In the conclusion of my article for the fourth issue of Tout-Fait Journal ⁽¹⁾, I identified a possible theme in the artistic events of the 1900’s. I’m referring to the gradual emergence, in art, of important ideas and conceptual themes which also belong to the grounding kernel of the complexity sciences.
As a first step, my concern was (and still is) to illuminate some unexpected links, all of them directly related to some fundamental ideas of complexity, between some leading figures in twentieth century art, namely Klee, Duchamp and Escher. This unexpected relationship is even more surprising considering the radical differences between their personalities and their artistic results, or at least the retinal (to use a duchampian term) ones. Furthermore, as far as I know, there is nothing in their writings that links these artists. Relations between Duchamp, Klee and Escher cover a huge range of ideas, and the complexity sciencesprovides us with a realm in which we can unify them.
At the yearly conference “Matematica e Cultura” in Venice ⁽²⁾, organized by Prof. Michele Emmer, I gave a talk titled “Strands of complexity in art: Klee, Duchamp and Escher”, ⁽³⁾where I presented some preliminary findings of my research. This article supplements those preliminary findings with new analogies. I’ll start by summarizing those first ideas; and then I’ll introduce other subjects, such as evolution, topology, impossible 3D objects and enlarged conceptions of perspective. Finally I’ll try to relate these themes with those of complexity.

1. A summary of preliminary findings

I divided the common traits between Klee, Duchamp and Escher into three groups, all of them mathematically relevant and strictly related to each other and to corresponding complexity themes. They are:
a. Recursion and fractals
b. Feedback loops and self organization
c. Instability and chaos
(Particularly for the a. and b. points, I took the most part of my argument about Duchamp from my article on Tout-Fait Journal cited above, where the reader can find some detailed explanations about the subjects summarized below).

a.

In Escher’s work the role of recursion, and the presence of fractal structures have been well known and accepted since the appearance of Hofstadter’s classic book ⁽⁴⁾.
As far as Duchamp is concerned, recursive structures underlie not only several individual works, but also creative processes on a larger scale, involving several works at once. I also suggested the presence (at least in embryonic form) of the idea of fractal structures, mainly linked to the typical duchampian procedure of repetition on a lower (reduced) scale.
Much of Klees work is based on recursive (iterative) procedures. Klee called themprogressions. They are mainly related to natural processes. In relation to natural processes Klee’s intuition of abstract mathematical concepts, like fractal dimensions (ie non-integer dimension), is notable, especially in relation to the botanical world.

b.

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Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride
Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors, Even, 1915-23

Here Escher’s use of tessellation comes to mind. A game of symmetries could be seen as a complex system, where very simple rules (namely the given symmetries) exert their reciprocal feedback locally; as well as interacting to have dramatic, global and complex consequences on the whole tiling system. This can be (meaningfully) related to concepts regarding morphogenesis: simple rules can create global complexity, provided that the components of the system are sufficiently connected to each other.
In most of Klee’s works we can see feedback loops in action, both negative and positive. True dynamic systems are the results of these loops. Klee relates them to morphogenetic processes. Once again, the key point is: local simplicity coupled with a huge network of connections) can determine the emergence of global organizational patterns.
Several of Duchamp’s wordplays show self-organizing properties. In a broader sense there are similar random self-organizing processes acting in the Glass. (Fig. 1)

c.

Looking at Escher’s prints, exposure to conflicting stimuli (such as black-white, concave-convex, figure-background) destabilizes the observer. This theme has been already widely discussed by scholars ⁽⁵⁾. Also, Escher is particularly interested in whirling structures that draw together self-reference, fractal structures and whirling, chaotic motions.

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Figure 2
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride
Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors Even [The
Green Box], 1934

It is well known that instability plays a key role in Klee’s compositions. Moreover Klee was attracted by what nowadays is called deterministic chaos, ie. unpredictable, irregular behavior, rising from the iterations of simple deterministic procedures. A number of different figurative frameworks are borne out of iterative procedures that have been triggered to behave irregularly. The most interesting thing, however, is that from such quite chaotic tangles of lines, often perfect vital and shiny forms emerge. An interesting analogy can be drawn here with the edge-of-chaos idea of complexity.
Instability and chaos are quite typical duchampian themes. His wordplays depend on predetermined lexical conditions; the slightest differences in either a single syllable or letter or even simply intonation could cause radical shifting in the meaning of a sentence (here we have a true sensitive dependence on initial conditions). Furthermore, Duchamp saw the creative power of instability. In the loosest sense it could be seen everywhere in the Glass and in theNotes of the Green Box, (Fig. 2)but more specifically we see that in the works based on rotatory motion, where highly unsplanar sets of rotating circles can create the illusion of the sthird dimension. Here again the creative power of instability has been exploited which is also powerful edge-of-chaos idea.

2. Evolving systems
Before the twentieth century it was physics, not biology, that was the leading area of scientific endeavour. It was from physics that models and protocols for science were drawn. The 1900s saw a shift towards biology. This shift was consistent with the progressive affirmation of the new paradigm of complexity.
This interest in biology is reflected in the work of Klee, Duchamp and Escher. Firstly Klee, whose interest in Natural History (especially in botany) is well known; like a naturalist he focused (as both artist and teacher) on the central problem of organic growth. He investigated both morphology (the study of forms) and morphogenesis (the study of processes leading to form); his intuitive, biological investigations are notable.
Escher, for his part, was more attracted by abstract ideas; more mathematical than biological, but was nonetheless intrigued by the natural world. He dealt especially with the inanimate world of minerals and crystals. However biologists drew analogies of his abstract ideas with corresponding biological concepts; sometimes Escher dealt with biological processes themselves.

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Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp,Bride’s
Domain from the Large
Glass, 1915-23

Figure 4
Marcel Duchamp,Bachelor
Apparatus from the Large
Glass, 1915-23

Perhaps Duchamp is the artist who best expressed (both in advance and inadvertently) the inversion of the relationship between biology and physics: by distendingthe laws of physics and chemistry he bypassed the rigid determinism and the reductionism of those disciplines. By grafting the organic forms of the Bride (in the higher part of the Glass) (Fig. 3) onto the mechanical machinery of the Bachelors (in the lower part) (Fig. 4)Duchamp not only expressed the idea of a marriage between physics and chemistry (at the bottom, in a three dimensional world), and biology, (above, in a four dimensional world) but perhaps even the superiority of the latter: after all the bride is queen.
This new kind of interest in biology is related to the development in every scientific field of systemic theories. This began in the 1940’s with cybernetics and ended up with the establishment of complexity sciences: what better paradigm of a system is there than an organism? Biology teaches us that complex systems adapt and evolve, we call them complex adaptive systems (CAS) Adaptation and evolution are key in all areas of the complexity sciences. Can artists, that were aware of world-system complexity, have been unaware of these notions of adaptation and evolution, at least at some intuitive level? In my opinion no. Being sensitive to complexity implies having some awareness of evolutionary processes (not necessarily biological), driven by random probabilistic events coupled with adaptation, which make the world-system ever changing.
In Klees’ writings we find a number of references to evolutionary biology ⁽⁶⁾. He clearly had some understanding of the subject matter. However, it is what he did as a painter, more than what he thought as a naturalist, that is interesting here.
He would lovingly cultivate mistakes he made, and embed them in his paintings. He would encourage pupils to draw with their left hand, and to nurture the irregularities that ensued. He also would introduce subtle and repeated variations into his work that would form mobile, ever changing patterns. Klee clearly loved chance.

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Figure 5 Paul Klee, Red fugue,1921
Figure 6 Paul Klee, Sheet from the
town book, 1928

Here, two of Klees’ groups of work are of note: those of Red fugue (1921) (Fig. 5) andSheet from the town book (1928) (Fig. 6). Both groups are based on repetitive horizontal sequences, which are gradually transformed by introducing constant, apparently random variation in the repetitions of the starting shape. The representation of an evolutionary process could be seen in these paintings, where random mutations seem to be somehow selected to obtain certain properties of the resulting patterns. I discussed the subject in some detail in the article already cited ⁽⁷⁾, and I showed by means of computer simulations that evolutionary algorithms can produce quite similar patterns.
Let us consider now Escher’s use of tessellation or tiling (i.e. covering of the surface by means of repeated tiles, without empty gaps and overlapping), such as the one signed E15(1938) (Fig. 7). Each single piece of tiling contains the complete information necessary to build the whole surface; of course this holds.

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Figure 7
M.C. Escher, E15, 1938

Figure 8
M.C. Escher, Metamorphosis, late 1930s

Figure 9
M.C. Escher, Verbum, 1942

Meaningful analogies with the idea of complete genetic information contained within each cell of an organism. Parallels between Escher’s tessellation and mechanisms in biochemistry have been developed by Edward Whitehead ⁽⁸⁾.
Interestingly, Escher’s tiling often depicts a process which gradually transforms the structure of the tiles. This transformation is rendered infinite by the introduction of a circular narrative pattern, which leads it back to its starting point. The strips namedMetamorphosis (the process which turns the larva into insect) are examples of this (Fig. 8) which Escher created in the late 30’s. Such transformation can be seen to some extent as a metaphor for evolutionary process. This, at least, was the opinion of Nobel chemist Melvin Calvin on Escher’sVerbum (1942) (Fig. 9) ⁽⁹⁾.
Let us thirdly consider Duchamp.
The theme of the dichotomy mother – egg, and the paradoxes that lie therein are worthy of investigation. I discussed the subject in the already cited article ⁽¹⁰⁾.
Duchamp used objects and moulds to signify the idea of mother and egg. The mould represents the egg, the object the mother. He used these in a number of different contexts, including the Malic Moulds of the Glass. (Fig. 10)The object and the mould are self-perpetuating and codependent : the object is used to cast the mould and the mould to shape the object. Similar ideas are identifiable in Three Standard Stoppages (1913-14) (Fig. 11)and Tu m’ (1918) (Fig. 12). For the latter he made three wooden templates, for transferring the outline of the threads contained in the Stoppages onto the oil painting. In Tu m’ these templates appear again, depicted in the bottom-left corner; their respective threads in the right hand corner. We have the old threads; their templates, and the new threads… The two elements (thread-Mother and template-Egg) are present in both the Stoppages and Tu m’. (En passant: notice that in Tu m’ the representations of templates and threads stand at the opposite sides of the picture, as we said above; in the middle, the psychological epopee of Bride and Bachelor is abridged, maybe as the necessary step to link egg and offspring).

Now the key question is: is this chain deterministic? Could this cyclic process repeat itself unchanged, giving rise to ever equal objects? It couldn’t. Indeed, remember that Duchamp explicitly connects the idea of mould with the idea of infra-thin difference:

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Figure 13
Marcel Duchamp,
Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries, No. 2, 1914

Infra-thin separation. 2 forms cast in the same mould (?) differ from each other by an infra thin separative amount. All “identical” as identical as they can be, (and the more identical they are) move toward this infra thin separative difference. (Note posthume).
Thus the process contains an important random event (possibly corresponding to biological mutation). A parallel could be drawn between evolutionary process and the cyclical alternation of the object and the mould(Mother-Egg). At the very least, this observation would be consistent with Shearer’s idea that the cemetery of liveries (Fig. 13)(the Malic Moulds) could be seen as the place where scientific knowledge is recorded ⁽¹¹⁾. An empty livery is a repository for a scientific idea as well as being a mould that produces new ideas on which are encoded new theories, thence new liveries and so on.

3. Topology

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Figure 14
M. C. Escher, Moebius band I, 1961
Figure 15
M. C. Escher, Moebius band II, 1963
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Animation 1
Animation of Moebius Strips

Klee, Duchamp and Escher were all three attracted by topologically interesting figures.
Several of Escher’s works deal with topological figures, such as knots (Knots, 1965) and Moebiusstrips (as in Moebius band I, 1961 (Fig. 14) andMoebius band II, 1963 (Fig. 15)).
Moebius strips (see Animation 1 which explains a possible genesis of the strip starting from a cylinder) exhibit a number of interesting properties; I’ll recall and briefly explain some of them.
First, unlike the cylinder, which has both an internal and external surface, the Moebius strip has only one surface; This can be easily verified by mentally painting its whole surface, without lifting the brush from the strip.
Second, whilst a cylinder has two edges (lower and higher) the Moebius strip has one only edge; once again you can follow this edge completely with the finger without having to lift it from the edge.
Furthermore, if one cuts the cylinder longitudinally, two distinct cylinders will be obtained, whereas by cutting the Moebius strip the same way, one only new strip is yielded.
Escher carefully showed these properties in his prints. In Moebius band I he cut the strip longitudinally and obtained three snakes eating each other’s tail, while in Moebius band IInine ants in line walk on the strip, so as to highlight the single edge and single face concepts.
Escher was interested in the circularity of his knots and strips. He drew them together in a monograph ⁽¹²⁾ under the chapter heading spatial circles and spirals. His knots, Moebius strips, as well as planar and spherical spirals, were all drawn together in this section. The knots follow circular pathways which end up at the starting point after torsions and self-intersections. The same holds for the Moebius strips.
Klee too, was interested in knots, and had been since childhood. Several of his early drawings show knotted worms hanging from a fisherman’s hook. We see the same worms, now abstract knots, in later drawings such as Ways Toward the Knot (1930) (Fig. 16). 2D knots are also drawn according to even more essential forms, like the infinity-shaped motif (and its polygonal variants) shown in his pedagogical sketch (see Sketch 1). We see a huge collection of similar patterns in pictures like Dynamically polyphonic group (1931) (Fig. 17), which is based on a feature of those 2D knots Klee was interested in (see Animation 2): a hatch follows the course of the knot with continuity, but always remaining on the same side of the line; in so doing, the hatch highlights the inside of one half of the motif, and the outside of the other half. How is it possible to pass from inside to outside, while remaining on the same side of the line? It is due to the self-intersection of the 2D knot (corresponding with the torsion in the Moebius strip), which allows passage from an inner to an outer region, without passing from one side of the line to the other. As we saw before, Moebius strip has a similar property. Let us return to Klee’s 2D knots. He amplified them, to form complex, perpetual pathways, once again formed by uninterrupted, closed, self-intersecting lines (often polygonal instead of curved) and always returning to the starting point. This is typical of Klee’s drawings of the late 20’s and the early 30’s. An example is the drawingMechanics of an Urban Area (1928) (Fig. 18).

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Figure 19
Paul Klee, Excited, 1934

Sketch 2
Folding recursive process

We have other evidence of the special topological meaning of Klee’s images, such as labyrinths. Labyrinthine lines and signs are indeed among the most important patterns in Klee’s late style. Several hypotheses could be made to explain the genesis of such patterns, and in my opinion they are often linked to morphogenetic processes ⁽¹³⁾. There are, however, some drawings, such as Excited (1934) (Fig. 19) and all the others, based on the same framework, which particularly show the underlying presence of the folding recursive process (seeSketch 2). Similar (but reversed) processes are sometime used for classifying labyrinths in topology ⁽¹⁴⁾ unrolling them, to obtain the simpler equivalent form. But, interestingly, similar folding processes can also give rise to fractal and/or chaotic structures ⁽¹⁵⁾ which in turn can be connected with the corresponding themes highlighted above.
With reference to the use of Duchamp’s topological figures, I have already underlined the importance of the Kleinian bottle, along with some related Moebius-strip-like structures in his writings and works ⁽¹⁶⁾, and I have already stressed a possible meaning of this circular self-penetrating and self-encompassing figure, this is recommended further reading.
Now I’ll focus on further interesting links between Klee, Escher and Duchamp with respect to the use they made of the well-known topological properties of those surfaces. The analogy between the infinity-shaped motif of Klees’ and Eschers’ Moebius strips is further reinforced by observing some other prints of Escher’s, which came 10 or 15 years before his Moebius strips; Horsemen (1946) (Fig. 20) and Predestination (1951) (Fig. 21)show the planar infinity-shaped motif.
Let us take Duchamp’s Steeplechase (Fig. 22): it is a self-made racing course, for a childish horserace game in which there is a clear connection with both Klee’s infinity-shaped motif and Escher’s prints Horseman and Predestination. This could be seen as an antecedent ofSculpture for Travelling (1918). (Fig. 23)

Jean Clair ⁽¹⁷⁾ suggested an interesting analogy between the kleinian bottle and some alchemic symbols, such as the one of the pelican devouring itself, and then he connected it with Duchamp’s Air de Paris (Fig. 24). Look now at Escher’s preparatory sketch (Sketch 3)of a Pelican; although in the definitive print he substituted the pelican with a dragon (Dragon, 1952) (Fig. 25), he maintained however the same idea of a self-penetrating and self-eating animal (after all, the snakes eating each other’s tail in Moebius band I refer to the same theme). As far as Klee is concerned, we saw similar self-eating structures, though abstract, in the meandering lines of the drawings around 1934, use the same techniques as the previously mentioned Excited: the basic motif (see Sketch 4) is formed by two curves penetrating one another, the end of the one into the belly of the other.

In his latest style Klee used a typical pattern whose genesis and meaning we can better understand by looking at a detail of the drawing The fugitive is Looking Back (1939) (Fig. 26); the body of the fugitive is based on branching curved lines, the one starting from the back of another. The head too is formed by a similar, curved line, but it is branching from its own back, in a circular, self-referential scheme. This motif is further amplified in innumerable drawings and paintings around 1939-40, where we find a lot of self-embedded, self-encompassed figures, such as in Fastening (1939) (Fig. 27).

What is the significance of this trend for using topological figures? What relationship can we establish between that and complexity?
First, with Klee, Duchamp and Escher there is a tendency to represent very complex things, where the parts are widely connected to each other, interacting with non-linear pathways, often looping and returning to some crucial points. Thus the tangled intricacy of some knots or labyrinths visually and effectively expresses the corresponding intricacy of the components of their complex systems.
Second, such intricacy of connections within a system often produces unexpected outcomes, which in turn imply new unexpected outcomes, and so on. Thus in the complex system represented in their works by our artists, it is difficult to discern clearly causes and effects, because of the network of their reciprocal feedback. The unexpected, often strange and sometimes paradoxical outcomes rising from systems subjected to circular feedback and self-referential loops have corresponded with the strange and paradoxical properties of figures such as knots, the Moebius strip or the Kleinian bottle, due to their circularity, their self-intersections or self-penetrations. The same could be said for those figures discussed above, often used by the late Klee, which are self-encompassing.
Particularly in the case of Duchamp, as I have already shown ⁽¹⁸⁾, the topological properties of the kleinian bottle were used to express the paradoxical identity Egg–Mother (or Bride–Glass). This was discussed in the previous section, and in general to express the autopoetic properties of the duo Glass–Box.
 
4. Enlarged perspective and Impossible 3D objects

Figure 28
Marcel Duchamp,
Apolinère Enameled, 1916-17

Figure 29
Paul Klee, Chess, 1931

Sketch 5
Trihedral junction
versus DihedralT-junction

Sketch 6
Trihedral
junction versus Dihedral
T-junction in Apolinère Enameled

Rhonda Shearer ⁽¹⁹⁾ thoroughly discussed the relationship between some of Eschers’ and Duchamps’ works, based on 3D impossible objects. She documented how Duchamp’s Apolinère Enameled(1916-17) (Fig. 28) predates by forty years the seminal paper of Lionel and Roger Penrose on impossible 3D figures ⁽²⁰⁾. She also stresses the bond of friendship between Duchamp and Roland Penrose, a close relative of Lionel and Roger. The cited Penrose article is the professed source of inspiration of Escher’s famous impossible figures, so that the reading of Shearer’s article cements a direct link between Escher and Duchamp via the Penroses.
But, what about Klee’s impossible 3D objects? We shall discuss some works, which are representative of corresponding frameworks, all of them developed in about 1930 and deeply linked with one another.
The first we shall consider is Chess (1931) (Fig. 29). I have elsewhere already examined this painting, its genesis and its possible meaning ⁽²¹⁾. Here I want only to recall that the bare, empty room in the background is an impossible 3D object (as a matter of fact, many other elements in the painting are spatially inconsistent, but here we shall confine ourselves to the background only).
The walls of the room are joined to each other by means of vertical edges, three of which are explicitly traced, whilst the fourth (the dotted one in Sketch 5) is only suggested by the left side of the paler rectangle in the upper right hand corner of the painting. Three of those vertical edges have mutually inconsistent junctions at the opposite extremities: one end shows a trihedraljunction, where three distinct edges converge, while at the opposite end, two of the three edges line up one another, giving rise to a dihedral T-junction. Thus, the background is an impossible, puzzling 3D object, and the checkerboard covering over the scene may suggest something like a chess problem, just to emphasize the spatial enigma posed by the background.
Look now at Apolinère Enameled: one among the ingredients for making this 3D object impossible, is just the same as for Klee’s Chess: mutually inconsistent ends of a edge, highlighted in Sketch 6.
Klee used to express the concepts and the ideas he was interested in, by means of graphic simplifications, focusing his attention on only the essential parts. He would discard irrelevant and non-essential details, that might mislead the observer and would especially avoid repetition and redundancy. If necessary they wold just suggested.
That’s the reason why we find traces of other impossible 3D objects in a very simplified form; as is the case for The Conqueror (1930) (Fig. 30). Look at his banner. Though a banner is essentially a flat object, at first sight we actually perceive something like a cube, a solid figure; but counting the peripheral sides of the overall silhouette, we find that there are five, not six, as we would generally expect (Sketch 7). Something here is wrong: as soon as we accept the hypothesis of a possible 3D vision, we immediately recognize that it is inconsistent with some details of the motif. There is something missing. To better understand what really is missing, let us examine a further simplified versions of the same motif in another of Klees’ pictures: Six species (1930) (Fig. 31). Look at the flower displayed in Sketch 8. To make it spatially plausible, we have to mentally add a missing edge to form a trihedron; the same holds of course for each other flower in the painting. Without the addition of the missing edge we perceive something oscillating between a dihedron and a trihedron, which leads us back to the analogous ambiguity we saw in Chess.

Notice now that Duchamp was interested in exactly the same ambiguity. Look indeed at the recto side of the Hershey Postcard note (circa 1915) (Fig. 32), or even at the miniature reproduction of Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy? in the Boite-en-Valise (1941) (Fig. 33).

