World readying for John Cage’s 100th birthday.

March 31, 2011 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 .. read more...

Rigaud: a Scent in Need of an Author

March 29, 2011 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 unli.. read more...

Ubuweb’s “Uncreative” Poet Speaks About Textual Readymades

March 27, 2011 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 ".. read more...

Local Ready-Mades at Vintage Hardware

March 24, 2011 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 constructi.. read more...

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

March 22, 2011 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.. read more...

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

March 21, 2011 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, .. read more...

The Center for Olfactory Art Presents…

March 20, 2011 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's 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 c.. read more...

shenanigans in Washington Square

March 18, 2011 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.. read more...

Flavorwire Surveys Bike Art Since Duchamp

March 18, 2011 "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.. read more...