Artist Gets Into the Head of Duchamp, literally

April 20, 2011 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 deconstruct.. read more...

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

April 20, 2011 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 .. read more...

Alfred Jarry Celebrated in Philadelphia

April 18, 2011 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 pe.. read more...

Picasso’s Super-Readymade?

April 16, 2011 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 impas.. read more...

New History of Puns Rehabilitates Key Avant-Garde Device

April 14, 2011 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 Antic.. read more...

recommend: Found Sound

April 12, 2011 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.. read more...

Avowed Conceptualism (Gone Awry?) in Berlin

April 11, 2011 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 s.. read more...

Tracking Duchamp’s Perfume Bottle

April 5, 2011 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 .. read more...

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

March 31, 2011 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 Poetr.. read more...