamp created work under the guise of Rrose Selavy, as Naumann so eloquently phrases, "an alternative persona through which he could hide his true identity while continuing to function as an artist." While Duchamp had been creating works under this name for a while, it wasn t until 1921 that he physically manifested his feminine alter ego, enlisting his friend Man Ray to help take photographs of himself in drag. These unforgettable and iconic images, were used throughout his work, and particularly in the artwork, Belle:Haleine: Eau de violette, in which a photograph of Rrose is precisely cut to fit the decorative form of a Rigaud perfume bottle, and inscribed to create what is called one of Duchamp s first "assisted readymades."

Seduction of Duchamp: Bay Area Artists Response

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Seduction of Duchamp: Bay Area Artists Response," draws its inspiration from the momentous historic West Coast Roundtable on modern Art discussion held at the old San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1949, which featured Duchamp as the main speaker joined by prominent invited guests. The invitees included Robert Goldwater, editor of the Magazine of Art and associate professor of art at Queens College, Alfred Frankenstein, music and art editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, Kenneth Burke, author, literary critic and professor at Bennington College in Vermont, Andrew Ritchie, director of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, Gregory Bateson, the cultural anthropologist, the abstract painter Mark Tobey, the composer Darius Milhaud, and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This show examines Duchamp s long lasting fascination and influence on today s bay area artists who continue to grapple with questions he raised then. These questions are still relevant, what makes something art? How can an object be called a work of art? Is it something inherent to the object? Is it when an artist declares it as art? Is art defined by an object s placement in a collection or institution, like a gallery or museum? The works represent a wide variety of artistic practices, themes and experiments in the field of optical illusions, cinema, moving constructions and ready-mades that link Duchamp to new artistic forms such as op-art, kinetic art, installation. "The Seduction of Duchamp" at the Slaughterhousespace unveils, by and large, newly created works for this occasion and the invited artists have never presented their work at the Slaughterhouse venue. The opening Saturday, October 3 includes a performance by Gregangelo s Velocity Circus. Portions of this program are partially funded by the Art Council of Sonoma County. The exhibition runs until November 7.

Los Angeles - Free Museum Admission Weekend

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

This weekend 24 museums in Los Angeles and its surrounding areas will offer free admission this Saturday and Sunday, October 3rd and 4th. Some institutions will participate both days, otherwise schedule listed below: Armory Center for the Arts - Both Days The Autry National Center - Sunday, October 4th ONLY Bowers Museum - Sunday, October 4th Only California African American Museum - Both Days California Heritage Museum - Saturday, October 3rd Only California Science Center - Both Days Craft and Folk Art Museum - Both Days Fowler Museum at UCLA - Both Days The Getty Center - Both Days The Getty Villa**- Both Days The Grammy Museum at L.A. Live - Sunday, October 4th Only Hammer Museum at UCLA - Sunday, October 4th Only Japanese American National Museum - Saturday, October 3rd Only Los Angeles Fire Department Museum and Memorial - Saturday, October 3rd The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) - Sunday, October 4th Only Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) - Both Days Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County - Sunday October 4th Only Norton Simon Museum - Sunday, October 4th Only Orange County Center for Contemporary Art - Both Days Orange County Museum of Art - Both Days The Paley Center for Media - Both Days Santa Monica Museum of Art - Saturday, October 3rd Only Skirball Cultural Center - Sunday, October 4th Only The Studio for Southern California History - Both Days This is the perfect opportunity to visit the current, and recently opened exhibition "Museums in Miniature," works of Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp at Los Angles Museum of Contemporary Art.

Angels of Anarchy

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Opening this weekend Manchester City Gallery of Art presents Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism. The exhibition will continue until January 10. "Angels of Anarchy is the first major exhibition in Europe to explore the crucial role that women artists played in the surrealist art movement.The exhibition features over 150 artworks, including paintings, photography, sculpture and surreal objects, created by three generations of artists from around the globe.The 32 artists are some of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century, including Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller, Meret Oppenheim and Leonora Carrington. These were radical, revolutionary women whose work still inspires, and sometimes shocks, today." The exhibition features works of women that were often overlooked in the predominently male Surrealist circle. Many of whom either worked alongside Duchamp or were influenced by him (and vice versa). The exhibition is curated by Dr Patricia Allmer, MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Armed Robbers Steal Magritte Painting

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

On Sept. 24, 2009 two armed robbers broke into the Rene Magritte Museum in Brussels, holding museum staff and visitors at gunpoint shortly after it opened at 10am in broad daylight. They forced museum employees to lay on the grass in the courtyard and proceeded to climb the glass panel that was protecting the painting. They fled on foot, then left the scene in a car. The painting "Olympia" (1948) is estimated to be worth four million euros. It depicts Magritte s wife Georgette lying nude with a shell on her stomach. The museum is currently checking for fingerprints and will remain open by appointment only.

Understanding Duchamp

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

UnderstandingDuchamp.com is an interactive approach to making sense of Duchamp. The website offers a detailed timeline of Duchamp s life and work, with explanatory text and animations. This is a great educational resource for any Duchamp lover!

Philadelphia Museum Explores Arshile Gorky

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

One of the key themes of Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective will be the artist';s profound engagement with the Surrealist movement throughout the 1940s. Gorky';s relationships with members of the Surrealist group in exile in the United States, including its leader, Andre Breton, as well as painters Yves Tanguy, Wifredo Lam, and Max Ernst, and his close friendship with the Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta all contributed to the development of his singular visual vocabulary, a highly original form of Surrealist automatism characterized by biomorphic forms rendered with thinned-out washes of paint. After his marriage in 1941 to Agnes Magruder, whose parents had a farm in Virginia, Gorky';s experience of the American landscape would enrich his artistic vision, and, beginning in 1943, emerges as a central theme in the lush, evocative paintings for which Gorky is best known. The rich farmland and bucolic atmosphere of rural Virginia (and later Sherman, Connecticut) reminded Gorky of his father';s farm near Lake Van, and inspired him to create freely improvised abstract works that combined memories of his Armenian childhood with direct observations from nature. The resulting paintings, such as "Scent of Apricots on the Fields" (1944) and "The Plow and the Song" series (1944-1947), are remarkable for their evocative strength, lyrical beauty, and fecundity of organic forms. Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in association with Tate Modern, London, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition will run from October 21, 2009 to January 10, 2010

Museums in Minature: Works by Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Museums in Miniature explores the use of collage, assemblage, and staged tableaux by Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell as plays on the notion of an exhibition space. Evocative juxtapositions, absurdities, and rebuses abound in Cornell';s work, demonstrating the enduring influence of Duchamp';s practice, and of Surrealism more broadly, during the second half of the 20th century. Duchamp will be represented by MCASD';s The Green Box (1934) and by a version of his Boîte-en-valise (1942-54), which contains miniature replicas of three of Duchamp';s works. Duchamp described the Boîte-en-valise as a “miniature museum,” or a portable retrospective of his oeuvre to that point. The exhibition also showcases several box constructions by Joseph Cornell. The rounded arches of Untitled (Grand Hôtel des Alpes) (1957) function as architectural fragments that refer to a monumental structure, while the elaborate fenestration of Pink Chateau (1944) seems the perfect backdrop for an epic ballet. Duchamp';s “miniature museums” are ironic, polemic, and humorous; Cornell';s are richly textured and extraordinarily poetic. Together the works by Duchamp and Cornell serve as a prelude to the exhibition, Automatic Cities on view in the adjacent galleries. The exhibition is curated by MCASD Curator Robin Clark.

Surrealism at the Frist

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Surrealism: seeing the ordinary as extraordinary was the theme of Dr. Therese Lichtenstein s photography and film exhibition, called Twilight Visions , which opened Thursday night at the Frist Center. The exhibition featured more than 120 photographs by French artists from the 1920 s and 1930 s, such as Man Ray, Eugene Atget, Hans Bellmer and Brassai, and offered a unique insight to the social and political hardships during their culture s transition between world wars. This mixture of documentary and experimental photography beautifully captured the celebration of electricity and encouraged observers to excite their vision and to be active participants as the walked through the disoriented structure of the exhibit. "It is so important for our culture to appreciate surrealism, considering all the things going on within our nation today," Dr. Lichtensteing commented when asked about how the exhibit could be inspiration even to the American culture today. Percieving the ordinary as extraordinary serves as inspiration to us during this time of economic crisis and emphasizes the concept of the Twilight Exhibit both literally and metaphorically. In the exhibit, twilight represents the undetermined time occuring between night and day, in a more literal sense, where everything is both hidden and exposed. Metaphorically, the exhibit also represents a comparison; be it between the grotesque and the beautiful or reality and fantasy- and sometimes when things become difficult it helps to not be able to determine a clear divide between the two. "I found it really fascinating. It';s abstract. I really enjoyed the photos by Man Ray and would like to revisit again soon, remarked Libby Robinson Lacocke, a former personal finance professor at MTSU. The exhibition will be held at the Frist until January 3, 2010 then will travel to the International Center of Photography in New York from January 29 through May 9, 2010 and lastly, to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia from June until September 30, 2010.

The Creative Act, Marcel Duchamp

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Listen free online to Duchamp s "Session on the Creative Act" recorded live at the Convention of the American Federation of Arts in Houston, Texas, April 1957. CD also includes interviews with George Hamilton and Richard Hamilton as well as musical introludes.

"Chance Aesthetics" to open Friday, Kemper Museum of Art

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

This upcoming exhibition to open Sept. 18 at Mildred Lane Kemper Museum of Art explores artists who incorporate chance as a decisive factor in the creation of an artwork. The work spans from the early 20th century and follows through to the 1970s. The exhibition includes over 60 works by Jean (Hans) Arp, George Brecht, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Ellsworth Kelly, Alison Knowles, François Morellet, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Dieter Roth, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Yves Tanguy, among many others. "Chance Aesthetics explores these concepts in three thematic sections: "Collage, Assemblage, and the Found Object," "Automatism," and "Games and Systems of Random Ordering." Each section addresses central avant-garde strategies employed to subvert or rework traditional forms of artistic expression. These categories also provide a basic framework through which individual movements--Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, and others--are traversed in order to compare and contrast chance-based strategies and objectives across diverse historical and cultural contexts. " - Excerpt from Press Release Chance Aesthetics will be open from Sept. 18, 2009 - Jan. 4, 2010

Marcel Duchamp:The Art of Chess

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess opened yesterday at Francis Naumann Fine Art Gallery, it is the first exhibition to explore Duchamp s interest in chess and its effect on his artistic production. It has traveled from St. Louis University Museum of Art and includes unique additions of artists represented by Naumann. Also included in the show will be works by a number of Duchamp';s contemporaries—Man Ray, Georges de Zayas, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Leon Kelly, Beatrice Wood, Arman and Sarah Austin—that relate to Duchamp';s involvement with the game of chess, as well as a selection of works by contemporary artists—Charles Juhàsz Alvardo, Mike Bidlo, Donald Bradford, Russell Connor, Ingrid Evans, Mark Kostabi, Sophie Matisse, Daniel Meirom, James Meyer, Trong Gia Nguyen, Yoko Ono, Jennifer Shahade, Diana Thater, Douglas Vogel—some of whom have made works specially for inclusion in this show. The exhibition will run through October 31, 2009. The gallery is located at 24 W. 57th street.

Time Will Tell, Exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery Closes

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Yale University Art Gallery recently closed an exhibition offering a rare opportunity to explore the process of fine-art conservation. "Time Will Tell: Ethics and Choices in Conservation" exhibits the techniques used and dilemmas faced by conservators and their process of preserving and restoring historic works of art. The artwork ranges from ancient Roman statues to instruments to twentieth century portraiture. The collection includes a portrait of Marcel Duchamp made of highly perishable cellulose nitrate plastic. These objects and artworks are all tied together by similar conservation questions and problems introducing museum goers to a new way of looking at art.

Tel Aviv Museum of Art Shows a Portfolio of 10 Pochoirs by Man Ray

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Man Ray (1890 Philadelphia – 1976 Paris) created Revolving Doors between 1916 and 1917 as a series of collages made from brightly colored translucent paper, which became the major exhibit in his third one-person show at the Daniel Gallery, New York (1919). In 1926 these images were published as pochoirs (true to the original) in a portfolio, and in 1942, noticing that the early collages began to fade, Ray reproduced them in oil on canvas. These paintings appear in several photographs taken in his studio. Revolving Doors is not the only instance in Ray s oeuvre—which is typified by self-references and quotes—where images are re-executed in different techniques. At least one image in the collage version of Revolving Doors (no. 5, Legend) was formulated earlier (albeit in a different structure) in an oil painting (Legend, 1916). The need for freedom and ingenuity which guided Ray s work in all media, and his awareness of the significance of the context in which the works are viewed, were tied with the license to (frequently) revisit a former invention. Thus, in printing the collage images, Ray relinquished the uniqueness and singularity of the "original" for the ability to disseminate these images in the context of the Surrealist avant-garde, whereas 25 years later—in an entirely different cultural era—he revisited the images originally created as an innovative, avant-garde collage, fixing them in a durable, traditional painterly medium. This oscillation among media was a pivotal element in Ray s artistic practice. His definition of himself as someone living a double life as a painter-photographer indeed echoed the professional "categorizations" prevalent in his era; at the same time, however, in rejecting his ascription to a specific medium, as well as in the inventiveness which characterized his practice, and the underlying principle of his work—whereby the practice serves the image, and the medium selected for its execution (painting, photography, cinema, object) is the one deemed most suitable for articulation of the idea—Ray emphasized art s conceptual aspect. The explicit pleasure with freedom and the joy of playfulness only enhanced Ray s attentiveness to the possibilities introduced by the contingency or chance inherent in the creative process. Let us remember that play and amusement, as modes of inhibition-liberating stimuli, were considered a serious matter in the Dada and Surrealist circles, a fact which did not prevent Marcel Duchamp—Ray s patron, friend, and chess partner—from describing the latter somewhat critically: "Man Ray—synonym of the masculine gender … pleasure playing and pleasuring." In 1916-17, when he initially formulated the transparency games in Revolving Doors, Ray was in the midst of his discovery of photography—which theretofore served him mainly to document his works—as a relevant artistic medium. The photographic thought and its means are clearly discernible in these papers alongside painterly thought, whereby I refer mainly to the applications of light, which will later become central to Ray s photographic work. His interest in light resulted in an engagement with glass plate negatives (cliché-verre) and solarization, leading to the invention of the Rayographs (photograms with an aspect of depth). In his staged photographs, Ray thus structured juxtapositions between shadows and objects, bright and dark areas, flatness and depth, charging a surprising dramatic effect with familiar motifs (such as portraits or still life). The images featured in Revolving Doors are not abstract. The forms originated in objects which Ray found engaging, kept in his immediate vicinity, and even presented in many paintings and photographs. The flat images of the given object appear as the silhouettes of a colorful light projection, yet their coloration is based on the primary colors of matter—red, blue, and yellow, and the hues created by their overlapping. The intersection also generates the appearance of a third dimension, which is enhanced against the whiteness of the paper—as if the layers of paint, the contour outlines, and mainly the scratched silvery overcoat on the last print in the set (Dragonfly) are not fixed on the same surface. Ray s use of primary colors is not aimed at the scientific or the "essential," but rather accentuates the choice of readymade. Much like his objects, which served as a source for forms, the red-blue-yellow are indeed given—albeit under the specific, random circumstances of their formalizations, combinations, and superimpositions, they spawn an unexpected formal and colorful wealth, and are perceived as frames of the "decisive moment" extracted from a sequence of occurrences in progress. Aptly, the pochoir technique used for the images reproduction is likewise based on concealment and exposure.

Silence Sea and Marcel Duchamp, by Julius Ziz

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Silence Sea and Marcel Duchamp(2000, USA/FRA 16mm, colour/b&w, 23 min.) was created from found 16mm footage of Marcel Duchamp and his wife Teeny playing a game of chess. He is pretending that he is winning but he is losing. Follow to view excerpt or download entire film.

Vanderbilt s International Lens Film Series Begins Today

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Vanderbilt University';s film series, International Lens, will begin Sept. 2. This series, which is free and open to the public, will feature 29 different films from September through December. Each screening includes an introduction as well as facilitated post-screening discussion. In conjunction with "Surreal to Reel: Paris on Film" festival, International Lens will screen a 35mm print of Luis Bunuel s surrealist masterpiece L';âge d';or. This film was written in collaboration with Salvador Dali and includes such Surrealist cast members as Max Ernst. For complete schedule of films visit International Lens Website.

DIE KUNST IST SUPER!

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Die Kunst ist super! (Art is super!) is the title under which the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart is showing a new presentation of works from its collections. In line with the motto "Die Kunst ist super!" proclaimed by Udo Kittelmann, this presentation is one of the most important steps on the path to the future positioning of the Hamburger Bahnhof under the new director of the Nationalgalerie. Spanning some 10,000 square meters, the exhibition uses thematic, monographic and motivic constellations, surprising dialogues and individual appearances rich in associations to cast works from the Nationalgalerie, the Marx Collection and the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, as well as the Marzona Collection in Hamburger Bahnhof in a new light. In an age that has seen supposedly stable systems of values collapse into crisis, their underlying instability laid bare, this new exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof presents art as a dependable variable. In all its flexibility and complexity, its creation of fictions and disillusionment of the same, whichever way you look at it: Art is super! Presented artists are: Absalon, Richard Artschwager, Matthew Barney, Georg Baselitz, Georg Brecht, Joseph Beuys, Lee Bontecou, Marcel Broodthaers, Günther Brus, Salvador Dalí, Gino de Dominicis, Marcel Duchamp, Walker Evans, Lyonel Feiniger, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Dan Flavin, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Lucio Fontana, Jochen Alexander Freydank, Isa Genzken, Wolfgang Tillmans, Franz Gertsch, Jack Goldstein, Rodney Graham, Philipp Jakob Hackert, Duane Hanson, Carsten Höller, Donald Judd, Allan Kaprow, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger, Konrad Klapheck, Jeff Koons, Robert Kusmirowski, Sol LeWitt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mario Merz, Paul McCarthy, John McCracken, Otto Mühl, Bruce Nauman, Helmut Newton, Roman Ondák, Nam June Paik, Mark Quinn, Robert Rauschenberg, Daniel Richter, Pipilotti Rist, Gerd Rohling, Dieter Roth, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman, Roman Signer, Robert Smithson, Daniel Spoerri, Sturtevant, Thomas Struth, Hans Jürgen Syberberg, Cy Twombly, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, John Wesley, Franz West, Otto Zitko, plaster casts of celebrated artworks and death masks from the Gipsformerei (Replica Workshop) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and models of various insects by Alfred Keller from the Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum) in Berlin. Address: Invalidenstrasse 50 - 51, 10557 Berlin Opening Hours: Tue-Fr, 10 – 6 pm Sat, 11 - 8 pm Sun, 11 – 6 pm Closed Monday

The First Annual Anne d Harnoncourt Memorial Symposium: Scholars Present Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnes, Sept. 12

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania are jointly initiating this annual symposium in honor of Anne d';Harnoncourt to celebrate her contributions to art and culture in Philadelphia, the region, and beyond. Scholars Present Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés Marcel Duchamp';s enigmatic final masterpiece Étant donnés: 1. La chute d';eau, 2. Le gaz d';éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) (1946-66), which the Museum';s late George D. Widener Director and CEO, Anne d';Harnoncourt, helped to install in 1969, shaped the contours of d';Harnoncourt';s curatorial and scholarly practice for the next four decades. The work has remained equally influential for generations of artists since. Respected Duchamp scholars, including Hans de Wolf, Elena Filipovic, Paul Franklin, David Hopkins, Francis Naumann, and Michael R. Taylor will present a series of papers offering new viewpoints on Duchamp';s provocative installation and its place within the artist';s iconoclastic oeuvre. The artist';s stepson, artist Paul Matisse, will offer his remembrances of the installation of Étant donnés at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Saturday, September 12, 2009 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. $50 ($40 members; $15 students); Ticket price includes Museum admission and box lunch

New Jersey Film Festival Fall 2009

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

On Sept. 4 the Rutgers Film Co-op/ New Jersey Media Arts Center will present the New Jersey Film Festival Fall 2009. The festival will showcase new international films, independent American films, experimental and short subjects, as well as "cutting edge" documentaries. It will feature over 50 screenings from September 4 to November 8. Thursday evenings will highlight experimental films including such Surrealist masterpieces as Blood of a Poet (Le Sang D Un Poet) by Jean Cocteau, The Golden Age (L Age D Or) by Luis Bunuel, and Dreams That Money Can Buy by Hans Richter, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and others; twenty of Andy Warhol s famous 4 minute Screentests; and mini-retrospectives of work by Bruce Baillie and Sidney Peterson.

Happy Birthday Peggy Guggenheim

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

American heiress Peggy Guggenheim was considered to be as intriguing as the art she collected. One of the pioneering collectors of Abstract Expressionism, she had a particular fondness for surrealism, cubism and sculpture. At the height of her career, she amassed a piece of art per day. In London, Guggenheim opened her first modern art gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, featuring artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Yves Tanguy and Pablo Picasso. Although she didn';t actually know very much about art when she started, she fortunately had Marcel Duchamp as her mentor. It was the gallery that ultimately prompted her to start collecting: “Gradually I bought one work of art from every show I gave, so as not to disappoint the artists if I were unsuccessful in selling anything, she wrote. In 1939, Guggenheim';s ambition increased, and she decided to open a modern art museum in London. Working with Duchamp and art advisor Harold Reed, she vowed to buy “a piece a day.” In 1941, the approach of the German army drove Guggenheim to flee Europe with her fiancé, artist Max Ernst. She quickly established an art museum in New York called “Art of this Century.” Guggenheim continued to support abstract and surrealist painters, and was an especially enthusiastic admirer of the American movement of Abstract Expressionism. In 1947, she moved to Italy and exhibited her collection at the 1948 Venice Biennale. Twenty-two years later, Peggy donated her collection to the Solomon F. Guggenheim Foundation, which had been established by her uncle.

Somewhere Between Art and Life

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

There are times at Venice when you feel Marcel Duchamp has a lot to answer for. The artist s infamous urinal not only paved the way for the grand, imaginative gestures of, say, Robert Rauschenberg - whose scrap-iron sculptures are at the Peggy Guggenheim museum - but also for a slew of self-indulgent installation art much of which is currently taking up exhibition space in the city of Titian and Tintoretto. The Scottish and Mexican pavilions prove that Duchamp s legacy has not been wasted. In palaces either side of the square of Santa Maria Formosa, Martin Boyce and Teresa Margolles have produced visionary subversions of the found-object genre. Although concerned with radically different landscapes, the pair are flâneurs , adept at revealing the back stories of their own territories. Both conjure art out of matter that often slips beneath our radar - the clandestine, uncanny spirits that discreetly animate our everyday world. Boyce, a 42-year-old sculptor based in Glasgow, opens his show with a path of stepping stones whose jagged course is mapped by dulled-gold, edge-crisped replicas of fallen autumn leaves. Above hangs a sculpture of plastic, interlocking, polygonal panels. These oblique, sail-like shapes have been the leitmotif of Boyce s work since he saw them in a photograph of a pair of "concrete trees" made by the French Cubist sculptors Joël and Jan Martel for the 1925 Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris. The Martels work nourished Boyce s appetite for modernism. Since the mid-1990s, he had been making sculptures that played on design icons such as Arne Jacobsen s Ant chair and the Eames brothers ESU storage unit. But the concrete trees "perfect collapse of architecture and nature" nudged his work beyond the urban interior.

Is This Recyclable?

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Is This Recyclable? An upcoming exhibition at Under Minerva, Brooklyn. This group show focuses on thirteen artists who break away from traditional media and instead explore materials that are often overlooked yet readily available. By using readymade and recyclable materials the artists are both directly appropriating from the materials purpose and properties, literally recycling these pieces in the process. The theme is motivated by early readymades of Duchamp, and the consequent interest in artists using non-traditional objects and mass-produced items to create art. "At present, several artists are using discarded objects and recycled materials as their medium. Is This Recyclable? contemplates whether this trend is a response to environmental issues, commentary on the increase in consumerism or an attempt to uncover new meaning for the object." This show is curated by Vanessa Juriga and features artwork by Angela Basile, JAsmine Begeske, Mark Cannariato, Travis Childers, Gary Duehr, Jesse Holt, Ryan McIntosh, Desi Minchillo, Raquel Muslin, Anne Percoco, Caitlin Rueter, Ian Trask, and Barbara Wisnoski. Under Minerva is located at 656 5th Avenue, Brooklyn NY. Opening Reception 28 August from 7 - 9pm.