Returning now to Klee’s Conqueror, it is easy to see similar treatments in its banner. Especially in this case, as we said above, the perception oscillates continually between the 2D and 3D: no sooner have we arrived at a 2D hypothesis, then we are pushed to reject it and embrace 3D one, and vice versa. The relevance of some of Duchamp’s and Escher’s ideas is here clear, for it is well-known that the conflict between surface and space is one of the most important among their themes.
Let’s now turn our attention to Klee’s Soaring, Before the Ascension (1930) (Fig. 34) which is representative of several paintings based on the same framework, worked out in the years we are considering. The framework is based on rectangles freely soaring over the whole surface of the work, connected to each other with colored bars.
At the first glance we realize that the whole is spatially inconsistent, though the local details are not. Particularly, it happens that focusing our attention on a couple of connected rectangles at once, there is no problem; but considering three or more connected rectangles at once, in the most cases it yields spatial inconsistencies, that prevent the observer from seeing which are the closest or the farthest planes (unless one admits the bars could make a hole in the rectangles and pass through them).
In Soaring Klee used several skewed perspective boxes at once, like the ones in his pedagogical sketch (Sketch 9). Here we are confronted with the desired effect of spatial ambiguity, for a face (the red one in see Sketch 10) might simultaneously belong to several boxes, each of them suggesting a different perspective; thus, that face has an ambiguous spatial collocation. We can easily see the practical effects of such a strategy in Sketch 11, which displays several of the possible simultaneous perspectives contained in a single detail ofSoaring. Interestingly, because of their shared surfaces, the perspective boxes used by Klee form a wide network of connected elements. Notice: not just a linear chain of elements, but a true net, which allows a multiplicity of possible circular courses ⁽²²⁾.
This kind of construction makes me think to something like the hypercube displayed in Sketch 12and this of course recalls the Duchamp’s pet; the fourth dimension. Thus, look at Poster for the Third Chess Championship (1925) (Fig. 35), where Rhonda Shearer ⁽²³⁾ showed several analogous spatial inconsistencies.
One of the most famous 3D impossible objects of Escher’s is Ascending and Descending (1960) (Fig. 36): on the roof of a building we see an endless staircase. Once again we have a circular course ever returning to its starting point. It is well-known, and Bruno Ernst ⁽²⁴⁾ explained it carefully, that the building, which has the impossible staircase on its roof, has a strange perspective structure, shown in Sketch 13. More than any verbal explanation, animations 3 and 4 help us understand the key reason for this. Animation 3 is a perspective sketch with one only vanishing point. It starts by showing three distinct parallel planes. They are perspectively represented with three closed polygonal lines (namely three rectangles) whose edges are of course not connected with each other. But by slightly rotating one of the edges of the optical pyramid around the vanishing point, we get a spiraling polygon, which joins in a single connected line the edges of several planes. The same holds if perspective has three vanishing points: look at Animation 4, which explains the perspective structure of Escher’s impossible building. Here is the surprise. Look at Sketch 14: the impossible room in Klee’sChess is based just on the construction presented in animation 3, thus it is deeply linked to the impossible building of Escher’s Ascending and descending. (Further explanation for this can be found in the article cited above ⁽²⁵⁾).

Thus, in these cases both Klee and Escher conceived perspective in terms of an iterative process, whose outcome is the spiraling, growing motion we saw in their buildings, as well as in a nautilus shell; thus they thought of the vanishing point as a sort of attractor of a dynamic system.
Can we see anything of this in Duchamp’s work? Not exactly the same, but in a way the answer is: yes, there are.
One of the major achievements of Duchamp on perspective is of course the lower half of the Glass (we shall consider the Completed Large Glass, 1965 (Fig. 37)). Thus, look at the Slide, a perfect perspective box which contains the rotatory element named the Water mill. Many other rotatory elements can also be found in the lower part of the Glass, such as the Chocolate grinder or the Oculist chards, but particularly the pathway described by the Sieves or the Toboggan have the feature of a spiral shell we are interested in.
The analogy between these elements and the perspective spirals we saw above is admittedly weak. But look now at Rotary demisphere (1925)(Fig. 38). Animation 5 can help visualize the surprising perspective depth effect one yields once a similar device is rotating. This is quite close to Klee’s and Escher’s idea of considering the perspective vanishing point as a sort of attractor of an iterative process which implies spiral motions.

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Figure 34
Paul Klee, Soaring,
Before the Ascension, 1930

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Sketch 12
Hypercube
Figure 35
Marcel Duchamp, Poster for the
Third French Chess Championship, 1925

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Figure 37
Marcel Duchamp,
Completed Large Glass, 1965

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Figure 39
M.C. Escher, Another
world II, 1947
Figure 40
Paul klee, Perspective
with inhabitant, 1921

What I said so far shows clearly that the theme of the impossible 3D objects and the one of an enlarged conception of the perspective are tightly linked to each other. Thus I want just to recall some of Escher’s experiments on perspective which Klee and Duchamp also did with similar outcomes.
In Escher’s Another world II (1947) (Fig. 39)the only vanishing point (roughly in the center of the print) must be considered at once on the horizon, or at the zenith or at the nadir, depending on which bird (and which wall) we are considering. The same holds for Klee’s Perspective with inhabitants (1921)(Fig. 40).
In Relativity (1953) (Fig. 41) Escher needed three distinct vanishing points to represent a world with three different gravitational fields, where people can walk on the walls as well as on the floor or the ceiling. In Klee’s Arab town (1922) (Fig. 42) we see a similar effect: the ground plane containing the floor of the higher part of the painting is the same plane containing the back walls in the lower part.
The fluid perspective in Escher’s House of stairs (1951) (Fig. 43) could be also explained by Klee’s idea of a stray viewpoint, and the final outcome could be compared with the one ofSoaring.

Finally, as far as Duchamp’s perspective experiments are concerned, Shearer showed a quantity of different perspective tricks devised by Duchamp, ranging from stray viewpoints, multiple vanishing points, fluid perspective, photographic overlapping, and so on ⁽²⁶⁾. Of course, they maintain an high degree of similarity with the ones of Escher and Klee.
Let’s now return to the impossible objects, and see them from another viewpoint.

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Figure 44
M.C. Escher, Waterfall, 1961

Sketch 15
The simple tribar
underling the building
of Waterfall

What do they represent? Especially in Escher’s case it is evident that they are variation on a leitmotiv: the one of perpetuum mobile. Look at Waterfall (1961) (Fig. 44) or even at Ascending and Descending, which explicitly show endless motions. But look even at the simple tribar (Sketch 15) which underlies the building of Waterfall. As we go with the eye along its bars, we perceive a sense of depth, we feel we are leaving the plane where the bars are actually drawn, to enter in the third dimension; and the pathway is really endless because, once the turn is completed, we can repeat it again and again; every time we find ourselves at the starting point.
Thus the impossible objects belong to a world which isn’t subjected to the law of thermodynamics: here entropy doesn’t increase, but reduces itself, to allow perpetual motions, such as inWaterfall.
A similar overturning is exactly what happens in complex systems with self-organization, which is one of the key concept in complexity sciences. Self-organization means that a system, provided certain conditions (one of them being the complexity of the system itself) spontaneously reduces its entropy, by introducing new levels of order among its elements. The slogan coined by Stuart Kauffman ⁽²⁷⁾, Order for free, effectively captures the essence of the stunning and seemingly paradoxical discover of a self-established order.
Now, if Klee, Duchamp and Escher guessed something about self organization as I believe and as I tried to highlight, then the impossible objects in a way could express with their paradoxical properties the surprising order-for-free nature of complex systems.
After all, something similar has been already said by Jean Clair about the Glass:
Michel Carruoges ⁽²⁸⁾ noticed that the intricate machinery of the Glass shows several analogies with other imaginary machines and engines, devised in same period by Jarry, Roussel, Kafka… Several years after, Jean Clair ⁽²⁹⁾ recalled Carrouges’ statement, and further deepened the parallelism, including in the list a quantity of pseudoscientific inventions which were popular in those years. One of the leitmotivs of those peculiar machines (Glass included) was that they produce more energy than they use, said Clair, thus they are variations on the theme of the perpetuum mobile. In fact they overturn the reality principle (the second law of thermodynamics) into the pleasure principle (the dream of an energy completely free and available).
In short, in my way of seeing things, we can group impossible objects and these machines together.

click to enlarge

Sketch 16
Necker Cube

But a further connection can also be found, particularly referred to the Necker Cube (Sketch 16), which underlies several impossible objects, such as the Impossible Bed of Apolinaire enameled. Indeed, as Rosen ⁽³⁰⁾ observed, the Necker Cube encompasses within itself, thus we can connect it to the same themes we discussed for the self-encompassing topological figures: hence feedback looping and self-reference.

5. A unifying reading perspective
In conclusion, I would like to delimit the context in which this paper should be read.
Often it happens that many people at once, unconsciously, independently and following different courses, elaborate the same new ideas and concepts, and help cement them into the Zeitgeist. In fact they contribute to the emergence of new sensibilities and new ways of observing, interpreting and understanding the world. This was the case for Klee, Duchamp and Escher: I believe they expressed (being in advance on their time) and contributed towards ideas that would grow and be affirmed. Nowadays, this new paradigm, this new way of seeing things is expressed by the so called complexity sciences.
Reiner Hedrich ⁽³¹⁾ stressed some salient traits in the development of complexity sciences. Here I’m interested in two of them. First, the gestation period of the new theories has been very long, about one hundred years. This long latency period, necessary to find a solid mathematical theory useful to describe dynamic systems behavior generously covers the lifetimes of Klee, Duchamp and Escher. Thus, in a way, they were immersed in a stream of ideas and concepts which were still under construction and organizing in theories. I’m talking about a nascient stream in the cultural subconscious, not one that was flowing on the surface of the well established scientific culture of those years; thus I don’t think that our artists could have been directly influenced by those scientific ideas; generally speaking, even admitting the possibility of such an exchange of views, in my opinion it is easier to think it happened in the opposite direction. With a few exceptions: for some aspects (I think of concepts such as instabilities and chaos) scholars acknowledge Duchamp has been influenced by the reading of Poincaré; but they are just only some aspects of his complex thought; the same holds for Klee’s possible understanding of (evolutionary) biology and natural sciences, or for the mathematical readings of Escher, which moreover in some cases he admitted to be unable to understand. The second feature in the development of complexity sciences stressed by Hedrich is that the grounding ideas of the new paradigm, the kernel of complexity, didn’t deal with a specific disciplinary field: instead, they are a sort of conceptual foundation, a shared background for any empirical discipline dealing with complex systems. This fact makes it conceivable that there was, to some extent, a widespread and unconscious emergence of such ideas, even though in purely qualitative and intuitive terms. In other words, I’m talking about quite general concepts, and not about specific subjects or details of a well-defined disciplinary field: it makes possible that the same ideas could have been grasped by someone in more intuitive forms, which is what I’m suggesting for Klee, Duchamp and Escher.
The concepts I’m talking about are closely related to each other, they form a tangle of interconnected ideas, that bringing one of them to the light, mostly implies that many (or even all of) the others could also somehow come out. Really, it is impossible to examine thoroughly one of them without revealing a cascade connection with each other. Indeed, the idea of cyclic dynamism of a system entails feedback, recursion and self-reference; in turn self-organization, fractals and chaos are entailed, and again emergence, dynamic and unsequilibria, (co)evolution; further, the visual expression of such a complexity needs new and different ways to conceive the space, where new and more complex relations may occur between its elements; thus, the represented space has strange topological properties.
It is well-known that complexity introduces several relevant changes in the way we used to know the world. This is not the place to discuss them: I’ll limit myself to summarizing some of them.
First: mainly due to both deterministic chaos and sensitive dependence on the initial conditions which characterize the dynamical systems, we have to accept two weaker versions of both the causality principle and determinism.

click to enlarge

Sketch 17
Diagram explaining
concept of complexity

Second: because of the concept of emergence, the reductionist approach is not more suito study complex systems. This is sometime expressed by opposing reductionism and holism. I like the way Chris Langton expresses the concept by means of Sketch 17 which I took from Roger Lewin ⁽³²⁾.
To effectively explain the radical change in the way of seeing the world implied by complexity, a set of dichotomies is often used, which confronts old paradigms with new:
simplicity-complexity, reductionism-holism, determinism-uncertainty, quantity-quality, necessity-contingence, predictability-unpredictability, reversibility-irreversibility, repeatability-unrepeatability, causality-randomness, law-chaos… Interestingly, if we attempt to describe Klee, Duchamp and Escher by choosing either of the poles in such dichotomies, we always have to choose the second one.
As far as Duchamp is concerned, the discussion about the crisis of determinism and reductionism has been already widely discussed, particularly in relation to the ideas of Poincaré’s.
Coming to Klee, I want just recall his essay titled Exact experiences in the field of art ⁽³³⁾, where he expressed a concept which is one of the leitmotiv of his activity as both artist and teacher: the freedom and the intuition of the artist act in the space between law and unpredictability, but always remembering the necessity of both:
Oh, don’t let the eternal spark become completely smothered by law’s measure! Take steps in time! But don’t go away from this world completely. ⁽³⁴⁾
Escher expressed a similar ambivalence with his prints, in the paradoxical coexistence of extreme formal rigor and uncertainty, mathematical exactness and instability, rigorous application of exact principles and unpredictability in the outcomes.
On the other hand, only a few words are needed to recall that Klee, Duchamp and Escher built their work as organisms, composed by a number of interacting elements, where the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. In their works complex processes are mostly represented, whose outcomes can be emergent, unexpected properties. We can dissect them, but in so doing we always lose something. This is the true essence of their holistic art.

 

---

Notes

1. Roberto Giunti, “R. rO. S. E. Sel. A. Vy”, Tout-Fait : The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal 2.4 (January 2002) Articles <https://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1240&keyword=>.

2. < http://www.mat.uniroma1.it/venezia2005/>.

3. Roberto Giunti, “Percorsi della complessità in arte: Klee, Duchamp ed Escher”, in: M. Emmer (ed.)Matematica e Cultura 2003 (Milano, Springer Verlag – Italia, in print)

4. Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (New York, Basic Book, 1979)

5. Teuber M. R. “Perceptual theory and Ambiguity in the Work of M. C. Escher against the background of 20^th Century Art”, , in H. S. M. Coxeter, M. Emmer, M. L. Teuber, R. Penrose (ed.) M. C. Escher: Art and Science, (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1986)

6. Giunti, R. “Una linea ondulata lievemente vibrante. I ritmi della natura nell’opera di Paul Klee”, Materiali di Estetica No. 2, (2000)

7. Giunti R. [6]

8. Whitehead E. P.
“Symmetry in Protein Structure and Functions”, in H. S. M. Coxeter, M. Emmer, M. L. Teuber, R. Penrose (ed.) M. C. Escher: Art and Science (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1986).

9. Calvin M. “Chemical Evolution”, Oregon State System of Higher Education, Eugene, Oregon, 1961

10. R. Giunti [1], p. 13, <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1240&keyword=>.

11. Shearer, R.R.
“Marcel Duchamp’s Impossible bed and Other Not Readymade Objects: A possible route of Influence from Art to Science (Part I and II). “ Art & Academe, 10:1 & 2. (Fall 1997 and Fall 1998) <http://www.marcelduchamp.org/ImpossibleBed/PartI/> and <http://www.marcelduchamp.org/ImpossibleBed/PartII/>

12. Escher M. C. The Graphic work (Bendikt Taschen Verlag, Koeln, 1992)

13. Giunti R. “Paul Klee on Computer. Biomathematical models help us understand his work” in M. Emmer (Ed.) The Visual Mind 2, (The MIT Press, Cambridge MASS, in print)

14. Tony Phillips “The topology of Roman Mozaic Mazes” in M. Emmer (Ed.) The Visual Mind (The MIT Press, Cambridge MASS, 1993).

15. D. J. Wright, Dynamical Systems and Fractals Lecture Notes, <http://www.math.okstate.edu/mathdept/dynamics/lecnotes/lecnotes.html>.

16. R. Giunti [1], p. 11, <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1240&keyword=>.

17. J. Clair, Duchamp at the turn of the Centuries, ToutFait Journal, Issue 3. <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=877&keyword=>.

18. Giunti R. [1], p. 13,<>

19. Shearer R. R. [11]

20. Penrose L.S., Penrose R. “Impossible Objects: a Special Type of Visual Illusion”, Brit. Journal of Psycology, vol. 49, 1958

21. Giunti R. “Analysing Chess. Some deepening on the concept of Chaos by Klee”

<http://www.mi.sanu.ac.yu/vismath/giunti/00Chess.htm> or <http://members.tripod.com/vismath/pap.htm>

22. Indeed, Klee gradually passed from a first conception, where things are mechanically enchained to each other in a rigid, linear successions, with a well defined cause-effect relation (look at the drawing Parade on the track, 1923) Fig. 45 to a final conception where each thing is connected with each other in a complex network, and causes and effects are not clearly distinguished: look at the pedagogical sketch (sketch 18). Its caption is says: «Building of an higher organism: the assembling of parts viewing at the overall function».

The framework of Soaring is just the first important achievement of such a creative course, which will lead in the late works to the theme of morphogenesis.

23. Shearer R.R. “Examining Evidence: Did Duchamp simply use a photograph of “tossed cubes” to create his 1925 Chess Poster?” Tout-Fait Journal, issue 4, <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1375&keyword=>.

24. B. Ernst, Der Zauberspiegel des M. C. Escher (Taco, Berlin, 1986)

25. Giunti R. [21]

26. Shearer R. R. “Why the hatrack is and/or is not Readymade: with interactive software, animations and videos, for readers to explore”, Tout-Fait Journal, Issue 3, <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1100&keyword=>

27. Kauffman S. At Home in the Universe. The Search for the Law of Self- Organization and Complexity(Oxford University Press, 1995)

28. Carrouges M. Les Machines célibataires (Arcanes, Paris, 1954)

29. Clair J. Marcel Duchamp ou le grand fictif (Galilée, Paris, 1975)

30. Rosen, S. M. “Wholeness as the Body of Paradox”. 1997 <http://focusing.org/Rosen.html>.

31. Hedrich R. “The Sciences of Complexity: A Kuhnian Revolution in Sciences?” Epistemologia XII.1 (1999) <http://www.tilgher.it/epiarthedrich.html>

32. Lewin R. Complexity. Life at the edge of chaos (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999)

33. The essay is contained in: Klee P. Das Bildnerische Denken (Basel: Benno Schwabe & Co., 1956)

34. P. Klee, Tagebücher von Paul Klee 1898-1918 (Köln:Verlag M. Dumont Scauberg, 1957), note 636, 1905

Figs. 1-2
©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

[The following is the transcript of the talk Marcel Duchamp (Fig. 1A, 1B)gave on February 17th, 1963, on the occasion of the opening ceremonies of the 50^th anniversary retrospective of the 1913 Armory Show (Munson-Williams-Procter Institute, Utica, NY, February 17th – March 31st; Armory of the 69th Regiment, NY, April 6th – 28th) Mr. Richard N. Miller was in attendance that day taping the Utica lecture. Its total length is 48:08. The following transcription by Taylor M. Stapleton of this previously unknown recording is published inTout-Fait for the first time.]

click to enlarge

• 
• 

• Figure 1A
  Marcel
  Duchamp in Utica at the opening of “The Armory Show-50th Anniversary
  Exhibition, 2/17/1963″
• Figure 1B
  Marcel
  Duchamp at the entrance of the 50^th anniversary exhibition
  of the Armory Show, NY, April 1963, Photo: Michel Sanouillet

Announcer: I present to you Marcel Duchamp.

(Applause)

Marcel Duchamp: (aside) It’s OK now, is it? Is it done? Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Yes, I think so. I’ll have to put my glasses on. As you all know (feedback noise). My God. (laughter.)As you all know, the Armory Show was opened on February 17^th, 1913, fifty years ago, to the day (Fig. 2A, 2B). As a result of this event, it is rewarding to realize that, in these last fifty years, the United States has collected, in its private collections and its museums, probably the greatest examples of modern art in the world today. It would be interesting, like in all revivals, to compare the reactions of the two different audiences, fifty years apart. If only a happy few in this room actually saw the Armory Show of 1913, all of you have heard and read so much about it that we all are very familiar with the kind of reception the public of 1913 gave to it. It was a veritable bataille d’ [inaudible] with such weapons as derision, contempt, caricature, engaged in approval and defense of a new form of art expression, a battle which seems, today, hard to imagine.

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• 
• 

 

 

• Figure 2A
  Interior space of the Armory Show, New
  York (detail) 1913
• Figure 2B
  Cover of the catalogue for “The Armory
  Show-50th Anniversary Exhibition,” 1963

 

In Europe, this same period of 1910-1914 has been called the heroic epoch of modern art, and had its convulsions in the shows of the Independents and the Salon d’Automne of 1911 and 1912. But the reaction of the European public was only a mild cry of indignation in comparison to the negative explosion at the Armory Show. The public of 1963 will certainly not be shocked. All of the paintings and sculptures have been seen or reproduced so often during the last 50 years, and particularly after having been part of the controversy of 1913, most of them have established their worthiness. In other words (laughs), in other words, today, the public, in order to judge, will be on a more understanding and critical level, and fully aware of the concentration [inaudible] by the 50 years of survival. A feeling of reverence, with nostalgic overtones, will certainly prevail in the final verdict by our present aesthetic standards.

I hope, this afternoon, to add a little note to the Show itself, by showing you a number of works which were in the 1913 exhibition, but could not, for different reasons, be obtained for the present show. I will also show a few others, which, although in neither show, reflect the spirit of that period. The aim of the Munson-Williams-Procter Institute has been to show only the paintings and sculpture that actually were in the Armory Show. In fact, over 325 original items have been collected – a real tour de force. And now, we’ll start with the slides:

Ingres. Ingres. Dominique Ingres. Chronologically, the first artist on the list. Ingres was represented in 1913 by two drawings without any title in the catalogue. This one, a very beautiful study of a portrait he made of the Comtesse d’Haussonville (Fig. 3) was done around 1840, and may or may not have been actually in the 1913 Show. In any case, a drawing of such quality could compare favorably to any Ingres drawing, and we’ll accept it as though it had been, hmm? (laughter) It’s about the same.

Puvis de Chavannes next. Puvis de Chavannes. As a distant disciple of Ingres, Puvis de Chavannes applied a classical approach to the technique of mural painting during the middle and the end of the 19^th century. In this Prodigal Son (Fig. 4), painted in 1879, Puvis de Chavannes seems to have completely ignored the realist storm of Courbet, followed by the Impressionists’ revolution, and all the isms that raged until he died in 1898. It shows courage—or stubbornness. (laughter)

Daumier. Honoré Daumier. Third-Class Carriage (Fig. 5) by Daumier. A very well-known masterpiece, which was included in the original show. Daumier made two other wash drawings of trains and their passengers, second and first class – when trains were quite a novelty, in the world of 1860. This oil painting now belongs to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

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• 

   

   

• 
• 

• Figure 3
  Dominique
  Ingres, The Comtesse d’Haussonville, 1845, The Frick Collection,
  New York
• Figure 4
  Cover of the catalogue for “The Armory
  Show-50th Anniversary Exhibition,” 1963
• Figure 5
  Honoré Daumier, The
  Third-Class Carriage, 1863-65, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
  New York

 

Manet. Manet. Édouard Manet, who died in 1883, painted some beautiful portraits in the last years of his life. This on, Mery Laurent (Fig. 6) —M-e-r-y, I don’t know why, hmm? Mery Laurent, the lady with the black cloak. Also called L’Automne, painted in 1882. It was included in the Armory Show, and is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy. Although Manet was on friendly terms with the Impressionists, he belongs to an earlier generation and never influenced or was influenced by any of their theories.

Degas. Edgar Degas painted this Carriage at the Races (Fig. 7), one of the many famous pictures Degas made of this scene. It was painted in 1873, when he returned from a trip to America, where he had visited his family in New Orleans, where his mother was a Creole. One still feels in this painting the mark of the Ingres and Manet influence, which disappeared in his later pastels of ballet dancers and washerwomen.

Redon. Odilon Redon. There are so many beautiful Redons …but this one is not perfect. This luminous pastel of 1910, called Roger and Angelica (Fig. 8), was among the fifty Redons shown at the original exhibition. Redon’s subjects were only simple incidents in the general arrangement of colors and forms. The figures and the faces in his pastels make no pretense at representing natural truth. They are more like the prolongation of dreams. And Redon’s pastels show the preoccupation of the non-figurative theories that we hear so much about today. (Today it’s abstraction.)

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• 
• 
• 

• Figure 6
  Edouard
  Manet, Portrait de Méry Laurent, 1832-1883
• Figure 7
  Edgar
  Degas, A Carriage at the Races, 1872 © Burstein Collection/CORBIS
• Figure 8
  Odilon
  Redon, Roger and Angelica, c. 1910, The Museum of Modern
  Art, The Lillie P. Bliss Collection

 

####PAGES####

Now, we go back to the Impressionists.

