Duchampian News & Views
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Soup Cans and Fountains
June 29, 2010Marcel 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."
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Bride of Bottle Rack
June 28, 2010While 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.
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Robert Shapazian Dies in Los Angeles
June 26, 2010Noted 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.
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‘Surreal House’ Weird Enough for Fortean Times
June 23, 2010The 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."
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The Uncollectable Duchamp
June 22, 2010Is 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.
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New Realisms, Readymade in Madrid
June 18, 2010An 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)
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The Museum of Good Ideas
June 17, 2010Duchamp’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…
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Stuckists versus the High Concept
June 15, 2010 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 Sel.. read more... -
Requiem for the Readydesigner
June 14, 2010Tobias 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.
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