Duchampian News & Views
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The Tree of Wheels
December 31, 2009As one online commentator notes, “Duchamp must be ‘spinning’ in his grave” at the idea of 35 bicycle wheels reassembled in London’s Bermondsley Square. The designers hope to inspire more of the city’s residents to spin their own wheels instead of taking automotive transport.
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Barcelona Showcases Work of John Cage
December 30, 2009 Through January 10, visitors to Barcelona can experience the work of John Cage and other artists he worked with or learned from, thanks to the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art's current exhibition, "The Anarchy of Silence."Marcel Duchamp is singled out in the show catalog as "the exceptional artistic example in Cage's life, and thus in the present exhibition" for his use of chance as a creative tool, as well as for his multiple collaborations with Cage across various medi.. read more... -
The Seduction of Duchamp
December 29, 2009 A truly extraordinary gallery show recently brought together the work of 35 Bay Area artists in an extended comment on Marcel Duchamp's preoccupations and career, from Nude Descending to .. read more... -
Last Week for “Twilight Visions” in Nashville
December 28, 2009 Bringing together over 100 iconic photographs as well as a wealth of Surrealist ephemera, a recent exhibition at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts explores, contextualizes and interprets the dream-life of Paris between the wars. Works on display include images composed by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer and others. Through January 3 in Nashville; the show will then travel to New York and Savannah, Georgia. For more information, fristcenter.org has details... read more... -
Major Surrealist Retrospective Coming to Edinburgh
December 24, 2009 Next summer the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art will exhibit all of its Surrealist art -- one of the largest public collections in the world -- as part of the extensive "Another World" retrospective show. Works on exhibit will include paintings by Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miro; sculpture by Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp; and previously unexhibited print portfolios by Dali, Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy among others. For more details.. read more... -
The Irreverent Object
December 23, 2009 The recently closed show at New York's Luhring Augustine Gallery, The Irreverent Object: European Sculpture from the '60s, '70s and '80s, gave connoisseurs a chance to view what amounts to the evolution of the readymade art object and prompted discussion of the family resemblance between the exhibits and the work of Marcel Duchamp. What role does humor play? Does bringing the "irrelevant" object into the museum necessarily entail a certain "irreverent" posture, or is the prod.. read more... -
Man Ray & Africa: Return to Egypt?
December 21, 2009 In an evocative review of the Phillips Collection's ongoing exhibition of Man Ray's interest in African art, painter Menachem Wecker ponders whether Ray's use of apparently Egyptian iconography points to a repudiation of his Jewish upbringing -- horses and pyramids skirt the edge of taboo -- or simple coincidence. The exhibit's curator, Wendy Grossman, inclines toward the latter view, since as she notes while Egypt is part of Africa, Ray focused most of his attention on Sub-S.. read more... -
Taking Duchamp’s Legacy for a Spin
December 20, 2009Nearly a century after Marcel Duchamp mounted a bicycle wheel on a rickety stool, his influence is everywhere in the art world, prompting long-time art critic Sebastian Smee to meditate on the triumphs — and pathos – of non-retinal art, which both confounds and disappoints the expectations of museum-goers worldwide.
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Man Ray/Nowhere Man
December 17, 2009The occasion of the ongoing Alias Man Ray retrospective at the Jewish Museum in New York, along with the accompanying and eponymous biography of the notoriously peripatetic artist, recently prompted newspaper critic Robert Fulford to reflect on how Ray’s self-invented life exemplifies the tension between Dada and Surrealist ambitions.