A Game of Chess with Marcel Duchamp, 1963

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp: A Game of Chess, A film by Jean-Marie Drot, 55 min. This French film includes original footage of interviews filmed consequent to Duchamp s first major retrospective exhibition in 1963 at the Pasedena Art Museum. The film includes voice-overs in English, as well as original black and white footage interspersed with color reproductions of artworks. It includes a custom soundtrack by the French composer Edgar Varèse. The program follows Duchamp s work somewhat chrologically, and delves into his motivations for conceptual art. We learn more about his biography and experiences and their consequent radical influences on his art. The latest interview with Jean-Marie Drot takes place during a chess game, five years before Duchamp s death. His thoughts on chess expressed in this interview can be further studied in the current traveling Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess.

Collage at Fred Gallery London, starts: 6 Aug 2009 ends: 27 Sep 2009

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

FRED (London) is delighted to have this opportunity to present an exhibition in celebration of Collage. Co-curated with Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, this joint-exhibition provides a platform for contemporary American artists to show in London, many for the first time, alongside leading European artists represented by FRED. Both galleries have also brought together works by some of the foremost practitioners in Twentieth century Western art. The exhibition creates a unique grouping of work from this exciting field. The exhibition features some sixty-nine artists from the last one hundred years, each working in very different ways, but all incorporating collage in its various forms into their practice. Historical figures including Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Robert Motherwell, Ben Nicholson, Jacques Villeglé and Andy Warhol hang alongside contemporary practitioners such as Nora Aslan, John Evans, Ion Birladeanu, Nayland Blake, Ansuya Blom, Brice Brown, Jay Cloth, Dan Coombs, India Evans, Gilbert and George, Marcus Harvey, Susan Hiller, John Jodzio, Don Joint, Chantal Joffe, Grayson Perry, Maritta Tapanainen and Mark Wagner. For some, collage is an elemental driver in their methodology, but for others it is incidental or experimental, and has been included because it pushes at the edge of what it is that we accept the technique to be. There is a full list of the contributing artists on the following page. Collage was pioneered by George Braque and Pablo Picasso in the early part of the last century, and derives from the French word coller, meaning to glue or paste. What we now readily accept as collage goes back hundreds of years, but it made a dramatic resurgence in the early part of the twentieth century and went from a form of novelty to one with a distinctive place in Modernist art. Made from an assemblage of different materials and forms, it is a work of formal art made from clippings and cuttings of paper, fabric, wood, ribbons, bits of photographs, printed material or found objects that have been stuck to a surface with purpose, and an element of incongruity, in their new juxtapositions and re-contextualisations. In this technological age, where the making of digital images is ubiquitous and their manipulation widespread, collage continuous to hold its important place in the making of, and our understanding of, contemporary art. Artists Include: John Ashbery, Nora Aslan, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Ion Birladeanu, Nayland Blake , Ansuya Blom, Brice Brown, Jay Cloth, Dan Coombs, Michael Cooper, Joseph Cornell, Robert Courtright, Matthew Cusick, Ian Dawson , Kate Davis, Jan Dibbets, John Digby, Godfried Donkor, Samantha Donnelly , Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Dzama, India Evans, John Evans, Ginnie Gardiner, Gilbert & George, James Gobel, Al Hansen, David Harrison, Marcus Harvey, Addie Herder, Susan Hiller, Paul Hosking, David Huffman, Derek Jarman, John Jodzio, Jerry Jofen, Chantel Joffe, Cletus Johnson, Ray Johnson, Don Joint, Chris Kenny, Jiri Kolar, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Andrew Logan, Andrew Mania, Margaret Mellis, Salvatore Meo, Robert Motherwell, Avis Newman, Ben Nicholson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Betty Parsons , Grayson Perry, David Poppie, Mac Premo, Penny Rockwell, Jakob Roepke, Barbara Sandler, Holli Schorno , Bob & Roberta Smith, Jeff Sonhouse, Dorothea Tanning, Maritta Tapanainen, Joe Tilson, Jacques Villegle, Mark Wagner, Andy Warhol, Dodi Wexler, C.K. Wilde, May Wilson, and Trevor Winkfield.

A Peep into Duchamp

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp labored in secret for 20 years to produce what the painter Jasper Johns has called "the strangest work of art any museum has ever had in it." He might be right: The diorama known by its abbreviated French title Etant donnes is spectacularly bizarre, enigmatic, mysterious, disturbing, captivating, and, perhaps to some observers, repellent. None of those attributes is obvious, because Etant donnes is also as secluded as a cloistered nun. It has been one of the Philadelphia Museum of Art s cherished masterpieces for 40 years, yet I ll wager that - Duchamp partisans excepted - most visitors have not seen it or even been aware that it exists. Étant donnés doesn t attract crowds because it can be viewed by only one person at a time. Furthermore, Duchamp restricted what the solitary viewer could see: He or she must stand in one spot and peer through two peepholes in an antique wooden door, like watching a baseball game through a knothole in the outfield fence. "Étant donnés" continues in Galleries 181, 182 and 183 of the modern-contemporary wing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th Street and the Parkway, through Nov. 29. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and to 8:45 p.m. Fridays. Admission is $16 general, $14 for visitors 65 and older, and $12 for students with ID and visitors 13 to 18. Pay what you wish first Sunday of the month. Information: 215-763-8100, 215-684-7500 or www.philamuseum.org

Jonah Bokaer s Octave

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Jonah Bokaer s - Octave from Giovanni Jubert on Vimeo. "A solo dance work composed through the use of DanceForms 1.0 software. To accompany the live choreography, Bokaer collected five thousand used MetroCards which were deposited onto the performance space creating an alarming audiovisual activity of flying décor and musical reverberation. The work collapses the traditional distinctions between movement, sound, and décor. Bokaer also recreated Marcel Duchamp';s Bicycle Wheel (made of MetroCards), motorized by hand during the performance, pointing towards the legacy of Duchamp."

Surreal Things Revisited

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Art Gallery of Ontario has announced a two-week extension for its show Surreal Things, an exhibition of surrealist art organized by London s Victoria and Albert Museum.

Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Manchester Art Gallery s major new exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see outstanding works by women artists including Frida Kahlo and Lee Miller from public and private collections around the globe. Women played a huge, but at the time not fully recognised, part in the Surrealist movement. Only recently has an appreciation grown of how crucial women';s contributions were in this movement. Artists such as Meret Oppenheim, Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller, Leonora Carrington and Francesca Woodman are heroines and role models to a whole generation of women – not just artists. Angels of Anarchy is the first major group exhibition of 20th century women Surrealist artists ever to be held in Europe. Featuring over 100 well known and rarely seen artworks in a variety of media including painting, print-making, sculpture, photography and film, this exhibition will extend and enhance the understanding of these artists'; radical and sometimes still shocking work. Manchester Art Gallery is the only UK venue for the exhibition, offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the work of so many women Surrealists displayed together.

MOMA Photography Collection Grows

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Museum of Modern Art s Photography Department announced it has recently acquired 39 works by photographer Richard Avedon, in addition to some 60 photographs from the collection of Suzanne Winsberg. Avedon s photographs include portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Malcom X. These were part purchase and part gift from the Avedon Foundation, established in 2004.

Chance Aesthetics at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum Sept. 18 to Jan. 4, 2010

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Organized by Meredith Malone, assistant curator for the Kemper Art Museum, Chance Aesthetics will feature more than 60 artworks by more than 40 avant-garde artists from Europe and the United States, including Jean Arp, George Brecht, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Ellsworth Kelly, Alison Knowles, François Morellet, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Dieter Roth, Niki de Saint Phalle and Yves Tanguy, among many others. At the exhibition s heart is a central paradox involving the tension between chance and choice. While many artists have championed the creative possibilities of the arbitrary and the accidental both as an attack on reason and logic and as a counterpoint to officially sanctioned aesthetic tastes artistic subjectivity is never entirely ceded. The controlled and the arbitrary variously interplayed throughout the 20th century, stimulating new forms of creative invention that challenged longstanding assumptions about what might constitute a work of art and the role of the artist as autonomous creator.

Philadelphia Museum Celebrates Etant Donnes Anniversary

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present the first exhibition to examine the genesis, construction, and reception of Etant donnes: 1 la chute d eau, 2 le gaz deeclairage (Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2 The Illuminating Gas), Marcel Duchamp s enigmatic final masterwork. Duchamp (1887-1968) constructed Etant donnes in complete secrecy over a period of twenty years, from 1946 to 1966, during which he publicly claimed to have gone underground and given up art for chess. The exhibition will be on view from August 15 to November 29, 2009. It was not until after his death on October 2, 1968 that the work was discovered in his studio. The multi-media assemblage surprised the art world and perplexed the public when, as a gift to the Museum and in accordance with the artist s wishes, it was permanently installed in July 1969, joining the world s largest collection of his works, including Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 (1912); The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915-23), to which it closely relates, and readymades such as With Hidden Noise (1916) and Why Not Sneeze, Rose Selavy(1921).

Talk Show

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:07:31 GMT

On Thursday, August 6th, EAI presents Talk Show, the second of two outdoor evening screenings on the rooftop of the X Initiative. Talk Show presents works by artists who use video to bring the interview into their art. Included in the program are Tony Oursler s interview with Sonic Youth s Kim Gordon; a 1982 video "magazine edition" by MICA-TV (Carole Ann Klonarides and Michael Owen) and Richard Prince; Chris Burden s Big Wrench, a video confessional in which he recounts a true story about his truck; footage of art collective Ant Farm s 1976 appearances on Australian talk shows; and Russell Connor s fascinating, rare 1964 interview with Marcel Duchamp, in which the legendary Dadaist looks back on his life and the art of the 20th century. The very circumstances of artists lives and the experiences that result often make for spectacular storytelling. Here they explore multiple strategies: artists interviewing other artists, collaborative interviews, first-hand accounts of personal experience and the TV talk show as a locus for intervention. Thursday, August 6, 2009 9:00 pm X Initiative (rooftop) 548 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011 www.eai.org RSVP Required: info@x-initiative.org or 917-697-4886 Admission free

BE THE ARTIST FAMILY PROGRAM

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

BE THE ARTIST FAMILY PROGRAM Art classes teaching young people about the art of Marcel Duchamp. A class for kids ages 10-14 runs from noon to 2 p.m., another for children ages 5-10 lasts from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. National Portrait Gallery, Eighth and F streets NW. 202-633-1000 or http://www.npg.si.edu. Free. Saturday 12 to 5:30.

Dreams that Money Can Buy

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Dreams That Money Can Buy is a 1947 American experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter. Collaborators included Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Leger. The film won the Award for the Best Original Contribution to the Progress of Cinematography at the 1947 Venice Film Festival. Desire: Max Ernst; The Girl with the Prefabricated Heart: Fernand Leger; Ruth, Roses and Revolvers: Man Ray; Discs: Marcel Duchamp; Ballet: Alexander Calder; Circus: Alexander Calder; Narcissus: Hans Richter Below are three excerpts from the film.

Happy Birthday Marcel Duchamp!!

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp was born June 28, 1887. He was born in Blainville-Crevon Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie region of France. He died on October 2, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France. His grave bears the epitaph, "D ailleurs, c est toujours les autres qui meurent;" or "Besides, it s always other people who die."

Paul & Nusch Eluard and Surrealism Exhibition

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The National Galleries of Scotland currently presents an exhibition at their Dean Gallery exploring and chronicling the affair between Paul Eluard and his wife Nusch. The works are gathered from the Roland Penrose collection exhibited in a small, but overpacked front room gallery. The works in the collection explore Nusch s influence as muse on Eluard s work. The exhibition also includes collaborations with other artists in and outside of the Parisian Surrealist circle include Man Ray, Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso. Excerpt from National Galleries of Scotland Website: The surrealist poet Paul Eluard (1895-1952) published over seventy books of poetry and prose. For Eluard painting and poetry were intimately linked, and it was his custom to collaborate with artist friends such as Max Ernst, Man Ray and Pablo Picasso in the production of numerous publications. From 1924-38 he was a key figure in the Surrealist Group in Paris. In 1930 Eluard met Maria Benz, known as Nusch (1906-1946) a muse and model for Man Ray and for Picasso, and married her in 1934. She inspired some of Eluard s most tender love poems. Roland Penrose first met Eluard in Paris in 1929; they were introduced by Max Ernst. Their friendship, which lasted until Eluard s death, is well documented in the Gallery s Penrose archive. The display highlights this friendship through letters and photographs. Also included in the display are Eluard s many book collaborations, together with his collages and works from his art collection, purchased by Penrose in 1938. The exhibition will be on view at the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh from June 27 to September 27, 2009.

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Re-Invention

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Jewish Museum will present Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention from November 15, 2009 through March 14, 2010, a major exhibition considering how the artist';s life and career were shaped by his turn-of-the-century American Jewish immigrant experience and his lifelong evasion of his past. The exhibition explores the deliberate cultural ambiguity of Man Ray who became the first American artist to be accepted by the avant-garde in Paris . It also examines the dynamic connection between Man Ray';s assimilation, the evolution of his art, and his willful construction of a distinctive artistic persona, as evidenced in a series of subtle, encrypted self-references throughout his career.

Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres, the Most Profitable in Spain

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Inaugurated in 1974, the Dali Theatre-Museum was built upon the remains of the former Figueres theatre. It contains the broadest range of works spanning the artistic career of Salvador Dali (1904-1989), from his earliest artistic experiences and his surrealist creations down to the works of the last years of his life. Spanish newspaper El Pais, today reported that the Dali Museum is the private museum that receives more guests in Spain (approximately 6,000 per day, compared with the Prado s 8,000) and it generates $6.3 million, according to the latest financial report. Some of the most outstanding works on exhibition there are: Port Alguer (1924), The Girl from Figueres (1926), The Spectre of Sex Appeal (1932), Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon (1941), Poetry of America The Cosmic Athletes (1943), Galarina (1944-45), Basket of Bread (1945), Napoleon s Nose Transformed into a Pregnant Woman Strolling Her Shadow with Melancholic amongst Original Ruins (1945), Atomic Leda (1949), Apotheosis of the Dollar (1965), Galatea of the Spheres (1952) and Dawn, Noon, Afternoon and Evening (1979). We should also note the set of works that the artist created expressly for the Theatre-Museum, such as the Mae West Room, the Wind Palace Room, the Monument to Francesc Pujols and the Rainy Cadillac. Also to be seen are works by other artists that Dalí wanted to include: El Greco, Marià Fortuny, Modest Urgell, Ernest Meissonier, Marcel Duchamp, Wolf Vostell, Antoni Pitxot and Evarist Vallès, amongst others. The Dalí Theatre-Museum has to be seen as a whole, as the great work of Salvador Dalí, for everything in it was conceived and designed by the artist in order to offer visitors a real experience of getting inside his captivating and unique world. The Dalí Theatre-Museum of Figueres offers a unique experience of being able to observe, live and enjoy the work and thought of a genius. As Dalí himself explained: It s obvious that other worlds exist, that s certain; but, as I ve already said on many other occasions, these other worlds are inside ours, they reside in the earth and precisely at the centre of the dome of the Dalí Museum, which contains the new, unsuspected and hallucinatory world of Surrealism.

Book Release: Marcel Duchamp, La Vita a Credito

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp: La Vita a Credito was recently published in June by Johan and Levi. Written by Marcade Bernard, it has only as of now been published in Italian. While alot has been written on Duchamp s work, this biography focuses more on Duchamp s life beyond being an artist; focusing on his anarchist beliefs, "detached elegance", and indifference to money. The book chronicles how Duchamp defines the "art of living."

Kemper Art Museum Announces Fall Schedule

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Kemper Art Museum at Washington University has announced its schedule for the 2009-2010 academic year. There will be two exhibitions in each of the fall and spring terms. Opening Sept. 18 and continuing through Jan. 4 will be “Chance Aesthetics,” featuring the work of Jean Arp, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Ellsworth Kelly, Jackson Pollock, Dieter Roth and Niki de Saint Phalle. The exhibition, organized by assistant curator Meredith Malone, features work in which the creative possibilities of chance are explored.

For the Blind Man in the Dark Room Looking for the Black Cat That Isn t There

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis presents "For the Blind Man in the Dark Room Looking for the Black Cat That Isn t There" an international group exhibition to open Sept. 11, 2009. For the blind man celebrates the speculative nature of knowledge and proposes that curiosity matters more than understanding. While the artists featured in the exhibition all share our common urge to understand the world, they are also eager to keep art separate from explanation. As speculations, the works on view each allude to a search for knowledge, while insisting that art is not a code that needs cracking. Embodying a spirit of playful non-knowledge, unlearning, and productive confusion, For the blind man is dedicated to the inquisitive mind and to the pleasures of finding our way in the dark. One artist, Sara Crowner "re-inserts into circulation the two issues of the 1917 journal The Blind Man (edited by Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, and Beatrice Wood), offering copies on sale at the museum s front desk at the publication s original cover price of 10 and 15 cents." Other artists include: Anonymous, Dave Hullfish Bailey, Marcel Broodthaers, Sarah Crowner, Mariana Castillo Deball, Eric Duyckaerts, Ayse Erkmen, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Rachel Harrison, Giorgio Morandi, Matt Mullican, Bruno Munari, Rosalind Nashashibi & Lucy Skaer, Falke Pisano, Jimmy Raskin, Frances Stark, Rosemarie Trockel, Patrick van Caeckenbergh. Catalogue edited by Will Holder.

Homage to Tinguely s Homage a Marcel Duchamp

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Homage to Tinguely s Homage a Marcel Duchamp, by Arthur Ganson "A double homage to Marcel Duchamp and Jean Tinguely. The machine mimics the formal design of Marcel Duchamp s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. In the place of the Bride is an image of Tinguely s own homage to Duchamp, and the mechanical elements of my machine loosely recall the Bachelors in Duchamp s original work. The machine was created while meditating on the works of these two masters." - Ganson

Christie s Upcoming Prints and Multiples Sale: July 22, 2009

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Christie s upcoming Prints and Multiples summer sale will present "a cross section of movements and styles," showcasing prints and multiples by artists including: Marcel Duchamp, Paul Gauguin, Joan Miró, Sam Francis, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Jeff Koons, Claes Oldenberg, Pablo Picasso, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Whiteread. The sale will include 12 offset lithographs by Marcel Duchamp. These Rotoreliefs, are printed on both sides of cardboard and will be sold at an estimated $3,000 to $5,000. Lot Description (from Chistie s website) MARCEL DUCHAMP: Rotoreliefs (Optical Discs): The complete set of 12 offset lithographs in colors (printed on both sides of six cardboard disks), black plastic circular holder, two black plastic viewers, and explanatory note in French, 1935, each signed in ink (Schwarz calls for the 1935 edition to be unsigned), (No. 2) dedicated pour Reana affectueusement , from the unnumbered original edition of 500 (there were also editions of 1000, 100, 5 and 150 published in 1953, 1959, 1963 and 1965 respectively), each with occasional surface soiling and minor wear, otherwise in very good condition. Overall Diameter: 9¾ in. (248 mm.)

Exhibition of Works by Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell Announced at Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Museums in Miniature: Works by Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell will open September 26, 2009 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla. The exhibition explores the use of collage, assemblage, and staged tableaux by Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell as plays on the notion of an exhibition space. Evocative juxtapositions, absurdities, and rebuses abound in Cornell s work, demonstrating the enduring influence of Duchamp s practice, and of Surrealism more broadly, during the second half of the 20th century. Duchamp will be represented by MCASD s The Green Box (1934) a compendium of manuscript notes, drawings, and photographs documenting the development of his major work, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), and by a version of his Boîte-en-valise (1942-54), which contains miniature replicas of three of Duchamp s readymades (mass-produced goods appropriated by Duchamp as artworks) and 68 printed reproductions of other works by the artist. The box is assembled in such a way that various parts slide out, fold out, or lift out for display to create what Duchamp described as a "miniature museum," or a portable retrospective of his oeuvre to that point. The exhibition also showcases four box constructions donated to the museum by the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. The small format of Cornell s box sculptures implies intimacy, while the worn quality of his materials (torn maps, ticket stubs) suggests both nostalgia and transience. The rounded arches of Untitled (Grand Hôtel des Alpes) (1957) function as architectural fragments that refer to a monumental structure, while the elaborate fenestration of Pink Chateau (1944) seems the perfect backdrop for an epic ballet (both works require imagination on the part of the viewer to be completed). Duchamp s "miniature museums" are ironic, polemic, and humorous; Cornell s are richly textured and extraordinarily poetic. Together the works by Duchamp and Cornell serve as a prelude to the exhibition, Automatic Cities: The Architectural Imaginary in Contemporary Art on view in the adjacent galleries.

The Erotic Object: Upcoming Lectures at MOMA

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Coinciding with the prementioned exhibit The Erotic Object: Surrealist Sculpture from the Collection, MOMA has organized four more lectures and gallery talks over the next month. Exhibition includes works by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Jean Arp, Alberto Giacommetti, Joan Miro, Hans Bellmer, Salvador Dali, Meret Oppenheim, Joseph Cornell, and Louise Bourgeois. Saturday, July 18, 2009, 1:30 p.m. With Agnes Berecz Sunday, July 19, 2009, 1:30 p.m.With Diana Bush Monday, July 27, 2009, 11:30 a.m.With Deborah Goldberg Wednesday, August 19, 2009, 1:30 p.m.With Agnes Berecz

Book Review: Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Readymade Press, has recently released Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess to coincide with the concurrent exhibition at Saint Louis University Museum of Art, Marcel Duchamp: Chess Master. This is the first major study in the English language dedicated to further examining Duchamp s life and art as effected by his devout interest in chess. It was rumored in the early 1920s that Duchamp had willingly decided to quit making art and devote his life to playing chess. While Duchamp made no attempt to dispute this rumor, he never fully ceased making art while playing tournament chess. Through this book we explore how he combined his interest in chess with his art making process, and his art s evolution toward heavily strategic and coded metaphors that would only become obvious to avid chess players. The book includes essays by Francis M. Naumann and Bradley Bailey, in additional to illustrated game analysis by Jennifer Shade. Naumann s essay Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess compares the chronology of Duchamp s life and art as parallel to a game of chess. He breaks down Duchamp s history into different phases of a chess game: training and learning the game, opening, middle game, and finally the endgame. He compares Duchamp s strategic approach to art as well planned out moves in a chess game. Bradley Bailey s (curator of the exhibition at Saint Louis University Museum) essay Passionate Pastimes: Duchamp, Chess, and the Large Glass "demonstrates that Duchamp s identity as a chess player is so thoroughly interfused with his work as an artist that the two activities are aesthetically and conceptually inseparable, an interrelation especially evident in Duchamp s masterwork." The book ends with game analysis of fifteen of Duchamp s chess games, analyzed by Jennifer Shade. Upon purchase you gain access to digital animations of each game available on Francis M. Naumann Fine Art website. Available for purchase on Amazon.com and FrancisNaumann.com Readymade Press is based out of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art. The exhibition will travel to Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York on view September 10 - October 30, 2009.

Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts: Western Art Collection

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts is one of the most important museums of Asian modern arts. The museum was inaugurated in 1978 in Tehran and after 30 years, this museum';s treasures are being publicly exhibited for the second time. Four years ago, in the period of Khatami s presidency in Iran and in the last days of the so called "reforms period", the treasures were exhibited on the walls of 9 galleries for the first time. The treasures of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts is one of the richest eastern modern treasures of the world which can be considered as the most important Asian museum of the world';s contemporary arts. 120 works of European and American modernism';s history are on view since 26 June 2009 in this museum. This launching is the greatest exhibition of western works after the Islamic revolution in Iran. It has to be mentioned that from the 80s up to know, no foreign works has been added to this collection and the treasure lacks the works of this period. This exhibition will be on view until 6 August 2009. Works by the following artists are kept there: Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Van Gogh, James Ensor, Edouard Vuillard, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Jules Pascin, André Derain, Louis Valtat, Georges Rouault, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon, Max Ernst, René Magritte, George Grosz, Diego Rivera, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Peter Phillips, James Rosenquist, Fritz Winter, Joan Miró, William Turnbull, Victor Vasarely, Adolph Gottlieb, Richard Hamilton, Georges Braque, Jean Paul Riopelle, Edvard Munch, Pierre Soulages, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Maurice Prendergast, František Kupka, Max Beckmann, James Whistler, Edward Hopper, Giorgio Morandi, Noreen Motamed, Giacomo Balla and Marcel Duchamp.