Monet. Claude Monet was represented by five canvasses in the Armory Show. This first one,Boardwalk at Trouville, 1870, when Trouville was the Atlantic City of France, is an early attempt at Impressionism, since the name “Impressionism” was coined only four years later in 1874. And we have another Monet, entirely different. This one is a Water Lily Pool, on the contrary, dated 1904, much later, and is one of a series of water lily murals, which link Monet with the birth of abstraction. The two Monets that you saw were in the 1913 Show.

click to enlarge

Figure 9
Georges Seurat,
Les Poseuses (The Models),1888

Seurat. Georges Seurat, in his too-short life – he died at age 32 – achieved a very important revolution with Pointillism, which was his personal reaction to Impressionism. This beautiful version ofLes Poseuses (Fig. 9) of 1888, shows his very unique contribution to the technique of Neo-Impressionism. A large canvas of the same subject, Les Poseuses, is in the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania.

Cross. Henri-Edmond Cross was with Seurat and Paul Signac at the origins of Pointillism, the art movement that succeeded Impressionism around 1880. This painting, called Clearing(Fig. 10) of 1906-7, was in the Armory Show, and is a perfect illustration of the theories of Pointillism, based on the scientific studies of Chevreuil. Simultaneous contrast of colors which also influenced Delauney a few years later, around 1912.

Toulouse-Lautrec. (I think we have it upstairs, I think) Toulouse-Lautrec is less known for his oil paintings than for his posters. Nevertheless, with paintings such as this one, calledRed-haired Woman Seated in Garden(Fig. 11) in 1889, he belonged to the Impressionist group. This painting was in the original show, and is also included in the anniversary show. (I saw it last night, hmm.)

Gauguin. Gauguin. Paul Gauguin brought back this oil from his first trip to Tahiti. It’s calledMata Mua (Fig. 12), which in Tahitian dialect means “in open times.” It was shown at the important Gauguin exhibition at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris in 1893, when Gauguin was 45, already. As you know, he died in miserable conditions during his second stay in Tahiti in 1903.

click to enlarge

• 
• 
• 

• Figure 10
  Henri-Edmond
  Cross. The Clearing, c. 1906/07
• Figure 11
  Henri
  de Toulouse-Lautrec, Red-Haired Woman Sitting in Conservatory,
  1889, private collection
• Figure 12
  Paul
  Gauguin, Mata Mua, 1892

 

And van Gogh. Van Gogh. Of the 14 paintings that Van Gogh had in the 1913 show, five important ones are in the anniversary show, upstairs. This one, called Hills at Arles, from the Thannhauser Collection was painted in 1889 at Arles or at St. Remy, I can’t be sure. When van Gogh was very sick in the hospital at St. Remy. I show you now another landscape very much like this one. Olive Trees at St. Remy, painted in the same year, 1889. Very luminous expression and all – almost the same thing. In the following year, 1890, van Gogh went to live his last month in Auvers, a small town near Paris, where he painted several portraits of young girls like this one, Mademoiselle Ravoux (Fig. 13), June 1890, which is included in the anniversary show. Van Gogh died a month later. Incidentally, this last painting used to belong to Katherine Dreier, who lent it to the Armory Show, and it is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

And now we come to Cézanne. Paul Cézanne. Woman with a Rosary (Fig. 14). It was in the Show of 1913. Cézanne painted this important portrait at the end of his life in about 1903, probably in Aix [en-Provence]. In 1904-1905, the Salon d’Automne and the Independents gave him a very important one-man show. He died in 1906, before he had received a worldwide recognition.

Now we can do Ryder. Albert Ryder, a great, great painter, who came from an American Cape Cod family, and lived for many years in New York, on Washington Square and later, West 15^th Street, in a most modest and bohemian way, completely absorbed in and dedicated to his inner vision. This Moonlight Marine (Fig. 15) was in the original and is also in the present show. It’s one of Ryder’s best-known themes, a typical expression of his position as a forerunner of abstract art, as we understand it today. Very abstract, isn’t it? You hardly see the boats. There are some boats.

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• 
• 
• 

• Figure 13
  Vincent
  Van Gogh, Mademoiselle Ravoux, June 1890
• Figure 14
  Paul Cézanne,
  An Old Woman with a Rosary, 1900-04
• Figure 15
  Albert Pinkham Ryder,
  Moonlight Marine, c. 1908, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
  York

 

Figure 16
James McNeill Whistler, The
Little Rose of Lyme Regis, 1895. Oil
on canvas.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA.

Figure 17
Mary Cassatt,
The Bath, 1910

Now, Whistler. James McNeill Whistler painted this portrait called Little Rose of Lyme Regis (Fig. 16), which is, I suppose, a small town in England. It was painted in 1895, and it is considered as one of his finest achievements in quality, as compared to most of his life-sized portraits. As we all know, Whistler lived a great part of his life abroad, and became quite a big international figure around the turn of the century.

Another American, Mary Cassatt is coming now. Mary Cassatt had two paintings in the 1913 show of her favorite subject, mother and child. She only painted that, all her life, very much like this one called The Bath(Fig. 17), 1910. That was not in the Show, I don’t think it was in the 1913 Show. In France, where she spent most of her life, she was very closely associated with the Impressionists—Degas, Pissarro, Berthe Morisot—and considered one of theirs. This painting is owned by the French government in the Petit Palais collection in Paris.

Now, we have the lights. Before we go on with the slides, I wanted to elaborate a bit on the art situation in America in the years before 1913. In New York, the private gallery of Alfred Stieglitz, Fifth Avenue, situated at 291 Fifth Avenue, although concerned with the establishment of photography as an art, was the scene of the introduction of Rodin, January 1908, and Matisse, April 1908, to America. I mean they didn’t come, only their things came, hmm (laughs). Stieglitz and Steichen, during the next years, followed up by showing Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Rousseau, Cezanne, Picasso, and the American Max Weber. In 1910, the 291 Gallery gave a group show of American artists: Marsden Hartley, Dove, John Marin, Alfred Moore, Walkowitz, and others.

####PAGES####

Quite independently from 291, and more like a gesture of revolt against the Academy, a group of American artists held an exhibition in 1908 at the Macbeth Gallery in New York called The Eight Show. Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, Everett Shinn, Arthur B. Davies, and Maurice Prendergast. The show of The Eight at the Macbeth Gallery was a tremendous success, and was soon followed by the creation of a Henri School of Art, headquartered in the famous Lincoln Arcade Building, where lived myself later on, on 66^th Street, where a large group of younger artists, like Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Walter Pach, joined the ranks of the original Eight, under the guiding spirit of Robert Henri. The group was to be called, much later, the Ashcan School, which, to a certain extent, was a prophecy of what we know today as a proper art school, hmm?(laughter) In April 1910, a large independent show was organized by Sloan and Walt Kuhn. The great success of the show established firmly the faction of the young American artists in opposition to the Academy.

Such was the climate in which Arthur B. Davies, elected president of the newly-formed Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1912, conceived with Walt Kuhn and Walter Pach, the project of an expanded version of the 1910 Independent with the participation of European artists. The project materialized in the Armory Show of 1913. Among the difficulties to organizing this large exhibition, the first important obstacle was the duty imposed on all import of all fine arts to America at that time. It was a remarkable decision of John Quinn, the famous New York lawyer and art patron, to go to Washington, and argue and convince the lawmakers to change the law. He succeeded, and obtained the admission duty-free of all fine original works of art to America less than a hundred years old, I believe. This action is still enforced today. Now, we will see more, more, more slides.

Yes. This is Henri. Robert Henri. Robert Henri was really a moving spirit of American modern art, in the period immediately preceding the Armory Show, though he was a finer teacher than a painter, in my opinion. This painting called Laughing Boy (Fig. 18) was not in the original show, but in the show of The Eight I spoke of, in 1908. It is a typical Henri portrait, but still too academic, I feel. The Ashcan is [inaudible]. (laughter)

Bellows. George Bellows, one of Henri’s pupils, belongs to the generation of the Ashcan School, and he is known for his pictures of boxing matches, executed in a dynamic narrative style. This view of Lower Manhattan called The Lone Tenement (Fig. 19) was painted in 1909, after Bellows had been accepted by the Academy in 1907, and before he began painting sports scenes of violent realism, which is more the Ashcan, like boxing.

Prendergast. A beutiful Prendergast. Maurice Prendergast spent his formative years in Europe. When he returned to America, he was invited to join the exhibition of the Eight in 1908 with Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, and the Henri group. He also showed at the Independents, 1910. Later on, Prendergast, Glackens, Bellows, and Charles Sheeler were among the founders of the second Society of Independent Artists – no jury – in 1917 in New York. This painting, called Ponte della Paglia (Fig. 20), was probably painted in Italy in 1899, I think. The flag is green. It’s an Italian flag in 1899. It shows, perhaps, an influence of Bonnard. It’s very true for the one in the anniversary show, upstairs, in the collection of this institute, Landscape with Figures. I remember, Prendergast was a very nice person. Very…very…almost timid.

click images to enlarge

• 
• 
• 

• Figure 18
  Robert Henri, Dutch
  Joe (Jopie Van Slouten), 1910
• Figure 19
  George
  Bellows, Lone Tenement, 1909
• Figure 20
  Maurice
  Prendergast, Ponte della Paglia, 1898-99, The Phillips Collection,
  Washington

Now, Walkowitz. Walkowitz is 82 now, today—82 years old today. He was born in Siberia, and came to the United States as a child. The title of these three drawings is Duncan Dancers(Fig. 21). Walkowitz made a great number of studies and drawings in the Isadora Duncan School of Dance. His sketches of Isadora and her pupils are a very vivid evocation of the great American dancer and teacher. At the time of the Armory Show, he was with the Stieglitz group.

Katherine Dreier. Katherine Dreier sent this oil, The Blue Bowl, and we never could find it. It is certainly not lost, but we couldn’t find it. At the Armory Show, she had spent several years in Europe, and brought back a small collection of European artists, among which is van Gogh’s Mademoiselle Ravoux, that you saw on the screen a moment ago. As a pioneer of abstract art, she established a few years later the Société Anonyme and The Museum of Modern Art of 1920, long before the other Museum of Modern Art. A collection of international artworks, which is now at Yale University.

Kroll. Leon Kroll. You can hardly see it, it’s from a newspaper, but anyway. He painted this painting called Terminal Yards (Fig. 22) around 1911, and it was in the 1913 Show. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a better slide. This one is taken from a newspaper reproduction. The painting was bought at the Armory Show by Arthur Jerome Eddy, a Chicago lawyer and art collector, a rather eccentric character – he bought two of my own paintings, (laughter) and was the first man in Chicago to have his portrait painted by Whistler and to ride a bicycle (laughter). You know, I knew him and he was very nice man.

Rousseau. Rousseau, Rousseau, Rousseau. Le Douanier has three landscapes in the present show, very much in the spirit of this one, which is called View at Malakoff (Fig. 23).Malakoff is a small town on the outskirts of Paris, dated 1898. I think it was also in the original Show, and I want to show you a bigger one, which was not in the Show. And now, in another vein, which accounts for his fully-deserved recognition, Rousseau becomes the dreamer, the poet in these large paintings like this one, called The Dream, painted in 1901.

click images to enlarge

• 
• 
• 

• Figure 21
  Abraham
  Walkowitz, Isadora Duncan, date unknown
• Figure 22
  
  Leon Kroll, Terminal Yards, ca. 1911
• Figure 23
  Henri
  Julian Rousseau, Study for View at Malakoff (Vue
  de Malakoff), 1908

click to enlarge

Figure 24
Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Kneeling Woman
(Femme á genoux), 1911

click to enlarge

Figure 25
André Derain, Window on the Park
(La Fênetre sur le parc), 1912

Lehmbruck. Wilhelm Lehmbruck has been called the leading Expressionist sculptor. In this Kneeling Woman (Fig. 24) of 1910, he is simply turning away, turning his back on the pure forms of Maillol, whose influence had marked his earlier years. The plaster cast of this sculpture was in the original show in 1913 and belongs now to the Albright Gallery in Buffalo. But it is too fragile, really, to travel. You can only see it this way.

Derain. One of the original “wild beasts,” the Fauves, with Matisse and Braque. Derain turned, after 1907, to a more constructive technique. Almost a Cubist, without accepting to be a Cubist. He was very stubborn, too. And his still life, Window on the Park (Fig. 25), 1912 belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was in the original Show, and is also in the present show.

Pablo Picasso. This portrait of Madame Soler is a very early Picasso, dated 1903. It belongs to the blue period, probably painted in Barcelona, where he had returned after his first stay in Paris, 1901-1902. One of the very first Cubist sculptures by Picasso, this Head of Fernande Olivier, 1909, is treated with the same facet-like technique as were the Cubist paintings of the same year. Yes, it’s in the present show. It’s upstairs. Beautiful sculpture. Now, we have another one, which is called Woman with a Mustard Pot(Fig. 26), you see the mustard pot on the left, and was painted in 1910, at the very beginning of Cubism, and bears a certain resemblance to the sculpture you just saw on the screen. The museum of The Hague, Holland, agreed to lend this important painting to the show in New York in April. They wouldn’t let it go for more than three weeks, I don’t know why. The three Picassos you just saw were all in the original Show.

####PAGES####

Now, this is Brancusi. Constantin Brancusi. I cannot understand why this beautiful Muse(Fig. 27) and four other sculptures of Brancusi’s, created such a violent reaction in the Chicago show of 1913. As a result, Brancusi was burned in effigy, along with Matisse and Walter Pach, in Chicago (laughter). It’s true. These are the mysteries of modern art.

Braque. Georges Braque, in 1908, Georges Braque abandoned his Fauvist palette and attacked a completely different problem, which was to become Cubism. This still life, Pitcher and Violins (Fig. 28), 1910, is typical of the first years of the Cubist discipline as it was practiced by Picasso and Braque at that time. In fact, their technique was so closely similar that it was very difficult at times to distinguish the Cubist Braque from the Cubist Picasso. That I know, that was very difficult.

Léger. Fernand Léger. I remember seeing this composition by Léger in the Cubist room of the Salon d’Automne in 1911. Léger’s contribution to Cubism in 1910 and 1911 was this tubular style. Instead of using cubes, he used tubes. The art critics of the time called him a Tubist instead of a Cubist (laughter). It’s true, it was in all the papers. He was soon to develop a more colorful style.

La Fresnaye. La Fresnaye. Roger de la Fresnaye was wrongly called a Cubist. In this Village of Meulon of 1912, he simply applies a geometric technique, a formal transcription of a very effective landscape. This painting is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Arensburg collection, and probably was in the 1913 Show. Probably. When I first came to New York in 1915, it was hanging in the Arensburgs’ dining room. They probably bought it at the Show, that’s why.

click images to enlarge

• 
• 
• 

• Figure 26
  Pablo Picasso, Woman with
  Mustard Pot (La Femme au pot de moutarde),1910
• Figure 27
  Constantin Brancusi, The Muse (La Muse),
  1912, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
• Figure 28
  Georges Braque, Violin and Pitcher, 1910

click to enlarge

Figure 29
Francis Picabia, Procession in Seville, 1912

Voila. It is Picabia. I also remember being in the studio with Picabia in Paris when he was making this Cubist picture,Procession in Seville (Fig. 29) in 1912. His main preoccupation at that time was to advocate abstraction, and he must be counted with Kandinsky, Kupka, and Mondrian as one of the pioneers of non-figurative art. This painting was in the Armory Show and is also included in the anniversary show.

That’s my brother. Duchamp-Villon. Not himself, no (laughter). Duchamp-Villon, my brother, has three pieces in the present show. This one, his fourth piece, called Girl of the Woods, was made in 1910, I believe, a year before his head of Baudelaire and two years before his Cubist horse. It is a terracotta cast of the original plaster which was in the 1913 show. He died in November of 1918, from the long illness he had contracted at the front in the First World War.

click to enlarge

Figure 30
Henri Matisse, The Young Sailor, II (Jeune Marin), 1906

Now we come to Matisse, who I have been keeping for the last because I want to show you five important ones, although we haven’t got many upstairs. Matisse was represented in the Armory Show by thirteen paintings, three drawings, and a large sculpture. While Augustus John had thirty-eight, and Odilon Redon forty. But Matisse had a big share of angry hostility on the part of the public and the art critics. Even though we’re now completely familiar with the five Matisses I’ll show you, we can imagine the shock they produced in 1913 on a public totally unaware of the “Wild Beast School,” the Fauves. This painting, The Young Sailor(Fig. 30) was done in 1906, in Collioure. It is the second of two versions, this more graceful and assertive than the first one. Now, the Blue Nude of 1907 painted also in Collioure, heavily accented in the Fauve style. It is now in the Baltimore Museum. This is Luxe, the second version of 1908. It has only the word “luxe” in common with an earlier painting of 1904-5 called Luxe, Calme, et Volupté, a title taken from the famous poem of Baudelaire,L’Invitation au Voyage. It is completely painted in Pointillist technique—the other one, not this one. Girl with a Black Cat. This is one of the numerous portraits Matisse made of his daughter Marguerite. It is dated 1910, a year of many Matisse portraits. And now, the last slide, The Red Studio, one of the four large interiors painted by Matisse in 1911. Against a monochrome red, Matisse has scattered the colored miniature images of his own paintings and sculptures. This last painting belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

And now, before we part, I would like to salute a few artists, veterans of the Armory Show. Archipenko, Georges Braque, Paul Burlin, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Leon Kroll, Picasso, Monsieur [inaudible], Charles Sheeler, Jacques Villon, Walkowitz, Margaret and William Zorach, and myself.

(Applause)

Announcer: Lights!

(Applause)

[inaudible]

[cut]

Voice: Questions and answers – we’re never gonna get those.

[inaudible]

Marcel Duchamp: Yes. I don’t know because what you do in 1913 you don’t do in 1963, even anybody. It is very difficult to say. I might and might not. I don’t know, I couldn’t tell. And you don’t know either. I have a cigar now (laughter and applause). Thank you.

[end of recording]

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Günter Uecker,
Do it Yourself, 1969

Figure 2
Duchamp und Jean
Tinguely, Galerie
Iris Clert, Paris, Juli 1959

In wohl radikalster Konsequenz hat der deutsche ´Nagelkünstler´ Günther Uecker diesen Gedanken eines künstlerischen ´Do it Yourself´ in einer gleichnamigen Arbeit ins ästhetische Spiel gebracht. Nach dem dissenten Ende der Düsseldorfer Künstlergruppe ZERO im Jahre 1967 versuchte Uecker sich von der despektierlichen Reduzierung seines Schaffens auf ein Paar eingeschlagene Nägel zu befreien. Uecker habe zu dieser Zeit, so schrieb der ehemalige Direktor der Berliner Nationalgalerie Dieter Honisch 1993 in einem großen Retrospektivkatalog, »alles getan,um das Image des Nagels zu verbrauchen und zu überwinden,« ⁽⁹⁾ quasi die Geister, die er mit seinen Nagelbildern gerufen hatte, zu vertreiben. Sein Do it Yourself ⁽¹⁰⁾ von 1969 (Abb. 1), ein unlimitiert aufgelegtes Multiple, bestehend aus einem Holzbrett, zwei darin eingeschlagenen Nägeln und einem an diesen aufgehängten Hammer, war – bei aller materiellen Simplizität dieses Objektes – der unverhohlene Kommentar, »wer eine weitere, lediglich bereits Geleistetes wiederholende Nagelarbeit von Uecker wolle, solle sie sich doch gefälligst selbst machen.«⁽¹¹⁾ In diesem Sinne ist sein Do it Yourself wenig mehr als das lakonische Statement zur eigenen Werk- und Wirkungsgeschichte, gleichwohl aber auch nicht weniger als das emphatische Angebot an den Betrachter,es doch einmal selbst zu versuchen und dem eigenen Gestaltungswillen freien Lauf zu lassen.

 

Bereits zehn Jahre zuvor hatte der Schweizer Jean Tinguely als einer der ersten Künstler das Prinzip des ´Do it Yourself´ in seiner künstlerischen Praxis erprobt. Es ist sicher kein Zufall, dass gerade Tinguely die damit verbundene Aufhebung des klassischen, um das Ideal der Autonomie zirkulierenden Werkbegriffs zum Prinzip seiner Kunst erklärte, war er doch schon in frühen Jahren einer der glühendsten Bewunderer Duchamps gewesen. Nicht später als im Sommer 1959 hatte Tinguely erstmals fünf seiner berühmten Malmaschinen – die sogenannten Méta-matics – in der Pariser Galerie Iris Clert vorgestellt (Abb. 2).⁽¹²⁾ Für diese Ausstellung war mit Hand- und Klebezetteln geworben worden, auf denen Tinguely den Betrachtern künstlerische Autonomie offerierte:»do it yourself and create your own abstract painting with tinguely´s meta-matics´ (a machine producing paintings)«.⁽¹³⁾ Diese provokante Aufforderung überspitzte Tinguely noch, indem er auf den Infoblättern einen Wettbewerb ausloben ließ: »a prize of 50.000 f. is offered by the gallery to the best painting made of tinguely´s ´meta-matics´.«⁽¹⁴⁾ Laut Pontus Hulten, dem damaligen Impressario der Pariser Kunstszene und Intimus Tinguelys, seien in der Ausstellungszeit von insgesamt gut vier Wochen über 4000 Meta-Zeichnungen angefertigt worden.⁽¹⁵⁾ Dabei war der wohl prominenteste Besucher der Galerie – wir ahnen es – Marcel Duchamp, der die Méta-matic No. 8 (Meta-Moritz)⁽¹⁶⁾ mittels Einwurfs einer eigens für die Ausstellung angefertigten Münze in Betrieb genommen hatte: »Die Maschine«, so berichtet Calvin Tomkins, »[…] fuhr mit zwei Filzstiften sprunghaft über ein leeres Blatt Papier und brachte in weniger als einer Minute ein glaubhaft aussehendes abstraktes Gemälde zustande.«⁽¹⁷⁾ Jeder Ausstellungsbesucher konnte folglich ein aus seiner Kooperation mit der Maschine hervorgegangenes Bild nicht nur sein eigen nennen, ondern sich überdies im Glauben wähnen, an der Produktion eines Kunstwerkes nachhaltig partizipiert zu haben.

