Marcel Dzama’s Behind Every Curtain: Patterned by Duchamp

March 5, 2011 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 rig.. read more...

“French Window” in Tokyo

March 3, 2011 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.. read more...

See M.D. Move

March 2, 2011 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 mo.. read more...

Malibu Discusses the Gesture Duchampian Fountains Can Make

March 1, 2011 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 ar.. read more...

Progenitor of cinema and Duchampian innovation at SFMOMA

February 28, 2011 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 t.. read more...

How many moves can you last against Duchamp?

February 27, 2011   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 .. read more...

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

February 26, 2011 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 o.. read more...

Recreating Etant Donnes at Francis Naumann

February 25, 2011 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, t.. read more...

Duchamp down the catwalk?

February 24, 2011 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 ref.. read more...