The Waintrob Collection: Artists and Their Art

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Waintrob Collection, currently on view at Snug Harbor Cultural Center is an eclectic assemblage of artworks from a variety of twentieth century American and European artists. Brothers Sidney and Abraham Waintrob had longstanding social roots in the New York artworld, as a spare time hobby, they began photographing their artist friends, who began exchanging pieces of their art for the photographic portraits. This exhibition chronicles these bartered artworks to include drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures of artists such as Alberto Giacommetti, Henry Moore, Marcel Duchamp and Walker Evans. The exhibition also includes relevant artists correspondence. The Waintrob Collection: Artists and Their Art Where Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden s Visitors Center 1000 Richmond Terr., Livingston 718-448-2500 www.snug-harbor.org When Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnes August 15, 2009 - November 29, 2009

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp s enigmatic assemblage Etant donnes: 1. La chute d eau, 2. Le gaz d eclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) has been described by the artist Jasper Johns as "the strangest work of art in any museum." Permanently installed at the Museum since 1969, this three-dimensional environmental tableau offers an unforgettable and untranslatable experience to those who peer through the two small holes in the solid wooden door. Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the work going on public display, this exhibition consists of Duchamp s extraordinary assemblage, along with close to eighty works of art related to its installment, including all the known studies, photographs, erotic objects, and other materials. This landmark exhibition and the accompanying two hundred-page catalogue explore the history and reception of Duchamp';s final masterpiece, as well as its legacy for contemporary artists such as Ray Johnson, Hannah Wilke, Robert Gober, and Marcel Dzama. This exhibition is being dedicated to the memory of the late Anne d Harnoncourt, the Museum s George D. Widener Director and C.E.O., who passed away on June 1, 2008. D Harnoncourt was a respected Duchamp scholar who, as a 25-year old curatorial assistant, oversaw the painstaking installation of Étant donnés... at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, along with the artist s widow Alexina "Teeny" Duchamp and his step-son Paul Matisse. In 1973 she co-organized, with Kynaston McShine, the Marcel Duchamp Retrospective exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which later traveled to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Throughout her career, d Harnoncourt sought to shed new light on Duchamp s enigmatic final masterwork and offered early enthusiasm and steadfast support for this exhibition project and its related catalogue, both of which she was looking forward to seeing and reading with eager anticipation. Curator Michael R. Taylor • The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art Location Galleries 181–183, first floor

Blainville-Crevon - Neuilly-sur-Seine

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

A critical view on a famous installation by Marcel Duchamp (Roue de bicyclette, 1913). Duchamp was born in Blainville-Crevon (Normandie) and died in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Paris). Hoschele constructed a bicycle with a camera in front and a second camera at the back. The front camera looked forwards, the back camera looked backwards. He traveled from Blainville-Crevon to Neuilly-sur-Seine, which is about 150 km. This trip took him two days. He documented the road, the weather, the landscape (from rural environment to suburbia). Out of this material he made 9 hours video each. For the installation he reconstructed Duchamps ready-made as an interface. By turning the wheel the viewer activates the digitized video material from both cameras on boths screens. By turning the wheel forwards the viewer moves the video forwards; when turning the wheel backwards the video is moving backwards. Therefore the viewer can move forwards and backwards, faster and slower, and even stop. The viewer travels with Duchamp, he participates with his artwork and life. Blainville-Crevon - Neuilly sur Seine from hoec on Vimeo.

Robert Whitman, Inside Out, 1987

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Robert Whitman s piece "Inside Out" is based on Ulf Linde s Lecture on Marcel Duchamp. The piece was performed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1987. 1987 Robert Whitman "Inside Out" from Walter Patrick Smith, AIA on Vimeo.

The Erotic Object: Surrealist Sculpture from the Collection

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Museum of Modern Art presents The Erotic Object: Surrealist Sculpture from the Collection, an exhibition showcasing 20 sculptures from the Museum collection, on view from June 24, 2009, through January 4, 2010. Works by 11 artists are shown, including Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Meret Oppenheim, and Man Ray. Drawing upon the strength of MoMA s collection, the exhibition includes a number of Surrealism';s most celebrated objects, including Dalí';s bread-and-inkwell-crowned Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933) and Oppenheim';s notorious fur-lined teacup (1936). While primarily featuring works made in Paris, the exhibition also includes sculptures from the 1940s and 1950s by New York–based artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Joseph Cornell, who redefined the Surrealist practice of object making on their own terms. In addition, the installation includes periodicals from the Museum Library';s collection that document Surrealism';s fascination with the object. The exhibition is organized by Anne Umland, Curator, with Veronica Roberts, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture

Marcel Duchamp: Face to Face Portrait Talk, June 25

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Coinciding with the current exhibition Inventing Marcel Duchamp: Dynamics of Portraiture, curator Anne Goodyear will host a lecture tonight to further introduce and promote Duchamp s significance in portraiture and his exploration of identity. The lecture will be held at the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, TONIGHT, June 25, 2009 at 6pm. Eighth and F streets NW. Free. 202-633-1000.

Medals of Dishonour at the British Museum

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Medals of Dishonour opens this Thursday at the British Museum. This exhibition is dedicated to displaying and preserving the history and tradition of the "darker side of medals." The exhibition is split into two parts: the first showcasing medals of dishonour from the 16th to 20th century displayed amongst prints and drawings. These medals, taken from the museum s collection, range from satirical and humorous subjects to political and somber themes. Among these works are two Medals of Dishonour by David Smith (who coined the term and from which the exhibition gets its title) and a "little known" medal by Marcel Duchamp. The second part focuses on medals recently commissioned by contemporary artists including Jake and Dinos Chapman, William Kentridge, Grayson Perry, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Ellen Gallagher, Langlands and Bell, Cornelia Parker, Michael Landy, Yun-Fei Ji, Steve Bell and Felicity Powell. These works were commissioned by the British Art Medal Trust, with contemporary subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to consumerism. The British Museum website offers a copy of the PRESS RELEASE, as well as a SLIDE SHOW of the highlighted works in the exhibition. 25 June – 27 September 2009 British Museum Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DG

the qi peng dynasty (we are duchampions)

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In qi peng s ironic yet poignant show at a certain Lower East Side gallery lasting in less time than a single workday of Jack Bauer within a season of the TV show "24," envoy enterprises is proud to present a fresh piece of conceptual art entitled "the qi peng dynasty (we are duchampions)" to the public. This complex installation art features a hybrid fusion between traditional works on paper and painting and cutting-edge new media art, particularly based on the idea of autobiography loosely based on James Joyce s novel "A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man" smashed with Facebook and Xerox. peng combines selected interview portraits, which he has published through www.examiner.com as an online art project, between art professionals which he has met in real life or Facebook or Twitter or other social networking websites into a larger installation project. By delivering a cross section of the international art world, focusing on New York City and Los Angeles mostly with a small dose of his current hometown of Salt Lake City, the artist attempts to democratize how the public perceives any particular individual within this complex web of artists, art dealers, museum curators, art workers, and slaves who comprise this whole system of people who put together contemporary art for the audience. By displaying offset prints of these portraits like a digital version of August Sander photographs, peng attempts to humanize the art world as an antithesis to the glossy art market and blue chip players portrayed by the magazines. This installation piece will present secondary documents that will reflect on how the artist s first solo show in New York City became extant at envoy enterprises. Mixing together proposals, acceptance and rejection letters, critiques, as well some surprising documents that feature a Chelsea gallery, and a painting that is based on a prominent Brooklyn artist with overtones of the idea of WWPD, this work becomes a brave exploration of the politics of how exhibitions are created and galleries are curated. Also this is a fairly dispassionate view of the artist s subjective journey from a virtually unknown artist as a displaced New Yorker located in Utah into a slowly emerging artist as a small player within the international art world. He also highlights the challenges of an atypical Utah conceptual artist attaining both critical affirmation and artistic defiance with and against the somewhat insular New York contemporary art world reframed as the Garden of Eden. There will be a surprise ending to the whole installation and a possible inclusion of the following events: an artist book signing at a table, an unexpected appearance of the Zero Dollar project by Laura Gilbert, a performance duel between Rick Herron and the artist himself, and guest appearances by famed bootlegger Eric Doeringer and collaborating artists William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton. The audience may be able to say hello to the following celebrities: James Kalm, Jerry Saltz, or James Wagner. 10% of the complete installation s sale will be donated to a non-profit organization helping out the victims of the Madoff investment scandal. the qi peng dynasty (we are duchampions) is the Salt Lake City artist s first attempt at a solo show anywhere in his homebase of New York City. He needs all the luck that he can get from a broken leg. qi peng was born in 1976 in Queens, New York City. He lives and works mostly in Salt Lake City and sometimes in New York. His work has been exhibited at The Lab at Belmar, Anna Kustera, James Cohen/NURTUREART, Metro Pictures/Visual AIDS, modern8 gallery, and Projects Gallery. Currently he is represented by The Barbara Ann Levy Gallery in West Palm Beach, Florida. Envoy East Village / Lower East Side 131 Chrystie Street, 212-226-4555 June 23 - June 23, 2009 Opening: Tuesday, June 23, 12 - 9PM

Picture Dreams. Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection at the New National Gallery; Berlin

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Pietzsch Collection ranks as one of the internationally most significant collections of Surrealist art, with principle works by Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Andre Masson and Yves Tanguy, as well as numerous works by other artists more broadly connected to the Surrealist movement. A second important core aspect to the collection lies in works by the Abstract Expressionists in America, whose art movement rose directly from the roots of Surrealism to flourish in the New York of the nineteen-fifties. Works by important figures who have since become legends in their own right, such as Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman are all represented in the collection together with works by the great Mexicans Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Presented by: New National Gallery 19 June - 22 November 2009 Neue Nationalgalerie Potsdamer Straße 50 Berlin-Tiergarten 10785 Tel +49(0)30 - 266-2951 nng@smb.spk-berlin.de http://www.smb.museum/nng

Duchamp Reloaded

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"In 1913, Marcel Duchamp took found objects from the streets and placed them in museums. 96 years later, if Duchamp were alive, he may want to do the very opposite." - Ji Lee.

Leslie Holt: Hello Masterpiece

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

I recently came across Leslie Holt s "Hello Masterpiece (art appreciation)" series, having already posted one of her paintings as yesterday s image of the day. I felt it was necessary to follow up with a little more background about her work. Artist Statement: In my most recent “Hello Masterpiece (art appreciation)” series, I juxtapose the character, Hello Kitty, with famous images from art history. The paintings are postcard size, similar to those found in a museum gift shop. The famous paintings become pop culture icons akin to Hello Kitty, and the paintings'; appeal as take home sized objects reinforces their context as commodities in a market. In these paintings Hello Kitty is often taking a tour through art history and dressing up to “match” elements of the famous painting. Hello Kitty becomes a toy version of Cindy Sherman, capable of changing identities by transforming her outer appearance. However, her “toyness” and her obvious overlay on the image disrupt any illusion that she actually fits in the scene of the artwork. In other images from this series, Hello Kitty is pointing toward social or political issues, such as war, genocide, or gender identity. I rely on her to charm the viewer into looking, but her innocent, playful appeal contrasts with the serious adult subject matter. With this contrast of adult and childlike content and these “high” and “low” cultural icons, I hope to elicit laughter and irony. Holt not only appropriates imagery directly from Duchamp (illustration above) but as explained further in her artist statement, her approach and conceptualism also parallel his. The Hello Masterpiece series consists of over 100 paintings, all postcard size. This format directly references Duchamp s L.H.O.O.Q. Holt s work is a lighthearted, humorous, contemporary and easily accessible approach to appropriation. Be sure to check out her other artwork located here on her website.

Duchamp Highlights Upcoming Christie s Auction, London

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Duchamp s drawing 2 nus: un fort et un vite (Two nudes: one strong and one swift) will be up for auction at Christie s London Impressionist/ Modern Art evening sale, June 23, 2009. This lot is expected to sell for $1,306,400 to $1,959,600. This piece was executed in 1912 with charcoal, pencil and estompe on paper and formerly belonged to Francis Picabia s wife. "Marking a development away from the Cubo-Futurist-inspired study of motion that had characterised his previous painting - the notorious Nude Descending a Staircase No 2. that he had painted a month or two before, in January 1912 - 2 Nus, un fort et un vite marks the beginning of Duchamp s interest in rendering unseen elements of the world. This was a metaphorical non-abstract realm, as yet unexplored in the medium of painting, that was pioneered by Duchamp and Picabia." This work has been labeled as one of the highlights of this upcoming auction. We will post auction results after June 23, 2009.

The Heritage of the Holy Land: Treasures from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The exhibition entitled The Heritage of the Holy Land, displaying a selection from the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, might well be one of the highlights of the Museum of Fine Arts events in 2009. Opening in the middle of June, the exhibition will span 9,000 years and will include unique exhibits such as a fragment of the Dead Sea scrolls, as well as works by Rembrandt, Chagall and Rodin. The history of the land of present-day Israel was shaped by the meeting of cultures and religions for millennia. This land is regarded by several world religions as a holy place. Thus, the Budapest exhibition is organised around the concepts of the sacred and the spiritual, and their manifestations in art. The artefacts and works of art displayed will range from the 7th millennia B.C. to as recently as 2005. The masterpieces will come from different parts of the collection of the Israel Museum representing different historical periods and artistic genres, thus the exhibition will draw visitors attention to relationships between the works some self-evident and some more intriguing and present the cultural diversity of the region s history. Visitors will be able to see life-size anthropoid mummy coffins, a Koran from Kashmir, Hanukkah candle holders, a photograph taken of the Shroud of Turin in the 19th century, works by Rembrandt, Poussin, Rodin, Chagall, Duchamp, and Rothko as well as by contemporary artists Walinger and Boltanski. One of the most outstanding exhibits will be one part of the Dead Sea scrolls, a section of the Temple Scroll, being the longest complete Dead Sea Scroll ever found written in the 1st century B.C. During 2008 to 2010 the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is renewing all of its galleries and its campus while the museum remains open. This project offers the opportunity for the many treasured artefacts of its permanent collection to be displayed in summer 2009 in Budapest. The exhibition is curated by Yigal Zalmona, the chief curator of the Israel Museum, and is directed by Krisztina Jerger. 24 June 2009 6 September 2009 Open every day 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., except Monday

The Leepa-Rattner Museum Of Art Surrealism Lecture

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Salvador Dali Museum s curator of education Peter Tush, will present Surrealism in the 1930s, a multimedia look at the developments of Surrealism in the 1930s June 25 at 7 p.m. The lecture will cover the International Exposition of Surrealism in 1938 and the evolution of the Surrealist movement during the years prior to the Second World War. The cost is $5 for members; $8 for non-members and free for students. The lecture will be held in the museum auditorium. To foster a greater understanding and appreciation of the 20th century, the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is offering summer programs that continue its focus on the social, political, cultural and artistic developments of the decade from 1930 to 1940. The Decades Series was created in 2002 and reflects the museum s mission to nurture interest in 20th century art.

N. Mutt, 2009: Interview with artist Nena Amsler

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Artist Nena Amsler is no stranger to Duchampian puns, and likewise, exploring the boundaries of art through a combination of formal and conceptual painting. She recently had a solo show at Kristi Engle Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) entitled N. Mutt 2009, May 2 - May 30. While her primary focus is painting, her current work expands the possibilities of what constitutes a painting. "This exhibition s title, N. Mutt 2009, is an appropriation from the title of Marcel Duchamp s iconic work, with which he challenged the definition of art. Likewise, Amsler seeks to challenge the definition of "painting." The artist - a "mutt" herself, being a product of two disparate cultures (Switzerland and Peru) - creates paintings crossbred between multiple genres. Utilizing the traditional painter s materials (stretchers, canvas, panels and paint - in this case acrylic), Amsler presents an uncommon array of possibilities that are consistently innovative. Her material explorations; her investigation into the possibilities of painting; the introduction of a loose narrative and references to other contemporary works of art make her practice neither strictly formal nor exclusively conceptual." (press release from Kristi Engle Gallery) Her Duchampian humor is evident throughout the exhibition. While she defines her "paintings" as "acrylic on canvas," in some instances the acrylic is actually acrylic yarn! Most of the pieces in the exhibition are made of several canvases (or panels). She explains that each work can at once be abstract (as a separate canvas or panel) and figurative when they are seen together as a whole. While Duchamp s influence is strong, Amsler s own humor and visual language prevail. Like Duchamp s work, to avoid misinterpretation, Amsler s highly conceptual work is best explained by herself... What persuaded you to title the exhibition "N. Mutt 2009"? In 1917, when Duchamp appropriated a urinal as "art," he questioned the very definition of art. In my exhibition, I wanted to question the definition of "painting." Appropriating the title from arguably the first appropriator, seemed, well, appropriate. (The "N" is the initial of my first name.) I also couldn t help but think that Duchamp must have chuckled to himself at the thought of his "Fountain." This guy knew how to have fun! And of course he demonstrated a new way of thinking about art in the same stroke of genius. While I too wanted to pose some questions - about the process, product and presentation of painting - I promised myself to also have fun. Also, a friend and I began referring to ourselves as "mutts" a while ago. She is Brazilian from Italian ancestry while my mother is Peruvian and my father, though born in Argentina, is actually Swiss. It can be said that nearly everyone in America is somewhat of a mutt, but my friend and I have commiserated that we still don t feel completely assimilated. There are American quirks - like being conversant in pop culture, be it TV programs or particular color combinations, designs and gadgets of certain eras, like the 70 s - that always seems to escape us. "Dog" acrylic on canvas (in 6 separate parts) When creating the work for this exhibit, I realized that even the individual pieces had a mutt-like quality to them. I m intrigued by the structural possibilities of paint and its support systems, rather than the "painterly" issues - such as creating illusionistic space or formal compositions - of a more traditionally inclined artist. So, in working with paint as a functional material (as glue, say) or joining canvases like building blocks to create a structure or incorporating text into the work, I embrace "muttness" by integrating two-dimensional and three-dimensional media, figuration and narrative, abstraction and representation. What are you favorite pieces in the show? That s a hard one to answer. Thinking about your question, my mind jumped from one piece to the next, resisting the choice. Maybe this is because I see all pieces being part of a whole, both the whole of the individual "figures" they constitute as well as the whole of the scenario that those "figures" occupy. So I guess the process of creating the game plan for that particular gallery space was probably my favorite "piece." "Reeds" and details acrylic on canvas (in 3 parts; note: shoestrings & eyelets are entirely acrylic paint) What inspired you to "expand the boundaries of what constitutes a painting"? I ve never been very good at following prescribed conventions, in art or otherwise. Looking back at my evolution as an artist, I ve always gravitated to using paint and painting supports in weird and funky ways. Applying paint to a canvas with a brush or palette knife, creating either representative or abstract imagery, seems so boring to me, like walking down the same well-worn road over and over again. This exhibition made it clearer to me that questioning the definition of painting - while utilizing the "tools" of painting itself - is what inspires me. Have you always worked with multiple canvases (or panels)? Or was this approach new to the works for this exhibition? The approach is definitely new for me, having evolved, organically, while working on this exhibit. I thought of incorporating games that I could play with the viewers, creating, as Annie Buckley wrote in her beautiful catalog essay, "some Duchampian jokes that thumb their noses at the market with a wink for the audience." "Ladder" and detail acrylic on canvas (in 12 parts; all canvases are bolted together) I also wanted to invite the viewer to find a story, either specific or open-ended, connecting multiple canvases/panels along the way as they saw fit. And I liked the idea that individual components of that story, not just necessarily an entire "figure," would be available for purchase, allowing the piece to "decompose" in the process of sales. Aside from Duchamp, who are your other artistic influences? Lately, I ve been enjoying the work of Martin Kippenberger, who recently had a sprawling retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. His uninhibited willingness to "thumb his nose" at the art establishment, or any and all power structures, I find refreshing. Do you have any upcoming exhibitions or projects planned for the near future? I am currently preparing a proposal for an exhibition in another Los Angeles gallery that will continue in the vein of "N. Mutt 2009." This summer and fall I ll have a couple of pieces in the Museum of Amelia (Umbria, Italy) displayed among the regular array of civic artifacts the Museum usually shows. The curator hopes to "expand the boundaries" of where contemporary art can be seen. Music to my ears.

I d give it to you if I could but I borrowed it

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

I d Give it to you if I could but I borrowed it, Guy Ben-Ner, 2007 (video installation) In order to view Guy Ben-Ner s video installation "I d give it to you if I could but I borrowed it," the viewer must mount and "ride" one of the two stationary bicycles installed in the gallery. The video, displayed on a monitor mounted on the handlebars, is powered by pedaling the bicycle. The video depicts Ben-Ner and his two children stealing parts from famous artworks in a museum, including Marcel Duchamp s Bicycle Wheel, Pablo Picasso s Bull s Head, Jean Tinguely s Cyclograveur and Joseph Beuys Zerstorte Batterie. The works are dismounted, deconstructed, and reassembled together to build a working bicycle. The audience participation in riding the bicycle mirrors the characters in the video interacting with the sculptures in the museum. Once the bicycle is assembled Ben-Ner and children take a drug enhanced ride through Munster, in a sequence re-imagining The Phonokinetoscope by Rodney Graham, again reworking a piece of art as he did with the sculptures. The video can be sped up, slowed down and watched in reverse, turning the control of the artwork to the viewer. "I d give it to you if I could but I borrowed it," was executed in 2007 and exhibited last year in a solo show at Postmasters Gallery, NY, along with the video "Stealing Beauty."

Top 200 Artists of the 20th Century to Now

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The UK Times cast a public poll of 1.4 million voters to find out who were the top 200 artists since 1900. Its no surprise we find Marcel Duchamp within the top five highest rank, coming in at 5th place with 20,647 votes. According to the public he champions Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Salvador Dali, and Andy Warhol by over 3,000 votes.

Cinematic Works from the Menil Archives

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The film archives at The Menil Collection are replete with art movies of every stripe, as today s 90-minute al fresco sampler of goodies, Menil Movies: Cinematic Works from the Menil Archives, demonstrates. There are interviews with Buckminster Fuller and Marcel Duchamp, rare interviews with the great Man Ray, and Robert Wilson s weirdly surreal, and short, video sketchbooks. There s also footage of rifle-wielding feminist sculptor Niki De Saint Phalle creating one of her shooting paintings and visiting a junkyard (some scenes were shot by François de Menil). Today s presentation, a collection of highlights from the archive, is a launch for the Menil Movies series, which continues in the fall. 8:30 p.m. 1515 Sul Ross. For information, call 713-525-9400 or visit www.menil.org or www.aurorapictureshow.org. Free. - D.L. GROOVER, Houston Press

Witches Cradle (1943); Marcel Duchamp and Maya Deren

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

An unfinished collaboration between filmmaker Maya Deren and Marcel Duchamp. (1943) Watch Part I and Part II

Duchamp, Miro, Marc, Monet and Picasso Highlight Christie s Auction of Impressionist and Modern Art

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale will take place at Christie s on 23 June and will offer 46 works of art, including exceptional museum-quality masterpieces by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc, Joan Miro, Camille Pissarro and Marcel Duchamp. The auction is expected to realise in excess of £40 million and will be on public view at Christie s in London from 18 to 23 June 2009. Deux nus: un fort et un vite, 1912, by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) Deux nus: un fort et un vite, 1912, by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) is one of very few important early drawings by the artist to remain in private hands (estimate: £800,000 to £1,200,000). Dating to the period when the artist stormed onto the art scene with great controversy, it is the first of three radical and groundbreaking studies that Duchamp executed in Spring 1912 in preparation for his painting The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes , now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In early 1912, Duchamp painted Nude Descending a Staircase and submitted it to the Salon des Independantes in Paris. The painting was rejected, perhaps because the judges saw Duchamp s work as a jibe towards Cubist art. He later submitted the painting to the 1913 Armory Show in New York where it became the centre of controversy once again. The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes, for which the present work is the early study, was painted in a somewhat similar style and depicts figures in motion, juxtaposed with static entities. Cubism was naturally static, and Duchamp mocked its pretensions by adding movement, seeking a more fluid fourth dimension. Formerly in the collection of Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, it has since been in the collection of the present owners for 30 years and is offered at auction of the first time.- excerpt from Artdaily.org

Can artists create art by doing nothing?