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Niki de Saint Phalle,
Schützenbild,
1964 © VG Bild-Kunst,
Bonn 2002

Auch die mit Tinguely liierte Francoamerikanerin Niki de Saint Phalle griff die Idee der Co-Autorschaft auf, um ihre damalige bildnerische Strategie der sogenannten Tir Tableaux, mit denen sie zu Beginn der sechziger Jahre im internationalen Kunstbetrieb reüssiert hatte, in ein ´Participation Piece´ zu transformieren (Abb. 3). Im Pressetext der Edition MAT, in der Saint Phalles Schützenbild⁽¹⁸⁾ 1964 herausgegeben wurde, hieß es lapidar: »Der Besitzer hat die Möglichkeit, durch mehr oder weniger gelungene Einschüsse sein Bild zu ´komponieren´.«⁽¹⁹⁾ Diese Kompositionsoption hatte de Saint Phalle in einem undatierten Brief an den Editeur Karl Gerstner präzisiert:

Niki des Saint Phalle / GEBRAUCHSANWEISUNG: für´s ´Schützenbild´

 

1.Bild an einer Auswand [sic] anlehnen

 

2.Starkes Brett dahinter (zum event. Schutz der Wand)

 

3.Gewehr (22 Long Rifle) mit Kurzmunition laden

 

4.So lange schiessen bis alle Beutel sich ´ergossen haben´ (oder bis IHNEN das Bild gefällt)

 

5.Aufpassen! Bild in der gleichen Position lassen – Bild gut trocknen lassen UND dann immer noch aufpassen: denn es kann ein Farbrückstand quer fließen.“⁽²⁰⁾

De Saint Phalles ´Do it Yourself´-Kunstwerk folgte also genau genommen der Logik eines ´Shoot it Yourself´. Der Besitzer hätte – so die Idee – die performativen Schießaktionen der Künstlerin nacherleben können: Ekstase des künstlerischen Schöpfungsaktes inklusive. De Saint Phalle:»Nach jedem Schießen fühlte ich mich vollkommen stoned. Ich war total süchtig nach diesem makabren und freudigen Ritual.«⁽²¹⁾

click to enlarge

Figure 4
Jasper Johns,
Target, 1970/71 ©
Jasper Johns and Gemini
G.E.L./VAGA, New York, NY

Figure 5
Andy Warhol, Do
It Yourself (Landscape)
, 1962

In ganz ähnlicher Weise gestaltete sich das Kooperationsangebot, das Jasper Johns in Target (Do it Yourself)⁽²²⁾ offerierte, welches 1970 in der Edition Gemini G.E.L. erschien (Abb. 4). Auch Johns wählte hierfür die Form des Multiples, wie es überhaupt bezeichnend ist, dass das Prinzip des ´Do it Yourself´ weitgehend an das Multiple und damit an die vermeintlich demokratischste aller Kunstformen gekoppelt scheint. Im Prinzip bot Johns dem Besitzer von Target die Möglichkeit, den feinen Haarpinsel zu ergreifen und die in konzentrischen Umrisslinien angedeutete Struktur einer Zielscheibe mittels dreier Aquarellplättchen farbig zu fassen, es also einem der bereits damals in der New Yorker Kunstwelt erfolgreichsten Künstler in gewisser Weise gleich zu tun. Für den Besitzer von Target hätte es folglich bedeuten können, in eine Kooperative mit dem Künstler einzutreten, die Koautorenschaft zu übernehmen und diese zudem neben des Künstlers Signatur durch die eigene zu dokumentieren.

Vor der Interpretationsfolie derartiger kooperativer Vollfertigungs- oder Vollendungsstrategien läge es nun nahe, auch Andy Warhols berühmte Serie seiner ´Do it Yourself´-Bilder⁽²³⁾ als koauktorial zu vollendende Nonfiniti zu begreifen. Indes: so unübersehbar der Einfluss Duchamps auf Werk und Wirken Warhols auch ist, bei diesen Bildern handelt es sich doch nicht um eine Paraphrase des »Creative Act«-Theorems im Sinne einer manifesten Arbeitsteiligkeit des Werkprozesses zwischen Künstler und Rezipient. Zumindest fordern Warhols ´Do it Yourself´-Paintings trotz ihrer proklamatorischen Titel keinerlei aktile Partizipation des Betrachters ein (Abb. 5). Vielmehr stellen sie, ohne dass sie den Verweis auf ihren reduziblen Charakter schuldig bleiben, die ihnen eigeneMedialität aus. Heiner Bastian, dessen schillernd glamouröse Retrospektive von 2001/02 in Berlin, London und Los Angeles Andy Warhol erneut in den Rang eines adorablen Meisterkünstlers,⁽²⁴⁾ ja eines klassisch-modernen Visionärs des 20. Jahrhunderts verklären wollte, hat mit Blick auf dessen großformatige ´Do it Yourself´-Gemälderichtig erkannt, dass diese Bilder nur ´gemalt´ seien, weil sie bereits jemand ´vorgemalt´ habe.⁽²⁵⁾ Tatsächlich sind sie – und hierin natürlich den Brillo Boxesganz ähnlich – ästhetische Statements über die Verfasstheit von Kunst;sie erscheinen in gewisser Weise als Metaphern des Warholschen Kunstbegriffs,der an die Stelle einer neodadaistischen Attitüde eine im Medium der Malerei vorgetragene Reflexion über Medialität ins Werk setzt. Warhol übersteigert damit das Prinzip avantgardistischer Malerei in seine eigene Negation – der manifesten, nämlich taktil vollzogenen Kooperation des Betrachters bedarf es hierzu freilich nicht. Letzterem kommt vielmehr die Aufgabe zu, im Sinne der Duchampschen Dechiffrierung der »inner qualifications« die metaphorische Botschaft dieser ´Ready-made´-Malerei, ihre »aboutness«, wie es Arthur C. Danto nennen würde,⁽²⁶⁾ zu entschlüsseln. Warhols ´Do-it-Yourself´-Bilder also als Epitaphe eines Endes der Malerei?

click to enlarge

Figure 6
Niki de Saint Phalle,
Schützenbild,
1964 © VG Bild-Kunst,
Bonn 2002

Figure 7
Klara Hulten, Peinture
exécutee avec la
Méta-matic N° 20,
undatiert

Zumindest sind wir mit Warhol an einem Punkt angelangt, an dem es gilt, die bisherigen Ausführungen einer Revision zu unterziehen. Betrachtet man nämlich die wenigen in den einschlägigen Katalogen abgebildeten ´Shoot it Yourself´-Bilder de Saint Phalles mit präzisem Blick, so fällt auf, dass nahezu keines Verletzungen der Bildfläche durch Einschüsse an jenen Stellen aufweist, an denen das Relief nicht erhaben ist, unter denen also a priori keine Farbeinschlüsse zu vermuten waren (Abb. 6). Wer immer ein solches Bild erworben haben mag – so ist wohl zu schließen –, wird die paradoxe Werkgenese aus Bildkreation und -destruktion kaum Zufallstreffern überlassen haben. Eher schon ist zu vermuten, dass die Farbe ganz gezielt durch Einstiche zur Eruption gebracht wurde, dass es sich folglich um einen sehr gezielten Akt der Bildschöpfung und nicht um ein performatives, der Kontingenz des Moments unterliegendes Nacherleben einer künstlerischen Attitüde gehandelt haben wird. Bei Jasper Johns wiederum ist in der gesamten Literatur zum Künstler bezeichnender Weise nicht ein einziges Beispiel einer Kooperation dokumentiert, wie sie sein ´Do it Yourself´-Target vorzuschlagen scheint. Dokumentiert sind vielmehr die unangetasteten, büttenweißen Zielscheiben, welche die ihnen zugrunde liegende Idee visuell dokumentieren. Selbst bei Tinguelys Méta-matics erscheint es mehr als fraglich, ob die Ausstellungsbesucher tatsächlich – abgesehen vom Einspannen des Papiers und der Stifte sowie dem Einwurf der Münze – eigenständig auf die Bildkreation einwirken konnten. Zu eng geschnitten erscheint der zumal nach den Vorgaben des Künstlersubjektes definierte Handlungsrahmen zu sein, als dass der Ausstellungsbesucher tatsächlich ein, wie Tomkins es beschreibt, »glaubhaft aussehendes abstraktes«⁽²⁷⁾ Bild hätte gezielt herstellen können (Abb.7). Die koauktorial zu vollendenden Kunstwerke also lediglich als Repräsentanten der ihnen zugrunde liegenden Ideen? Und die vermeintlichen Koautoren doch als nicht mehr, denn willfährige

In diesen Fragestellungen scheint immerhin die Möglichkeit auf, dass alle besprochenen multiplen ´Do it Yourself´-Objekte letztlich nichts anderes darstellen als Metaphern des von ihnen suggerierten Handlungsversprechens, ohne allerdings dessen Einlösung faktisch einzufordern; »darstellende Verkörperungen«⁽²⁸⁾ also, welche die Idee der produktiv-konstitutiven Co-Autorschaft visuell zur Anschauung bringen, ohne dieser zur Genese ihres Werkcharakters allerdings tatsächlich zu bedürfen. ´Do it Yourself´-Kunst als also janusköpfiges Spiel mit einem kumpaneienden Schulterschluss von Künstler und Betrachter auf der einen und dem offenkundigen Etikettenschwindel vorgeblicher Kompetenzübertragung auf der anderen Seite. Damit entpuppt sich die seitens der Künstler nicht ohne Augenzwinkern vorgetragene Proklamation des ´Do it Yourself´ als ein ludisches Lippenbekenntnis; eines allerdings, dass in seiner inneren Paradoxie – Deklaration von Koautorenschaft versus deren faktischer Verzichtbarkeit – Duchamp sicherlich Freude bereitet haben dürfte, liegt ihr ästhetischer Mehrwert doch in nicht weniger, als der Selbstvergewisserung des Rezipienten in der Trias von Künstler, Werk und seiner selbst.

 

Epilog:

Die künstlerische Strategie des ´Do it Yourself´ wurde gerade jüngst im Rahmen des Internetprojektes ´Do it´ ( http://www.e-flux.com/projects/do_it/homepage/do_it_home.html )
vom Künstlerintimus und umtriebigen Kurator Hans Ulrich Obrist aufgegriffen – hier allerdings unter Verzicht auf das pleonastische´Yourself´.´Do it´ ist ein postfluxistisches, internetbasiertes und damit nachgerade omnipräsentes Handbuch schriftsprachlicher Handlungsanweisungen von insgesamt über 60 internationalen, zeitgenössischen Künstlern. So legitimiert beispielsweise der vor einigen Jahren verstorbene Felix Gonzales-Torres den kunstversierten Netzsurfer, eine seiner berühmten Bonbonecken posthum nachzuschöpfen: „´Untitled´ Get 180 lbs. of a local wrapped candy and drop in a corner.“ Andreas Slominski, um willkürlich ein anderes Beispiel zu bemühen, fordert indes die Realisierung folgender absurden Notation ein: „Tip a bicycle seat so that the front points upwards and use the seat to squeeze lemons.“ Begleitet werden derartige Instruktionen von der Aufforderung, bei etwaigen Realisierungen diese photographisch zu dokumentieren, um derartige Bildbelege den andlungsanweisungen exemplarisch beifügen zu können. Auch hier zeigt sich allerdings, wie schon bei den Notationen der Fluxuskünstler in den sechziger Jahren, das der Aufführungscharakter weit hinter den Charakter als ´Denkstücke´zurücktritt. Zumindest sind bezeichnender Weise in ´Do it´ bislang keine Realisierung dokumentiert. Der geneigte Leser darf sich also aufgefordert fühlen, die Vorgeblichkeitsthese des Autors Lügen zu strafen: „Do it (Yourself)!“

Notes

1. Richard Bellamy in einem Gespräch mit Susan Hapgood am 21. Juli 1991 in Long Island, zit. n. Hapgood, Susan: Neo-Dada. In Ausst.-Kat. The American Federation of Arts: Neo Dada : Re-defining Art 1958-1962. 4. November 1994 – 1. Januar 1995 [hrsg. v. Susan Hapgood]. New York : The American Federation of Arts, 1994, S. 14.

2. Siehe hierzu auch Blunck, Lars: Between Gadget and Re-made : The Revolving History of the Bicycle Wheel. In: tout-fait – The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 1, Issue 3, New York, December 2000 (http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_3/Notes/blunck/blunck_d.html).

3. Marcel Duchamp zit. n. Paz, Octavio : Nackte Erscheinung : Das Werk von Marcel Duchamp.Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp, 1991, S. 115.

4.Duchamp, Marcel: The Creative Act. In: Art News, Vol. 56, Nr. 4, New York, Sommer 1957, S. 29.

5. Ibidem, S. 28 f.

6. Immer wieder findensich derartige Aussagen in Duchamps Notizen und Interviews. Etwa: »Und das bringt mich dazu zu sagen, dass ein Werk vollständig von denjenigen gemacht wird, die es betrachten oder es lesen und die es durch ihren Beifall der sogar durch ihre Verwerfung überdauern lassen.« (Marcel Duchamp in einem Brief an Jehan Mayoux, 8.März 1956, zit. n. Daniels, Dieter: Duchamp und die anderen : der Modellfall einer künstlerischen Wirkungsgeschichte. Zugl.: Aachen, TH, Diss, 1991. Köln : Dumont, S. 2). Und an anderer Stelle: »Ich habe eine ganz bestimmte Theorie – ich nenne es Theorie, obwohl ich unrecht haben kann -, dass ein Kunstwerk erst existiert, wenn der Betrachter es angeschaut hat. Bis dann ist nur etwas, das zwar gemacht wurde, das aber verschwinden könnte, und niemand würde davon wissen. Aber der Betrachter weiht es, indem er sagt: ´Das ist gut, wir behalten es´, und in diesem Fall wird der Betrachter zur Nachwelt, und die Nachwelt behält die Museen voller Bilder, nicht wahr.« (Marcel Duchamp in einem Interview mit George Heard und Richard Hamilton für die BBC, London, 1959 , zit. n. Daniels [1992], a.a.O., S. 214).

7. Gerstner, Karl: Do it yourself Kunst : Ein Brevier für jedermann. Köln : Galerie Der Spiegel, 1970.

8. Ibidem, S. 1.

9. Honisch, Dieter: Das Werk als Handlung. In: Ausst.-Kat. Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung München: Günther Uecker, eine Retrospektive. 19. Juni – 15. August 1993 [hrsg. v. Dieter Honisch]. München : Hirmer, 1993, S. 16.

10. ünther Uecker, Do it Yourself, 1969, Hammer und Holzbrett mit zwei Nägeln, 34,0 x 16,5 x 7,5 cm, VICE-Versand Remscheid, Auflage unlimitiert.

11.Schmieder, Peter: Unlimitiert : Der VICE-Versand von Wolfgang Feelisch : Kommentiertes Editionsverzeichnis der Multiples von 1967 bis in die Gegenwart. Köln : Verlag der Buchhanldung Walther König, 1998, S. 142.

12. »Méta-matices de Tinguely«, Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, 1.-31. Juli 1959.

13. Englischsprachige Version zit. n. Hultén, Pontus: Jean Tinguely, »Méta«. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin und Wien : Ullstein, 1972, S. 91. Siehe auch Bischofberger, Christina: Jean Tinguely : Werkkatalog Skulpturen und Reliefs, 1954-1985. Zürich : Edition Bruno Bischofberger, 1982, S. 101, und Schimmel, Paul: Der Sprung ins Leere : Performance und das Objekt. In: Ausst.-Kat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art [et.al.]: Out of Actions : Zwischen Performance und Objekt 1949-1979. 8. Februar – 10. Mai 1998 [hrsg. v. Paul Schimmel]. Dt. Ausg., Ostfildern : Cantz, 1998, S. 38.

14. Hultén [1972], a.a.O., S. 16.

15. Nach Hultén, Pontus: Der Mensch und sein Werk. In: Ausst.-Kat. Museum Jean Tinguely Basel: Die Sammlung. Bern : Museum Jean Tinguely Basel und Benteli Verlags AG, 1996, S. 55.

16. Jean Tinguely, Méta-matic No. 8 (Méta-Moritz), diverse Materialien, 35 x 72 x 46 cm, 1959.

17. Tomkins, Calvin: Marcel Duchamp : Eine Biographie. München und Wien : Hanser, 1999, S. 481.

18. Niki de Saint Phalle, i >Schützenbild, 1964, Gips, Farbbeutel und Holz, 72 x 54 x 7 cm, Edition MAT, projektierte Aufl. 100.

19. Zit. n. Vatsella, Katerina: Die Edition MAT: Daniel Spoerri, Karl Gerstner und das Multiple : Die Entstehung einer Kunstform. Bremen : H.M. Hauschild GmbH, 1998, S. 238.

20.Ibidem, S. 238. Von diesen vergleichsweise miniaturartigen Tir Tableaux hätten de Saint Phalles Wünschen entsprechend wegen der geringen Haltbarkeit der Farbe zunächst nur drei Stück vorbereitet und je nach Käuferanfragen dann weitere Reliefs produziert werden sollen (de Saint Phalle in einem Brief an Karl Gerstner im Sommer 1964, nach Vatsella [1998], a.a.O., S. 280).

21. Saint Phalle, Niki de: Dies und das aus meinem Leben mit dir, Jean. In: Ausst.-Kat. Museum Jean Tinguely Basel: Die Sammlung. Bern : Museum Jean Tinguely und Benteli Verlags AG, 1996, S. 21.

22. Jasper Johns, Target (Do it Yourself), 1970/71, Lithographie, Wasserfarben, Haarpinsel und aufklappbarer Holzrahmen, 36,8 x 25,4 cm, Aufl. 40 Expl., Edition Gemini G.E.L.,Los Angeles

23. Andy Warhol, Do it Yourself (Landscape), 1962, Öl auf Leinwand, 177,8 x 137,2 cm, Museum udwig Köln.

24.»Andy Warhol Retrospektive«, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2. Oktober 2001 – 6. Januar 2002, Tate Modern,London, 4. Februar – 31. März 2002, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,25. Mai – 18. August 2002. Zur Kritik an Bastians Konzeption siehe v.a. Siegel, Marc: Doing it for Andy : Zur Warhol-Retrospektive in Berlin. In: Texte zur Kunst, Vol. 12, Heft 45, Berlin, März 2002, S. 171-180.

25. Siehe Bastian, Heiner: Rituale unerfüllbarer Individualität : Der Verbleib der Emotion.In:Ausst.-Kat. Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin: Andy Warhol Retrospektive.
2. Oktober 2001 – 6. Januar 2002 [hrsg. v. Heiner Bastian]. Berlin : SMPK, 2001, S. 24.

26.Zu Dantos Philosophie der Kunst und der Kategorie der »aboutness« siehe u.a. Danto, Arthur C.: Die Verklärung des Gewöhnlichen . eine Philosophie der Kunst. Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp, 1999 und Danto Arthur C.: Kunst nach dem Ende der Kunst. München : Fink, 1996.

27. Vgl. Fußnote 17.

28.Janecke, Christian: Service-Kunst : Nutzungsangebote in Projekten der Gegenwartskunst zwischen Bild und Vorgeblichkeit. In: Bühler, Marcel; Koch, Alexander (Hrsg.): Kunst & Interkontextualität: Materilien zum Symposium schau-vogel-schau. Köln : Salon-Verl., 2001, S. 225.

“If you are alive, you are a Dadaist,” Richard Huelsenbeck wrote in 1920. Huelsenbeck belonged to the now well-known group of poets and performers who came together in Zurich during 1916 under the name Dada. Whilst Dadaist movements appeared in other places, and took on different manifestations, the Zurich Dadaists were concerned principally with poetry and performance. And if Dada may be defined or understood in many ways, it is arguable that to those in Zurich in 1916 Dada was precisely about the ambiguity of language and its relation to the world, and this was not only demonstrated through performances and writing, but also in the attempt to resist the kind of identification that language, seemingly, cannot escape:

Spit out words: the dreary, lame, empty language of men in society. Simulate gray modesty or madness. But inwardly be in a state of tension. Reach an incomprehensible, unconquerable sphere.
Hugo Ball (Ball, 1996: 77)
Dada is elasticity itself.
Richard Huelsenbeck (Huelsenbeck, 1993: 11)

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Figure 1 Richard Huelsenbeck
(source unknown)
Figure 2 Hugo Ball (source unknown)

As the mediator of sense experience and as a regulator of ideas and concepts, the use of language–one may even say, of words–was extremely important to Huelsenbeck, Hugo Ball and the others (Figs. 1 and 2). And we may suggest that where Richard Huelsenbeck could claim that being itself was ambiguous (i.e., being, like Dada, was ‘elastic’), he was aware that language both connects and disconnects the individual from a world of experience; and we may read what the Zurich Dadaists proclaimed as suggesting that life was a kind of Heraclitean flux, in which all objects, experiences and perceptions were fundamentally unstable. Life, in short is ever moving forward, whilst language (which, in its attachment to categories of understanding, always works in a backward direction), by contrast, masks a kind of immanent disorder. The problem with language was not only one of, say, referentiality, but also of the way in which it gives order, or ‘makes’ the world–and in this sense the uses of language can be nefarious: “Human beings,” Huelsenbeck added, “are simply ideologues if they fall for the swindle perpetrated by their own intellects; that an idea, symbol of a momentarily perceived fact, has any absolute reality” (Huelsenbeck, 1993: 9-11).

  

1. Logos and Identity

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Figure 3
Poster for the first
evening at Cabaret Voltaire

In this essay I want to suggest that the play of identity in language and appearance that was a feature of the short-lived Cabaret Voltaire (Fig. 3), which the Dadaists established in Zurich in 1916, can be read as an attempt to destroy the idea of logos, by which I mean it was an attack on the idea that reason (through the mediating discourse of identity) reveals its own perfectibility in overcoming the shortcomings of the historical present, by reaching towards a future that would be evermore perfect. So whilst the word ‘logos’ translates as ‘word’ or ‘speech’ its associations are far richer than this, and in general terms logos refers principally to a series of developments within the philosophical tradition of the West, which taken together can be understood as an idea of perfectibility, or of the power of reason to attain such perfection. As Mark C. Taylor has written:

[t]he Logos has been interpreted in various ways: Platonic forms, the mind of the creator God, the son of God, the image of God, Reason, Spirit, Absolute Subject, creative archetypes, numbers, geometric forms, and so forth. In each of its incarnations, the logos forms the ground and provides the reason for all that exists. From a logocentric perspective, to under-stand anything, one must penetrate appearances and comprehend what stands under the surface (Taylor, 1992: 188-89).

Thus, any attempt to understand (under-stand as Taylor says), justify, or examine a ‘reality’ beyond appearance, or the relationship between language and such objectivity becomes part of this logocentric tradition, even, it is argued, when such understanding takes the form of a denial of logos (because to deny it is nevertheless to affirm a relation to it, even if it is one of unwelcome parentage, for example) (Rorty, 1991: 107-118). For our purposes the important aspect of this tradition is found in the way language and rational categories create connections between words and the world, and thus assume a principal role in the making ofidentities. It was the world as presented by such rational language around 1917 that Dada sought to question, with Hugo Ball in particular believing that only the spiritual reassertion of logos could destroy the claims of reason to reveal all–in other words, reason’s claim tologos had to be destroyed.

Although the question of identity between appearance and reality has been problematic to an understanding of the world since the dawn of philosophical speculation, the problem of bridging the apparent gap between the two becomes more marked in modern society precisely because more aspects of our experience of the world are now mediated than ever before–from the fact that one can now ‘experience’ situations, lives, or cultures beyond our own (e.g., through film, fiction, etc.), to the commonplace act of, say, purchasing a carton of milk without any knowledge of how to obtain it without the mediation of commerce (this is the inevitable mediation of material life as a consequence of the division of the field of production). Couple that with the historical emergence of contrasting ways of thinking about Western assumptions about reality (anthropology, for example, revealed a variability in beliefs about the nature of the physical world), and the problem of identity becomes so overbearing that one can see by the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century the ease with which the normally expansive curiosity of the Western mind is directed inwards. A retreat to safety, it seems, in an attempt to prevent philosophical speculation from making the gap mediated by language into an unbridgeable chasm.

