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

March 16, 2011 "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 cri.. read more...

O’Hara’s Early Homage to Rrose Selavy

March 15, 2011 Poets and painters have been in dialogue since as far back as anyone can tell. But, for Frank O'Hara (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'Hara's poems often evoke the artists that had been instrumental to his development as a writer and thinker in their characteristic expression of the int.. read more...

nothingtoodoo, Terrence Koh

March 12, 2011 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. .. read more...

Marjorie Strider Paints a New Woman for Duchamp

March 12, 2011 Her work hasn't 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 'depth' to them: in some pieces, the more desirous parts of their bodies physically project out from the can.. read more...

“Alias Man Ray” selected for Art Critics’ Award

March 10, 2011 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.. read more...

Looking for Duchamp at the 2011 Armory Show

March 8, 2011 New York's 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 Exh.. read more...

Duchamp at the Great Upheaval, Guggenheim

March 8, 2011 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 .. read more...

Found Pop Detritus = Readymade?

March 7, 2011 "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 conju.. read more...

Duchamp at the Anatomy/Academy, PAFA

March 6, 2011 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&rsquo.. read more...