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

More than 20 artists will pay homage to Felicien Marboeuf in an eclectic exhibition opening in Paris next week. Although he s hardly a household name, Marboeuf (1852-1924) inspired both Gustave Flaubert and Marcel Proust. Having been the model for Frederic Moreau, he resolved to become an author lest he should remain a character all his life. But he went on to write virtually nothing: his correspondence with Proust is all that was ever published - and posthumously at that. Marboeuf, you see, had such a lofty conception of literature that any novels he may have perpetrated would have been pale reflections of an unattainable ideal. In the event, every single page he failed to write achieved perfection, and he became known as the "greatest writer never to have written". Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter, wrote John Keats. Jean-Yves Jouannais, the curator of this exhibition, had already placed Marboeuf at the very heart of Artistes sans Oeuvres (Artists without Works), his cult book that first appeared in 1997 and has just been reprinted in an expanded edition. The artists he brings together all reject the productivist approach to art, and do not feel compelled to churn out works simply to reaffirm their status as creators. They prefer life to the dead hand of museums and libraries, and are generally more concerned with being (or not being) than doing. Life is their art as much as art is their life - perhaps even more so. Jouannais believes that the attempt at an art-life merger, which so preoccupied the avant garde of the 20th century, originated with Walter Pater s contention that experience, not "the fruit of experience", was an end in itself. Oscar Wilde s nephew, the fabled pugilist poet Arthur Cravan, who kick-started the dada revolution with Francis Picabia before disappearing off the coast of Mexico - embodied (along with Jacques Vache or Neal Cassady) this mutation. Turning one s existence into poetry was now where it was at. "I like living, breathing better than working," Marcel Duchamp famously declared. "My art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral; it s a sort of constant euphoria." The time frame of the artwork shifted accordingly, from posterity - Paul Eluard s "difficult desire to endure" - to the here and now. Jouannais celebrates the skivers of the artistic world, those who can t be arsed. "If I did anything less it would cease to be art," Albert M Fine admitted cheekily on one occasion. Duchamp also prided himself on doing as little as possible: should a work of art start taking shape he would let it mature - sometimes for several decades- like a fine wine.

Reflections, Refractions at the National Portrait Gallery

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Coinciding with the current exhibition Inventing Marcel Duchamp the National Portrait Gallery is also hosting Reflections, Refractions, "an ideal companion piece to the Duchamp-inspired portraiture show featuring works of self-examination by a coterie of influential creators, from Childe Hassam to Edward Hopper to Andy Warhol." Intentionally the work is in the same vein as the Duchamp exhibit, exploring manipulated portraiture and the artists break away from representation. In fact a self-portrait by Robert Rauschenberg titled Autobiography includes a reference to Duchamp s Green Box. "This exhibition of approximately 75 works will probe the complex issues of understanding identity in the past century. Included in the exhibition are self portraits by Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, Louise Nevelson, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, Chuck Close, Larry Rivers, Jacob Lawrence and Faith Ringgold. While the works by these artists reveal traditional themes, including impersonation, reinvention, self-consciousness, vanity and the complex game of seeing a mirrored image, the exhibition will also explore how issues of identity and self-portrayal were bent in new directions in the 20th century as if refracted through a prism. An illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Wendy Wick Reaves, curator of prints and drawings, is the exhibition curator."

Interview with Artist Rafael Rozendaal

Fri, 29 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Art history is a nice story. Some cave man starts to look at bulls and paints them on his wall. Then the next caveman looks at his painting and he is jealous, so he makes a better one. And the story continues. If the 2nd caveman would look at bulls, he wouldnt get any where. The smartest guy knows to look at the painting of his competitor and to upgrade it. It is good to learn from recorded history, otherwise mankind would still be drawing bulls on cavewalls. So i make websites after paintings." - Rafael Rozendaal, 2004 Rafael Rozendaal works within the medium of conceptual internet art and experimental flash design. A majority of his websites rely on user interaction, his subjects "range from clouds to blood, from hands to farts, from hills to dollars, from doors to fire." Rafael has exhibited work internationally at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New Museum, Cell Project Space, Hayward Gallery, Deitch Projects, and WhitneyBiennial.com (to name only a few). His work, although the epitome of contemporary art, is strongly indebted to art history, often directly referencing specific works or artists. He has digitally remade a readymade: Duchamp s Bicycle Wheel, on view at leduchamp.com (2008) . Rozendaal s interpretation of the readymade is interactive and invites the audience to "spin the wheel." Rafael was nice enough to answer a few questions we had about his work and motivations for appropriating from Duchamp. Harold Rosenberg defines Duchamp s assisted readymades as "creating a work of art out of a worthless mechanical reproduction, it subjects a media product to an act that reflects the situation of art in our time." Would you apply this same definition to your work? I think this definition does not apply to my version of the wheel. The piece i made is built on a software that is readily available but still needs a lot of user input, so its not really assisted readymade. Duchamps piece is a collage of two pieces, my piece is a software version of his. It is a very different approach. What were your motivations in directly appropriating from Duchamp in creating this piece? I saw the wheel in the Centre Pompidou and i noticed they had locked the wheel, and you are not allowed to touch it. As far as i know, Duchamp s bicycle wheel is the first interactive piece of art. It is the foundation of everything after. So i felt a need to remake the piece and make it publicly available on the world wide web. Also i am very interested in interactive representation as a fairly uncharted territory in art. Showing a hand that does not move till you touch it. Throughout your practice how have you come to use flash design as your primary medium? Flash is very flexible and fits my ideas. It is a specific way of thinking, a certain lightness and very pragmatic. And it always works on every computer. It is nice to always use the same infrastructure so i can focus on the subject matter instead of practicalities. How do you feel Duchamp s sculpture translates into an interactive piece in the digital realm? Duchamp s piece is no longer interactive in the museum, they locked the wheel. An online version is more portable and ubique, which I think are beautiful qualities. I am very sensitive to the screen, it is my home and studio and exhibition space. Ultimately, without Dada or Duchamp s introduction of the readymade and the everyday into art, do you think Internet Art would be so readily respected as Art and have institutions devoted to it? It would be interesting to travel back in time and somehow cancel Duchamp and Dada. Who knows what direction the world would have headed? However I think things would have happened just the same, if they didnt do it someone else would have felt the place they would leave. It is impossible nowadays to think of art without their influence, it just became so widespread and common knowledge.

100 SEXES D ARTISTES

Thu, 28 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Starting in 1973 artist Jacques Charlier, began his series of caricaturing "artists genitalia." For the next three decades he created 100 imaginary portraits of the "procreative organs" of artists he considers to have been major figures in 20th century contemporary art since, and including, Marcel Duchamp. These caricatures are based on "conceptual analysis and personal interpretations of the artistic attributes of major representatives of modern and contemporary art, thus enabling, among other things, a humorous and satirical re-reading of recent art history." Along with curator Enrico Lunghi and support from French-Speaking Community Wallonia-Brussels and Wallonia-Brussels International, the portraits were initially proposed to be exhibited in the form of posters in an open-air museum in Venice coinciding with the Biennale. The proposal was denied by the Biennale director because he "believed there was a risk of offending the artists concerned." They were also denied public advertising and bill posting space saying it would offend public decency. However, neither of these set backs hindered the artist and curator. With support from the Ministry of Culture and Broadcasting of the French Speaking Community of Belgium, they fought the Venetian censorship and secured letters of permission from all artists concerned. "What is more, galvanized by this inadmissible censorship, we contacted other cities and art institutions who have accepted to present the "100 Sexes d Artistes" project in public space with no hesitation. Which just goes to show the ridiculous nature of the Venetian position... It only remains for the art world and journalists to ask themselves what values the Venice Biennale is promoting if it censors an artistic project in such a dubious and irresponsible manner" The show will continue as planned from 3 to 7 June 2009, on the boat moored at the Riva dei Sette Martiri in Venice. The exhibition will be open from 10am - 8pm. Online images of the caricatures will be released June 3.

Press Release: Futurism at Tate Modern

Wed, 27 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

This exhibition will be the first large-scale showing of Futurism in Britain in thirty years. The movement set out to modernise Italian art and social attitudes and its influence spread across Europe and beyond, revolutionising the response to the dynamism of modern life. Its master of ceremonies was the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and this exhibition celebrates the centenary of his publication of The Founding and First Manifesto of Futurism in 1909. A core group of artists Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini pledged its enthusiastic adherence to Futurism and abandoned the art and culture from the past. The Futurists embraced a celebration of modern technology, speed, and city life and they often painted urban and industrial scenes. The fascination and experience of cars, trams and airplanes is frequently represented in their subject matter together with the use of bold and strident colours on the canvas. Bringing together works from the groundbreaking Futurist exhibition of 1912 that began at the Galerie Bernheim in Paris and traveled to the Sackville Gallery in London and onwards across Europe, this exhibition will reveal the original impact of that show. The effect of Futurism on the Parisian avant-gardes was profound, and this show will examine the nature of that exchange as Cubism and Futurism became inextricably linked. It will also show the impact of the movement in Britain and Russia as it found a response in Vorticism and Russian Futurism. Artists who will feature include Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, [Marcel Duchamp], Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Natalya Goncharova, Liubov Popova, David Bomberg, Wyndham Lewis, C.R.W. Nevinson and Jacob Epstein. Highlights of the exhibition will include: Umberto Boccioni s sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 1913; Carlo Carrà sFuneral of the Anarchist, Galli 1911; and responses to the challenge represented by Futurism in works such as Delaunay s Eiffel Tower 1911; Jacob Epstein s Torso in Metal from the Rock Drill 1913-14 and Picasso s Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc 1914 onto which he pasted the Futurist periodical, Lacerba. Tate Modern Level 4 East Friday 12 June Sunday 20 September 2009 Admission £12.20 ( Concs £10.30 / Senior £11.30 / Family £30.50 / Groups - £11.20 / concs £9.30 / Schools - £3.90 concessions) Opening hours: Sunday to Thursday, 10.00 18.00. Friday and Saturday, 10.00 22.00. Last admission into exhibitions 17.15 (Friday and Saturday 21.15).

Hypermodern dadist in the livery of a trebuchet, even

Tue, 26 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Imagine for a moment that the "Bachelors" or "Nine Malic Molds" of Marcel Duchamp s Large Glass, represent the eight pawns material to a chess player, that they connote the eight files or eight paths which a pawn is compelled to take toward the eighth and final rank, or what is for the pawn its long sought place and moment of gratification, union, and transition. Imagine that the Ninth Malic Mold, the Stationmaster of Duchamp s notes, represents Duchamp, the artist as guide and gatekeeper, the viewer as witness, the protagonist of Duchamp s anonymous allegory, and the metaphorical player himself with the King as his medium and stand in.

53rd Venice Biennale; and coinciding Europe exhibitions

Thu, 21 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Opening June 7 and lasting until November 22, this will be the 53rd Venice Biennale since it was founded in 1895. Including national and international exhibitors and artists, the event spans the entire city of Venice expanding into the lagoon. Highlighted artists include Bruce Nauman, Tracey Emin, and Steve McQueen. Coinciding with the Biennale are outstanding exhibitions at the Royal Academy, Tate Britain, and Tate Modern. Tate Modern will be exhibiting a survey devoted to "Futurism" including works by Carlo Carra, Giocomo Balla, and Gino Severini, among the celebrated "Nude Descending a Staircase," by Marcel Duchamp, compared to "an explosion in a shingle factory."

Jeu d echecs avec Marcel Duchamp (1963) on UbuWeb

Wed, 20 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"This film records an in-depth interview with Duchamp which took place five years before his death, at the time of his first ever one-man show (at the Pasadena Art Museum). It records for posterity Duchamp talking about his life, his ideas on art, why he chose to continue living in America after fleeing France in 1915, and why he virtually abandoned his work as an artist in 1923. An engaging dialogue takes place between Duchamp and film-maker Jean-Marie Drot as they go around the Pasadena show, with the artist commenting on the exhibits and using them to explain the various stages of the development of his work. This is punctuated by the games of chess, which were for Duchamp a passion and a metaphor for the mental discipline he applied to his art. In this film we gain a rare glimpse of him talking with humour and insight about his ideas, and living up to the myth of the artist-philosopher that has grown up around him. Jeu d échecs avec Marcel Duchamp was filmed late 1963 in Pasadena and New York for the Radio Télévision Française (RTF); first broadcast on 8 June 1964 and then shown at the International Festival of Artistic Films and Films of Art (Bergamo, 19 September 1964). The English version was presented in a television broadcast in September 1964 in the Art and Man Series. "

The stuff that dreams are made of; Exhibition at Galerie Moderna, Prague

Tue, 19 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Decades after its demise, Surrealism still flourishes in Prague Surrealism came belatedly to the Czech lands, but when it arrived, it came to stay. The Czech Surrealist movement was an outgrowth of the Poetism practiced by the avant-garde Devětsil group, two of whose founding members, Toyen and Jindřich tyrský, moved to Paris in 1926 and formed close ties with the leader of the French Surrealist movement, André Breton. Another Devětsil member, Josef íma, had already been living in Paris since 1922. The exhibition "Fragments of Dreams" at the relatively new Galerie Moderna brings together an extensive number of works on paper, prints, paintings, a smattering of collages, sculptural objects and photographs by Czech artists working in the Surrealist vein. This show follows on the heels of an exhibition devoted just to Toyen and Sima."

Putting on the dog: William Wegman at Akron Art Museum

Mon, 18 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Akron Art Museum in Ohio currently showcases 56 photographs, in addition to 13 videos by William Wegman, "a conceptual artist who works in a variety of attitudes and approaches, not only in film and photography, but also drawing and painting, moving easily between the various mediums." Using his Weimaraner dogs as vehicles for inspirations and characters in his photographs and videos, Wegman made his work accessible to a larger audience, "For beyond his fame and respect in art circles, he is one of the few contemporary artists to have successfully popularized his work through the mass media." Critic Dorothy Shinn states "echoing Duchamp, Wegman also uses verbal and visual puns to create an atmosphere of archness and eccentricity." The exhibition is on view from May 16 - August 16, 2009, Akron Art Museum is located One South High Akron, OH 44308.

Philips Contemporary Auction Falls Short of Estimate; Homage to Duchamp livens auction room

Fri, 15 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

After this weeks contemporary art auctions held throughout New York City, Philips de Pury & Company fell over $4 million short of their $12.1 million low estimate. 12 works out of the 43 offered failed to sell. Carol Vogel of the New York Times states "the salesroom did come alive occasionally, however. One of the more spirited moments was when Fountain (Buddha), a 1996 cast bronze urinal by Sherrie Levine, sold for $446,500, above its $200,000 high estimate. Four bidders went for Ms. Levine s homage to Marcel Duchamp, one of an edition of six."

Trees + Flowers - Insects Animals: Man Ray; NEW Book June Release

Thu, 14 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Trees + Flowers - Insects Animals" to be published later this upcoming June is a unseen collection of photographs by Man Ray, focusing on recurring themes he was not generally acclaimed for. The photographs subjects range from buildings, landscapes, grasshoppers, rocks, stars, trees, flowers, and animals. Unlike his infamous rayographs and solarized portraits of artworld celebrities, these works show his intimate attraction to using nature as conceptual forms in his compositions. His more familiar works are juxtaposed with these more unlikely subjects, to show recurring composition structure and themes, "There s a well- known photograph of Marcel Duchamp, Tonsure, which shows the artist with the shape of a star shaved into the back of his scalp. It is published alongside a close up of star fish on pebbles taken during the 1920s."

NEW Film Release: "Little Ashes;" Salvador Dali, Luis Brunuel, Fredrico Garcia Lorca

Wed, 13 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Full Synopsis taken from Little Ashes Official Website: WARNING Spoiler Alert!! "Madrid in 1922 is a city wavering on the edge of change as traditional values are challenged by the dangerous new influences of jazz, Freud and the avant-garde. Salvador Dali arrives at university at the age of 18 years old, determined to become a great artist. His bizarre blend of shyness and rampant exhibitionism attracts the attention of two of the university s social elite- Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Bunuel. Salvador is absorbed into their decadent group and for a time he, Luis and Federico become a formidable trio, the most ultra-modern group in Madrid. However, as time passes, Salvador feels an increasingly strong pull toward the charismatic Federico- who is oblivious to the attention he is getting from his beautiful writer friend, Magdalena. Finally, in the face of his friends preoccupations - and Federico s growing renown as a poet - Luis sets off for Paris in search of his own artistic success. Alone in Madrid, Federico struggles against his psyche, tortured by the damning implications of his own religious beliefs and the undeniable voice of his flesh. He is haunted by news of Salvador, who is collaborating on a Surrealist film with Luis and has embarked on an affair with Gala, a married woman. By 1936 Spain is teetering on the precipice of civil war, and Federico, now a highly acclaimed and controversial playwright, receives an invitation to dinner from Salvador and Gala. But the hosts have a rather unusual agenda and the evening is a disaster. A week later, Salvador is hosting a party when he discovers that Federico has been assassinated in the outbreak of war. The walls of self-denial that surround the artist come crashing down as he realizes, too late, the depth of his love for Federico."

This is Not a Museum: NEW Rene Magritte Museum, Opens June 2

Tue, 12 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

On June 2, 2009, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Belgium in collaboration with the Magritte Foundation will proudly open the long awaited Rene Magritte Museum. The museum will showcase over 170 works by Magritte separated chronologically by floor. In addition to its three floors of galleries the building is set to house vast archives of Magritte s paintings and drawings, photographs, letters, exhibition ephemera, as well as a library, resource center, and museum shop. Rene Magritte is venerated as one of the 20th century s most celebrated Surrealist painters. He was born in Belgium in 1898, and moved to Brussels to study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. His work is best known for his "juxtaposition of ordinary objects in unusual context and for giving familiar objects new translations." The museum is located on the Palace Royal, 1 - 1000 Brussels, BE Hours: Tuesday - Sunday, 9:30am - 5pm, Open til 8pm on Wednesdays Tel: +32 2 508.31.11

"Surreal Things" at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Mon, 11 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Opening this past Saturday May 9: The Art Gallery of Ontario presents Surreal Things, an unparalleled theme first to exhibit the influence of Surrealism on 20th century design. The exhibition showcases the work of Surrealist artists and designers headlining: Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray, and Elsa Schiaparelli. The exhibition focuses on Surrealism s contributions and influence on theatre, interior design, fashion, film, architecture and advertising throughout the 20th century. The work, spanning a variety of medium, is presented in five separate thematic sections including: Protest: The Ballet; Surrealism and the Object; The Illusory Interior; Nature Made Strange; and Displaying the Body. Surreal Things is curated by Ghislaine Wood of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. It will travel to Dallas Museum of Art and Minneapolis Institute of Arts later this year.

Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture; New Book Release from MIT Press

Fri, 08 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In this past week MIT Press released Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture; the catalog s release conscides with the current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, located at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. In addition to chronicling Duchamp s aliased self-portraiture, the exhibition and accompanying catalog also showcase portraits of Duchamp by both his peers and later contemporary artists including: Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Francis Picabia, Beaturice Wood, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Yasumasa Morimura, and Douglas Gordon (to name a few). In an unprecedented juxtaposition of approximately one-hundred portraits of Duchamp (in variety of media) the exhibition fuels scholarship on Duchamp s willfull manipulation of techniques and self-identity, as well as explore his reputation and influence as an iconoclast as interpreted by other artists. The accompanying foreword and essays by Janine A. Metcalf, Francis M. Naumann and Michael R. Taylor, and the National Portrait Gallery curators, invite the reader to rethink the role of portraiture in modern and contemporary art. The catalog includes over 100 color illustrations and approximately 50 black and white photographic reproductions. It is available for sale through Amazon.com

Sculpture Displays Take Shape At Tate

Thu, 07 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

As part of DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture,"artist Michael Craig-Martin will select and arrange works from the Tate Collection to focus on the complex ways that sculpture informs our understanding and experience of the physical world" In the exhibit, which started May 1, Craig-Martin aims to "create a new context for the works in the collection" by taking over three of he Tate s gallerys and painting each one "a different vivid colour, centred around a new large-scale wall drawing made specially for the space." "Masterpieces from Michael Craig-Martin';s section of the display include Amedeo Modigliani';s Head (1911-2), Marcel Duchamp';s Fountain (1917, replica 1964), Pablo Picasso';s Cock (1932, cast 1952), Donald Judd';s Untitled (1973), and Franz West';s Viennoiserie (1998)."

Mike Figgis colloborates with Tate for Film Project

Wed, 06 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Academy Award nominated filmmaker Mike Figgis is collobrating with the the Tate Liverpool and Tate Media to make a series of short films featuring conversations with people from Liverpool about the works of art in the Tate Collection. Four works of art from the Tate Collection, including Marcel Duchamp s Fountain will be shown in public places around Liverpool and " members of the public will be invited to talk about the works in these new contexts." Figgis said that his goal for the project is to demonstrate that "art can be discussed, and that the discussion of a work of art is as important as the art itself" and that " a strong work of art will have resonance regardless of where it is or what happens to it".

After Images at the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Tue, 05 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The current show "After Images", which runs until June 13 at the Paula Cooper Galley in New York, "illustrates how artists from Degas, Delacroix and Cézanne through Jasper Johns, Sophie Calle, Louise Lawler and Sherrie Levine have based their work on paintings, drawings or sculptures from history". The show will include loans from private collections and foundations as well as work by contempory artists that the gallery represents. Contempory art in the show includes Sherri Levine s Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp), a gold version of Duchamp s Fountain.

Marcel Duchamp: Reinventing the Wheel

Mon, 04 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"The object in Tate Modern is white and shiny, cast in porcelain, its slender upper part curving outward as it descends to a receiving bowl - into which I urinate. It s just a brief walk from here in the fifth-floor men s loo to Marcel Duchamp s Fountain, an object sealed in a plastic display case on a plinth that is nevertheless almost identical to the receptacle into which I ve just pissed.... Duchamp warned against an attitude of aesthetic delectation that would transfigure his urinal into something artistic. Yet, as a visual form, it is bizarrely lovely, so white and incongruously ethereal, and as art it is ... well, there s a question already tripping me up. Is it art?"

Partnership Between MoMA and High Museum of Art

Fri, 01 May 2009 08:07:31 GMT

This summer, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta will launch a partnership with New York s Museum of Modern Art with an exhibition of Cluade Monet s Water Lilly paintings. The three-year partnership will produce several short rotating exhibits as well as longer large exhibits. Planned exhbits include a 2011 show featuring works by 12 modern art pioneers, including Marcel Duchamp. The partnership which is modeled on the High Museum s previous collaboration with the Louvre, is intended to supplement the High Museum s somewhat lilmited collection by allowing viewers there to see works from the MoMA.

Fountain

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Marcel Duchamp';s Fountain is a uniquely confounding piece. On the one hand, placed in the context of a gallery, Fountain is validated as a work of art; still the piece does not conform to canonical expectations of how a sculpture should look. The work is ostensibly a porcelain urinal – albeit nonfunctioning – turned ninety degrees on its side. The lone conventionally artistic thing the viewer can discern is the artist';s ‘signature.'; In black paint, Duchamp sloppily scrawled R. Mutt, 1917, effectively completing his visual polemic."

"Marcel Duchamp: Chess Master" at the St. Louis University Museum

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Throughout his life, Marcel Duchamp was an enthusiastic and skilled chess player, even declaring at one point that he had given up art in order to play chess. In 1924, he was declared Chess Master by the French Chess Federation. However, instead of giving up art for chess, he used chess to inform and inspire his art. The exhibit "Marcel Duchamp: Chess Master", which opens at the St. Louis University Museum on May 6, is the first exhibit to focus entirely on Duchamp s interest in chess. In addition to works by Duchamp himself, the exhibit includes chess-inspired works by other Dada and Surrealist artists such as Man Ray and Max Ernst. The exhibition will be preceded by panel discussion of Duchamp s chess-playing on May 5 at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis.

Jennifer Shahade Recreates Famous Photo of Marcel Duchamp

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Jennifer Shahade, two-time winner of the World Chess Championship and contibuter to the book "Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess", recently recreated a famous 1963 photograph of Duchamp. The original photograph, which was taken by Julian Wasser at the Pasadena Art Museum, showed Duchamp playing chess against a naked woman. Shahade s version is a video instead of a photo and shows her playing against a naked man. The game they play is based on a game Duchamp won against E. Smith. Shahade also interrupts the game to talk about her resarch on Duchamp and his chess playing.