In technical or formal terms this was reflected, for instance, in the development of a philosophy that advocated the abandonment of speculations about the nature of reality (the so-called Anglo-American analytic school of the first half of the twentieth century). Already, in fact, by the late 1890’s, the groundwork for this withdrawal from metaphysics was found in Gottlob Frege’s work on the sense, meaning and reference of language; although his attempt to elaborate the grounds for a firm identity between words or names and an external object that these referred to was of limited success–because he found that meaning had an unavoidable contextual determination that allowed for a degree of ambiguity (Frege, 1980: 56-79) ⁽¹⁾. In trying to make philosophy scientifically respectable, the philosophers of language who followed Frege, determined that, in language, every term must therefore be unambiguous, or rather, for talk of reality to avoid the charge of meaninglessness, words had to refer to one thing or another–word meanings must be ‘tight’ and not ‘elastic’. This meant that a conception of language taken in such terms could be understood to have a backward directed referentiality function, which is to say that language itself was for the most part assimilated to already available categories of ordering experience. The important point about this with relation to Dada is that the ‘proper’ use of language reflected a version of the logos:that is to say, the philosophically respectable notion of language in the early twentieth century cannot easily be disentangled from associated ideas of referentiality and identity, which suppose a ‘reality’ to which language use, and representations generally (be they verbal/textual or material) should match up (Wittgenstein, 1953; Goodman, 1978). The reason for this was simple–words always refer to something. Dada, as we will see, sought to say something about reality, but did not use language in this way. Of course, this was not entirely new with respect to Dada–certain uses of words (e.g., in verse or poetry) would never claim to reach for such strict conditions of use, but did this entail meaninglessness? Was the apparent gap between words and worlds not an aspect of the problem of language providing the grounds for different kinds of views of the world (e.g., scientific as against literary, etc.), that reason-as-logos had sought to overcome? As Richard Rorty has said, the basis of this problem is that the realist picture (which demands strict association, or a ‘tight’ application of words) ultimately cannot cope with the idea that there may be nothing below a surface that is ‘made’ by the connecting function of language–that actually there is no universal method for providing the means to de-contextualize words and language to get below the surface, and perhaps more importantly the metaphors that form such a large part of the representational practices of language do not have any meaning (Rorty, 1989: 19).

2. Worlds in Motion

The primacy of the logocentric tradition in Western thinking since the Enlightenment (i.e., in its association with the notion of the power of reason) ensured that any experience or phenomena that contradicted the idea of reason’s perfectibility (or that suggested gaps in reason’s applicability) was categorized in a more or less residual manner (the list could be endless–‘nonsense’, ‘coincidence’, ‘chance’, etc.), and thus an awareness of the deceptiveness of appearance, or of experiences of disorder in appearance or imagination were constituted in symbols of a sublunary world. A representation of this is found in the mythical figure of Proteus who was, according to the ancient Greek Lucian:

[n]o other than a dancer whose mimetic skills enables him to adapt himself to every character: in the activity of his movements, he is liquid as water, rapid as fire; he is the raging lion, the savage panther, the trembling bough; he is what he will (quoted in Orgel, 1967: 9-10).

In other words, the sublunary is equivalent to some conception of base existence, and Proteus, like Dada (as we have seen) is not susceptible to fixed definition, and is thus elastic in terms of ‘character’–which is to say without character. Thus, where logos is taken to be a reason that overcomes the appearance of deceptiveness, the cause of deception is itself associated with an unruly nature that is forever moving–or protean–in character. And for the Zurich Dadaists (and others) in the first decades of the twentieth century a world in motion was seen to demand new methods of interpretation, presentation, or other poetic re-enactment, as artists began to explore the centrality of disorder and deception to life as lived, and as portrayed in language and through the visual medium.

The Italian futurists, for example, were impetuous seekers of chaos and urged, simply, abandonment to the de-humanizing rush of the mechanized and rationalized industrial age. Zurich Dada, by contrast, was propelled by the need to take a long and hard look at where the consequences of modernity had taken humanity, and at the debasement of culture that was seen in the inevitability that young men would almost certainly be marching off to war with a volume of Goethe in their knapsacks ⁽²⁾. And for Hugo Ball in particular war was nothing less than the destruction of the Word (logos), the ‘magical’ nature of which was in its connection to ancient texts that contained the ‘plaintive words’ that no human mind could resist (Ball, 1996: 66). The recovery of the Word was what was required, and it was to be achieved through the destruction of words, of language as conventionally conceived, to be replaced by ‘vocables’, or combinations of word voicings in the sound-poem (Richter, 1997: 31). The poème simultané for example was the result of several voices combined in recitation of discordant elements. Ball noted that:

[t]he subject of the poème simultané is the value of the human voice […] the noises represent the inarticulate, inexorable and ultimately decisive forces which constitute the background. The poem carries the message that mankind is swallowed up in a mechanistic process. In a generalized and compressed form, it represents the battle of the human voice against a world which menaces, ensnares and finally destroys it, a world whose rhythm and din are inescapable (quoted in Richter, 1997: 31).

Dada was then also an elaboration of something that was there for all to see, but which was largely obscured by language and conventions of meaning. By indulging in a series of hide-and-seek games, Ball and the others revealed that the protean world of uncontrolled movement and unforeseeable forms was within us all, a position that was simply reinforced by the mechanized military technology of the twentieth century; which had reduced society to some kind of Hobbesian state of nature where war, as the novelist J.G. Ballard has noted, seemed to affirm that the whole world was merely a stage-set that could be swept aside at a moment’s notice ⁽³⁾. The average individual, stripped of active power in times of industrial war, was merely a puppet, set into motion by the authorial hand of the objective and sovereign state.

In such circumstances a sense of self, and no less a sense of the world, was difficult to maintain in the face of the obvious slaughter of the war. Whatever this meant for the notion of a world governed by reason and objectivity, by the pursuit of logos, it said clearly that we could not be whom we are, or who we hoped to become, without accepting that the self is to a large extend an incidental–even accidental construct–and as such was part of a ‘reality’ to which it was difficult to reconcile oneself. The suspicion that one’s being is not found in any self-determining or rationally autonomous fashion–as the words and aims of reason proclaimed–but by the apparent contingency of a being that is formed only insofar as the immanent disorder within the heart of humankind (within society) is kept under control, was demonstrated by the descent into war.

The trappings of selfhood, from the ‘construction’ of subjectivity to the foundations underlying society and morality (in all their complex causality), emerge in consequence of the affirmation of some identity; an identity which, in withdrawing, or taking something (qualities, experiences, meanings, etc.) is something to itself–is rather something than some other thing. In simple terms identity is a claim of order, or of self-composition against the contingency of all other relations. The perfect banality of such an observation is evident in the most elementary of childlike assertions of categorical learning, necessary though they are to a growing awareness of the location of oneself in the world; that, for example, ‘to be a man is to not be an animal,’ or ‘an animal is not a vegetable.’ The antinomy of characteristics or qualities that provides the language of identity is, once again, a mask. It is the order of the world thus made, defined, and so on, that directs our view away from the artificiality of the categories that support it: no identity is simply extracted, or withdrawn from the world (and no order is simply made from disorder, and then end of story) without an implicit relationship or debt to the what-is-not of identity. A thumb, for example, is not a forefinger, yet at the same time it is only a thumb in respect of its relation to the forefinger. This is true simply in abstract terms (in terms of the words and their associations alone) but also true in every instance where an actual thumb can be identified. The point is that the relationship between words and worlds is simple–words ‘make’ or reveal worlds, and so words affirm identities, or even ‘truths.’

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Figure 4
Sophie Tauber in masked
performance. (source unknown)
Figure 5
Sophie Tauber (and unknown other)
in masks. (source unknown)

But Dada was about the fakery of the language of reason, of a world divided and understood by such identities. It was about the essential truth of the idea that order can ever be really more than a neat arrangement of ‘things’ that could just as easily be displaced, or destroyed. This aspect of an identity that takes–extracts–itself, could be rationally autonomous in the sense that it is active; but it is alsoacting, or the metaphorical adoption of the mask that conceals a depth below the surface. Yet when the mask is actually utilized to point out, or make a reminder of how misleading appearances could be (as it was in the Cabaret Voltaire performances), the surface order of relations paradoxically vanishes under the confusion of what is presented being mediated through a symbol of deception (Figs. 4 and 5), as Hugo Ball noted:

What fascinates us all about the masks is that they represent not human character and passions, but characters and passions that are larger than life. The horror of our time, the paralyzing background of events, is made visible (Ball, 1996: 64).>

Similarly the use of words by the members of the Cabaret served equally to disconnect, or untie such relations of identity: “Silk stockings are priceless,” Walter Serner wrote reasonably enough (its reason is demonstrated by the fact that one may disagree with it), but that was not all; identity is then destroyed in the novel declaration of broken categories that are only demonstrations of unreason:

A vice queen IS an armchair.World views are word mixtures.A dog IS a hammock.
L’art est mort. Viva Dada! (Ball, Huelsenbeck and Serner, 1995: 160)

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Figure 6
Tristan Tzara, Zurich 1917 (source unknown)

In a similar fashion, Tristan Tzara (Fig. 6), the most volatile character amongst the Zurich Dadaists declared that he aimed to disorder sensible relations–he “smashed drawers, those of the brain and those of social organization” (quoted in Richter, 1997: 34). Confronting such declarations at the time must have been equivalent to wandering into some unknown land devoid of any human differentiation in the organization of world and experience–into, in fact, a sublunary world of natural immediacy. Equally one may now may be reminded of the psychiatric typology which tells us that a mind lacking order also–in terms of personal characteristics at least–fails to realize the autonomy so valued as a proof of the triumph of modernity (but instead, in modern terms, displays pathological tendencies): such a person becomes the ‘non-subject,’ threatened by whim, existing at the mercy of caprice. Such a ‘person’ is Proteus. A lack of order, then, is necessarily about the absence of means, or of efforts to affirm an identity (i.e., the failure to control the movement of forces beyond one’s control; the failure to differentiate oneself from the protean). What we see with Dada, and what lends credence to the claim (by Hugo Ball) that it demanded gestures that were bordering on madness is the contrast between one who is moved (disordered) and one that moves (ordered)⁽⁴⁾.

3. The Destruction of Logos

With Dada, it is sometimes difficult to know how seriously the intentions of the participants were, mainly because it is clear that there were differences all along as to the purpose of a phenomenon that had ‘no programme’ (Richter, 1997: 34). However, Richard Huelsenbeck’s statements/ writings/ contributions to Dada literature allow one to suggest that Dada was established in opposition to what we might recognize as dualistic modes of conventional thinking, of the categorization of concepts, objects, and so on, in oppositional terms (e.g., subject/object; theory/fact, etc.). These “loving polarities” as Harvie Ferguson has called them “are so many ways of rendering experience accessible by dividing it against itself” (Ferguson, 1990: 7). But Dada, if one reads Huelsenbeck’s words in this way, recognized no such conceptual ordering, and instead proposed that the reinvigoration of language would see such polarities collapse. Dada, he said (and the demonstration is in the language) “blusters because it knows how to be quiet; it agitates because it is at peace” (Huelsenbeck, 1993: 10). In other words, Dada traded on the indeterminacy of ‘is-ness,’ on the elasticity of being where one quality is identified in terms of an opposite, rather than inoppositional terms.

In the varied responses of the members of the Cabaret Voltaire between 1915 and 1919 one can plot the dissolution of Dada as anything resembling a coherent movement (Richter, 1997; Huelsenbeck, 1993). Hugo Ball, the principal founder of the Zurich Dada group, would have no truck with the issuing of manifestos, or with any other propagandist work (which seemed to emulate the activities of futurism), but this was eagerly taken up by others, such as Tristan Tzara, and then exported to a variety of other European cities ⁽⁵⁾. One thing that did bind them was the idea that language had to follow painting in re-ordering the world, in making the sensible human image that language portrays equally as fragmentary as the abstract and cubist paintings of the time. Ball, for example, wrote in 1916 that:

The image of human form is gradually disappearing from the painting of these times and all objects appear only in fragments. This is one more proof of how ugly and worn the human countenance has become, and of how all the objects of our environment have become repulsive to us. The next step is for poetry to decide to do away with language for similar reasons (Ball, 1996: 55).

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Figure 7
Text of Hugo Ball’s ‘Karawane’

The power behind the Dada destruction/reinvention of language was found in the belief that language and literature had already been debased–in patriotic declarations of support for the war, and in the use of literature in providing moral sustenance for soldiers at the front. The point was that language had become abstracted from life to the extent that it was rendered worthless–for example, what value did words have when they could support butchery? And what of modernity? Did not the very ‘nuts and bolts’ of reason deliver war as a “vindication of modernity, violently completing the abstraction of the world”? (Conrad, 1998: 211) So, whilst Ball sought to situate language within the evident dissonance of the times, his aim was also to create, as Malcolm Green has said, “a field of words that bypassed the author’s own associations and triggered new ones in the listener” (Fig. 7) as an aspect of regaining the world, and words, from such abstraction (quoted in Huelsenbeck, 1993: v). One important point that Dada had picked up from Italian futurism was the idea that art was created in the spatio-temporal dimension, rather than being produced merely in time, or in space. The printed word, as a possible medium for creation, was staid and fixed in both of these dimensions (although texts in Futurism and Dada experimented with font styles), and in books and newspapers, it was seen to abstract language from its real context, the context within which life takes place. What Ball and the others sought to achieve at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 was a way past this abstraction to a synthesis of the arts that would surpass the mimetic and representational limitations of mediation and traditional artistic practice (whether in writing, painting, or poetry).

This introduced the masked dances, and simultaneous recitals of poems (and so on) to combat the conventional trappings of performance in which the stage–‘staging’ suggesting a set of expectations–as the medium got in the way of substance and delivery: acting was a mask–a truth so obvious that it had become invisible. In the performances at the Cabaret Voltaire words were transformed, they became ‘vocables’; not really words at all, but concretized combinations of sounds produced by the performer voicing what can only be called a series of combined letters of the alphabet which had apparently been randomly jumbled into a new kind of vehicle for expression, and these then delivered without any regard to reference or identity ⁽⁶⁾. This corresponded in some small way to Luigi Russolo’s new idea of the human voice, the characteristics of which he listed as comprising one of six “families of noise of the Futurist orchestra,” under the heading Voices of Animals and Men(Apollonio, 1973: 86). These he listed as, “Shouts, Screams, Groans, Shrieks, Howls, Laughs, Wheezes, Sobs,” and the similarity between the two divergent movements with regard to the elevation of ‘meaningless’ sound in performance is shown if we compare the Dadaist Jean Arp’s remarks about “automatic poetry,” which he claimed “springs directly from the poet’s bowels or other organs, which have stored up reserves of usable material. The poet crows, curses, sighs, stutters, yodels, as he pleases. His poems are like Nature” (cited in Richter, 1997: 30). Of course, this ideal could only be realized in certain kinds of performance, and consequently was considered a more laudable goal in some cases than in others. It is in this respect that Hugo Ball seems to have diverged from the others. In his introduction to Ball’s diaries, translated as Flight Out of Time, John Elderfield writes that:

Ball had found that the act of recitation itself tested a poem’s quality and determined its impact. Basic to his interpretation of poetry was his conviction that it had far more aspects to it than its written words (quoted in Ball, 1996: xxvii).

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Figure 8
Hugo Ball in performance, 1917 (source unknown)

What the sound-poem had that was greater, according to Ball, was its connection to a realm of spiritual logos that was mediated through the performance and universal recognition of ‘ancient mystical words’ (which one takes to have been given form by the vocables). Not at all incidental to Ball’s view that performance should converge upon new possibilities was the use of masks and costumes in the Cabaret, and these, it turned out, were to become an essential component in transcending the limitations of words and language, bringing Hugo Ball, in particular, to a startling realization of the possibility of renewing the Word (i.e. logos) through the sound-poem which, in connecting to the spiritual would unmask the fakery of ideas about language and truth. The accidental nature of this discovery reveals a serious point behind the use of masks, which seems only to have been realized after Marcel Janco had prepared the costumes and the participants in the Cabaret had taken up ‘character’ under the influence of these new appearances. The masks, in fact, only highlighted the protean nature of expression–which is to say, the elusiveness, the naked strangeness of the sound and motion of performance–and Hugo Ball in particular noted that a transformation had overcome the performers (Fig. 8). The mask, he observed, “Demanded a quite definite, passionate gesture, bordering on madness” (Ball, 1996: 64). The masks also brought home to Ball the deceitful nature of the phenomenal world, the ambiguity of appearances (of words, gestures, etc.) that taken together provide a stage for meaningful life, and suggested the possibility that the only way to come to terms with this illusion was through the transforming power of a more serious kind of gesture:

Although we could not have imagined it five minutes earlier, we were walking around with the most bizarre movements, festooned and draped with impossible objects […] the motive power of these masks was irresistibly conveyed to us. All at once we realized the significance of such a mask […] they represent not human character and passions, but character and passions that are higher than life. The horror of our time, the paralyzing background of events, is made visible (Ball, 1996: 64).

The power of the mask lies in its relation to indeterminate play. In modern society play is not readily understood by the categorical mind (i.e., ‘play’ is a residual category), and certainly not as the route to truth–rather, in its frivolity and sensuousness, play is contrasted with reason and emerges as the source of error, which means it is an aspect of existence that reason-as-logos seeks always to overcome (Ferguson, 1991: 7-27). In archaic societies, on the other hand, play is taken as the return of an arbitrary cosmos to the divine lottery of Zeus–in other words, as an earlier way to divine truth, or we may say to the spiritual-as-logos (Spariousu, 1989). For Hugo Ball and the others the donning of masks and costumes upset the cozy familiarity of a modern world charmed into existence by the bending of language to suit the most grotesque ends. In the Cabaret Voltaire the liquidity, or protean quality, of the performance of bizarre movements and ecstatic recitation presented language (in the unstable form of the Dadaist vocables) ‘draped’ in the unrecognizable garb of meaninglessness. “We have now driven the plasticity of the word to the point where it can scarcely be equaled,” Ball remarked on the success of performances:

We have loaded the word with strengths and energies that helped us to rediscover the evangelical concept of the word (logos) as a magical complex image […] touching lightly on a hundred ideas at the same time without naming them. (Ball, 1996: 67-68).

Thus, the notion of logos as reason’s progress to perfection was destroyed by the impenetrable vocables and simultaneous poems, which were intended to drag the listener underneath the deceptive appearance of an industrial society that proclaimed the triumph of reason–to touch on a hundred ideas at the same time. And to return to the problem of appearance, what is crucial to our understanding is that performances like these, which employed disguise on several levels, dramatized the very problem of appearance and reality within the context of change (Napier, 1986: 2-3). This seemed to open the gap that had driven philosophy to strict terms of language association: what now was real, and what was fake, it asked. It said that change is found in unpredictable performance, but identity by contrast (as a kind of tautological redescription-of-the-same) only pertains in a state ofchangelessness. Yet, it is undeniable that things in the ‘real’ world (and not just in performance) do change–being is becoming–thus, the possibility that the world, or nature, may be ambiguous is rehearsed through the disguises of performance. Nevertheless, the potential disorder implied in such upsetting of certainties can hold a certain degree of danger, and the experience of Hugo Ball seemed to demonstrate this.

click to enlarge

Figure 9
Hugo
Ball in performance, 1917 (source unknown)

It was in June 1916, and barely a year after arriving in Zurich that Ball began to drift apart from the others involved in the Cabaret after one particularly harrowing performance. In his diaries he describes giving a reading of some of his sound-poems in a costume specially made for the event. The costume was so confining as to require many on the spot adjustments to the performance, and so it determined his movements in a particular way that he could not have foreseen, which in turn influenced the modulation and timbre of his readings. And having been carried on stage due to his immobility, Ball was left with only his arms free; the rest of his body, wrapped in a tightly fitting cylinder, was stiff (Fig. 9). Nevertheless, with arms free he found that he was able to “give the impression of winglike movement by raising and lowering [the] elbows,” which he duly did by flapping them energetically between readings, at the same time furtively trying to work out how this thing might end:

I noticed that my voice had no choice but to take on the ancient cadence of priestly lamentation […] for a moment it seemed as if there were a pale, bewildered face in my cubist mask, that half-frightened, half-curious face of a ten-year-old boy, trembling and hanging avidly on the priest’s words in the requiems and high masses in his home parish. Then the lights went out, as I had ordered, and bathed in sweat, I was carried down off the stage like a magical bishop (Ball, 1996: 70-71).

This removal of self–a destruction of the world of self–is wrought by an incalculable plunge. In letting himself be taken by events he permitted the experience to become one where the world was, for him, transformed into a magico-religious sensorium. Delving deeply into the unknown–these were performances, remember, that were described as ‘bordering on madness’–he becomes caught in the vertigo of the playful forces of denial and affirmation. He may have chosen the stage, but in the act, and through the mode of presentation he loses dominion over it. The audience witnessing this was equally unsettled; after initially being baffled, it ‘exploded’ (Richter, 1997: 42). The impact on Hugo Ball was no less emphatic–after this he “progressively disengaged himself from Dada” (Richter, 1997: 43). Tristan Tzara had begun to take a more prominent role in the presentation of Dada, nudging things in a more propagandist, pamphleteering, and confrontational direction, which seemed to be diverging sharply from the kind of activity Hugo Ball was involved in, one which aimed at the destruction of world and will, and seemed on this occasion to have been successful on at least one count, the destruction of his own will to continue: “I have examined myself carefully,” Ball said, “and I could never bid chaos welcome” (quoted in Richter, 1997: 43). The truth was that he already had, and it proved disconcerting enough to draw him back from the abyss.

click to enlarge

Figure 10
Cover of Serner’s ‘Letze Lockerung’
(Last Loosening), Hanover: Paul
Steegman, 1920.
Figure 11
Walter Serner, Zurich 1917.
By Hans Richter.

With Ball’s disengagement Dada then spread out into other European cities (and was exported to New York), and what followed the Cabaret Voltaire was a continuation, if not repetition, of an ever more provocative tomfoolery (minus Ball’s pursuit of a spiritual logos), and instead of Ball’s declared intention to create a new fusion of arts, Dada became an attack on art itself. With a barely concealed hint of nihilism, Walter Serner, a latecomer to the Cabaret Voltaire, took the radical nominalism of Dada rhetoric to an extremity of meaningless and disintegration in his Last Loosening (Figs. 10 and 11)⁽⁷⁾. This riposte to good taste, executed to hilarious effect in a slim volume of fifty pages, displayed a keen sense of the ultimate profanity of things, of the obvious cosmetic re-ordering of filth and garbage that provides a basis for identity and meaning, and that no less provides the spur for art as well. Although it is not clear whether he included his fellow Dadaists in his disparaging appraisal of the artistic objective of appropriating the world (but a good guess would suggest it is likely), it is evident that he was reaching for the chaos that Hugo Ball recoiled from: “It is generally known that a dog is not a hammock; less so that failing to accept this tender hypothesis would cause the painter’s daubing fists to slump at their sides” (Ball, Huelsenbeck and Serner, 1995: 155). Ergo, painting is hamstrung by problems of identity and representation. He goes further, suggesting that the artistic impulse derives from an embarrassment at the thought of doing nothing, from a kind of impotence compounded by an inability to constrain oneself. And all this in the face of the gratuitousness of existence:

It’s all just the same […] the desire to escape one’s embarrassment by giving it (stylistic, ogodogodo) form. Dreadful word! Which is to say: to make something that is profitable out of life, which is improbable to the tips of its toes! To clap a redeeming heaven over this filth and enigma! To perfume and order this pile of human excrement! (Ball, Huelsenbeck and Serner, 1995: 156)

In short, art was evidence of an inability to get to grips with being, to refrain from fixing things–it was a manifestation of impatience: “all in all, my dearest,” Serner wrote, “art was just a teething problem” (Ball, Huelsenbeck and Serner, 1995 : 156).

 

---

Notes

1. E.g., “the meaning of the ‘evening star’ would be the same as that of ‘morning star’, but not the sense […] the designation of a single object can also consist of several words or other signs.” Frege, 1980: 57.

2. Richard Huelsenbeck had said in 1920, “none of us had much appreciation of the kind of courage it took to get shot for the idea of a nation which is at best a cartel of pelt merchants and profiteers in leather, at worst a cultural association of psychopaths who, like the Germans, marched off to war with a volume of Goethe in their knapsacks, to skewer Frenchmen and Russians on their bayonets.” Quoted in Greil Marcus (1989) Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA: 194-95.

