Duchampian News & Views
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‘Until Something Else’…
April 5, 2010In his correspondence with Alfred Stieglitz, Duchamp once applauded photography’s power to “make people despise painting,” but acknowledged that photography itself was only useful until something else comes along to make it, too, “unbearable.” From this starting point, culture critic Francisco Ricardo explores various aspects of what this oppositional something else– the “new medium” — may yet be.
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Bringing ‘Something Else’ to Kyoto
April 2, 2010 A major exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto (MOMAK) highlights many of retiring chief curator Shinji Kohmoto's "favorite" unclassifiable works of art from the collection, including several of Duchamp's readymades.In the exhibit catalog, Kohmoto alludes to these works, which are officially catalogued in the museum's catchall "non-category," as containing a Duchampian "something else" -- a quality that "cannot be contained within classifications (nouns) tha.. read more... -
Tweet Nothings: Appropriations of Peter Ketchum
April 1, 2010A new show at the Norfolk, CT library introduces new and old work by Peter J. Ketchum, a New York artist and gallery owner usually pigeonholed into the “folkpop” category. Antique picture postcards relettered and otherwise detourned. Duchampian jokes aplenty.
(Through April 30; gala reception April 11. peterjketchum.com has details.)
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From Shocking To Merely Poetic….
March 30, 2010Appraisals of the work of Surrealist photographers point out that images that would once have been revolutionary statements of the modern now seem passively dreamlike, dated, nostalgic.
(“Twilight Visions” will run at New York’s International Center of Photography through May 9.)
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MOMA and the Readymade Concept
March 29, 2010Although the Museum of Modern Art’s acquisition of the “@” symbol raised eyebrows, the Duchampian overtones of bringing a piece of anonymous typography into the museum are obvious. The act tests the barrier between art and industrial design — are all marks of punctuation theoretically worth contemplating in the museum context? Can a semiotic element be “owned,” or could other institutions claim other versions of the “@”?
And what if MOMA’s “@” is a forgery?
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Unauthorized Fountains Make Waves
March 25, 2010 The philosophical ramifications of Marcel Duchamp's estate objecting to the circulation of unauthorized and unsigned copies of the epochal Fountain by Arturo Schwarz are not lost on The Economist. The often-wry weekly journal notes that while Schwarz, who sold a limited edition of 12 hand-crafted replicas of the original urinal, claims that the newly discovered copies were created under Duchamp's supervision, collectors do not relish the mystique of their readymades being dil.. read more... -
Exhibitions in a Box
March 24, 2010 Independent Curators International has taken up the challenge posed by projects like Marcel Duchamp's Boite-en-valise to present suitcase-sized traveling exhibitions of art. These miniature art collections contain ephemera, video, archival materials and small-scale original works curated to allow display space operators a full ready-to-install show that they can configure to fit their needs.One of the first of these "exhibitions in a box," a retrospective look at the groundb.. read more... -
Starry Messenger
March 23, 2010 Those in central California may find food for thought at a UC-Davis lecture on "Marcel Duchamp's Comet Haircut and Astronomy" coming up next month. Design professor James Housefield will address the suggestive linkages between Duchamp's starry haircut, the artist's lifelong interest in optics, and other uses of astronomical material in art and popular imagery. By inscribing the celestial onto the personal, one might argue, Duchamp bridged the abyss between the invisible and t.. read more... -
Duchamp and Type Treatment
March 22, 2010 Richard Kegler created his first font to reproduce Marcel Duchamp's handwriting for his graduate thesis on the Large Glass. Since then, his company P22 has developed hundreds of typefaces and a website that realizes the original thesis through animation.The Duchamp font is no longer available, so those hoping to type in the artist's script will be disappointed...or will simply need to teach themselves to emulate his readymade example... read more...