Moeller Fine Art Berlin Opening Exhibition

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Longtime New York art dealer Achim Moeller is opening a new gallery, called Moeller Fine Art Berlin. The gallery s opening exhbition, "Ouverture" opens on April 28 and includes work by many contermpory artists as well as masterpieces by such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Paul Klee, and Wasilly Kandinsky. The exhibtion will be shown in Palais Eger, a Beller Epoque palace in Berlin.

Male Version of Etant Donnes

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The artist Paul Kos created a male version of Marcel Duchamp s Etant donnés entitled Zizi Va ! for the di Rosa Art Preserve in Napa, California.

Erwin Blumenfeld: I Was Nothing But a Berliner, Dada Montages 1916-1933

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In her new book “Erwin Blumenfeld: I Was Nothing But a Berliner, Dada Montages 1916-1933", Helen Adkins collects and annotates the little-seen dada colleges of Erwin Blumenfeld. Although Blumenfeld was a famous and much sought-after fashion photographer, his colleges were mostly "given away as gifts and sent as letters" and are only being rediscovered now.

L Art: Gas lighting

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Opening this week it the Garrick Player s production of The Gas Heart, a nonsensical play derived from the Dada art movement in the 1920 s...The Gas Heart was written by one of the key figures of the Dada movement, Tristan Tzara. The play, as described by the Tzara, is the greatest three-act hoax of the century"

Theater Review: Ambitious play at OU proves rewarding

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"A play that tries to do almost too much — dealing with love, Lenin, Dada and the "death of art” in a little over two hours — gets enough of it right to make a vivid impression on spectators. The Dada Play, a script by visiting Canadian author Mieko Ouchi, is on stage through Sunday at the University of Oklahoma';s Lab Theatre in Old Science Hall."

"Surrealism and Beyond" at the Cincinnati Museum of Art

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Surrealism and Beyond", which runs until May 17 at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, showcases surrealist and dada art from the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Cincinatti is the only US venue for the exhibit, which " features a glorious mix of works by every major figure from the dada and surrealist movements: Jean Arp, Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Hannah Hoch, Rene Magritte, Man Ray and Kurt Schwitters, to name a few."

Duchamp: Artist as Celebrity

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In a review of the show "Inventing Marcel Duchamp:The Dynamics of Portraiture" at the National Portrait Galley, Blake Gopnik argues that " for Duchamp, portraiture was all about demolishing our stale ideas about an artist - or a person - as a single, stable thing." Rather than use his self-portraits to present himself as he actually was and define his identity, Duchamp used them to invent several alternate identities, including R.Mutt and Rrose Selevay. Portraits made of him by others also contribute to this, and through out the show Duchamp s identity is constantly changing so that he "can be male one minute, female the next. He can be a European man of letters or an outlaw from the Wild West. He can be a fleshy prizefighter or a champagne glass full of inanimate scraps." Although Duchamp s fame, especially in the United States, was tied to his celebrity, he did not present a single, unified image to the public. Instead, his self-portraits and other artists portraits of him presented him from many different angles, and his identity was transforming. Duchamp revolutionized portraiture by challenging the nature of identity and the way identity was shaped through art.

Marcel Duchamp and Portraiture

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In her article New Smithsonian exhibt shows Marcel Duhcamp s influance on Warhol, Jasper Johns, Marsha Ducbrow defends the National Portrait Gallery s decision to show an exhibit about Marcel Duhamp, an artist not known for his portraits. She belives that while Duchamp did not actually make many portraits, he "revolutionized portraiture. And he greatly influenced artists including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, among other key 20th and 21st century artists whose works are included in Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture (March 27-August 2, 2009)." Duchamp was "a master of self-invention" who changed the concept of what a self-portrait or portrait could be. Duchamp had many alter-egos, such as Rrose Selevy and R. Mutt, as well as making influantial self-portraits, such as Belle haleine - Eau de voilette and Wanted. While he did not produce many self-portraits,many of his works explored the concept of identity and defining the self, and thus he revolutionazed the art of portraiture and inspired future artists.

A Pleasing Secret History: Andrei Codrescu s Posthuman Dada Guide

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Eli Epstein-Deutsch reviews Andrei Codrescu s new book, The Posthuman Dada Guide , which he calls, "a hard-edged, rapier-like volume, perfect for sliding into a back pocket of skinny hipster pants or stabbing into the complacent underbelly of bourgeois (or bourgeois-bohemian) society...it offers a headier-than-usual tour of the early-1900s avant-garde, sprinkled with sex appeal for the would-be MySpace-age revolutionary."

The Stettheimer Dollhouse

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

A new book, The Stettheimer Dollhouse, tells the fascinating story of the Stettheimer Dollhouse. The dollhouse was built over nearly two decades by Carrie Walter Stettheimer, starting in the 1920s. What makes the dollhouse extraordinary is that all the art on its walls consists of minature versions of famous paintings. Stettheimer knew many of the great artists of her time personally, so these reproductions are often by the original artist. One such work is a minature version of "Nude Descending a Staircase" drawn by Marcel Duchamp. The book, written by Sheila Clark, includes descriptions of each room in the dollhouse as well as commentary about each artist featured.

"The Quick and the Dead" at the Walker Art Center

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

From April 25 to September 27,The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN will show the exhibit "The Quick and the Dead" which focuses on the history of conceptual art. The exhibit "juxtaposes a core group of works from the 1960s and ‘70s with more recent examples that might only loosely qualify as conceptual" and includes many works that have never been shown before. It also includes work by Marcel Duchamp as well as other innovators in the conceptual art movement, such as Bruce Nauman. Its goal is to examine conceptual art s history as well as its "ability to engage with some of the deeper mysteries and questions of our lives". The exhibition starts with an after hours/ preview party on April 24.

Marcel Duchamp & l erotisme

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The new book "Marcel Duchamp & l érotisme gathers the "contributions of international art historians and critics for a symposium on the theme Marcel Duchamp & erotisme in Orleans University, France" in 2005. The book is available only in French.

Experimental Dada Films

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Click on the link to view experimental Dada films by Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Viking Eggeling

Modern Art Explained :What Do You Think?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Times online is asking readers for their opinions on Marcel Duchamp s 1917 work Fountain. The Times encourages readers to email their opinion on the ground-breaking art and will publish a selection of the responses, along with comments by an expert. Click on the link to view other s comments or submit you own.

Mathieu Briand s "In Memorial of Albert Hofmann 1906-2008"

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The artist Mathieu Brand has created the exhibtion "In Memorial of Albert Hofman 1906-2008" as an homage to Hofman, the scinetist who created LSD. The exhibition seeks to "challenge all the senses" while also developing parallels between Hofman and various artists, including Marcel Duchamp. It features many works which are homages to works by Duchamp including "Holy Stability", which is made of a scale with a Bible on one side and a copy of "The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp" on the other, and "The Bicycle of the Day" which is an upside down bicycle that uses a copy of one of Duchamp s roto-reliefs as its wheel. The exhibit ends tomorrow and is at the anne+ gallery in Paris

Andrei Codrescu interview on WSN Radio

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Andrei Codrescu, the author of the new book "The Posthuman Dada Guide" was interviewed by WSN Radio. He is the author of 40 books of essays, poetry, and fiction and the winner of a Peabody award for the PBS version of his book Road Scholar. His new book is an encylopedic look at the history of Dada and a "guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life." Click on the link to here the interview.

Poem about Marcel Duchamp

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

An online poetry contest features a poem about Marcel Duchamp. The poem, titled "Little Triolet with Toilet", references the work of Marcel Duchamp as well as the surrealist Meret Oppenheimer.

"Abstract Cinema and Technology" at the MoCA North Miami

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Museum of Contempory Art in North Miami is currently showing the exhibition "Abstract Cinema and Technology" which "explores how technological innovations from the 1920s to the present provided new ways for artists to create abstract moving images". The exhibtiton features the 1926 film Anemic Cinema, a collaboration between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, as well as work by other Dada artists such as Hans Richter. It includes artists from every era in it s attempt to show the evolution of abstract film and its relation to the development of abstract paintings. The exhibition runs through May 11.

"Art is Arp" at the Arp Museum Banhoff Rolandseck

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Arp Museum Bahnof Rolandseck is currently showing the exhibititon "Art is Arp", "one of the most comprehensive retrospectives on Hans Arp ever undertaken". The exhibit, which runs until June 14, includes "over 100 drawings, collages, sculptures, and reliefs" as well as numerous texts, photographs, and other documents made by Arp, the founder of the Zurich Dada movement. Although the exhibit includes works from all periods of Arp s career, it focuses on pieces which explore "the law of chance", automatism, and the process of creating. It also includes much of Arp s literary work, including audio recordings of his poetry, which sought to "surpass all conventional rules of language."

"In Sight" at the Laumeier Sculpture Park

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Laumeier Sculpture Park in St Louis is currently showing "In Sight: Selections from the Collection", and exhibition of "rarely-seen works, unique ephemera and recent acquisitions from its extensive collection of contemporary art." The exhibit includes sculpture, videos, books, and sound art. It also includes Laumier s collection of "S.M.S" portfolios, a 1968 project by surrealist artist William Copley which feature six portfolios by various artists, including Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The exhibit ends May 10, 2009.

Futurism Exhibit in Rome

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

To celebrate the 100th anniversy of the publication of The Futurist Manifesto, the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome is currently showing an exhibition of futurist work and the art that was influanced by it, including works by Georges Braque, Picasso, Umberto Boccioni, Marcel Duchamp, and Francis Picabia. The centenial celebration is happening all over the world and will also include a traveling exhibition and performances, including a performance by Brian Eno. The exhibition started on Febuary 20 and lasts until May 24.

SMS Listening Party Recap

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"The next piece we listened to may be considered the pièce de résistance of the SMS Portfolios. Marcel Duchamp';s cover for SMS #2 consists of a seven-minute recording of Duchamp playing contrapetrie, a Surrealist word game that creates meaningful phrases from similar-sounding words. A spiralling example printed on the opposite side of the record, “Esquivons les ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots exquis,” (literally “Let us evade the bruises of Eskimos with exquisite words”) provides a visual counterpart reminiscent of Anemic Cinema. While the French audio was met with varying levels of comprehension, the artist';s endearing inclusion of a single English pun, “My niece is cold because my knees are cold” brought laughter to the entire room."

The Creative Act-BLOT vs Marcel Duchamp

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"This is our interpretation of a paper by Marcel Duchamp, presented to the convention of the American Federation of Arts in Houston, Texas, April 1957. The narration is by Duchamp himself, and the stop motion animation is done by Thiruda at the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Barcelona in late 2008."

Monitor Interviews the Artist

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

On April 9th, the British Film Institute in Southbank will show "Monitor Interviews the Artist", a selection of interviews with and films about artists, including Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte and Andy Warhol. The films come from the archive of the British TV show "Monitor", which ran during the 1950s and was known for its intellectual and thought-provoking take on the arts.

Canada s Only Stop: Prized Surrealist Art at the AGO this Summer

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"This summer, reality will be suspended at the Art Gallery of Ontario as it welcomes Surreal Things, an innovative exhibition organized by London';s Victoria and Albert Museum. A Canadian exclusive which runs May 9 to August 30, 2009, this is the first exhibition to examine the influence of Surrealism on the world of design as expressed in, theatre, interiors, fashion, film, architecture, and advertising. The show explores how some of the greatest artists of the 20th century engaged with Surrealism to create extraordinary objects. Surreal Things showcases more than 200 items drawn from public and private collections worldwide, many of which have rarely been exhibited before. The exhibition highlights the work of Surrealist artists and designers who were productive after 1930, including Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray, and Elsa Schiaparelli."

Mona Lisa Images for a Modern World

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Using the Mona Lisa to mediate between high and low culture is not new. Soon after the turn of the 20th century, the Dada movement revolted against the "high cultural" content of the visual arts. In doing this, in some cases the Dadaists elevated the mundane into the world of the "aesthetic" by forcing observers to look at everyday objects in surprisingly new contexts. At other times cherished objects and symbols were ridiculed. The most well known act of degrading a famous work of art is probably Marcel Duchamp s L.H.O.O.Q., a cheap postcard-sized reproduction of the Mona Lisa upon which in 1919 the artist drew a mustache and a thin goatee beard."

The Heir & the Cowboy: Social Predisposition, Mediation & Artistic Profession in Marcel Duchamp & Jackson Pollock

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Marcel Duchamp enjoyed the security and the support derived from his family';s station and from having the social and cultural capital he accumulated throughout his personal evolution. As a result of this inheritance, the artist was able to postpone remarkably the moment of his consecration. Jackson Pollock hailed from a family of farmers and had to go to great lengths to make a place for himself in the avant-garde art of the mid 20th century. The social space Duchamp is in a position to ignore is the antithesis of Jackson Pollock';s need for success."

View Magazine s Marcel Duchamp Special Issue, 1945

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Scholars often see View s most valuable contribution as its role in the introduction of Surrealist art to an American audience during the years 1940-1947. Although several recent studies examine the magazine generally within the context of Surrealism in America, few focus closely on the individual issues themselves...The Marcel Duchamp issue in March of 1945 appeared at a moment when Ford s magazine was enjoying some relative success, and Breton s own attempt at a Surrealist journal, VVV, had faltered... The Duchamp issue represents another point of artistic contact. The issue is a near collaboration between Breton, his friend Duchamp, and the Austrian-born architect and designer Frederick Kiesler"

Ubu Roi, book binding by Marcel Duchamp and Mary Reynolds

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"This binding is perhaps the best known and most successful of the collaborations between Reynolds and Duchamp. On November 26, 1934, Duchamp visited his close friend Henri-Pierre Roché in Arago and excitedly reported on a binding that he had just designed for Alfred Jarry';s Ubu Roi that Mary Reynolds was going to execute. Reynolds and Duchamp created out of the binding itself an extraordinarily clever pun. Both the front and back covers are cut-out U';s covered in rich earth tones; the spine is a soft caramel B."

Marcel Duchamp

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"With so much ado about his urinals and wheels, it';s easy to forget that Marcel Duchamp was also an exceptional painter. But Duchamp rejected painting. He rejected, that is, his talent. The fact that an exceptional painter rejected painting -- and ultimately may even have rejected art -- is precisely what lends Duchamp';s work its disconcerting gravity."

Duchamp, Love and Death, Even

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"After Duchamp s death a final set was released in French under the title Marcel Duchamp: Notes (1980) and followed by its English translation in 1983. This has provoked a stream of publications in English as well as further offerings from Europe and elsewhere. One of these is Juan Antonio Ramirez Duchamp: love and death, even, originally published in Spanish and subsequently translated into English. It provides a useful but problematic addition to the canon. Ramirez aim is to project a beam of light over Duchamp s career. First to be illuminated are the Munich works from 1912 with the sweep finally arresting in 1966 on his last installation Given: 1. The waterfall,.. The last section of the book discusses this work through a variety of sources while giving particular attention to the 1967 Operating Instructions and Ramirez, good lighthouse keeper that he is, follows its directives, completes his examination and switches off the lamp."

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, and Chess

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In his article All Artists are Not Chess Players Allan Savage looks at the chess playing of Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and Francis Picabia. All three were fascinated by the game and incorporated it into their artwork. Man Ray blieived that a square grid, such as a chess board, was "the basis for all art… it helps you to understand the structure, to master a sense of order" and he incorporated chess imagery into much of his art. Picabia was also influanced by the chess board, and created works inspired by it, such as Molecular Construction (1919). However, Man Ray and Picabia were not as skilled at the game as Duchamp was. Savage argues that this is because "of the three artists, Duchamp had the greatest motivation to achieve a modicum of success in chess" because " He was disciplined and self-absorbed. He was happy to work alone for long hours and days, which made studying the games of the great masters possible." Thus he was able to play chess well and even become semi-professional. He also made many works inspired by his love of chess, including Chessmen (1918), Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled (1932) and Pocket Chess Set (1943–1944).

Excerpt from The Posthuman Dada Guide: tzara and lenin play chess

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life. It is and it was always foolish and self-destructive to lead a Dada life because a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously."

Reproductions from the MoMA s collection at the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street subway station

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The MoMA is currently displaying large-scale reproductions of works from their collection, including Marcel Duchamp s Bicycle Wheel (1913), at the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street subway station in Brooklyn. The display, which is intended to increase awareness of the museum s collection, will last until March 15, 2009. The display is accompanied by audio commentries on selected works, which can be accessed by calling 1-888-939-MoMA , as well as a website which provides additional information about the works, including a video tour of the subway station.

Chess and Art

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In a blog post Jennifer Shahade, who annotated 15 chess games for the upcoming book Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess, argues against the idea that Duchamp "renounced art for chess". Instead, she says, Duchamp s chess playing acutally contributed to his art. He created works inspired by chess, from his early work The Chess Game (1910) The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even) (1915-1923). Shahade also argues that chess and art have many factors in common, such as the fact that confidence and focus are key to both. She concludes that Duchamp s chess playing was not simply "seless pastime that didn';t inspire him or add anything to his oeuvre", but rather a vital part of his life and art.

Duchamp s Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette Sells for $11 Million at Auction

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp s Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette sold for $11 million as part of a Christie s auction of art belonging to the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. The work, which surpassed its esitmated price of $1 million, was described by Dada scholar Francis Naumann as “one of the most provocative works of art ever made, a simple bottle of perfume whose liquid long ago evaporated, but whose essence, to be sure, will continue to influence artists long into the future.” The auction, which included works by Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Klee, and James Ensor set the world record for the most expensive collection ever sold at a private auction, with many works selling at prices a great deal higher than thier estimates. Belle Helleine was purchased by M. Giraud, a New York art dealer acting on behalf of an unnamed client, who also bought The Cuckoos, a Blue and Pink Rug, a 1911 painting by Henri Matisse.

Controversial Exhibition Features Work By Marcel Duchamp

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Starting September 22, the Hamburger Banhof Museum in Berlin will present the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, which includes work by Marcel Duchamp. The exhibition has been critisized for its connection to Flick s grandfather "who made his fortune from the war arms industry during the Nazi regime using Jewish slave labourers". Because of this, many within the Jewish community have protested against the exhibit. However, the curator "maintains that the point of the exhibition goes beyond scandals - it is for art´s sake and should be looked at from an aesthetical point of view". The collection includes "complementary information on the family s past" and "while the exhibition is on, further research on the family will also be done." The point of showing the collection is not to perpetuate the elder Flick s anti-semetic behaivor, but rather to make an extraordianary collection of art availiable to the public, as well as educating them about Germany s past.

The Marcel Duchamp I Married

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In an excerpt from her memoir A Marriage in Check: The Heart of the Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelor, Even, Duchamp s wife Lydie Fischer Sarazin-Levassor tells about their relationship. Although they initially had a happy marriage, Sarazin-Levassor soon found herself excluded from Duchamp s life. Duchamp essentially abandoned his wife, and altough she atttempted to put up a facade of a happy marriage, the two eventually divorced a year after marrying. Here is another link with information (in French) about the new English edition of the book and the original French edition: http://www.lespressesdureel.com/ouvrage.php?id=968

Jerry Saltz s Idol Thoughts

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In his article Idol Thoughts, Jerry Saltz considers the commonly held view that Duchamp is"an anti-artist and an iconoclast. ". Saltz believes this view is "entirely false" and in fact Duchamp "wasn t against art at all; he was against the hypocritical aura surrounding it". Instead of seeking to destroy art, Duchamp s work "is an incarnation of the invisible essence of art" that combines image and idea in a way that had never been done before.

Man Ray: Unconcerned but not Indifferent at the Hague Museum of Photography

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Hague Museum of Photography exhibit Man Ray: Unconcerned but not Indifferent, which started on January 24 and continues until April 19 2009, "is the first exhibition to reveal Man Ray s complete creative process". It features more than 300 items, including photography, readymades, and paintings and "examines the four separate creative phases in Man Ray';s life...each [of which] is closely connected with the place where he was living (New York, Los Angeles or Paris), his friends at the time and the sources of inspiration around him"

Marcel Duchamp:Etant donnes at the Philidelphia Museum of Art

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Philidelphia Museum of Art will present the exhibit Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés. The exhibit includes the work Étant donnés, which has been described by Jasper Johns as “the strangest work of art in any museum”, plus "close to eighty works of art related to its installment, including all the known studies, photographs, erotic objects, and other materials." The exhibit was created to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the piece going on public display, and runs from August 15, 2009 to November 1, 2009.

"Notation" at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Berlin

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The exhibit "Notation: Calculation and Form in the Arts", which has its opening tomorrow, " is dedicated to the spectrum of diverse artistic processes existing between the conception and the work". The exhibit features work from a diverse spectrum of artists, including Marcel Duchamp. It includes all types of art, from choreography and music to paintings. In addition, it seeks to explore the connections between science and art as well as "relationship between concept, recording, repetition and work". The exhibit runs from March 1 to July 26.

Getting the Picture: Illustrated Letters in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Smithsonian Museum s Archives of American Art is currently presenting an exhibit of artist s illustrated letters selected by Archives of American Art Curator of Manuscripts Liza Kirwin. The exhibit encompesses letters from the early 1900s through the 1980s and includes letters written by Marcel Duchamp.

R. Mutt sticker

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"If you want to turn your toilet into a work of art, how about adorning it with this R. Mutt sticker from Thwart Design? Replicating the R. Mutt 1917 signature that Marcel Duchamp put on the original Fountain, does adding the sticker to your loo make it a work of art? It s an interesting thought and continues the question that Duchamp raised with the original piece. Buy your sticker for 15 euros at Atypyk and join in by making your own ready-made sculpture."

Yves Saint Laurent Auction will Feature Work by Duchamp

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

An upcoming auction of art from the collection of Yves Saint Laurent will feature Duchamp s piece Belle Haleine - Eau de Voilette (1921). The piece, which is a perfume bottle with a photo of Duchamp dressed as a woman on it, is estimated to sell for 1 million Euros. The auction was organized by Saint Laurent s longtime partner Pierre Bergé following Saint Laurent s death last year. All proceeds from the auction will go to scientific and Aids research.

SMS Listening Party

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Dissonent Plane, an experimental music store in Seattle, is partenering with Davidson Galleries to present an SMS listening party. SMS is a "series of six portfolios of multiples released in 1968 by the surrealist William Copley" and "six of the works in the SMS portfolios are sound pieces", including a phonograph record by Marcel Duchamp. The party will be tonight at 7 pm and will last three hours.

The National Portrait Galley to exhibit "Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture"

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C will exhibit "Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture" from March 27, 2009 to August 2, 2009. The exhibit features portraits and self-portraits of Duchamp, many of which have never been exhibited before, in order to "demonstrate that Duchamp harnessed the power of portraiture and self-portraiture both to secure his reputation as an iconoclast and to establish himself as a major figure in the art world". The work featured ranges from 1912 to the present, including works by Man Ray, Andy Warhol, and Francis Picabia.

MoMA Deifies Dada s Top Dog, But Husband, Wife Steal Show

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In a review of the Museum of Modern Art s Dada exhibition, Mario Naves contends that Duchamp s readymades have wrongly "become 20th century classics", while Duchamp himself has been "set...up as a deity". Naves believes that Duchamp himself, who once said "I threw the bottlerack and urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty", would have viewed this "with amused contempt". Today Duchamp s readymades are deified by the very institutions which they once satirized and rebelled against. Naves contends that this has taken away their power and made them "dull and inert". In some ways, this is true. The power of Duchamp s readymades, especially Fountain do not simply reside in the objects themselves, but rather in the combination of the objects and their contexts. Duchamp submitting Fountain for exhibition, its refusal, and the subsequent article which he wrote defending it in The Blind Man are as much a part of the work as the urinal itself. A visitor who sees Fountain in a museum and knows nothing of the story behind it is missing out on context, and therefore not able to understand the full meaning of the work. Much of the power of Duchamp s readymades comes from the fact that they were revolutionary, breaking free from the established rules of art making and proposing a whole new way in which to approach art. By "deifying" Duchamp s work, the museum declares without question that the readymades are art, therefore removing the possibility of questioning and the ambiguity that are part of the works.