3. I paraphrase here from comments made by J.G. Ballard in an interview with Tom Sutcliffe, broadcast on BBC television in the UK as In Profile: J.G. Ballard, November 2001. Ballard was actually talking about World War Two and the experiences that went into shaping his Empire of the Sun, but the point stands equally for war in general.

4. See, for example, Michel Foucault (1999) Madness and Civilization, London. Here there are several examples of the importance of movement to autonomy. Foucault memorably begins by describing the ‘ship of fools,’ the madmen flung between ports, but detained at sea, in motion, but immobile, because of their lack of autonomous control. In other places he relates the idea that cures for madness and melancholia rested on the constraining of movement–for example, as a passenger on long sea voyages (174); and, as a passenger of an entirely different kind on the ‘rotary machine,’ a device that sought to redistribute the bodily humours of the patient. (177)

5. See Hugo Ball (1996) ibid. Entry for 24.V.1916: “we are never in complete or simultaneous agreement” (63); and Richard Huelsenbeck (1993) ibid: “Whoever turns ‘freedom’ or ‘relativity’ including the insight that the contours of everything shift, that nothing is stable, into a ‘firm creed’ is just another ideologue, like the nihilists who are almost always the most incredible, narrow-minded dogmatists. Dada is far removed from all that.” (11)

6. Tzara took this principle from performance into the printed word, and created the ‘cut-up’. According to Hans Richter (1997) ibid: “he cut newspaper articles up into tiny pieces, none of them any longer than a word, put the words in a bag, shook them well, and allowed them to flutter onto a table. The arrangement (or lack of it) in which they fell constituted a ‘poem’” (54)

7. Huelsenbeck (1993) in the Dada Almanac describes him thus: “Dr. Walter Serner…extreme adventurer, nihilist and venereologist…The epitome of the ‘gentleman burglar’ (Arp), he was later the author of numerous sleazy crime stories.” (92)
Bibliography

Apollonio, Umbro,ed.. Futurist Manifestos. Trans. by Robert Brain and Others. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973.

Arp, J. Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories. Edited by Marcel Jean. New York: Viking, 1972.

Ball, Hugo. Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1996.

Ball, Hugo, Huelsenbeck, Richard, and Serner, Walter. Blago bung, blago bung bosso fataka!: First Texts of German Dada. Translated and introduced by Malcolm Green. London: Atlas Press, 1995.

Conrad, Peter. Modern Times, Modern Places. Life and Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Thames and Hudson, 1998.

Ferguson, Harvie. The Science of Pleasure: Cosmos and Psyche in the Bourgeois World View. London and New York: Routledge, 1990.

Frege, G. Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1998.

Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978.

Huelsenbeck, Richard, ed. Dada Almanac. London: Atlas Press, 1993.

Huelsenbeck, Richard. Memoirs of a Dada Drummer. London: Atlas Press, 1991.

Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces. A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Napier, A. David. Masks, Transformation, and Paradox. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California, 1986.

Orgel, Stephen. The Jonsonian Masque, New York: Columbia University Press, 1967.

Pichon, B. and Riha, K., eds. Dada Zurich: A Clown’s Game From Nothing. New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1996.

Richter, Hans. Dada: Art and Anti-Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

– – – . Essays on Heidegger and Others. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Spariosu, Mihai I. Dionysus Reborn. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Stoichita, Victor I. A Short History of the Shadow. London: Reaktion Books, 1991.

Taylor, Mark C. Disfiguring: Art, Architecture, Religion. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1953.

Dear Reader,

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp, Tu m’, 1918
(The overall design of Tout-Fait is
based on the above,Duchamp’s last painting.)

The publishers of Tout-Fait strive to make every issue more interesting than the previous one–a matter, of course, that remains only for you to decide.

Bigger than ever, with more than 40 first-time contributions, we are glad to announce publications by Craig Adcock (on Geometry and Duchamp), ecke bonk (on Duerer and Duchamp), Steven B. Gerrard (On Wittgenstein and Duchamp), and Francis M. Naumann (on Money and Duchamp).

Thanks to a previously unknown recording by Richard N. Miller, a transcript of Marcel Duchamp’s 1963 lecture on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Armory Show is now featured in our News-section. Eva Kraus and Valentina Sonzogni of Vienna’s Frederick Kiesler archive discovered the 1945 notes of an unpublished interview by the architect with Duchamp. Tout-Fait’s Collections publishes their annotated typographic version of the handwritten notes, shedding new light on Duchamp’s work at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, the1912 Jura-Paris road trip as well as his fascination with Max Stirner.

In News, Jean Clair’s thoughts on Duchamp’s Femalic Molds are finally translated into English while in Articles, Michael Betancourt tackles Precision Optics and William Anastasi goes all out with James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp. Interviews reports on Duchamp’s all too rarely examined influence in formerly communist Eastern Europe and China when Kornelia Röder sits down with Russian mail-artist Serge Segay and Ya-Ling Chen engages in a discussion with shooting star Huang Yong Ping.

We would also like to congratulate Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster on winning the second Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2002. An exhibition of this internationally renown artist could be seen between October 25th – December 6th at the Centre Georges Pompidou. Regarding an altogether different matter Tout-Fait is saddened that Surrealism’s founding father André Breton’s belongings (thousands of artworks, manuscsripts and photographs) are to be auctioned off between April 7th-17th in Paris this year. It is inconceivable that no institution or government intervention prevented these precious materials from being scattered all over the world.

Sadly, since Tout-Fait’s previous number was published in January 2002, two great Surrealists and admirers of Duchamp have passed away. The artist-poet-publisher Charles Henri Ford died in New York at the age of 94 (we honor his memory in this issue’s Music-section with a contribution by Chris Rael). And in Rome, the Chilean-born Surrealist painter Roberto Matta Echaurren passed away at the age of 91 (see his and Katherine Dreier’s 1944 study of Duchamp’s Large Glass in Tout-Fait # 4’s Collection-section). Last year – and continuing into 2003 – many books on Duchamp continue to be published and reprinted. The following can only be a shortlist of the most important ones:

Françoise Le Penven, “L’Art d’écrire de Marcel Duchamp: A propos de ses notes manuscrites” (Nîmes: Jacqueline Chambon, 2003); Marc Décimo : La Bibliothèque de Marcel Duchamp, peut-être” (Dijon: Presses du Réel/Collection Relectures, 2002); Karl Gerstner, “Tu m’. Rätsel über Rätsel” (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2003); Alice Goldfarb Marquis, “Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare: A Biography” (Boston: MFA, 2002 [1978]); W. Bowdoin Davis, Jr., “Duchamp: Domestic Patterns, Covers, and Threads” (New York: Midmarch Arts, 2002); Joseph Masheck, (ed.), “Marcel Duchamp in Perspective” (New York: DaCapo, 2002 [1973]); Paul B. Franklin and Fabrice Lefaix (eds.), “Étant Donné No. 4” (Paris: Association pour l’Étude de Marcel Duchamp, 2002); Jacques Dupin and Jean Suquet, “Marcel Duchamp/Joan Miró: Demande d’emploi” (Paris: L’ Échoppe, 2002); Gerhard Graulich and Kornelia von Berswordt Wallrabe (eds.), “Marcel Duchamp” (Ostfildern: Cantz, 2003); Ina Busch and Klaus D. Pohl (eds.), “Reihe XX. Jahrhundert / 2: Marcel Duchamp” (Darmstadt: Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, 2003); Museum Jean Tinguely Basel (ed.), “Marcel Duchamp” (Ostfildern: Cantz, 2002 [exh.-cat., English and German versions]); Debra Bricker Balken and Jay Bochner, “Debating American Modernism: Stieglitz, Duchamp, and the New York Avant-Garde” (New York: DAP, 2003).

Also this year, London’s Tate Gallery and Vienna’s University of Applied Arts are devoting one-day conferences to the study of Marcel Duchamp (see info for both events in our News-section)

We are proud to announce that Tout-Fait is now recommended both by the New York Times and the BBC. In addition, our journal was favorably reviewed by MIT’s Leonardo magazine and is the official website on the an-artist featured by the Internet Public Library (University of Michigan). Throughout the world, universities, museums and other institutions continue to establish links to Tout-Fait. Thanks to the interest of our readers (we’re now approaching 200,000 hits) as well as to the continued feed-back we are always happy to receive, Tout-Fait remains committed to presenting you engaging articles on Marcel Duchamp and beyond. Not-for-profit, at no cost to you and 100% ad-free.

Enjoy browsing and spread the word,

Thomas Girst
Editor-in-Chief

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Tout-Fait welcomes any type of critical thinking. Multiple authorship is encouraged. All articles are first publications. All accepted foreign submissions will be published in both English and their original language.Tout-Fait (ISSN 1530-0323) is published by Cyber BOOK+ Publications, the publishing house of the not-for-profit Art Science Research Laboratory.
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Figs. 1
©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

kurwamacDuchamp is an even more anti-historic being than I. — Salvador Dalí⁽¹⁾

…whether you’re anti or for, it’s two sides of the same thing.
And I would like to be completely… nonexistent. — Marcel Duchamp⁽²⁾

The Passage from “Le Pendu Femelle” to “La Phallesse”

“In mathematics, it goes from a very simple theorem to a very complicated one”, as Marcel Duchamp concludes his important interview with Pierre Cabanne, “but it’s all in the first theorem. So, metaphysics: tautology; religion: tautology: everything is tautology, except black coffee because the senses are in control! … but the rest is always tautology”.⁽³⁾For Duchamp, however, not only metaphysics, religion and all the rest, but also grammatical gender, and especially the sexual identities in terms of which he elaborates it, are also tautological. Here, the “very simple theorem” is the conventional division of words, in Romance languages, into masculine and feminine–and the “very complicated theorem”, by contrast, the unconventional sexual identities in terms of which Duchamp elaborates grammatical gender. Indeed, Duchamp’s is the distinctly modern realization that necessarily precedes alternative (e.g. feminist and queer) sexual identities, and makes them possible in the first place: the identification of gender also as a surface no less constructed than that of language or of painting.

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Figure 1

Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Widow, 1920

The strange affinity, in this respect, of Manet’s Mlle. V… in the Costume of an Espada (1862) to R[r]ose Sélavy’s first autograph work, Fresh Widow (1920)(Fig. 1)–in fact, a French window–is exemplary. “Woman”, as a political signifier, Mlle. V reduces to the essential equivalence of painting and drag as similarly factitious; and “Spain”, as an historical signifier, it self-consciously eschews in favor of a stylish “Espagnolisme”. Like Mlle. V in drag, whether commenting on the making of Modernist art or the formation of modern sexual identity, Fresh Widow is also, first and foremost, a construct(ion). Analogous to language, it is made by another (the carpenter Duchamp hires) and acquired by oneself only as another (signed, albeit in block letters, by R[r]ose Sélavy). As such, it is so perfectly transparent to itself (a French window) that in order to obtain meaning it need at first achieve at least contingent opacity: whether as a French window or a fresh widow, either way, habillée en noir. In this sense, perhaps there can be no more thoroughly modern surface than the perfectly flat and opaque, black leather curtain with which Fresh Widow both occludes the “window on the world” of Renaissance perspective and, at once, asserts the analogous untransparency of modern sexual identity.⁽⁴⁾

To Manet’s equivalence of painting and drag, their relationship to language as similarly gendered and factitious is Duchamp’s essential contribution. Indeed, the mind reels at all the wonderfully non-literal translations we might come up with for one of the venerably venereal quips Duchamp so loved to invent: “A charge de revanche; à verge de rechange” [Owe a favor; replace a penis].⁽⁵⁾ “Even Steven’s” comes quickly to mind, as does, with malaprop dexterity, “Procastrination”. Yet any such translation begs the more seminal question, what exactly is a “replacement penis”?–and what kind of favor can one possibly repay with tender of this sort? Although the debt here is obviously masculine, elsewhere–by Duchamp’s own admission, throughout his works–the downpayment is expressly feminine, as when he observes: “l’arrhe de la peinture est du genre féminin” [the downpayment / art of painting is feminine in gender] (DDS 37; WMD 24). In this economy in which literary and artistic transactions freely participate in sexual exchange, another of the artist’s fundamental “laws” as he calls them–“‘cuttage’ in reserve” which, he enigmatically pronounces, is limited to “razor blades which cut well” (DDS 47; WMD 31)–reveals the common currency of both the debt and downpayment of Duchamp’s art to be neither castration exactly, nor its anxiety really, but rather the essential reversibility of the male-female dyad which both underlies and structures his works more generally.

click on images to enlarge
Figure 2	Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp and André Breton, Window installation for Arcane 17, 1945	Marcel Duchamp, Etant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau / 2° le gaz d’éclairage, 1946-66

Although both Duchamp’s Arcane 17 window installation (1945)(Fig. 2), as well as his Etant Donnés installation (1946-66) (Fig. 3), prominently feature a female mannequin, that mannequin has been both beheaded–which is to say, emasculated of a masculinity it never possessed⁽⁶⁾–yet at once reprovisioned with the phallus, indeed, with either of its two most fundamental figurations in Duchamp’s oeuvre: a faucet attached to her thigh in the former, a Bec Auer lamp in her hand in the latter (which I will discuss at greater length below). With no greater investment in the historical or political stakes by which sexual exchange, for Duchamp, instead becomes a matter of a sex change–of a “replacement penis”, no doubt facilitated by “‘cuttage’ in reserve”–so too the phallus becomes a sort of “phallesse”: an empty, or at least a priori indeterminate, sexual (ex)change value. Of course, a sex change can cut either way–and it is with no greater difficulty that Duchamp’s pre-Surrealist fellow-traveler, Apollinaire, describes the corollary scenario in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917): exit Thérèse and, the tether to her balloon breasts easily severed, enter Tirésias. Thérèse “gives a great cry and opens her blouse”, read Apollinaire’s stage instructions, “her breasts pop out… and as she lets them go[,] they fly up, balloons on the end[s] of strings”.⁽⁷⁾

In a series of doublets more than worthy of Duchamp at his most playful–“virgin / bride, vierge / verge, peindre / [pendre], passeur / pas soeur!, Cézanne / Suzanne”⁽⁸⁾–de Duve analogously locates the phallus at the fulcrum of a variety of sexual (ex)changes, or “passages”, which structure not only the artist’s title painting, The Passage from Virgin to Bride (1912) (Fig. 4), but also his earliest signature works more generally. What separates Duchamp’s Vierge [Virgin] (1912) (Fig. 5) from his Mariée [Bride] (1912) (Fig. 6) is exactly “‘cuttage’ in reserve”; or, as de Duve explains, a difference of “I”, “the lacking signifier”, which is “the phallus, the signifier of lack”.⁽⁹⁾Thus, get rid of the “I” in “vierge” [virgin], as he observes, and you have “verge” [penis]:⁽¹⁰⁾ the sign of her loss of virginity. Similarly, get rid of the “I” in “peindre” [to paint], and you have “pendre” [to hang].⁽¹¹⁾ Although beginning as “a woman to be painted”–as both Duchamp’s Virgin and virgin canvas–the Bride nevertheless ends up as “a woman to be hanged”;⁽¹²⁾ or, as de Duve concludes, “[once] a woman painted, in the past participle, the Bride will now be called ‘le pendu femelle’ (hanged female)”.⁽¹³⁾

click on images to enlarge
Figure 4	Figure 5	Figure 6
Marcel Duchamp, The Passage from Virgin to Bride, 1912	Marcel Duchamp,Vierge, No. 1 [Virgin], 1912	Marcel Duchamp, Mariée [Bride], 1912

Yet, neither “woman to be hanged”, nor certainly “hanged female”, truly embraces the genital-as-zoological quality of “Le Pendu Femelle”–both the most abstract and also the most ambivalent of Duchamp’s figurations of the “phallesse”–which I would instead translate as “the female of the species which is male and hangs”. For as a “hanged” and, in this sense, a dead woman, Duchamp’s “Le Pendu Femelle” at once presents a dead end: a sign otherwise without reference in his works.⁽¹⁴⁾ Yet, as establishing an essential homology between her sex and his own,⁽¹⁵⁾ as between these and painting in turn–à la Renoir’s famous dictum, that he paints “with his prick” (cf. DDS 239)–its relevance to Duchamp’s works could not be more manifest. Here, where neither member is on top, but potentially both at the same time–and Mar-Cel doubly identifies as both “Mar[iée]” and “Cél[ibataire]”: “Bride” and “Bachelor”–Rrose lifts her skirts to reveal the most traumatic sign of gender difference of all: for Duchamp, its essential indifference. Neither sexually nor linguistically, neither “his” nor “hers” alone, “Le Pendu Femelle” is just such a reversibly gendered, anatomical cipher–or, “phallesse”. Although Duchamp’s explicit figurations of “Le Pendu Femelle” are already several–and variously observable in the Passage, Bride and, severed from this last, the Large Glass (Fig. 7(c)-(e))–these merely reiterate an anterior, even atavistic formal prototype, according to which (with disconcerting, Apollinaire-like simplicity, no doubt) insert rod or piston into circle or semicircle, sphere or demisphere. Georges Bataille perfectly captures the formal logic of “Le Pendu Femelle” when he similarly identifies the “two primary motions”–“rotation and sexual movement”–to the rotating wheels of the locomotive (like the semicircular head of “Le Pendu Femelle”), driven by the in-and-out thrust of its pistons (exactly how Duchamp mechanically renders Le Pendu Femelle (1913) in Fig. 7(a)).⁽¹⁶⁾

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Figure 7a	Figure 7b	Figure 7c
Marcel Duchamp, Le Pendu Femelle (1913), detail from the Green Box, 1934	Marcel Duchamp, Detail (reversed) of Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912	Marcel Duchamp, Detail of The Passage from Virgin to Bride, 1912
Figure 7d	Figure 7e
Marcel Duchamp, Detail of The Bride, 1912	Marcel Duchamp, Detail of The Large Glass, 1915-23

the “passage” may literally be the anatomical route…
— Dawn Ades, Neil Cox, David Hopkins⁽¹⁷⁾

Rites of Passage: t / here

click to enlarge

Figure 8

Paul Cézanne, Bibémus Quarry, c. 1895, Museum Folkwang, Essen

Figure 9

Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even [the Large Glass], 1915-23

Contrary to de Duve’s claim of the somehow epiphanic significance of Kandinsky and “Secession”–to which Duchamp was introduced during his 1912 Munich sojourn⁽¹⁸⁾–even in Germany, the artist still speaks the lingua franca, not of Kandinsky and non-objective art, but rather of Cézanne and Cubism (Fig. 8). The Berlin “Secession”, he writes to his brother Jacques Villon, “finally allowed me to see how young French painting was looking abroad… I was really pleased to find they have Cubism here, it was so long since I’d seen any. And that certainly played a part in my having a soft spot for Berlin”.⁽¹⁹⁾ Indeed, in their analogous obsession with the problem of the background, Duchamp spends the better part of a lifetime pursuing both the Cubists, and especially the Master of Aix. As he explains to Francis Roberts:

The main point is the subject, the figure. It needs no reference. It is not in relation. All that background on the canvas that had to be thought about, tactile space like wallpaper, all that garbage, I wanted to sweep it away… The question of painting in background is degrading for the painter. The thing you want to express is not in that background.⁽²⁰⁾

Of course, the greatest testament to Duchamp’s efforts in this regard is his largely lacunary Large Glass (1915-23) (Fig. 9). Yet because the “ground” can never be eliminated, not even by the changeable view to the other side of the Large Glass, for Duchamp, rather, it was at first a question of how necessarily to oppose figure to ground, yet otherwise to elide them: in other words, a formal-as-conceptual question of Cézannian / Cubist “passage”.⁽²¹⁾

Notwithstanding Duchamp’s 1910 portraits of his father ensconced in an armchair (Fig. 10), or of his brothers playing chess at an off-miter card table (Fig. 11), it is not in these superficially Cézannesque treatments, but rather in such early conceptual experiments as Avoir l’apprenti dans le soleil [To Have the Apprentice in the Sun] (1914) (Fig. 12) that Duchamp’s obsession with the background first comes to the fore. In this drawing of a bicyclist racing uphill, yet executed on sheet-music paper, the generative idea is straightforwardly revealed by the title:

avoir l’apprenti dans le soleil = à voir: l’empreinte qui dans le sol est
given to sight: the imprint which is in the ground

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Figure 10	Figure 11	Figure 12
Marcel Duchamp, Portrait of the Artist’s Father, 1910	Marcel Duchamp, The Chess Game, 1910	Marcel Duchamp, Avoir l’apprenti dans le soleil [To Have the Apprentice in the Sun], 1914

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Figure 13
Marcel Ducahmp, Musical Erratum, 1913

In Apprentice, then, although figuration is inherently opposed to the space of musical notation, nevertheless, the ascending figure of the bicyclist is, at once, conceptually assimilated to the ascent of the musical scale itself. For “sol” refers not only to the title sun [“soleil”] of the drawing–the very precondition of what is given to sight–but also to the rising ground [“sol”] which the bicyclist ascends, exactly as the musical scale does also [“sol” = key of G⁽²²⁾].In the relationship of its imprint [“empreinte”] to its sheet-music paper as ground [“sol”], Apprentice in fact revisits another work of just the prior year, Musical Erratum (1913) (Fig. 13), which Duchamp scores for three voices, and whose lyrics he exactly appropriates from a dictionary definition of imprint [“imprimer”].⁽²³⁾ In this “musical mistake”, both the aleatory lyrics themselves, as well as the equal value of the notes, and their arbitrary order and range, all participate in the artist’s contemporary experiments with objective chance. Most telling of all, however, are the respective relationships of the “imprints”, or “figures”, in Musical Erratum and Apprentice to their otherwise identical “ground”. However unconventional the lyrics and notes in Musical Erratum, nevertheless, their relationship as musical notation to their sheet-music paper as ground is entirely conventional. In Apprentice, by contrast, that relationship–analogizing the ascent of the bicyclist to that of the musical scale and, therefore, the figure to the ground–has been entirely conceptualized. As Duchamp explains, “before the Nude my paintings were visual. After that they were ideatic”:⁽²⁴⁾not only in how they convey the “passage” from figure to ground, however, but also in how they figure the ascent of a bicyclist, like the descent of a nude, and movement more generally.

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Figure 14	Figure 15
Marcel Ducahmp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912	Marcel Ducahmp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 1, 1911

Indeed, the difference between the second version of Duchamp’s Nude Descending A Staircase (1912) (Fig. 14) and the first version (1911) (Fig. 15) is exactly this: the sense of depth, evidenced by the inward-turning spiral staircase, which the second version specifically de-emphasizes, and instead replaces with a more conventionally “chronophotographic” foreground-as-frieze, inspired by Duchamp’s interest in the time-lapse imagery of such photographic pioneers as Etienne-Jules Marey (DDS 170-1; WMD 124).⁽²⁵⁾ Yet rather than developing in and through space–conceived in both the first and the second Nude as an analogously chronophotographic process of successively doubling the figure–both Passage and Bride are irreducibly whole: constituted of jigsaw-like elements which are unrepeated and, as such, cannot depict the sort of spatio-temporal trajectory whose “there”, as in either Nude, is but the displaced double of its “here”. Rather, the psycho-sexual trajectory, or Passage,⁽²⁶⁾from Virgin to Bride, Duchamp instead figures as the forked rods terminating in semicircles which, at the center of the second Nude, Passage and Bride, variously exemplify “Le Pendu Femelle” (Fig. 7(b)-(d)); together with the chronophotographic cues of Morse Code-like dots and dashes which, similarly inspired by Marey’s time-lapse imagery, in both the second Nude and Passage, Duchamp specifically localizes about “Le Pendu Femelle”: as a series of inscribed arcs in the former; an extremely irregular polygon in the latter. For “Le Pendu Femelle” is exactly what we should expect to find in a state of chronophotographic flux as our Virgin first transits to Bride, as evidenced by the presence of these cues in her Kama Sutra-like Passage; no longer to be in a state of flux once our Virgin has definitively arrived there, as evidenced by the absence of these cues, now, as Bride; and, in any event, invariably to swing, “pendu”(lum)-like, as our nude bridegroom descends the staircase, as evidenced by the presence of these cues, first of all, in the second Nude. By contrast, all reference to “Le Pendu Femelle” is, appropriately, entirely absent from either version of Duchamp’s eternally nubile Virgin.

