Duchampian News & Views

  • Marcel Duchamp Video Tribute– Le Chaterie

    I have created a short video for the Vector Defenders (Vector Defenders) project, by OnClick studio (OnClick). It is a tribute to the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp's visual experiments, and music has been taken from the album Bailes Vespertinos. To be seen in Motion section at iikki.com.. read more...
  • Military Avoidance: Marcel Duchamp and the ‘Jura-Paris Road’

    "In 1905, the year of this War Office Report on French military resources, Marcel Duchamp was drawn into the 'net' of military conscription that was intended to incorporate every able-bodied twenty-one year old Frenchman into the national effort. Duchamp complied somewhat unwillingly but nevertheless managed to reduce his period of service ".. read more...
  • “Symbiotaxiplasm” = Duchamp’s “infra-thin” ?

    “Symbiotaxiplasm is a term conceived by the social science philosopher Arthur Bentley (a contemporary of John Dewey, see Art As Experience) that describes an action of interconnectedness…Perhaps this is something similar to what Marcel Duchamp meant by the infrathin¡©a poetic term describing the infinitely small difference between two things.”

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  • Duchamp said…

    “.. ‘ since a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow, we should be able to imagine the unknown four-dimensional object whose shadow we are. I for my part am fascinated by the search for a one-dimensional object that casts no shadow at all.’ by Octavio Paz”

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  • John Cage playing chess with Joan La Barbara

    “Actually, Cage hadn’t lost every single match with Duchamp. There was one that he definitely won, after a fashion. It happened in Toronto, in 1968. Cage had invited Duchamp and Teeny to be with him on the stage. All they had to do was play chess as usual…”

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  • The Unholy Trinity

    "Do you know Rrose Sélavy? No? Humm… Eros, c’est la vie… arroser la vie…Rrose, my dear, is a creation of three provocative artistic figures from 20th century’s early years. Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia were good friends with the same sense of humour…"

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  • Yes, Duchamp’s piece was a pivotal moment

    A while back, Roger Scruton, the philosopher and writer, wrote this piece on his very occasional blog: The literature of this industry is as empty as the neverending imitations of Duchamp’s gesture. Nevertheless, it has left a residue of skepticism. If anything can count as art, then art ceases to have a point. All that is left is the curious but unfounded fact that some people like looking at some things, others like looking at others."

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  • Marcel Duchamp Lived Here That Long???

    "I looked up the address when I got home and freaking Marcel Duchamp lived there from 1942 until he died in 1968. How can that be? We had him that long, and so close (to where I live I mean)?? I had no idea. According to Wikipedia he died in France though, but did live in a Greenwich Village studio for many years. So maybe he didn't die here, but he lived here a long time and produced his last work of art here, years after everyone thought he had stopped making art.".. read more...
  • Duchamp’s 3 Stoppages Étalon

    "Many of the stories he tells just don't line up," Shearer says. Consider Three Standard Stoppages, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, a key early work. Toward the end of 1913, Duchamp said, in his Paris studio, he cut three lengths of thread, each just under one meter long, dropped them from a height of one meter, and affixed the results on three separate canvases---a new standard of measure, incorporating chance and randomness, for the new art of this .. read more...