Societe Anonyme

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In 2007 the Phillips Collection in Washington DC launched its Center for the Study of Moden Art with the exhibit "Societe Anonyme". The exhibit is named after an orginization founded by Marcel Duchamp, Katherine Dreier, and Man Ray. Societe Anoyme s goals were "to break down the prejudice which exists against the new approach to art" and to "stay ahead or abreast of the times...to stimulate the imagination and inventive attitude of America". The group was enormously influential, "generat[ing] thirty publications, more than eighty contemporary art exhibitions, and 85 public programs" according to K. Kimberly King in her article Stop, See, and Soar: "Societe Anoyme" at the Expanded Phillips Collection. While reviewing the exhibit, King relates details from the life and work of Katherine Dreier, a little known artist and collector "whose matronly appearance and frilly dresses cloaked a dedicated revolutionary" and who "alter[ed]...modern art" through her partnership with Duchamp.

"Surrealism and Beyond" at the Cincinnati Art Museum

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The Cincinnati Art Museum will be the only venue in the US to show the traveling exhibit "Surrealism and Beyond: In the Israel Museum, Jerusalem", which showcases Dada and Surrealist art from the collection of the Israel Museum. The exhibit features 234 pieces, starting from the beginning of the Dada movement and ending with recent works. It includes such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Rene Magritte, and runs from Febuary 15 to May 17. Another story on the exhibit: www.ohio.com/entertainment/attractions/40716217.html

Vezzoli s Greed Premieres in Rome

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Milan-based artist Francesco Vezzoli officially launches his new faux perfume, Greed, at Gagosian Gallery in Rome, Feb. 6-Mar. 21, 2009. Described as "a signature perfume for the contemporary moment," Greed is specifically modeled on Marcel Duchamp';s 1921 perfume Belle Haleine, and features on its label an image of Vezzoli in drag, photographed by Francesco Scavullo. A special 60-second commercial for the product, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Natalie Portman and Michele Williams, can be previewed here. www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2009-02-06_greed-a-new-fragrance-by-francesco-vezzoli/#/videos/1/Greed, it should be noted, exists only as a concept; no actual perfume was produced."

We are Duchampians

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Duchamp became influential for bringing this lesson of the chess board to the art world, showing that art, like chess, is a set of rules that functions independently of the positive properties of the pieces -- replacing the art object with a bike tire or a bottle rack, for instance. Asking his friends and contemporaries to trade the traditional chess pieces in for their own inventions at the Julien Levy Gallery was, in a way, the beginning the infiltration of his ironic relation towards visual values into broader artistic discourse."

In the Manner of Duchamp, 1942-47: the years of the "mirrorical return"

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"In the Manner of Delvaux may seem too slight a work to inaugurate so substantial a reversal in artistic practices and style. After all, the photographic collage did not attract much attention at the time of its creation. But Duchamp was a magician in the economy of small gestures. One of the delights that drew him to the world of chess was the way in which the simple movement of a pawn by one square could rearrange the dynamics of the entire board. In the Manner of Delvaux was just such a pawn, advanced a single square on the chessboard of his art."

Etant donnes

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In his article Private Lives, Public Gestures Jörg Heiser draws a surprising conection between Marcel Duchamp s Étant donnés: 1. La chute d';eau, 2. Le gaz d';éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas)(1946-66) and the movie Rocky (1976). Heiser argues that the lamp in Étant donnés is a reference to the Statue of Liberty, a connection farther established by the phrase "Le gaz d';éclairage", a pun on La liberté éclairant le monde, the Statue of Liberty s official title. By connecting the Statue of Liberty to an erotic image, Duchamp comments on the connection between the "abstract idea of freedom and enlightenment...and, equally significantly, the concrete presence of sexuality and desire". While Duchamp presents Liberty as trapped behind a closed door, "traumatized [and] fragmented", "Rocky, in turn, presents Liberty as an accessible goal, achieved through the combined efforts of channelling anger into sportsmanship and desire into social empathy". Connecting Étant donnés to Rocky may seem far-fetched, but Heiser believes that "in their own ways, both frame the contradictions of the American Dream – its desires and frustrations, its confusions of sex and power – as seen through the eyes of an expatriate French artist and the son of an Italian blue-collar immigrant." Despite the differences between them,"both Étant donnés and Rocky render palpable the connections between intimate dreams and desires and the seemingly abstract political ideas of freedom and opportunity."

Rrose Selavy, Man Ray 1921

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"In choosing Man Ray to take a portrait of Rrose Sélavy, Duchamp co-opted the most adept photographer of glamour on behalf of the 20th century s most celebrated conceptual art. Man Ray gives Rrose the lighting, the sultry look, that made him so in demand in magazines such as Vogue. In a series of photographs in 1921 and later in the mid-1920s, his camera searches for Rrose in Marcel Duchamp, and eventually finds her."

Marcel Duchamp

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Embodying the intellect of his literary contemporaries Marcel Proust and James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) has been aptly described by the painter Willem de Kooning as a one-man movement. Jasper Johns has written of his work as the field where language, thought and vision act on one another. Duchamp has had a huge impact on twentieth-century art. By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists as retinal art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted, he said, to put art back in the service of the mind. "

Art and Synesthesia: in search of the synesthetic experience

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

" Questioning identity. Marcel Duchamp had taken a mesmerizing photograph of himself, gathered around a table —a co-presence with his additional selves. This multiple-self-portret represents five images of the artist, a mise-en-scène of a brainstorming session with himself. We see a manifestation of introspection, a reflective moment of pause in a circular tango of thoughts. Marcel Duchamp said: The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I ve noticed that most artists only repeat themselves .

Debating American Modernism Stieglitz, Duchamp, and the New York Avant-Garde

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"A rich dialogue between the circles of artists associated with American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) spurred the development of modern art in the United States between 1915 and 1929. During World War I many European artists, including Duchamp, left their homelands bound for New York, a metropolis thriving with industrial and technological advancement. "

"Marcel Duchamp: a work that is not a work of art" extended for one more week

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:07:31 GMT

The popular exhibition "Marcel Duchamp: a work that is not a work of art" in La Boca, Buenos Aires will continue for an extra week. The exhibition, which opened on November 22, 2008, was a huge sucess and has recieved 30,000 visitors. It features 123 works by Duchamp, including objects, works on paper, and photographs, and will close Febuary 8, 2009.

A romp with the rat pack

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"This is a very large exhibition, with more than 300 works: paintings, photographs, sculptures, readymades, films, chess sets, and a wealth of documentary material. There is much here I was previously unaware of. The show takes us from the early years of the 20th century to 1976, when the last of the trio, Man Ray, died. In between, there are shocks and surprises, dirty pictures and beautiful enigmas."

Judovitz `unpacks Duchamp and his legacy to modernism

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

" It didn t bother Dalia Judovitz that she was officially an expert in 17th century French literature and philosophy when she decided to write a book on Marcel Duchamp, considered by many to be the major art figure of the 20th century. Even though she was not an art historian, she had a strong background in aesthetics and a philosophical and conceptual interest in art. She was intrigued by the philosophical significance of Duchamp s artworks. In her 1995 book Unpacking Duchamp, Art in Transit, Judovitz examines how Duchamp questioned the category of the artist, the creative act and how art institutions define art. Duchamp was not only an artist; he was interested in how art objects reflect institutions and how those institutions enshrine the artwork; he also challenged the limits between art and non-art, said Judovitz"

Towards a Definition

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"The complexity of the deceivingly simple-looking Readymades has challenged many over the past century. Trying to pin down the collection of Readymades into a workable body of pieces, many have attempted to seperate them into seperate catergories according to their relative degrees of purity . The formation of such a scale on which to rate the readymades requires a basis for comparison, a point from which to gage degrees of variation: namely a comprehensive defintion of the readymade. This has posed a clear challenge."

Dreier and Duchamp, modernism s dynamic duo

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Dreier and Duchamp. Duchamp and Dreier. As dynamic artist duos go, the pairing of Katherine S. Dreier and Marcel Duchamp does not have the familiar ring of Picasso and Braque, or Johns and Rauschenberg. But it should, and "The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America" at the Phillips Collection here may begin to make it so."

The flag: Michael Taylor picks Marcel Duchamp

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"The biting satire of [Duchamp s] portrait of George Washington reflects the artist s nihilistic mood during the Second World War, which had brought back painful memories of the jingoistic patriotism that had led to the senseless loss of so many of his friends and even family members, including his oldest brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon, during the First World War."

Influances and Originality

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In his article Reinventing the wheel, Jonathan Jones states that Duchamp s "big idea - that any ordinary "readymade" object can be chosen by the artist as a work of art - has sunk so deep into modern culture that he is imagined almost as a biblical prophet, a remote figure of authority." Jones argues that today the ideas behind Duchamp s readymades are taken for granted and we often forget what a wholly original and unprecedented concept thte readymade was. Duchamp "discovered something new; no one can discover it again", and despite the many contempory artists who are influanced by Duchamp, his work is "inimitable" because of the ideas behind it.

Excerpt from Marcel Duchamp: Art as Anti-Art

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Why Not Sneeze? was not a success. Not many people saw it, and those who did found it hard to understand, but too strange to be meaningless. It was the kind of transitional object that channeled the hot air of Dada into the lungs of Surrealism, which was at that time just evolving. Later in 1936, Why Not Sneeze? was even included in a Surrealist exhibition in Paris. It was placed in a showcase alongside fetishes of the Papua, as well as mathematical demonstration models from the Poincaré (scientific) Institute."

Museum of Hoaxes: Marcel Duchamp

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) always held the snobbishness of art collectors and gallery owners in disdain. While he was a revolutionary artist with at least one eternal masterpiece ( Nude Descending a Staircase ), he was also a supreme prankster to those few who got the joke. "

Marcel Duchamp s Legacy to 20th Century Art

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"The `readymades, as Duchamp called them, borrowing an English word he picked up in New York, are usually understood as critical pranks that show how arbitrary is the marriage of object and meaning or intent in traditional artworks. "In `The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp, Jerrold Seigel, professor of history at New York University, has a less confrontational view of Duchamp that sets the artist apart from the refractory high jinks of Dada with which he is commonly associated."

Art and economics: Duchamp s postmodern returns Marcel Duchamp - Post-ing Modernism

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Marcel Duchamp s most radical departure from painting is embodied in his discovery and exploration of the ready-mades (1913-1927), works which usurp the notion of reproduction by highlighting the redundancy of a work of art as a commonplace object. According to Octavio Paz, the ready-made defies a dialectical interpretation of value, since it implies neither its negation nor its affirmation. Conceived as the plastic equivalent of a pun, the ready-made is a mechanism that stages the gratuitous conversion of an ordinary object into a work of art, while undermining through this gesture the notion of an art object. As criticism in action, the ready-made radically disrupts the valuative judgment of a work, as a work of art.(6) As the ready-mades demonstrate, Duchamp s exploration of the concepts of art and value is not an abstract philosophical inquiry, but a literal one. Rather than asking what is value? Duchamp proceeds to demonstrate its conditions and modes of operation as a social phenomenon. Not content to restrict himself to philosophical and institutional questions, Duchamp takes on the question of value on its most basic level, not merely as artistic abstraction but also as an economic phenomenon."

Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Currently on view in Measure of Time, an evolving exhibition examining temporality and duration in American art of the past century, are works from the BAM collections by two ancestors of the assemblage aesthetic celebrated in Semina Culture: the consummate intellectual gamesman Marcel Duchamp, and Joseph Cornell, maker of poetically evocative box constructions."

Duchamp s Persona

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In her article Duchamp s Hidden Noise: A Lifelong Flirtation With Fame, Alice Goldfarb Marquis considers Duchamp s relationship to the media and the persona which he created for himself through interviews. Marquis asserts that "Duchamp worked harder at burnishing his persona than he ever did at creating art" and that he "established his image as art s bad boy" through his witty, "bizarre", and often contradictory statements to the media.

Marcel Duchamp s The Creative Act

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In a piece written for the Session on the Creative Act, held in Houstan, Texas in 1957, Marcel Duchamp considers the role of the viewer in art. He believes that the artist is like a medium who "seeks his way out of a clearing" with no conciousness...about what he is doing or why he is doing it". Therefore, what ultimately determines a work of art s meaning and importance within art history is not the intent of the artist, but rather what the viewer interprets that intent to be. In Duchamp s view, a work of art is not made soley by the artist. Instead, it is a colloboration between the artist and viewer in which "the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act". Click the link to download a PDF of Duchamp s article.

Dust Breeding

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Duchamp decided to visit America. He began the Glass in New York in 1915. He applied lead wires to the transparent glass in the geometric shaps and designs he desired. The work went achingly slow. For one part of his Glass--the seives-- Duchamp decided to use actual dust."

Anemic Cinema

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Duchamp used the initial payment on his inheritance to make Anemic Cinema and to go into the art business (Calvin Tomkins). The film was shot in Man Ray s studio with the help of cinematographer Marc Allégret. Various versions were made in 1920, 1923 and eventually in 1926. This is the only film directed by French artist Marcel Duchamp, whose name is associated with the Dada and Surrealism movements. As with similar avantgarde works made by Man Ray, Hans Richter or Fernand Léger, there s no plot, only moving shapes and objects, in an attempt to deny the vision of art as contemplation and ecstasy. This characteristically dada film by Marcel Duchamp consists of a series of visual and verbal puns with nonsense phrases inscribed around rotating spiral patterns, creating an almost hypnotic effect; an exploration of wordplay intermixed with optical illusions."

Marcel Duchmap/ Readymades

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"The strange thing about ready-mades is that I';ve never been able to come up with a definition or an explanation that fully satisfies me." [Marcel Duchamp] ...Commentators have tried, but in vain. The elements have been covered by a scientific straight jacket whose thickness is even more surprising since the accounts from that era are rare and ambiguous."

Auction of Duchamp s Readymades

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

In May 2002, according to the BBC News article Urinal Fails to Make a Splash, a company in New York held an auction of "a rare collection of Marcel Duchamp s famous readymade conceptual art". The work " sold for prices below expectations" and some of the items did not sell at all. The most famous of the works sold at the auction was Fountain, which "sold for $1,185,000...short of its low estimate of $1.5m". For fans of Duchamp s work, the first reaction to this news might be dissapointment that collectors do not seem to value his work as much as was expected. However, Duchamp s readymades are not as simple as other art objects such as paintings or sculptures. Unlike these objects, the value of a work like Fountain does not lie in the object itself, but rather in the ideas which surround it. Therefore, it would be impossible for any one collector to own the work in the same way someone can own a conventional art object, such as a painting. Duchamp s works gain their meanting from the way they interact with society and the context in which they are displayed. It is understandable that the works were not popular with collectors, because their meaning derives from being displayed in museums and exhibitions, not in private collections.

Where Next for Mao? Shi Xinning s Director s Notes on Chinese History

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

“I almost always work with a staging of completely incompatible props and scenery. For example, Mao views a Duchamp exhibition in China – something that never took place. Or I place a curved steel sculpture by Richard Serra in Tiananmen Square – facing Mao';s famous portrait at the entrance to the Forbidden City. Or I arrange a meeting between a Mao statue and New York';s Statue of Liberty. […] I am not interested in Mao Tse-tung as a real person. Today, Mao is still an icon in China. He is omnipresent; he defined my childhood and the lives of my parents. I never show him in the real context of the 60s or 70s. I present him as a visual memory.”

Marcel Duchamp

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville-Crevon, a Normandy village, as the son of Eugène Duchamp, a notary, and Marie-Caroline-Lucie Duchamp (née Nicolle). Marcel was the fourth of seven children. Four of them gained fame as artists. Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918) became a sculptor and Jacques Villon (1875-1963) and Suzanne Duchamp (1889-1963) became painters. Duchamp himself started to paint in his teens. Duchamp s artistic aspirations were a disappointment for his father, but otherwise the family shared interest in music, art, and literature."

Rose Selavy

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia all created female alter-egos at some point during their careers. In her article Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray: Dada in drag Joanna Pitman argues that all three of these alter-egos "related to their broadening concept of what it meant to be an artist , but Duchamp s was the most complex. Unlike Man Ray and Picabia, Duchamp created artworks, such as Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy? (1921) and Fresh Widow (1920), under the name of his alter-ego. In doing this, Duchamp "expanded the posibilities of what constiututed a work of art" by questioning artistic identity and breaking taboos.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Art Museum Toilets Elevated to an Art Form

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

“ This museum was founded in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp, who in 1917 produced the sculpture Fountain and changed the way we viewed art, stated Director Robert Schlemielle. This piece essentially showcased that art may not be hanging in the proud walls of a museum gallery, but in the common objects and in even in the restroom. So today we launch this website asking some of the same questions about the current art establishment and its high brow art. ”

Burghers of Zurich vote to support Dada birthplace

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Voters in Switzerland s business capital Zurich decided on Sunday to continue subsidizing the Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of the anarchic Dada movement."

The Music of Marcel Duchamp

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:07:31 GMT

"Although Marcel Duchamp s musical oeuvre is sparse, these pieces represent a radical departure from anything done up until that time. Duchamp anticipated with his music something that then became apparent in the visual arts, especially in the Dada Movement: the arts are here for all to create, not just for skilled professionals. Duchamp s lack of musical training could have only enhanced his exploration in compositions. His pieces are completely independent of the prevailing musical scene around 1913."

Work avoidance: the everyday life of Marcel Duchamp s readymades

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"[Duchamp s readymades] are objects for cleaning, hanging, storing, drying, preening, and peeing: objects whose purpose is to aid in self-presentation, objects that allow homes and offices to function. They are the unsung aids that allow us to do the work of maintaining house and body, so that we are better prepared to do our other work, like making art, for instance. But this was not the situation of these objects in Duchamp s studio: the hat rack was suspended from the ceiling; the coatrack was nailed to the floor; the typewriter cover protected nothing but air; and the urinal stood alone, inverted, forever unused"

A Short Biography of the Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven including some of her writings

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"The Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven (sometimes printed with another von after Freytag ) was one of the most bizarre characters seen in Greenwich Village during the 20s. In many ways the Baroness s life was so tragic and ridiculous that it is difficult to understand what interest Pound took in her. Until recently, very little was known of her day-to-day life. Since the publication of her autobiography by Paul Hjartarson and Douglas O. Spettigue in 1992, much more of her life is known. Earlier printed accounts generally tell a few legendary stories about her but little else, and even many of these stories have the air of rumor...Attracted by the artistic scene, she found some work as a nude model for the Futurist and Expressionist painters, among them Marcel Duchamp, who appreciated her "lean masculine figure and gaunt ravaged face." (A certain strong parallel with today s fashion modeling scene suggests itself.) She composed a poem in his honor, titled, "Marcel, Marcel, I Love You Like Hell, Marcel." According to her autobiography, most of her art objects were produced out of other people s rubbish: sequins, buttons, bits of cloth, metal, and wood. The Baroness s sculpture also gained notoriety among the New York Dada movement."

Some Experimental Piffles of the Silent Era

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

The author reviews some experimental silent films, including Duchamp s Anemic Cinema and Man Ray s Le Retour a la Raison, and concludes that they are "piffles", interesting only within the larger context of the artists works.

Marcel Duchamp: A Game of Chess

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

Speed Art Museum Presents Marcel Duchamp

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"Louisville, Kentucky - The Speed Art Museum is excited to present to Louisville an exhibition of Marcel Duchamp: Marcel, Marcel. On exhibition 13 November through 17 February, 2008.Perhaps no artist of the twentieth century has aroused more passion and controversy, nor exerted a greater influence on art than Marcel Duchamp. Born 1887 in Blainville, France, Duchamp came to the public';s attention with his painting Nude Descending a Staircase No.2, which caused a furor when it was exhibited at New York City s famous Armory Show in 1913. However, the Duchamp that resonates more in the popular imagination is the pioneer of kinetic art and ready-mades, such as the bottle drying rack and the urinal and whose works seem to run against conventional ideas of what art might be. This is the Duchamp who redefined art as concept rather than product and whose ideas have fueled artistic movements and debates to the present day."

Fountain Named Most Influential Modern Art Work of All Time

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

In 2004, Duchamp';s Fountain was named the most influential art modern art work of all time by a poll of 500 art experts. Following the announcement, an article on the BBC News website asked readers, “Do you think the Fountain is an influential work of modern art? Do you agree with the experts? Which piece would you have voted for?” The varied responses to this show that the questions Duchamp raised about the nature of art are still very much alive today. Although the work was intended to shock viewers, its value lies not in the cheap shock value of seeing a urinal in a museum, but rather in the ways it challenges accepted notions of what art can and should be. Much has changed in the art world since 1917 and today works by conceptual artists such as Tracy Emins and Damien Hirst are regularly exhibited in museums and galleries. The value of Fountain, and the reason it deserved to win the poll, lies in the fact that the questions it raises are still relevant to the art world and the debates it provokes about the nature of art are just as passionate as the ones it triggered when it was first displayed. The majority of people who commented on the article believed Fountain should not be considered art. Many readers felt that Fountain and other conceptual art was elitist and pretentious because it appeals only to a select group of intellectuals who “get” it. As one person commented, “these people [who voted for Fountain in the poll] go their own elitist distaining way, society goes another”. Just as the original reaction to Fountain reflected society';s views of art in 1917, the reaction to it today reflects our own society';s views of art. In 1917, the work was not admitted to the Society of Independent Artists exhibition because it was a commonplace, everyday object. By submitting his work to the exhibition, Duchamp was attacking the tradition of fine art and the institutions that mandated what art should be. Today, such institutions have accepted Duchamp';s work, as evidenced by the poll. Instead of being viewed as an attack on the elitist art establishment as it was in its own time, Fountain is now seen as a part of that very establishment. However, this new view of the work allows for just as many questions as it originally did. Another reader who felt the experts who voted in the poll were “pretentious idiots” commented sarcastically, “How can I register as an artist? I just dropped a sandwich on the floor next to my desk and it perfectly demonstrates the futility of the rat race and juxtaposed the reality and the imagined. Truly challenges what art ‘can and cannot be';.” Yet it is precisely because it raises these kinds of questions that Fountain is influential. The viewer is forced to rethink their ideas about what gives art its value. Is it the object itself or the ideas surrounding it? Does simply being agreed upon by experts make something a work of art?

Simplistic Art: Artcore stuff

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"The following excerpt from the autobiography of Lydie Fischer Sarazin-Levassor (Duchamp';s wife) is revealing, punny and insightful."

Changing Art Forever: Marcel Duchamp

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"Four readers requested a post on Marcel Duchamp, one of the most controversial and most discussed artists in recent history. A Google search yields almost 1.5 million results for the French and American artist, whose 121st birthday was yesterday. Much of the controversy and discussion revolves around Duchamp';s “readymades,” particularly “Fountain” (1917), but, as evidenced by the four works of art above, there is so much more to Marcel Duchamp than just a urinal."

Duchamp and his legacy

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"What accounts for the immense intellectual prestige which the mystique of Marcel Duchamp has enjoyed in this country - if only in certain circles, to be sure - for more decades than most of us can now remember?"

Input/ Output: Marcel Duchamp

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

" What is it then that distinguishes the offer of art Fountain from the functional product urinal? Visible changes that were carried out by Duchamp and appear as material language, are the signature (R. Mutt 1917), the presentation (the backside lying on a pedestal - compare with the historical photo by Stieglitz for the journal 391), the place of presentation (not a sanitation shop-window, not a washroom - but an exhibition, museum - compare to a picture of Marcel Duchamp where he sits in front of the object in the Pasadena Art Museum, Los Angeles 1963), the giving of the title as information about the context."

Marjorie Perloff s Dada Without Duchamp / Duchamp Without Dada: Avant-Garde Tradition and the Individual Talent

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

Dada is referred to by both art critics and it own members as a collective movement and a group provocation of both the art world and its long-held belief in individual genius.Duchamp himself, through his use of mass-produced objects, questioned the role of the individual artist.Yet at the same time, Duchamp is singled out as the movement';s leader and towers over its other members. Majorie Perloff s ariticle Dada Without Duchamp/Duchamp Without Dada: Avant-Garde Tradition and the Individual Talent asks, "If Dada was...a collective being whose members shared identical purposes , how and why has Duchamp come to tower over, say, Hugo Ball or even his close friend François Picabia?"

Marcel Duchamp: Anything Goes

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"The new exhibition at London s Tate Modern features three heavy hitters, the Frenchmen Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, and the American Man Ray. They are associated with the Dada and Surrealism movements, but they were friends before these existed, and after they ended. Of the three, Duchamp is the towering genius. Out of his own interests, phobias and distractions, he created a new aesthetic that has survived to become the reigning spirit of today s art world. Its key idea is that anything can be a work of art."