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Figure 16	Figure 17
Marcel Ducahmp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 3, 1916	Marcel Ducahmp, Sad Young Man on a Train, 1911

The male-ish gender of the second Nude, whose title is admittedly neutral on this score,⁽²⁷⁾ is further confirmed by Duchamp’s inscription of the third Nude (1916) (Fig. 16) as the son [“fils”], presumably, of the second: “Marcel Duchamp [Fils] / 1912-1916”, as the third Nude reveals at recto. Doubtless, “daughter” would have better served the same filial purpose, were not the second Nude male; the third Nude a replica of the second; and both, in this sense, a reprise of another nude young man, from just the month before the second Nude: Duchamp’s Sad Young Man on a Train (1911) (Fig. 17). Sad Young Man is a painting of “two parallel movements corresponding to each other” which, Duchamp elaborates, are those of the train and of the sad young man passing through its corridor.⁽²⁸⁾However, the artist also provides us with two further and frankly anomalous details: the nude young man is a self-portrait–“Marcel Duchamp / nu (esquisse) / Jeune homme triste dans un train…”, as he inscribes the picture at verso–in which he is smoking a pipe.⁽²⁹⁾An entire series of only barely symbolic, yet closely related “parallel movements” thus emerges, according to which everything rather starts to resemble the phallus: from the erect young man penetrating the train’s “corridor”; to the train, itself, surely entering the tunnel of his symbolic; where the pipe he smokes is no longer one–for, “faire une pipe” is not to make a pipe, as Magritte’s picture famously disavows (Fig. 18), but rather “to give a blow job”. Indeed, the “parallel movements” of Sad Young Man and, separated by only a month, the second Nude are entirely comparable: the nude young man, who at first penetrates a venerably Freudian corridor, in turn, descends an equally venerable staircase:⁽³⁰⁾exactly the psycho-sexual Passage which the title work nominally regenders. No differently, the swing of his “pipe” in Sad Young Man, at first replaced by that of his “pendu”(lum) in the second Nude, Duchamp analogously regenders as “Le Pendu Femelle” in both Passage and Bride. Rather, the salient difference between Sad Young Man and the second Nude is the use of chronophotographic cues in the latter — to supplement the similarly chronophotographic process of successively doubling the figure in both works–in a way which specifically isolates and identifies “Le Pendu Femelle”. The source of these chronophotographic cues–in the time-lapse imagery of the foils Marey’s fencers wield — exactly re-emphasizes the phallic aspect of “Le Pendu Femelle” by transforming Marey’s fencers’ foils into the “phallic barbs” which, as John Golding observes, everywhere proliferate throughout Duchamp’s first stab at The Bride Stripped Bare By The Bachelors (1912) (Fig. 19).⁽³¹⁾

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Figure 18	Figure 19
René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1929	Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare By The Bachelors, 1912

[“Joey”] moved his penis as if it were the handle of a machine and called it “cranking up the penis”. — Bruno Bettelheim⁽³²⁾

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Figure 20

Marcel Duchamp, Coffee Mill, 1911

As Time Goes By: The Passage from Pendu(lum) to Chronograph
The first and only other instance when these chronophotographic cues significantly come into play is Duchamp’s pseudo-plan and -elevation of the Coffee Mill (1911) (Fig. 20), where, as in the second Nude, they again plot a specifically “circular” movement. This is the same (meta)physical trajectory–which, of course, is not one(33)–that Duchamp’s two versions of the Chocolate Grinder (1913; 1914) (Fig. 21a, b) and, more famously, his Bicycle Wheel (1913) (Fig. 22) also share. In addition to their common trajectory, however, the Coffee Mill and Chocolate Grinder also share a common morphology: from the knobbed handle of the Coffee Mill, which traces a circle about its stationary rod; to the three cylinders of the Chocolate Grinder, which also rotate about a stationary rod–one which is, itself, capped with a circular head, and not so enigmatically called the “bayonet” (DDS 96; WMD 68), if we again think of Marey’s fencers’ foils; finally, to a bicycle wheel which, in the title work, is mounted to another stationery rod–this one (like “Le Pendu Femelle” in the second Nude, Passage and Bride), by contrast, forked. If we add, as post-scripts, Duchamp’s experiments with the Rotary Glass Plates (1920) (Fig. 23) and Rotary Demisphere (1925) (Fig. 24), which figure the same sort of rod-and-demisphere apparatus spinning on axis, the fact of a common morphology to all these variegated objects becomes evident, as does its formal prototype in the work which Francis Naumann suggests might be Duchamp’s first Ready-made: Bilboquet (1910) (Fig. 25), a variation on the traditional cup and ball game, which if correctly manipulated, exactly consists of a ball perched upon a rod. Indeed, the vicious circles all these rods variously describe, or are otherwise inserted into, like the sexual coupling Bilboquet assumes in particular,(34) even anticipate Giacometti’s own “pendu”(lum) of sexual frustration, Suspended Ball (1930) (Fig. 26).

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Figure 21a	Figure 21b	Figure 22
Marcel Duchamp, Chocolate Grinder, No. 1, 1913	Marcel Duchamp, Chocolate Grinder, No. 2, 1914	Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913

Figure 23	Figure 24	Figure 25	Figure 26
Marcel Duchamp, Rotary Glass Plates, 1920	Marcel Duchamp, Rotary Demisphere, 1925	Marcel Duchamp, Bilboquet, 1910	Alberto Giacometti, Suspended Ball, 1930

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Figure 27

Marcel Duchamp, The Chocolate Grinder’s Leg, 1914, from the Green Box (1934)

In addition to their circular trajectory, however, the Coffee Mill and Chocolate Grinder are also productive of the same scatological-type comestibles, and in this sense participate in the same bodily metaphor: “Slow life–Vicious circle–Onanism…” (DDS 82; WMD 56), as Duchamp laments in his Large Glass dirge. Even without the dirge, however, the embodied onanism of Duchamp’s “circular” imagery is not exactly subtle. “Always there has been a necessity for circles in my life”, he explains, for “rotation. It is a kind of narcissism, this self-sufficiency, a kind of onanism”.(35) In exactly these terms, indeed, Bruno Bettelheim describes how one of his similarly circle-obsessed patients, “Joey”, “moved his penis as if it were the handle of a machine and called it ‘cranking up the penis'”.(36) (Like the crankshaft of the Model-T Duchamp could neither drive nor marry and, faute de mieux, the automobile heiress whom he did marry,(37) but soon only drove on Sundays?) Yet what the Coffee Mill and Chocolate Grinder add to the morphological mix is exactly this–an explicitly phallic “crankshaft”: self-evident in the alternately detumescent, tumescent and outright saluting sweep which the Coffee Mill’s knobbed “handle” traces; no less evident, however, in the “nickel-plated Louis XV chassis” on which Duchamp “mounts” his beloved-of-youth (if, perhaps, then G-Rated) Chocolate Grinder (DDS 97; WMD 68). For “she”–“[La] Broyeuse de chocolat” [The Chocolate Grinderess], as Duchamp calls her, already a very strangely marked type of what would simply appear to be “un broyeur”–ain’t no lady. Not only is she “montée” [mounted] to her chassis, but how she is “montée” [hung]. Indeed, that Louis XV decor should ever have such Size-Queen-Anne “legs” (Fig. 27)–formidable! The only difference, then, between the Coffee Mill’s knobbed “handle” and the Chocolate Grinder’s cabriole “legs” is whether the body of the mechanomorphic apparatus prefers to crown itself at top with a time-lapse whirligig of lesser phalli, or to ride them instead like so many carousel horses: the casters with which, in a sheerly gratuitous gesture even for Duchamp, he supplies the second Chocolate Grinder’s “legs”.

But for all her great good luck, just like the modus (non) operandi of the Large Glass “Bride”, the Chocolate Grinder’s is also the tale of an affection she does not exactly requite, as Duchamp describes:

sur un châssis Louis XV = sur un[e] chasse: il lui quinze during the chase: fifteen times [she] nickelé = niques, elles, [f]ait thumbs that nose of hers at him

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Figure 28

Salvador Dalí, Persistence of Memory, 1931

Yet the perhaps ball-busting Chocolate Grinder is no lady in this sense as well. For the viciously-circular bodily metaphor she figures is, in itself, an endlessly-sweeping clockwork metaphor: a sort of sexual end-game gone terribly wrong and instead become a waiting-game–or, more to the point, a kind of Crying Game (as in “Le Pendu Femelle” after all…). Thus the “circularity” of the Coffee Mill and Chocolate Grinder refers not only to the not-so-merry-go-round of onanism–“éternullité”, as Jules Laforgue says in his vein splittingly funny way(38)–but also to the circular movement of a clock, as does “Le Pendu Femelle” which is both “femelle” [la “pendu…le” = clock], yet grammatically masculine [“le pendu…le” = pendulum]. Indeed, the so-called first “Blossoming” of the “Bride”–which, in the upper register of the Large Glass, includes “Le Pendu Femelle”–“should graphically aim”, says Duchamp, “at a clockwork movement (electrical clocks in railway stations)… to develop[:] how best to express the throbbing jerk of the minute hand” (DDS 64; WMD 43). With its source, then, not only in the type of “rotation and sexual movement” which Bataille similarly identifies to locomotives, but also in the sort of clock we specifically find in “railway stations” — in other words, in waiting rooms–“Le Pendu Femelle” indeed inaugurates the same countdown which Dalí’s famous paean not just to time waiting to get hard, Persistence of Memory (1931) (Fig. 28), by contrast, indefinitely suspends.

It is not only in relation to a clock, however, but also as another sort of measuring device, a “barometer”, that Duchamp describes “Le Pendu Femelle”. In a note entitled “In ‘Le Pendu Femelle’ — and the Blossoming-Barometer”, he explains: “The filament substance might lengthen or shorten in response to an atmospheric pressure organized by the wasp. (Filament substance extremely sensitive to differences of artificial atmospheric pressure controlled by the wasp)” (DDS 69; WMD 48). This “Blossoming”, by contrast, is thus effected by two principal actors. First, there is the “baromètre” (i.e. “une barre à mettre”), of which Man Ray’s Catherine Barometer (1920), as well as his portrait that year of Mina Loy (which prominently features a thermometer-earing), also create something on the order of phallic mood-rings.(40) Second, there is the “guêpe” [wasp]. However, the wasp is not only the grammatically invariable riposte — “La Guêpe” (femelle) — to “Le Pendu Femelle”, but also it is the female of the wasp that has the poisonous stinger [“aiguillon”], which is itself a variant on the “minute hand” [“aiguille”] of the first “Blossoming”, just as the former’s venomous “sting” reiterates the latter’s “throbbing jerk”. No matter, then, whether we prefer to speak of a mercurial “barre” become “longue et rigide”, as Le Robert defines it, or, instead, of a retractable “aiguillon”. At issue, either way, is the same tumescence-inducing operation: whether of bar or stinger, a process of “lengthening or shortening” which, in response to “differences of pressure”, the barometer and the wasp can bring to bear more or less at will. Although Duchamp’s “Blossoming” perhaps parallels the undisclosed inner workings of Woody Allen’s famous “Orgasmatron”, we can be certain that it does parallel the tumescence-inducing “mechanical woman whose vagina, contrived of mesh springs and ball bearings, would be contractile, [and] possibly self-lubricating”, which Duchamp once proposed to erect.

a language that will match how he experiences things — and things only, not people. — Bruno Bettelheim

Rites of Passage: s / he

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Figure 30

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

Figure 31

Constantin Brancusi, Princess X, 1916

Further elaborating the domain of the “phallesse”–of such formidably phallic she-males as “La Broyeuse de chocolat” and “Le Pendu Femelle” / “La Guêpe” (femelle)–Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) (Fig. 30) analogously redesignates and, in the process, exactly reverses what would very much appear to be “un pissoir” (or, otherwise, “un urinoir”), instead, as “une fontaine”. Indeed, Kermit Champa asks, “Phallic? Vaginal? It was a man-made female object for exclusive male functions. Yet, who could characterize it precisely?”(43) Nevertheless Fountain can perhaps be characterized as a “female object” in the same sense that Duchamp might have described the similarly organic lines of Brancusi’s phallic totem, of only the prior year, Princess X (1916) (Fig. 31). For Beatrice Wood, indeed, Fountain was not only the “Madonna of the Bathroom”,(44) but also comparable to “a Brancusi, with curved lines of genuine sensitivity”,(45) a formal logic perhaps informed by the fact that Fountain and a version of Princess X were both slated to appear at the 1917 New York Independents exhibition.(46) But Fountain is also a “female object” according to another of Duchamp’s randy quips: “On n’a que: pour femelle la pissotière et on en vit” (DDS 37; cf. WMD 23). For those who easily recall the days of disco, the gist is fairly clear–“I’ve got what you want; you’ve got what I need”:

on n’a que = on a queue: we’ve got dicks et on en vit = et on envie: and we want [what they’ve got]

(Or, “where there’s pussy there’s prick” [“où il y a Chaliapine”],(47) as Duchamp elsewhere declares.) Lost in between what “we’ve got” and what “we want”, however, “pour femelle / la pissotière” plays by an entirely different set of rules. Although I might as well be quoting Freud’s infamous remarks in his lecture on “Femininity”,(48) yet here too the problem–as in “Le Pendu Femelle” / “La Guêpe” (femelle)–is “femelle”. Like its closest English translation–which is not really the “female” gender, but rather the zoological “bitch”–“femelle” frankly varies from catwalk to dogshow, for exactly which reason Flaubert counsels its use “only in speaking of animals”.(49) No less problematical, however, is the second and likewise “femelle” term: “la pissotière”. Even so, “We’ve got dicks, but all we’ve got for broads are open holes, and we want them”–taking both “femelle” and “la pissotière” as crudely reductive of male desire to the desire for any available opening–doesn’t quite work.

For, behind the obviously problematic view of feminine sexuality inherent in “pour femelle / la pissotière”, the more fundamental problem is Duchamp’s intent to assimilate the meaningfulness of gender in its psycho-sexual sense to its meaninglessness–or only circumscribed, even binary meaningfulness–in any linguistic sense.(50) By which I mean, why are farmers, pirates and poets all in the conventionally feminine form in Latin, although grammatically they are masculine, and in Rome they were paradigmatically men? This is the typically aesthetic question to which Duchamp likewise reduces gender, most obviously, when he explains to Cabanne, “If it isn’t a literary movement, it’s a woman; it’s the same thing”.(51) At this grammatical-as-ontological level, by simultaneously reversing both the flow and the gender of “un pissoir”, instead, as “une fontaine”, Duchamp similarly alienates it from its expressly male identification by the simple and–like the rose of Shakespeare and Stein–entirely arbitrary process of renaming it. So, too, in “Le Pendu Femelle” [“the female of the species which is male and hangs”], “La Guêpe” (femelle) and its phallic stinger, as well as the Chocolate Grinderess and its phallic cabriole “legs”, even this process of renaming is, itself, self-consciously marked and, in this sense, not unlike the use of “she” as the indefinite personal pronoun, yet definitely to raise the issue of why “he” is otherwise assumed. Duchamp’s early experience with the failure of English, by contrast, to gender its articles might even explain the artist’s otherwise inexplicable preoccupation with no sooner arriving in New York than replacing each occurrence of a gender indefinite “the” with an even more indefinite “*” in his title text of 1915: The.

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Figure 32

Marcel Duchamp, Nine Malic Molds, 1914-15

Nevertheless, the Nine Male-ish Molds (1914-15) (Fig. 32)–or “Moules Mâliques [Mâlic (?)]” (DDS 76; WMD 51), as Duchamp calls them–are perhaps the culminating example of all of this grammatical-as-ontological play. Although both grammatically [“un moule”] and descriptively [“mâlique”] masculine, their vessel-like form is gender ambivalent: whether as uterine-like molds to condense and cast gas (the enigmatic purpose Duchamp assigns them in the Large Glass), or as dress forms whose typically male costumes make (i.e. mold) the man. Yet, if “femelle” carries the double signifying burden of “bitch”, “mâle”–although obviously the foil to “Le Pendu Femelle” / “La Guêpe” (femelle) and “pour femelle / la pissotière”–carries no such double connotation. As applied to the species, it means male; as applied to men, manly. Rather, Duchamp descriptively emasculates the Molds, not as “mâle”, but rather as “mâlique” or “mâlic” (i.e. “male-ish”) more as we might speak of clothes making the drag king than the man. Like Rrose Sélavy–the “female-ish” dress form, which is often confused with an alter ego (as if there were any ego in any of this, in the first place)–the dress-form Molds similarly identify the constructedness of language and of dress to that of gender more generally. Indeed, if “mâlique” constitutes an invented, feminine form of the adjective “mâle” (in the sense that “-ique” tends to form the feminine), only further confusing matters, “mâlic” restores Duchamp’s neologism to an equally invented, male-ish form (-“ic”) –albeit one which is, itself, derived from an invented, female-ish form (again, “-ique”).(52) Exactly confounding logic, then, we have “Le Pendu Femelle” / “La Guêpe” (femelle), which are clearly insertive, yet are located in the upper register of the Large Glass: the so-called “Bride’s Domain”. On the other hand, we have the Male-ish Molds which by definition are receptive, yet are classed among the elements of its lower register: the so-called “Bachelor Apparatus”. With the phallic “Bride” on top, lording it over her receptive “Bachelors” at bottom (cf. DDS 58; WMD 39), feminine and masculine in their psycho-sexual no less than their linguistic sense–rather than meaningfully contingent, historical and political, coordinates–become meaninglessly binary axes, and these, along an overarching grid of indifference.

Circles are straight. They are a straight line. — “Joey”

Becoming Full Circle: From PiRr to πR²

Like the “circularity” of the Bicycle Wheel, Coffee Mill and Chocolate Grinder — or the tautological “I” they posit, whose final determinant is only the “not-I” to which their onanism opposes itself — clad not only in the black leather of a Fresh Widow, but also in “pi”, the very figure of the circle, Rrose Sélavy embodies an alternative (meta)physical trajectory. As Duchamp describes her:

…en 6 pi qu’habillarrose Sélavy = [Fr]ancis Picabia, Rrose Sélavy = in sex, [it is] “pi” that clothes eros, such is life(54)

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Figure 33

Marcel Duchamp, An Original Revolutionary Faucet: Mirrorical Return, 1964

Es ist Robert Lebel als grosse Weitsicht zuzuschreiben, dass er bereits 1959 in seinen Werkkatalog zu Duchamp die drei in den 1940er Jahren unter Leitung von Duchamp entstandenen Schaufenster aufnahm ⁽¹⁾. Ein viertes entstand 1960–ganz passend–anlässlich der Veröffentlichung von Lebels Monographie. Gleichwohl steht eine ausführliche Auseinandersetzung, wie sie vielen anderen vermeintlich marginalen Werken Marcel Duchamps besonders seit den 1990er Jahren zuteil geworden ist, bezüglich dieser Arbeiten noch am Anfang ⁽²⁾. Ein Blick auf die stetig wachsende Duchamp-Literatur lässt vermuten, dass dieser Zustand nicht sehr viel länger anhalten wird. In den folgenden Ausführungen wird versucht, anhand einiger speziell auf Schaufenster bezogener Aussagen Duchamps selbst und anhand der Analyse der insgesamt vier Schaufenster, die unter Anleitung Duchamps entstanden sind, ein genaueres Verständnis davon zu erlangen, warum sich dieser oftmals in der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung als elitär verstandene Künstler einem scheinbar so profanen Medium widmete.

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Abb. 1
D.F.: Konfisserie E. Gamelin, Rouen,
Rd., ca. 1900, Bibliothèque Municipal
Rouen. Aus: Ausst.-Kat.
Joseph Cornell/ Marcel Duchamp .
. . in Resonance. Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Ostfildern

Abb. 2
Duchamp, Marcel: La
Mariée Mise à Nu Par Ses
Célibataires, Même
(Das Grosse Glas), 1915-23, Öl,
Blei, Folie, Bleidraht
und Staub zwischen zwei Glasscheiben,
277,5×175,8cm (inkl.),
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Katherine S.
Dreier Bequest, 1953,
S. 361. Aus: Arturo Schwarz,
The Complete Works of Marcel
Duchamp (3. überarb. und erw. Aufl.),
New York 2000, S.361.

 

 

Die Frage der Schaufenster.
Das Verhör der Schaufenster über sich ergehen lassen.
Die Forderung des Schaufensters.
Das Schaufenster, Beweis der Existenz der äusseren Welt.
Wenn man das Verhör der Schaufenster über sich ergehen lässt, spricht man auch seine eigenes Urteil Verurteilung aus. Die Wahl ist tatsächlich hin und zurück. Aus dem Verlangen der Schaufenster, aus der unvermeidlichen Antwort auf die Schaufenster, beschliesst sich die Fixierung der Wahl. Keine Versessenheit ad absurdum, den Koitus durch eine Glasscheibe hindurch mit einem oder mehreren Objekten des Schaufensters verbergen zu wollen. Die Strafe besteht darin, die Scheibe zu durchschneiden und darüber Gewissensbisse zu haben, sobald die Besitznahme erfolgt ist. q.e.d. ⁽¹⁰⁾

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Abb. 3
Duchamp, Marcel: Tür für Galerie
“Gradiva”, 1937, Paris, Photographie.
Aus: October, Jg. 69, 1994, S. 122.

Abb. 4
Duchamp, Marcel: Tür für
Galerie “Gradiva”, 1937, Paris, Photographie.
Aus: Arturo Schwarz, The Complete
Works of Marcel Duchamp
(3. überarb. und erw. Aufl.),
New York 2000, Nr. 455, S. 743a.

Eine erste Berührung mit der Gestaltung einer Ladenfront hatte Duchamp noch in Paris gehabt. Bei dem 1937 erteilten Auftrag für die Tür von Bretons Galerie Gradiva handelte es sich, wie bei allen späteren Schaufensteraufträgen, um einen Freundschaftsdienst Duchamps. Dies bedeutete jedoch keineswegs, dass er den Wünschen oder Vorstellungen seiner Freunde entsprach, auch wenn er ihnen auf den ersten Blick oftmals entgegenkam. Die Tür für die Galerie Gradiva wies diese künstlerische Autonomie auf, die Duchamp sich nicht nur für die ‘wichtigen’ Werke vorbehielt. Photographien der Tür zeigen eine Öffnung in Form einer Silhouette zweier eng zusammenstehender Personen (Abb. 3 und 4). Antje von Graevenitz hat diese Öffnung als Initiations-Passage gedeutet, mit der Besucher den Heilungsprozess von Jensens Protagonisten nachvollziehen solle ⁽¹³⁾. Breton selbst schrieb in Bezug auf den Namen ‘Gradiva’, er bedeute auch die, welche “die Schönheit von morgen [sehe], welche den meisten Menschen noch verborgen” bliebe ⁽¹⁴⁾. Das Eintreten in die Galerie, in der natürlich Kunst von Surrealisten ausgestellt war, sollte nach Bretons Vorstellung den Besucher dieser Schönheit näher bringen und – wie in Jensens Geschichte – einen Beitrag zum Aufdecken des seelisch Verborgenen beim Betrachter leisten.