Myriad exhibits of conceptualism : Is it art? Nuit Blanche brings question to the fore

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"If Conceptual Art was about de-emphasizing the art object, it s easy to trace that notion to a much earlier time. To 1917, in fact, when Marcel Duchamp famously exhibited a porcelain urinal and signed it R. Mutt. It was a sudden reduction of the idea of art. Duchamp was saying for the first time, with a shocking visual pun, that, with the force of idea behind it, anything could be art."

The accidental surrealist: Mary Reynolds, American in Paris

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

“Warm Ashes: The Life and Career of Mary Reynolds is astonishing. Why haven t we heard of Mary Reynolds before, in the same breath as Anais Nin and Djuna Barnes? Perhaps because she did not write. She bound books. In a time when the world was small enough that all the artists seemed to know each other, Mary Hubachek Reyholds, born in 1891, lived in Greenwich Village with her soulmate husband, enjoying Bohemia. He enlisted in WWI sixteen months into their marriage, and died of the flu somewhere in Europe two years later. Pressured by her parents to move on, remarry and start a family, she fled to Paris, to Montparnasse. She took up with Marcel Duchamp, who would be, despite rocky early years, her lover for the rest of her life, and eventually took up bookbinding as her own art.”

Novel Appearances: French Book Art at the New York Public Library

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

“It';s as though a bomb were inadvertently dropped on the essence of book art during the first World War; it emerged on the other side fundamentally changed, spinning off in many directions. Dada shook up the established ideas of art and literature, especially in Paris where the movement was well-grounded in the written word, with poets like André Breton, Tristan Tzara, and Paul Éluard at the helm. The new methods of making art and creating poetry mirrored each other: Tzara would cut up newspaper articles, and Arp drawings, and each would let the pieces fall to create a poem, or a picture, from the chance arrangement.”

Unmaking the Museum: Marcel Duchamp s Readymades in Context

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

“Bicycle Wheel was not intended to be a remarkable piece of art, but rather a personal experiment. However, just because the initial idea behind it wasn t art-oriented doesn t mean that Duchamp didn t whole-heartedly embrace the wonderful uproar and contradictions it later acquired when becoming designated as art.”

Spiritualism and Nihilism: The Second Decade? Excerpt from A CRITICAL HISTORY

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"Duchamp is, in effect, the first conceptual artist, and the readymades are the first conceptual works of art. As he said in 1946, he "wanted to get away from the physical aspect of painting. I was more interested in recreating ideas in painting. For me the title was very important." He finally abandoned painting for readymade objects. The question is what ideas they recreated. He wanted art to be an "intellectual expression" rather than an "animal expression," but his very physical readymades -- in a sense, they are more physical than a painted picture, for they occupy real space rather than create the illusion of it -- may be an animal expression in intellectual disguise."

Pierre Pinocelli and the Destruction of Art

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:07:31 GMT

In The New York Times article Conceptual Artist as Vandal: Walk Tall and Carry a Little Hammer (or Ax), Alan Riding reports on the arrest of French performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli, who attempted to break a replica of Duchamp s Fountain that was on display at the Pompidou center. Yet, as Riding points out, the Dada movement made its name in the early 20th century by trying to destroy the conventional notion of art. One cannot help but think that Duchamp would have approved of Pinoncelli s action, since like Fountain itself, the act called into question the nature and value of art. Fountain, which was excluded from the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibition one it was first made, is now exhibited at venues such as the Pompidou. Pinocelli s act calls attention to the absurdity of this situation and like Duchamp s work, shocks us into examining our own notions of what defines art.

Peggy Guggenheim & Gallery Jeune

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:07:31 GMT

"Peggy Guggenheim opened the gallery Guggenheim Jeune in London in January 1938 ... The gallery on 30 Cork Street, next to Roland Penrose s and E. L. T. Mesens show-case for the Surrealist movement, the London Gallery...Marcel Duchamp, whom she had known since the early 1920s, when she lived in Paris with her first husband Laurence Vail, was taken on to introduce Peggy Guggenheim to the art world; it was through him that she met many artists during her frequent visits to Paris."

DUCHAMP, MAN RAY, PICABIA

February 21 - May 26, 2008 "Curated by Jennifer Mundy, Head of Collection Research at Tate, with assistance from Nicholas Cullinan, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern, London, England.The exhibition will travel to the Museu Nacional d Art de Catalunya, Barcelona from 19 June - 21 September 2008". Review in FT

Marcel Duchamp Redux Works At Pasadena Museum

April 25 - December 8, 2008"This year marks the 45th anniversary of Marcel Duchamp s legendary retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, now the Norton Simon Museum, from April 25 to December 8, 2008. Organized by Director Walter Hopps in 1963, By or of Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Selavythe first-ever retrospective of the artist s oeuvrefeatured 114 works of art, including major loans from Europe and the Philadelphia Museum of Art s Arensberg collection".

The Turner/Chico Museum to Present Marcel Duchamp Art Exhibit/Lecture

March 12 - April 27, 2008 "The exhibition “Marcel Duchamp: About the Large Glass and Related Works” will be held at The Turner/Chico Museum, March 12 to April 27, 2008". "The centerpiece of this exhibition will be a replica of Duchamp';s major work The Large Glass that was produced in 1990 by Chico students under the direction of CSU, Chico Art Professor James McManus. Related works include reconstructions of Fountain, Three Standard Stoppages, and Bicycle. Joining these objects are important works by Marcel Duchamp, borrowed for this exhibition, including his Notes in a Green Box and A l';infinitif."

The Museum of Modern Art , New York City

March 2–May 12, 2008This MOMA Exhibit features Duchamp s oil painting "T um""Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today" Go to interactive online exhibition

Marcel Duchamp enfrnaçais sur le web

-- Excellent Marcel Duchamp web site in French

Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent: Book Review Posted by Mr. Whiskets

New York Armory Show of 1913 - International Exhibition of Modern Art

The 1913 Armory Show : Resources • Wikipedia • ToutFait.com • Welcome to the 1913 Armory Show , by Shelley Staples for the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia • Recording of Marcel Duchamp s Armory Show Lecture, 1963 • The Armory Show by Linda Larson • INTERACTIVE -- Magnify Main Gallery View by Prof. James R. Beniger • ArtLex.com • Timeline 1912-1913

Ford, Breton, and the Contents of the Duchamp View

Chapter by Andrew Otwell, 1997.

Shallow Space - the theme of relief continues... Henry Moore Institute Leeds Exhibitions

"Professor Brandon Taylor has curated a new display from the Leeds collections which develops the current season s exploration of relief sculpture".

"Call for Artists: Urban Ready Mades"

2008-03-20 until 2008-09-23 Marcello s Art Factory den Haag, , NL Netherlands " Marcello s Art Factory in The Hague, Netherlands is currently hosting a project entitled Urban Ready Mades which comes from the concept of "ready mades" made famous by artist Marcel Duchamp who was the first to introduce this oevre." What is an Urban Readymade? Site calls for your participation: YOUR OWN URBAN READY-MADE...Simply place your sign and it becomes art ! Checklist of requirements and conditions to declare a URM 1. Is it a street, an object, a building, a view or an event? 2. Is it an urban- and / or industrial environment? 3. Do you think of yourself as an artist or an architect? 4. Is it a public or semi-public environment and easy accessible? 5. Is it a monument? 6. Is it a touristic attraction or tourist-trap? 7. Is it a work of art? 8. Is it allready a URM? Only when you answer the questions 1 to 4 with YES and the questions 5 to 8 with NO than we could be talking about a true Urban Ready Made.

Alison Knowles and the Gift on Histories and Theories of Intermedia

"Richard introduced me to Marcel Duchamp in order to execute the screen print "Coeurs Volants." The Something Else press needed permission to use the image of the flying hearts on a cover of a book called Sweethearts by Emmett Williams"...

The "Creative Act" by Marcel Duchamp

"Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity"...

Marcel Duchamp Redux

"Opening next month is Marcel Duchamp Redux, a special installation commemorating the 45th anniversary of Marcel Duchamp s legendary retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum)"....

Museum of Modern Art Presents Geometry of Motion 1920s/1970s

"Richter s interest in experimental cinema was related to Duchamp s abstract optical tests with rotary discs and afterimages that in 1926 resulted in Anémic Cinema (also on view at MoMA), a film alternating shots of rotating spirals with discs inscribed with erotic puns"....

2D Integrated Studio / Spring 08

Photomontage and Dadaism: A Closer Look at Two Visionaries, Ryan s Research Photomontage and Dadaism: A Closer Look at Two Visionaries By Ryan Brewer

Metropolitan Museum of Art - Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

"The Timeline of Art History is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art s collection. " See Time line entry about Marcel Duchamp".... Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) by Nan Rosenthal "Duchamp has had a huge impact on twentieth-century art. By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists as retinal art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted, he said, to put art back in the service of the mind. "

On Collecting Picabia s Writings and the Translation of His Major Poetry and Manifestos

"DADA kisses in the spring water and its kisses must be the contact of water with fire," Picabia, Philosophical Dada, 1920""I had just turned off a narrow passageway onto a deserted street in an old district of Paris, a street that would have difficulty accommodating two-way traffic. The concrete and granite on both sides ran high, as the facades of apartment buildings or walls that led to courtyards. A white-haired man was walking away from me down the middle street...."Excuse me, sir," I said with a voice that was loud enough to reach him".

Marcel Duchamp and Maya Deren First Part

"Maya Deren (April 29, 1917, Kiev - October 13, 1961, New York City), born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer. Also in 1943, Deren began making a film with Marcel Duchamp, The Witches Cradle, which was never completed. At that time her social circle included the likes of André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Anaïs Nin." (from Wikipedia) Read more about Deren at IMBd and find her papers at Boston University.

Marcel Duchamp and Maya Deren Second Part

Witch s Cradle 1943, Director: Maya Deren (1917-1961) Cast: Marcel Duchamp, B&W (incomplete) "Witch s Cradle, a choreographed set of movements between the figure (played by Duchamp) and the camera. The film was intended to be an exploration of the magical qualities of objects in Peggy Guggenheim s Art of this Century Gallery, a space where Duchamp also exhibited. Witch s Cradle remains unfinished, the film recalling Duchamp s difficulty with completion. Duchamp s Large Glass or The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23) collected dust in his studio for seven years until it was shattered in transit. Duchamp celebrated the accident as the final element allowing the art to be considered complete. "...

The Man Ray Trust official web site

Galeries Virtuelles "These virtual galleries offer a course set of themes (hands) of the photographer Man Ray. Choose a gallery ... to sail in the space. The galleries use Java technology and do not function on Macintosh. Plug-In flash is necessary to visualize the objets3D." ...

Entr acte

"Originally played as an intermission with no sound, this film is now a must for any fan/historian of fine art. Featuring cameos by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and other notables, Clair and Picabia s dada collage of different narratives, experimental use of the camera, and surrealist and absurdist images is the best example of experimental or dadaist films from the period. As unusual as it is to watch a film with no sound, the images created by the artists provide an extremely unique experience for the viewer. Fun for anyone, and especially interesting for those acquainted with the artists or the art movements themselves.-- by Jeff Dantowitz from Toronto, Canada"...

Man Ray workshop

At the Pinacothèque de Paris, from March 5 to June 1, 2008 "The Pinacotheque in Paris presents an unprecedented retrospective of works by Man Ray. For the first time, all aspects of the creation of the artist will be unveiled. An exceptional selection of works including drawings, photographs, paintings, sculptures, objects and personal images directly from the Man Ray Trust (Long Island, New York). "

Marcel Duchamp and John Cage

" Dreams that Money can Buy : a film by Hans Richter with many artists. This is a Duchamp s fragment with music by John Cage."...

The Cool School

"Documentary. Directed by Morgan Neville. (Not rated. 86 minutes. At the Roxie.)" "In 1963, Hopps gave his stake in Ferus to Blum so he could become director of the Pasadena Art Museum, where he staged the first American retrospective devoted to Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), whose influence was again on the rise. The event put Los Angeles and Hopps on the national art map. "...

MoMA Exhibits Book/Shelf

March 26-July 7, 2008 "Book/Shelf begins with Marcel Duchamp s Unhappy Readymade (1919), a work created when the artist, while traveling, instructed his sister back home to hang a geometry book on her balcony and to let the wind flip and tear the pages. The artist explained, "The wind had to go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages." The piece-destroyed in the process of its making-was documented in Box in a Valise, the artist s famous "portable museum," which is displayed at the entrance of this exhibition"...

Todays Quote 04.18.08 by michael ammerman

"Art is like a shipwreck... it s everyman for himself." Marcel Duchamp...

In the Tate Collection : Marcel Duchamp: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even, (The Green Box) 1934 [front cover]

"In 1934 Marcel Duchamp - or more accurately his alter ego Rrose Sélavy - published in green felt covered boxes ninety-four loose notes relating to the development and function of his magnum opus The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even, known familiarly as The Large Glass ...

Chess musings by circletide on Dichterische Fragmente

"It was Duchamp, wasn t it, that gave up his art, his projects, for chess? Perhaps not true, but I remember it so. Did Duchamp not talk of chess being the highest form of art because it is - in the most basic form - a visual representation of human thought, but also because it, as does life, contains rules, symbolism, sign structures, competitiveness, relationship...? Is it not also true that it cannot be commercialised like art?" ...

...Ray, man! Man Ray Exhibition in Madrid

" "My mother told me I made my first man on paper when I was three", Man Ray wrote in his Self-portrait typed manuscript. "Man Ray - Unconcerned But Not Indifferent" exhibition presents drawings, photographs, paintings, sculptures, personal objects, and images from the Man Ray Trust collection founded by the artist s wife, Juliet Browner in Long Island, New York. The exhibition at the Colecciones ICO in Madrid is comprised of nearly 300 items and it is the first one to place his art in relation to his personal objects such as the bowler hat and cane, or objects from his Rue de Ferou Studio in Paris." ...

Duchamp s Brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon sculpture

"Raymond Duchamp-Villon s began work on the plaster original of The Horse, a composite image of an animal and machine, in 1914, finishing it on leaves from military duty in the fall. It was preceded by numerous sketches and by several other versions initiated in 1913. The original conception did not include the machine and was relatively naturalistic, as is evident in the early states of the small Horse and Rider of 1914. "...

That Ubu that you do

"(Alfred) Jarry s legacy was formalised posthumously in 1948 by the founding of the Collège de Pataphysique in Paris. Its constitution asserts that all people are pataphysicians whether they know it or not, but paid-up Collège members have included artists... Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Jean Dubuffet... And its precepts have produced music more interesting and challenging than Maxwell s Silver Hammer.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm

Margaret Solton s response to Yale erred in banning Shvarts art by Seth Kim-Cohen"An art professor at Yale wrestles with the Aliza Shvarts controversy. He attempts to open with humor, but what he s written sounds pompous and illogical. Do Yale students think professors are gods? Robots? All teachers have always been people. Why is this a compromised position? Is he saying that as a person I find students who film themselves bleeding out repeated induced abortions in bathtubs and then mounting the images as a show a little troubling, while as a teacher I find it okay?"...

The Western Round Table on Modern Art (1949)

"Participants included Marcel Duchamp, Frank Lloyd Wright, Arnold Schoenburg, Mark Tobey, Gregory Bateson. Organizer Douglas MacAgy writes, "The object of the Round Table was to bring a representation of the best informed opinion of the time to bear on questions about art today (1949)."...

Dada Magazine, Issues 1, 2, 3 (1917-1918)

" Appearing in July 1917, the first issue of Dada, subtitled Miscellany of Art and Literature, featured contributions from members of avant-garde groups throughout Europe, including Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Delaunay, and Wassily Kandinsky... Printed in newspaper format in both French and German editions, it embodies Dada s celebration of nonsense and chaos with an explosive mixture of manifestos, poetry, and advertisements - all typeset in randomly ordered lettering. Included is Tzara s "Dada Manifesto of 1918," which was read at Meise Hall in Zurich on July 23, 1918, and is perhaps the most important of the Dadaist manifestos." ...

Artwork Censored ...like Duchamp s urinal. Yale erred in banning Shvarts art

"....Unfortunately, the (Yale) University has banned her work from the Senior Project Show, making a first-hand encounter with Shvarts work impossible. The University has decided not to allow the rest of us make up our own minds. I am considerably more troubled by their action than by hers. ..For the University to ban Aliza Shvarts artwork, to deny the rest of us the opportunity to make up our own minds, is to abdicate this special responsibility. The University should admit they have made a mistake and reinstate Shvarts artwork. Seth Kim-Cohen is a lecturer in the History of Art Department." ...

Surrealist Enrico Donati Dies at 99

"Enrico Donati, an Italian-born American painter and sculptor considered by many in the art world to be the last of the Surrealists, died at his home in Manhattan Enrico Donati (b.1909) was an American Surrealist painter and sculptor of Italian birth...he was clearly drawn to Surrealism. This was reinforced by meeting André Breton and coming into contact with Duchamp and the other European Surrealists in New York at the time." ...

Video: Badiou, "Some Remarks Concerning Marcel Duchamp" at Tilton Gallery

ELECTRACY

"Marcel Duchamp (Dada artist) altered the classic Mona Lisa originally created by Leonardo Da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. .. From looking at these (Dada) artworks, some similarities have been related in the progression of electronic literacy and digital art. As we live in the midst of a Global Communication Revolution , information, communication and technology have become so important that it continues to change and alter aspects of our daily lives." ...

The fountain drawings

"Mike Bidlo has concentrated his artistic energies on making a large number of drawings, each one different from the other, with Duchamp s masterpiece as their subject, using a multitude of brushes, pencils and media." ...

Student research at Savannah College of Art and Design:

Britt Kirmes thesis statement about Duchamp "Marcel Duchamp is one of the most influential artists of his time because of his unique approach to art, integration of art and life, and ability to provoke thought within the viewer."See her outline

Francis Picabia : The Chess-Theory Virtual Art Museum

Also go to Picabia s BIO

Histories and Theories of Intermedia

Articles on Marcel Duchamp from University of Maine Intermedia MFA Program

Pasadena Part II: Norton Simon Museum

" ...We went to the Norton Simon Museum to see the Marcel Duchamp Redux exhibition... It was smaller than I expected but they had some good pieces on display. They had a set of four "rotoreliefs" that were best viewed in person. These were motor driven turntables that rotated an image to give the impression of a form in movement. I had seen the still images in books (such as the fish in a pond) but it was good to see them in motion." ...

Metropolitan Museum Announces Master Photographer Exhibit in June

"The exhibition concludes with the work of four artists who were significant in transforming photography into a modern visual language. The exhibition s photographs by Man Ray (1890 1976), for example, will capture the broad creative scope of his work in the 1920s and 1930s, including portraits of fellow artists Marcel Duchamp and Jean Cocteau; documentation of his own ephemeral sculptures; and photographs that reveal his dynamic experimentation with the plasticity of the medium through solarization, photograms, negative prints, and film." ...

Catálogo Retrospectiva Duchamp Mary Sisler Collection

See animation

The surreal thing: Man Ray s Paris

"As an art groupie, I ve always been a fan of the great Surrealist artist Man Ray and wanted to immerse myself in the neighbourhoods where he lived, created his art and socialized with friends who were often the subject of his work..."

Stephanie Delacey and Luis Drayton by Marcel Duchamp

"Taken at the Duchamp/Picabia/Man Ray exhibition at the Tate Modern; 13/05/08. Photo: Stephanie Delacey..."

Surrealist Manifesto comes up for auction in Paris

"The only known complete copy of the "Surrealist Manifesto," the 21-page document that defined one of the great art movements of the 20th century, is to be auctioned in Paris...Penned by Andre Breton and published in 1924, it comes from the collection of the late Simone Collinet, his first wife, and is valued by Sotheby s at 300,000 to 500,000 euros (468,500 to 780,800 dollars)..."

Pompidou Centre apologizes for broken artwork

"The Pompidou Centre had promised to take additional measures to prevent damage to artworks after two contemporary works from its Los Angeles: 1955-1985 exhibition were broken in September 2006.That incident followed an attack in January 2006 during which a man used a hammer to damage an upturned urinal called "Fontaine" (Fountain) by Marcel Duchamp."

Miller And The Matisses

"Alexina Sattler (1906-1995) entered into the Matisse family through her marriage to Pierre Matisse [8]. The American-born artistnicknamed "teeny" because of her petite staturewent to Paris in 1921 to pursue her artistic vocation. She married Pierre in 1929...She divorced Pierre in 1949, and later married Marcel Duchamp in 1954, although she had originally met him in 1923."

Man Ray: Avant-Garde Alchemist

"So, how does someone named Emmanuel Radnitzky end up with a stylish moniker such as Man Ray ? Well, his family surname was changed to Ray in 1912 at the suggestion of Man Ray s brother. The family surname was changed as a reaction to the anti-Semitism that was rampant in Brooklyn, New York at the time. Emmanuel was called Manny" for short and Emmanuel eventually shortened his nickname to Man and added that to his new surname Ray He would gradually begin to use his new names as one single combined name, Man Ray. "

Releated works: marcel duchamp, Harold E. Edgerton

"Harold Eugene Doc Edgerton (April 6, 1903 January 4, 1990) was a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with transforming the stroboscope from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device. For example; today, the electronic flash is completely associated with the field of photography."

Duchamp: A Game of Chess

Elsa Schiaparelli, Surrealist Star

"Elsa Schiaparelli was an influential Italian fashion designer. Along with Coco Chanel, she dominated fashion between the two World Wars. Starting with knitwear, her designs were heavily influenced by Surrealists like her collaborator Salvador Dali...Elsa began working for Gaby [Picabia, ex-wife of French Dadaist artist Francis Picabia] who introduced her to artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray."

Sterne and Steinberg: Critics Wit

"Friendly with Duchamp, she [Hedda Sterne] exhibited alongside Pollock and Newman, drank with de Kooning and held glorious debates with Harold Rosenberg. Greenberg chronicled her and "Life" magazine captured her several times, the most famous photo of which is Art History-101 iconic. She refused to be classified stylistically or put "in a box." During her 70-year career she appropriated from Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and any other canon that served her."

The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America

Exhibition Venues • Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA: April 23 August 20, 2006 • The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC: October 14, 2006 January 21, 2007 • Dallas Museum of Art, TX: June 10 September 16, 2007 • Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN: October 26, 2007 February 3, 2008 • Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT: Fall 2010 See interactive online

He was Nouveau when it was new

Robbe-Grillet and the other so-called New Novelists, including Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon, wanted to do in literature what others had done in art just as Marcel Duchamp had deconstructed human motion in "Nude Descending a Staircase" and the Abstract Expressionists had valorized gesture, the movement of a brush stroke itself, over representation. Robbe-Grillet believed that writing should reveal the archaeology of its own construction, should depict a mind unfolding its thoughts over time.

The Dada Baroness

"One of the completely forgotten names--but a name well-known among the literati of the 1920 s--is that of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927). This enigmatic, gender-bending artist, a friend and collaborator of Duchamp, Man Ray and Djuna Barnes, is considered by art historians to be the first New York Dadaist."

Marcel Duchamp s masterwork

"In 1969 s Art Bulletin, the Philadelphia Museum of Art s newsletter, [the late] Anne d Harnoncourt and Walter Hopps offered the history of and an analysis for Marcel Duchamp s masterwork, Etant Donnés... Also included in the Bulletin was an amazing backstage look at the process. Between 1965 and 1968, Ducchamp s studio was housed in suite 40 at 80 E. 11th Street in NYC, across from a union office. Denise Brown Hare visited him and captured the piece in progress."

Duchamp en Buenos Aires

"This DVD is a strictly limited edition catalogue of 1.000. Each numbered and hand signed by the artist, curator and researcher Marcelo Gutman. You can see a hand made video of the exhibition here [on YouTube] "

Duchamp s concept "inframince"

"Aesthetic concept developed by Marcel Duchamp for whom it generally characterised a thickness ("épaisseur"), a separation, a difference, an interval between two things, in general little perceptible. The inframince qualifies a distance or a difference that you cannot perceive, but that you can only imagine. The best example of it, is the infra-mince separation between the bang of a gun (very near) and the mark of appearance of the mark of the bullet on the target. "

Marcel Duchamp s famous statement on creativity

"Marcel Duchamp, "The Creative Act" statement : "Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity... All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists."

Duchamp pipe for Enrico Donati

"Marcel Duchamp carved a wooden pipe for Donati. Enrico Donati was a close friend of Marcel Duchamp, as well as a fellow surrealist painter.Donati says that there is no story behind this pipe and that it was given to him by Duchamp as a token of their friendship."

PRIX MARCEL DUCHAMP: A COLLECTORS PRIZE

"The Marcel Duchamp Prize was created in 2000 by the ADIAF, (Association for the international distribution of French art), the largest group of private and amateur contemporary art collectors in France, as an initiative, amongst others, for promoting French artists internationally. Its aim is to encourage all new art forms that stimulate contemporary creation, and to give recognition to a promising artist living in France and working in the domain of the visual and plastic arts."

Marsden Hartley exhibit at Amon Carter shows darker vision of the West

"[Marsden] Hartley returned to New York City in 1919, where he became an unlikely member of the Société Anonyme, the avant-garde group headed by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Katherine Dreier. Hartley was attracted to the freedom of the group, but he was at heart a much more traditional artist and he lasted only seven months."

Wee exhibit, big scandal

"Which is perhaps why Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the curator of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, has placed Duchamp s Bicycle Wheel right at the centre of her huge line-up of contemporary art in this year s Biennale program, to which she has attached the slogan "Revolution - Forms that Turn" as her overriding theme. A revolution is a turn and a return, she says. It is also a sudden shift in perspective, a turning of perspectives, which is what Duchamp has done. So with this Biennale I am opening up the meaning of the word revolution. "

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia Exhibit at Museo Nacional D Art de Catalunya

"BARCELONA - This exhibition aims to chart the artistic and personal relationships of three of the great figures in early twentieth-century art, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia. Together they created the Dada movement in New York during the First World War, and, unusually within the history of modern art, they remained friends, with periods of varying intensity, throughout their lives. On view 26 June through 21 September, 2008." Visit Museo Nacional D Art de Catalunya at : http://www.mnac.es

Ducham en Barcelona

"See video of new "Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia" exhibition in Spain

Duchamp: "Sixteen Miles of String" (1942)

"Duchamp bought 16 miles of string, of which only one mile was used, to prepare an entanglement in which the visitor experienced difficulties in finding his way to the paintings, a metaphor for the difficulties which the layman often encounters in the attempt to understand modern painting"

Davy between painting, photography

"In his letter to Alfred Steiglitz -- the father of American photography -- Marcel Duchamp wrote: "You know exactly how I feel about photography. I would like to see it make people despise painting until something else will make photography unbearable." The letter is dated May 22, 1922."

Machinima and Up and Coming

"Most of my reading and writing right now is concerned with how Surrealists theorized found objects. The principal figures I m looking at, Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp were not officially inaugurated by Andre Breton into the Surrealist group but made some of the most interesting contributions to found object art with their assemblages and readymades."

Jeu d échecs avec Marcel Duchamp

"ALL ARTISTS ARE NOT CHESS PLAYERS" : Allan Savage on Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia

"For Marcel Duchamp, chess was almost everything. As his friend, the author Henri-Pierre Roché, noted: "He needed a good chess game like a baby needs his bottle." It featured throughout his art career, from his early painting Portrait of Chess Players (1911) to Reunion, the performance/chess game he staged with John Cage in 1968 on an electronically prepared board."

Machinima and Up and Coming

Elsa Schiaparelli, Surrealist Star

Picabia, Man Ray, Duchamp, des hEROS

"Review: Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia was on view at the Tate Modern, London in May. It traveled to the Museu Nacional d Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, where is on view from June 19 to September 21."

Marcel Duchamp: A work that is not a work "of art"

MAM MUSEU DE ARTE MODERNA DE SÃO PAULO Curator: Elena Filipovic 15 July - 21 September "On the day marking its 60th birthday, July 15 (Tuesday), the Modern Art Museum of São Paulo presents Marcel Duchamp: A work that is not a work of art . The exhibition takes its title from a question that Marcel Duchamp wrote down one day in 1913: "Can one make works that are not of art ?"

Duchamp in Buenos Aries : Exhibition

"De la estadía porteña de nueve meses de Marcel Duchamp es relativamente poco lo que se sabe y gracias a la creación de unas pocas obras y a una decena de cartas."

Happy Birthday Berenice Abbott

BERENICE ABBOTT (1898 1991) "Berenice Abbott can be considered the photographer of New York City. A revolutionary documentary photographer, Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1898, and studied for one year at Ohio State University, Columbus, before moving to New York in 1918 to study sculpture. While in New York, Abbott met Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, two of the founders of the Dada movement""

Erratum Musical

"The practice of cutting-up, appropriating and repurposing existing content in the creation of new artworks was central to 20th century artistic practice. From Marcel Duchamp s Erratum Musical (1913) which spliced together dictionary definitions of the word imprimer with a score composed from notes pulled out of a hat..."

Marcel Duchamp s Birthday today : July 28, 1887

Dreams That Money Can Buy

The film " is a 1947 American experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter. Each of the seven surreal dream sequences in the diegesis is in fact the creation of a contemporary avant-garde and/or surrealist artist, as follows: Desire Max Ernst (Director/Writer);...Ruth, Roses and Revolvers Man Ray (Director/Writer); Discs Marcel Duchamp (Writer) "

Interview with Marcel Duchamp

"Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp s output had considerable influence on the development of post-World War I Western art, and whose advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the Western art world."

What is Kinetic Art? Avant-Garde Art in Motion Challenges the Observer

Photo bomber "Art Interventionists"

"Critics will say that photo bombing hardly constitutes art intervention, which is the intentional meddling into a pre-existing piece of artwork or even an art venue, like a gallery or museum. (The performance artist who took a hammer to Marcel Duchamp s famous urinal -- titled Fountain -- in Paris in 2006 and called it his own art is a good example of an art interventionist. Same goes for an artist who manages to sneak his work into a museum.)

Ranking the greatest artworks of the twentieth century

"His [David Galenson] statistical approach has led to what he says is a radically new interpretation of 20th-century art, one he is certain art historians will hate. It is based in part on how frequently an illustration of a work appears in textbooks. Demoiselles came in at No. 1 with 28 illustrations....Marcel Duchamp s 1917 Fountain — a white urinal — was seventh with 18 illustrations, and his 1912 painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was eighth with 16."

Duchamp & the Hatrack

"This segment is from my documentary on the Dada movement titled, Random Acts of Beauty: The Story of Dada. Here, Stephen C Foster talks about Duchampian mind-games used to determine what qualifies as art. "

Duchamp & The Indifferent Field of Possibilities

"This segment is from my documentary on Dada titled, "Random Acts of Beauty: The Story of Dada." this segment examines Duchamp s interest in randomness and chance as compared to the Zurich Dadaists. It is a different take altogether."

Marcel Duchamp: Etant Donnes

"This is the first exhibition to examine the genesis, construction, and reception of Etant donnes: 1° la chute d eau, 2° le gaz d eclairage (Given: 1° The Waterfall, 2° The Illuminating Gas), Marcel Duchamp s enigmatic final masterwork that was secretly executed in New York during the last 20 years of his life and discovered in his studio soon after his death in October 1968. The exhibition will be on view from July 2009 to October 2009."

The genius of Duchamp? Larry Evans on chess: Marcel Duchamp s vexing problem

"Many years ago [Francis] Neumann also submitted it to my column in Chess Life, offering a reward of $15 to anyone who either could solve it or prove there was no possible solution. I have since subjected this problem to the most powerful computers and I am now convinced that Duchamp has given us, in effect, a problem with no solution. "

(Re)make it new

"Johnson and Duchamp turned springs and shovels into art objects by renaming them, changing their context, casting them in new light. The shovel never changed just the way we looked at it. ..Duchamp s shovel is still a shovel. John Gordon says that as a curator, he s looking for craftsmanship and intellectual engagement. This might be an object that appeals to me on a Christmas-gift level, but museologically I look for something more. It s hard to do good things that are witty because a one-liner isn t funny after a while. "

Chess from Duchamp to Damien Hirst

"In 1927, Marcel Duchamp...married a young heiress called Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor. The honeymoon did not go well. "Duchamp spent most of the week studying chess problems," recalled the artist s close friend Man Ray, "and his bride, in desperate retaliation, got up one night when he was asleep and glued the chess pieces to the board."

Original Copies: The Art of Appropriation at MoMA

"Nearby, Duchamp s "L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved" (1965) consists simply of a playing-card image of the "Mona Lisa" mounted on a sheet signed by the artist. The artist has left this portrait mustache-less, unlike his infamous "L.H.O.O.Q." of nearly a half-century before." Exhibition until November 10 2008

Art object stickers mysteriously appear, stirring discussion

"No one knows where the dots came from, said Benjamin Shahin... They are everywhere downtown. You ll see light poles valued at $1, Shahin said... The stickers suggest a notion by the late French artist Marcel Duchamp of "ready-made" art: that an artist can elevate an ordinary object to the status of art simply by designating it as such, he said."

Surrealist Art - Intro

"In 1941, Breton went to the United States, where he co-founded the short-lived magazine VVV with Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and the American artist David Hare. However, it was the American poet, Charles Henri Ford, and his magazine View which offered Breton a channel for promoting Surrealism in the United States. The View special issue on Duchamp was crucial for the public understanding of Surrealism in America."

Last work of surrealist Marcel Duchamp discovered

"The last ever art work created by the influential French surrealist Marcel Duchamp has been discovered in an apartment in in northeastern Spain... The artist is believed to be responsible for a corner fireplace built within the residence in the resort of Cadaques in Catalonia where he spent the final months before his death in October 1968. "

Marcel Duchamp

"A tribute to Marcel Duchamp."

Joseph Kosuth

" A chair sits alongside a photograph of a chair and a dictionary definition of the word chair. Perhaps all three are chairs, or codes for one: a visual code, a verbal code, and a code in the language of objects, that is, a chair of wood. But isn t this last chair simply . . . a chair? Or, as Marcel Duchamp asked in his Bicycle Wheel of 1913, does the inclusion of an object in an artwork somehow change it? "

A Little Dust, to Give a Room Character

"Several of the most influential modernist artists made much of dust. Marcel Duchamp grew it on plates of glass, and Man Ray photographed the results in a famous photo called "Dust Breeding." The glass was varnished and went on to become part of "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even," which you can see at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "

Muybridge as Modernist Muse

"Eadweard Muybridge understood that a single photograph was of little use when you are trying to understand the movement of an subject. Movement is inherently a function of moving through time and space. Muybridge s genius was that the even though a single photograph could only reveal a frozen moment in the movement of an object, a series of photographs are able to reveal a much more accurate description of movement...In Picasso and Duchamp s paintings, it is difficult to tell if it is the subject or the object that is moving."

A new look at Art and Play

"But after trying to share my graduate work with others...how could I possibly capture all of the art created by these six amazing artists: Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely (my personal favorite), Claes Oldenburg, Elizabeth Murray and Joseph Cornell...Well, thanks to the magic of the Internet and widgets, I can create content which gives you a glimpse into the breadth of these artists creative genius. Plus I am hoping that it won t become hopelessly outdated within a week."

A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him

Man Ray "met Alfred Stieglitz in 1913, and through Stieglitz s Gallery 291, he became acquainted with many of the most innovative artists of the time, including the founder of the New York Dada movement, Marcel Duchamp. Man Ray and Duchamp remained close friends throughout their lives."

Painter to Poet: Dorothea Tanning

"In 1946, Tanning married Max Ernst in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner. Their crowd also included Peggy Guggenheim (Ernst s third wife; Tanning was his fourth), Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Dylan Thomas, and Truman Capote."

The Anti-Retina Of Duchamp

Posted in Video, Avant Garde by mbumba(Hat tip: Where The Pieces Fall)

Book art by Marcel Duchamp

"In his designs for bookbindings and jackets, Duchamp often made user of the continuity between front and back: in the chess book L Opposition et les cases conjuguées sont reconciliées, 1932; in the designs for Hebdomeros and Ubu, executed by Mary Reynolds, 1935..."

Never mind the Pollocks

"One day Pollock, Duchamp and Guggenheim had a row over a canvas she had commissioned for the foyer of her East Side townhouse in New York. At 20ft wide, it proved too big for the allotted space. Duchamp proposed cutting eight inches off one end. Pollock disappeared to get drunk, wandering back later into a party at Guggenheim s apartment and peeing into her fire."

"MARCEL DUCHAMP : THE GREAT ARTIST OF TOMORROW WILL BE UNDERGROUND

Marcel Duchamp said, "Therefore I am inclined, after this examination of the past, to believe that the young artist of tomorrow will refuse to base his work as over-simplified as that of the representative or non-representative dilemma. I am convinced that, like Alice in Wonderland, he will be led to pass through the looking-glass fo the retina, to reach a more profound expression."

Reasons That We ll Always Have Paris

"A young Calder arrived in Paris as a realist painter and illustrator; within seven years he had been transformed into a Surrealist sculptor whose playful drawings in space were admired by Marcel Duchamp, among others. " Duchamp coined the term "mobile" for describing Calder s moving sculptures.

ARTISTIC LICENSE: Duchamp s Bottle Rack revisited

"Duchamp purchased a common bottle-drying rack sometime in 1914 and brought it to his studio. Two years later, while traveling, he wrote to his sister and asked her to paint an inscription on the bottle rack because he had decided that it was sculpture readymade. Unfortunately, she had already thrown it out."

Epitaph, Poetry by Robert Desnos

" In 1922 he published his first book, a collection of surrealistic aphorisms, with the title Rrose Selavy (based upon the name (pseudonym) of the popular French artist Marcel Duchamp)."

Jump And Piss

"On Oct 24th,1999, at London s Tate Gallery, the artists, JJ Xi (b.1962) and Cai Yuan (b.1956) stripped down to their underpants before jumping on top of Emin s bed and engaging in a pillow fight...Yet, this wasn t conservative iconoclasm. What was at stake in the performance, Two Artists Jump on Tracey Emin s Bed, was the horizon of the Duchampian readymade."

Why more Dadaism?

"For nearly fifty years, since Pop Art began and dethroned the "high art" seriousness of Abstract Expressionism as a manifestation of elitism, the inheritance of Dadaism has ruled the art world. This philosophy, promulgated first 100 years ago by Marcel Duchamp and his colleagues, declares that art in the prior sense of a directed, purposeful activity separate from and "above" everyday reality, is an outmoded concept."

Duchamp s urinal and Tracey Emin s Bed

JJ Xi & Cai Yuan . Two Artists jump on Tracy Emin s Bed. Performance at Tate Britain, London, 1999 Image source "WHEN CHINESE performance artists Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi tried to urinate in a replica of Marcel Duchamp s famous latrine in the Tate Modern in 2000, their behaviour showed a distinct pattern. A year earlier, the duo had jumped up and down on the work of the unvictorious Turner Prize nominee, Tracey Emin. They called their performance Two Naked Men Jump Into Tracey s Bed. Emin had called her piece simply My Bed. Like Duchamp s latrine, the bed offered no easy answers and provoked extreme, mostly negative, reactions..."

View A Nous La Liberte

"A Nous La Liberte - Criterion Collection was an incredible movie! Both Jean Brlin and Inge Frss were amazing! The great cast includes Jean Brlin, Inge Frss, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray...One of the all-time great comedy classics, Ren Clair s Nous la Libert is a skillful satire of the industrial revolution and the blind quest for wealth. Deftly integrating his signature musical-comedy technique with pointed social criticism."

le duchamp (2008) by Rafael Rozendaal

"Brand new work by artist Rafael Rozendaal. Be sure to also check out Rozendaal s JELLOTIME.COM, which was a Rhizome Commission in 2008."

Duchamp s mystery

" He is famous. No doubt about it. He led the artists of his time to one of the greatest revolutions of all. He changed the whole idea of art, of what it is. And yet, was he actually laughing at his private joke? Laughing at those who followed him, believing they were following a new belief. Laughing that he had us all fooled, us who took his word. If it is true that it was all a lie, Would it make a difference? "

The art factory and the death of the connoisseur

"In Duchamp s day the art world was tiny and the initiates were ready for a breakthroughfor new ideas and new media, for dada and the big money wasn t there. Once we accept that the artist s hand is no longer necessary, only his idea, it s a short leap to market the concept that beauty is not only no longer essential, it can even be turned into a dirty, elitist word."

Agreement between Proa and MAM-SP for Duchamp in Latin America

MAM – MUSEU DE ARTE MODERNA DE SÃO PAULO: 15 July - 21 September, 2008 FUNDACION PROA: November 19, 2008 - February, 2009 "Two years after an intensive investigation and production, Fundación Proa today shares with the MAM-SP the success obtained from the critics and public for the exhibition Marcel Duchamp: a work that is not a work "of art", inaugurated in São Paulo last July 15, constituting the artist s largest individual show in Latin America."

Duchamp s 3 Stoppages Étalon

"Many of the stories he tells just don t line up," Shearer says. Consider Three Standard Stoppages, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, a key early work. Toward the end of 1913, Duchamp said, in his Paris studio, he cut three lengths of thread, each just under one meter long, dropped them from a height of one meter, and affixed the results on three separate canvases---a new standard of measure, incorporating chance and randomness, for the new art of this century."

Marcel Duchamp Lived Here That Long???

"I looked up the address when I got home and freaking Marcel Duchamp lived there from 1942 until he died in 1968. How can that be? We had him that long, and so close (to where I live I mean)?? I had no idea. According to Wikipedia he died in France though, but did live in a Greenwich Village studio for many years. So maybe he didn t die here, but he lived here a long time and produced his last work of art here, years after everyone thought he had stopped making art."

Yes, Duchamp s piece was a pivotal moment

A while back, Roger Scruton, the philosopher and writer, wrote this piece on his very occasional blog: The literature of this industry is as empty as the neverending imitations of Duchamp s gesture. Nevertheless, it has left a residue of skepticism. If anything can count as art, then art ceases to have a point. All that is left is the curious but unfounded fact that some people like looking at some things, others like looking at others."

The Unholy Trinity

"Do you know Rrose Sélavy? No? Humm… Eros, c est la vie… arroser la vie…Rrose, my dear, is a creation of three provocative artistic figures from 20th century s early years. Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia were good friends with the same sense of humour..."

John Cage playing chess with Joan La Barbara

"Actually, Cage hadn t lost every single match with Duchamp. There was one that he definitely won, after a fashion. It happened in Toronto, in 1968. Cage had invited Duchamp and Teeny to be with him on the stage. All they had to do was play chess as usual..."

Duchamp said...

".. since a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow, we should be able to imagine the unknown four-dimensional object whose shadow we are. I for my part am fascinated by the search for a one-dimensional object that casts no shadow at all. by Octavio Paz"

"Symbiotaxiplasm" = Duchamp s "infra-thin" ?

"Symbiotaxiplasm is a term conceived by the social science philosopher Arthur Bentley (a contemporary of John Dewey, see Art As Experience) that describes an action of interconnectedness...Perhaps this is something similar to what Marcel Duchamp meant by the infrathin¡©a poetic term describing the infinitely small difference between two things."

Military Avoidance: Marcel Duchamp and the Jura-Paris Road

"In 1905, the year of this War Office Report on French military resources, Marcel Duchamp was drawn into the net of military conscription that was intended to incorporate every able-bodied twenty-one year old Frenchman into the national effort. Duchamp complied somewhat unwillingly but nevertheless managed to reduce his period of service "

Marcel Duchamp Video Tribute-- Le Chaterie

I have created a short video for the Vector Defenders (Vector Defenders) project, by OnClick studio (OnClick). It is a tribute to the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp s visual experiments, and music has been taken from the album Bailes Vespertinos. To be seen in Motion section at iikki.com

Art appreciator

"Since the days of Duchamp and warhol, art can be understood in two ways: Art is a way of doing things, art is a way of seeing things."

DADA part two: Marcel Duchamp

"Everyone who hates art, or what art has come to symbolize in modern society today and in history can look to Marcel Duchamp. This of course, is a contradictory statement that Duchamp would not approve of. His questions and art-from his submission of a bicycle wheel as an art piece (which is currently at the MOMA in New York), to his Mona Lisa with a moustache, and the cubist, Nude Descending a Staircase, Duchamp s works are varied, layered, complicated, touching yet humorous."

#13 VERTIGO : Marcel Duchamp and Mark Titchner

" Featuring Marcel Duchamp s Rotoreliefs and Mark Titchner s Ur Text... Years later I first came across Marcel Duchamp s Rotoreliefs and of course the connection was made. This was the progenitor of my beloved gyrating friend whose commercial failure at alley F, Stand 147 of the 1935, 33rd Concours Lepine, had at least been slightly alleviated by the mass-market familiarity of the Vertigo design."

Marcel Duchamp s Exhibition History

Find out more about Marcel Duchamp s exhibition history on dada-companion.com.

http://www.marcelduchamp.net

Dadarts.com has interesting Duchampian photos

Alec Nevala-Lee, author inspired by Duchamp

What did Marcel Duchamp tell Bill Griffith?

Duchamp s friend, John Cage, Celebrated

Marcel Duchamp on YouTube

Portraits of Duchamp on Only Images

Marcel Duchamp s Exhibition History

A La Duchamp, Jillian Mayer Chews Off Her Arms For Art Basel

John Morse and the Practical Art

Who Says a Sandwich Can t Be Art?

An Artist Meets a Composer at a Party...

Huang Yong Ping and Xiamen Dada

Huang Yong Ping and Xiamen Dada

John Cage s music for Marcel Duchamp

The Perfect Punch Line...

Read About Posthastism Post-Haste!

"Air Art --Marcel Duchamp" by Peter Duggan

How to find Duchamp in 2666

"Too Close to Duchamp s Bicycle"

The Maharaja Come to San Francisco

PIcabia&#39s Work Exhibited Next to Pieces of Classical Antiquity

Lady Gaga s Potty Art

Karla Black: Turner Prize 2011 Nominee

We re Moving into the Arensbergs

What s <em>Duchamp</em> Doing in Starbucks Anyway?

From Cage s <em>James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet</em>

Alert: Duchamp CD Posted on Rhapsody.com

Looking in the <em>Large Glass</em>

Gertrude Stein Autobiography Tops Time s 100 Best Nonfiction Books List

Harold Bloom vs. the Avant-Garde

Are Cliches...

<em>Daligramme</em> Done by Lancel is at Galeries Lafayette

Automatism B: It Was a Failsafe Mechanism for Spandex

A Neo-Duchampian Catchphrase

Donald Judd or Cheap Furniture?

Picabia Was Also a Post-Impressionist

Bicycle the Last Artistic Transportation?

Daniel Spoerri s <em>Multiplication d Art Transformable</em>

&quotThis is the Apocalyptic Nature of Our Modernity&quot

Ai Weiwei exhibition to open in L.A.

Bolano s Literary Prophecies: Breton Shall Return Through Mirrors

Quay Brothers New Film Opens

Of Being Numerous, No. 12

Duchamp and the Paradox of Art Spaces, Even

Romania and the Avant Garde

Duchamp and the Secret of the Object

Secret, Object, Ecstasy

Even the Exquisite Corpse Festival wonders...

Duchamp and the Infrathin

The Looting Imperative

Of Rhetoric and Modern Art

The Art of Substitution

Quotable Avant-Gardes: The Appetite and the Dish.

Capricorn Bicycles Unrolls the Duchamp

A Comparative Analysis of Duchamp and Dr. Dre.

The Sartorialist Celebrates Man Ray s Contributions to Bondage Fashion

Marjorie Perloff: Endgame and the "End of Art"

Thing/Thought: Fluxus at MOMA

Annals of the Surreal

On Anamorphosis

The Art Terrorism Manifesto of Raymond Salvatore Harmon

Hermetic Duchamp?

Surrealist Lab: Whose Unconscious? (Part 2)

An Argument for Tactile Art

Physics Comes to the Defense of Modern Art

The Scent of Belle Haleine

Picabia s 391, up for sale, sold.

Indifference: the Musical Score

Surrealist Lab: In Search of Automatism (part 1)

Cao Fei s "Whose Utopia"

Painting with James Hyde and a Weekend at Mount Tremper Arts

An Interesting Critique of John Cage

With A Lunatic Gesture We Forsook Jujistsu (Automatism A)

Secrets of 20th Century Music

And The Nominees for Le Prix Marcel Duchamp 2011 Are...

How To Take A Duchamp Road Trip

Stephen Colbert Suggests Gitmo Might Be Conceptual Art

Arthur C. Danto: on Hegel and Duchamp

How a Situationist "Draws"