Es gibt einige formale Hinweise, dass Duchamp mit seiner Tür andere Absichten verfolgte. Die in die Scheibe geschnittene Silhouette deutet zwei Personen an, wobei die grössere die kleinere zu dominieren, fast zu erdrücken scheint. Die beiden sind sehr nah aneinander gerückt, wobei es so aussieht, als lege die grössere der kleineren einen Arm um die Schulter und schaue die kleinere Figur an, die den Kopf etwas wegneigt ⁽¹⁵⁾. Wenn es sich hier also um ein Liebespaar handelte, dann stand das ungleiche Machtverhältnis ganz eindeutig im Vordergrund, und die Nähe der beiden, die in der Literatur (und vermutlich von Breton selbst) oft als Innigkeit gedeutet worden ist, war bei Duchamp eher eine Betonung dieses Missverhältnisses. Duchamp unterlief damit Bretons romantische Interpretation (ohne ihm offen zu widersprechen) und blieb zugleich näher an der Geschichte Jensens, denn hier unterwarf der Protagonist die geliebte Frau seinen Vorstellungen, liess sie zu einem Kunstobjekt (dem Relief) werden. Polemisch könnte man behaupten, gleiches geschehe in einer Galerie mit Kunst. Sie wird einem Massstab ausserhalb ihrer selbst, dem kommerziellen, unterworfen; sie wird die Gradiva im Sinne Duchamps: eine Ware. So gesehen war diese Tür als Warnung Duchamps an die Besucher zu verstehen, nicht die Sache selbst zu übersehen, nicht die Kunstwerke mit ihrem Warenwert zu verwechseln.

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Abb. 5
Duchamp,Marcel: Schaufenster für
La Part du Diable von Denis
de Rougemont, 3. Februar 1943, Brentano’s, Fifth Avenue New
York, Photographie. Aus: Arturo Schwarz,
The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp
(3. überarb. und erw. Aufl.), New York
2000, Nr. 489, S. 768.

1943 übernahm der ‘Fenstermacher’ Duchamp in New York einen Auftrag für eine Schaufensterauslage (Abb. 5). Auch diesmal handelte es sich um einen Gefallen für einen Freund. Die von den Surrealisten bewunderte Schrift Der Anteil des Teufels von Denis de Rougemont war 1942 bei Brentano’s aufgelegt worden und sollte nun in einem Schaufenster der Filiale an der Fifth Avenue ausgestellt werden. Da Rougemont selbst keine Idee für die Auslage hatte, wandte er sich an Breton, der vorschlug, Duchamp zu konsultieren. Wie aus dem Tagebuch von Rougemont hervorgeht, riet dieser, “die Decke aus offenen, an den Griffen herabhängenden Regenschirmen zu machen” ⁽¹⁶⁾. Auf der Photographie sind die Regenschirme allerdings nicht zu sehen. Duchamp vergrösserte das von seinen Freunden geäusserte Unverständnis dieser Idee dadurch, dass er kryptisch hinzufügte: “Die Frauen werden es verstehen”⁽¹⁷⁾. Die Idee mit den Regenschirmen unter der Decke war Duchamp bereits früher gekommen. Er hatte sie für die Surrealisten-Retrospektive 1938 in Paris verwenden wollen anstelle der Kohlesäcke, die dann tatsächlich zum Einsatz kamen. Regenschirme waren nach dem Bericht von Henri-Pierre Roché angesichts der schwierigen Wirtschaftslage damals nicht aufzutreiben gewesen ⁽¹⁸⁾. Duchamp scheint jedoch bereits in Paris aus seiner Idee kein Geheimnis gemacht zu haben, denn Salvador Dalí benutzte im folgenden Jahr Regenschirme in dieser Weise in seinem Pavillon Dream of Venus auf der New Yorker Weltausstellung ⁽¹⁹⁾. Hatte Duchamp folglich gemeint, die modebewussten New Yorker Frauen, die 1939 in Scharen zu Dalís Pavillon geströmt waren, um das Werk des surrealistischen Modepapstes zu bewundern, würden sich daran erinnern können? So sie es taten, musste ihnen Duchamp als Plagiator von Dalís Idee erscheinen – eine ironische Verkehrung der tatsächlichen Schuldigkeiten.

Für den Hintergrund des Schaufensters für Rougemonts Buch zeichnete Kurt Seligmann verantwortlich, der neben okkult anmutenden Graffiti auch die Tarotkarte XV abbildete, die ausser dem Bezug auf das Buch auch als Vorbote eines späteren Schaufensters (LazyHardware) gesehen werden kann, das ebenfalls unter der Ägide von Duchamp entstand. Ansonsten befanden sich noch zahlreiche exotische Skulpturen in der Auslage, die zwischen die ausgelegten Bücher gestellt waren. Mag sein, dass Breton die Abb.n in seinem New Yorker Lieblingsgeschäft, bei dem Antiquitätenhändler Julius Carlebach, entliehen hatte⁽²⁰⁾. Die Auslage zog trotz ihrer Exotik keine grössere Aufmerksamkeit auf sich ⁽²¹⁾. Keines der vier Schaufenster, an deren Erstellung Duchamp Teil hatte, fand in der Presse Erwähnung, obwohl es zumindest einmal zu einem kleinen Skandal kam.

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Abb. 6
Duchamp, Marcel: Lazy Hardware,
Schaufenster für André Bretons
Arcane 17, 19.-26. April 1945, Gotham Bookmart, E. 57^th
St. New York, Photographie (Maya Deren), Philadelphia Museum
of Art, Marcel Duchamp Archive. Aus:
Ausst.-Kat. Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp
in Resonance. Philadelphia Museum of
Art, Ostfildern 1998, S. 250, n. 148.

Dieser entzündete sich an dem berühmtesten der Schaufenster, an deren Gestaltung Duchamp beteiligt war. Dasselbe Buchgeschäft wie zuvor, Brentano’s an der Fifth Avenue, ermöglichte 1945 eine Auslage für die Buchpräsentation von Bretons Schrift Arkanum 17. Das Geschäft sah sich jedoch aufgrund von (in der Überlieferung nicht spezifizierten) Protesten der Women’s League bereits am ersten Tag der Installation gezwungen, die Auslage wieder zu entfernen, woraufhin sie in den Gotham Bookmart in eine nahe gelegene Querstrasse verlegt werden musste (Abb. 6) ⁽²²⁾. Die Auslage, wie sie uns aus Photographien an ihrem zweiten Standort bekannt geworden ist, bestand aus verschiedenen Beiträgen. Duchamp hatte eine kopflose Schaufensterpuppe beigesteuert, die einen Wasserhahn am Bein hatte und in eine knappe Schürze gekleidet war. Auf einem Etikett wurde dies als Lazy Hardware (Träge Eisenwaren) betitelt. Von Duchamp stammte auch eine Flasche, die zuvor schon als Motiv für eine Titelseite der Surrealisten-Zeitschrift View gedient hatte (Abb. 7). Der von Breton und Duchamp hochgeschätzte junge Maler Roberto Matta Echaurren hatte ein surrealistisches Plakat mit dem Schriftzeile “arcane 17” angefertigt (Abb. 8). Matta hatte zudem für Bretons Buch vier Tarotkarten entworfen, die im Schaufenster präsentiert wurden, indem mehrere Exemplare des Buches an den entsprechenden Stellen aufgeschlagen wurden (Abb. 9). Schliesslich wurde das Cover des Buches samt eines Portraits des Autors sowie einer Schreibfeder in einem seesternförmigen Tintenfass zu Füssen des Mannequins gezeigt. Das Schaufenster ist in mindestens vier verschiedenen Aufnahmen festgehalten worden, von Duchamp bei der Arbeit an dem Mannequin gibt es eine (Abb. 10, 11-12) ⁽²³⁾.

In kunsthistorischen Schriften, in denen Duchamps Schaufenster-Projekte erwähnt werden, ist zumeist nur von der Auslage für Arkanum 17 die Rede. Das mag zum einen daran liegen, dass bereits sehr früh in der seit 1973 ausufernden Duchamp-Literatur, nämlich schon 1977, ein ausführlicher und gedankenreicher Artikel von Charles Stuckey erschienen ist, der sich mit Duchamps Beitrag zu diesem Schaufenster, der kopflosen Schaufensterpuppe, beschäftigte. Der Artikel ist zudem interessant, weil er das schwierige Verhältnis von Kunsthistorikern zum Medium Schaufenster eindrücklich widerspiegelt. Daher seien hier einige Bemerkungen zur Historiographie dieses Schaufensters erlaubt.

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Abb. 1
Duchamp, Marcel: Lazy Hardware,
Schaufenster für André Bretons
Arcane 17 (Duchamp beim Aufbau),
19.-26. April 1945,
Gotham Bookmart, E. 57^th
St. New York, Photographie.
Aus: Arturo Schwarz, The Complete
Works of Marcel Duchamp
(3. überarb. und erw. Aufl.), New York 2000, S. 781.

Stuckey zog kunsthistorische Vergleiche für das Mannequin heran und versuchte, es in Duchamps Oeuvre einzuordnen. Obwohl er mit einer Vielzahl mehr oder weniger plausibler Bezüge aufwarten konnte, fühlte er sich verpflichtet, seinen Ansatz zu rechtfertigen: “Vielleicht ist es widersinnig, ein solch kurzlebiges Werk wie Lazy Hardware zu untersuchen, das nur der Versuch war, das Buch eines Freundes anzupreisen” ⁽²⁴⁾. Seine eigenen Zweifel beseitigte er indes mit dem Hinweis, viele andere Künstler hätten ebenfalls in Schaufenstern gearbeitet. 25 Jahre nach Stuckeys Artikel ist der Verweis auf dieses Schaufenster zu einer Pflichtübung im immer aufwendigeren Parcours der Duchamp-Forschung geworden. In eines seiner Überblickswerke nahm kürzlich Hans Belting eine Photographie der Auslage auf; bei einer Buchvorstellung deutete er sogar an, dieses Schaufenster enthalte alle wichtigen Ideen des Grossen Glases ⁽²⁵⁾. Die feministische Forschung stand nicht an, Lacan und seine Theorie des Spiegelstadiums an einer Photographie abzuhandeln, in der Duchamp und Breton sich in der Scheibe dieser Auslage spiegeln, um daran die Ermahnung auszusprechen, dass erst wir als Betrachter mit unserem “‘begehrenden’ Blick” etwas hervorbringen, was keineswegs Duchamp selbst, sondern nur ein Spiegelbild seiner selbst sei (Abb. 13) ⁽²⁶⁾. Es ist somit ein Paradox in der Forschung entstanden, das darin besteht, dass Kunsthistoriker die Auslage an sich und zugleich die Photographien immer häufiger erwähnen, aber scheinbar immer seltener betrachten. Um dieser Regression zuvorzukommen, soll daher hier noch einmal ein Blick auf die Auslage geworfen werden.

Zunächst müssen jedoch einige der Erkenntnisse Stuckeys zu Lazy Hardware erwähnt werden. Er beschränkte sich ganz auf das Mannequin und liess Mattas Beiträge zum Schaufenster beiseite. Die Kopflosigkeit der Puppe führte er auf eine Anlehnung an Max Ernsts Figur aus dem Collage-Roman La Femme 100 Têtes (1930) zurück. Dieser Bezug scheint weniger aufgrund von formalen Parallelen, als vielmehr für das im Titel enthaltene Wortspiel relevant zu sein. Werner Spies hat immerhin vier Lesarten aufgezeigt ⁽²⁷⁾. Eine Behauptung, die sich schwerlich aufrecht erhalten lässt, die aber dennoch fasziniert, erläuterte Stuckey anhand der Rekonstruktion der ersten Aufstellung des Mannequins. Er behauptete, es habe bei Brentano’s niedriger gestanden, so dass etwaige Spiegelungen der Betrachter nicht im Bereich der Scham der Puppe, sondern auf Kopfhöhe erfolgt seien. Die wechselnden Betrachter hätten diese Frau über den Tag hinweg tatsächlich zu einer Frau mit hundert Köpfen gemacht. Stuckey stellte zudem erstmals den Bezug zu Duchamps oben bereits erwähntem Text zum Schaufenster von 1913 her und beschrieb “die aktive Rolle, die Duchamp dem Fenster zuschreibt” als das Bemerkenswerte daran ⁽²⁸⁾. Hieraus erklärt sich, warum für Stuckey der Bezug zu Ernst so wichtig war. Da jedoch die Puppe lebensgross war, hätte sie bei Brentano’s auf Höhe des Gehwegs stehen müssen, um die vermeintliche Spiegelung zu bewirken. Das war nach Stuckeys eigenen Angaben nicht der Fall, und wird auch durch die Photographie eines Schaufensters des gleichen Jahres für Brentano’s widerlegt, das in etwa der gleichen Höhe wie das vom Gotham Bookmart ansetzt ⁽²⁹⁾. Drei der erhaltenen Photographien spielten freilich mit Spiegelung, indem sie Duchamp und Breton, beziehungsweise Breton allein neben die Schaufensterpuppe projizierten. Wohl dadurch kam Stuckey auf den Gedanken, dass die hell angestrahlte Schürze, die einzige Bekleidung der Puppe war, am zweiten Standort eine Reflektion ausschloss und den direkt davor stehenden Betrachter quasi der Spiegelung seines Kopfes beraubt habe. In Analogie zu Ernsts “Frau ohne Kopf” (Femme Sans Tête) hätte da nun ein Betrachter ohne Kopf gestanden, und dieses Wechselspiel nannte Stuckey mit Duchamp “den Koitus durch eine Glasscheibe hindurch”. Die Frage, warum Duchamp den Betrachter hätte enthaupten wollen, bleibt allerdings ungeklärt.

Für den Wasserhahn, den Duchamp am rechten Oberschenkel des Mannequins angebracht hatte, verwies Stuckey zu Recht auf Duchamps Spruch: “Von unseren Artikeln an träger Eisenware empfehlen wir einen Wasserhahn, der zu tropfen aufhört, wenn man ihm nicht mehr zuhört” ⁽³⁰⁾. Offensichtlich hörte niemand mehr zu, denn dieser Wasserhahn tropfte nicht ⁽³¹⁾. Stuckey ist einer der ersten, die den Wasserhahn in der Literatur phallisch gedeutet haben ⁽³²⁾. Craig Adcock hat diese Lesart zum Anlass genommen, gleich von einer Geschlechtsumwandlung der Puppe in Analogie zu Duchamps Spiel mit seinem weiblichen Alter Ego Rrose Sélavy zu sprechen ⁽³³⁾. Duchamp selbst hat den Ausspruch vom tropfenden Wasserhahn 1964 in einer Radierung seines Brunnens untergebracht, und damit indirekt eine Verbindung zwischen dem Schaufenster mit Lazy Hardware und dem mit Badezimmerausstattung der Firma Mutt aufgezeigt ⁽³⁴⁾. “Er ist ein Zubehör, das man jeden Tag in den Schaufenstern von Klempnern sehen kann”, hatte Duchamp von dem Brunnengesagt ⁽³⁵⁾. Mit Lazy Hardware veranschaulichte er diese Behauptung für den Wasserhahn, dehnte sie – nicht ohne Witz – auf das Schaufenster eines Büchergeschäfts aus.

Stuckey versuchte sich verdienstvoller Weise auch daran, Parallelen zwischen Duchamps Mannequin und Bretons Buch Arkanum 17 aufzuzeigen, wobei er einen Aspekt daraus hervorhob: die Polarität von Mann und Frau. Nach Stuckey ersetzte Duchamp diese Vorgabe von Breton bei Lazy Hardware durch die Polarität von Betrachter und Betrachtetem. Diese Auslegung beruht jedoch auf einem etwas wackeligem Verständnis von Bretons Schrift. Eine genaue Lektüre von Bretons Roman soll im folgenden den für Lazy Hardware wichtigen Aspekt des Geschlechterverhältnisses klären. Breton hatte das Buch im August 1944 während eines Urlaubs mit seiner zukünftigen Frau Elisa Caro in Kanada begonnen und kurz nach seiner Rückkehr beendet, so dass bereits zu Weihnachten 1944 eine De-Luxe Ausgabe mit farbigen Reproduktionen von Mattas Tarotkarten erscheinen konnte⁽³⁶⁾. Der Titel des Buches bezog sich auf die Tarotkarte mit der Nummer 17, die Breton einer literarisch-politisch gefärbten Deutung unterzog. Besondere Bedeutung schrieb er dem grössten auf der Karte abgebildeten Stern zu: “Der hier wiedergefundene Stern ist der des grossen Tagesanbruchs, jener, der danach strebte, die anderen Gestirne im Fenster zu überstrahlen” ⁽³⁷⁾. Mit dem Tagesanbruch waren, so geht aus dem Buch hervor, zwei konkrete Dinge gemeint. Das Ende des Krieges und der Beginn einer neün Liebe für Breton, dessen erste Ehe kurz zuvor zu Bruch gegangen war, der aber neues Glück bei Elisa Caro gefunden hatte. Beides erörterte und vermengte Breton in dem Buch, wo er das Bild des Sterns in diesem Sinn ausführlicher deutete:

Er besteht aus der Einheit dieser beiden Mysterien selbst: der Liebe, die aus dem Verlust ihres Gegenstandes wiederauferstehen muss und die sich erst dadurch zum vollen Bewusstsein ihrer selbst, zu ihrer ganzen Würde erhebt; der Freiheit, die nur um den Preis ihres Entzugs ihrer selbst recht inne zu werden und zu wachsen vermag. ⁽³⁸⁾

In Analogie zur Liebe, die nach einem Verlust wieder neu entstehen könne, sah Breton hier dem Frieden entgegen, der trotz des Krieges bald greifbar werden würde. Bretons Anliegen mit dem Buch war es, diesen persönlichen Optimismus weiterzugeben und die Gestaltung des Friedens vorauszudenken.

Wie so oft bei Duchamp kann man in den drei von ihm plazierten Gegenständen zahlreiche Anspielungen aufdecken, die freilich weder augenscheinlich noch zwangsläufig sind. Die Schreibfeder kann neben dem offensichtlichen Verweis auf die von Breton in Arkanum 17als Heilmittel besungene Poesie beispielsweise Sinnbild für den von ihm gegen Ende des Buches angeführten “Engel Freiheit” sein, der nach Victor Hugo “geboren [ist] aus einer weissen Feder, die Luzifer bei seinem Sturz verloren hat” ⁽³⁹⁾. Die Flasche war die Originalvorlage für das von Duchamp angefertigte Titelbild des Duchamp-Heftes der Zeitschrift View, das im März 1945 erschien und ebenfalls im Schaufenster ausgestellt war. Das Cover zeigt die von rechts unten nach hinten in die Bildmitte ragende Flasche, aus deren Öffnung scheinbar Rauch aufsteigt in den Sternenhimmel, der den Hintergrund des Blattes ausfüllt. Aus einem Bericht darüber, wie Duchamp diese Collage angefertigt hat, geht hervor, dass das Etikett aus seinem Livret Militaire, seinem Militärausweis, bestand⁽⁴⁰⁾. Der Künstler war aus gesundheitlichen Problemen schon nicht in den Ersten Weltkrieg eingezogen worden ⁽⁴¹⁾. Eine politische Deutung der Flasche wird noch verstärkt, wenn man sie in Verhältnis zu Bretons Ausspruch (der Duchamp vielleicht auch bekannt war), “die traurige Flasche dieser Zeiten aufschütteln” setzt ⁽⁴²⁾. Der entweichende Rauch würde belegen, dass dies gelungen ist, dass das Ende des Krieges in Reichweite gekommen ist. Bretons Buch bot erste Gedanken für diese Übergangszeit an. Beide Beigaben, die Feder und die Flasche konnten folglich politisch gedeutet werden und hätten damit eines der beiden Themen von Bretons Buch behandelt. Das Tintenfass in Form eines Seesterns kann als Bretons Stern verstanden werden, der für Freiheit und für Liebe stand.

Die Schaufensterpuppe jedoch ist schwerlich politisch zu deuten. Vielmehr wird hier eine Auslegung analog zu Duchamps Tür für Gradiva vorgeschlagen, nämlich als Anspielung Duchamps auf Bretons Ansichten zur Liebe, dem zweiten Thema von Arkanum 17, und spezifischer noch Bretons Verhältnis zu Frauen. Die Schaufensterpuppe wäre folglich eine Verkörperung von Bretons Konzept der Frau, jedoch nicht nur der Art von Frau, die in Bretons Buch eine solch zentrale Rolle spielt, der Kind-Frau, sondern zugleich eines alternativen Typus Frau. Duchamp kommentierte mit dieser Figur Bretons Verhältnis zu Frauen, speziell zu seiner ersten Frau Jacqueline, die sich 1942 von Breton getrennt hatte, um eine Beziehung zu dem Künstler David Hare einzugehen (den Breton zum Herausgeber der surrealistischen Exil-Zeitschrift VVV gemacht hatte). Zugleich kommentierte er Bretons Verhältnis zu Elisa, auf die sich die Liebeserklärungen in Arkanum 17 bezogen, und die seine zweite Frau werden sollte. In seiner umfassenden Breton-Biographie hat Mark Polizzotti auf den grossen charakterlichen Unterschied dieser beiden Frauen hingewiesen. Er beschrieb Jacqueline als eine Frau, die “ihrer eigenen Bestimmung zu folgen” beschlossen hatte und die als Künstlerin erfolgreich werden wollte ⁽⁴³⁾. Zu Bretons Ungemach führte sie im New Yorker Exil ein von ihm sehr unabhängiges – und im Gegensatz zu seinem – ereignisreiches Leben. Dagegen vergleicht Polizzotti Elisa zu Recht mit der Kind-Frau, die Breton in Arkanum 17 verherrlichte, war sie doch “verletzbar und leidenschaftlich, offenkundig ohne die privaten Ambitionen, die Breton bei seinen anderen Frauen nur so schwer akzeptieren konnte” ⁽⁴⁴⁾. Breton hatte zwar dafür plädiert, dass angesichts des Krieges Frauen eine grössere gesellschaftliche Rolle spielen sollten: “Es wäre an der Zeit, die Ideenwelt der Frau auf Kosten derjenigen des Mannes in den Vordergrund zu stellen, die heute mit ziemlichem Getöse ihren Bankrott erlebt,” heisst es da scheinbar freimütig an einer Stelle ⁽⁴⁵⁾. Doch wollte Breton die ‘Ideenwelt’ der Frau zugleich auf zwei Stimmen beschränken, “die eine, um liebend das Wort an den Mann zu richten, die andere, um das ganze Vertrauen des Kindes zu gewinnen” ⁽⁴⁶⁾. Dieses Ideal verkörperte Elisa. Die Beschränkung der Frau, die er damit vornahm (und auch in seiner Begeisterung für die Geschichte Gradiva bezeugt hatte), begriff der Autor selbst nicht als negativ. Duchamp dürfte da anders gedacht haben und dies drückte sich, so hier das Argument, in der Schaufensterpuppe Lazy Hardware aus.

Wenn man unter diesem Aspekt die Schaufensterpuppe in Bezug zu Ernsts Romanfigur setzte, könnte man in ihr sowohl die Frau sehen, die ihren eigenen Kopf hat (Femme S’Entête), als auch die kopflose Frau (Femme Sans Tête). Die Frau mit eigenem Kopf wird in der Puppe symbolisiert durch den Wasserhahn, der eine Anspielung Duchamps auf Jacqueline war. Der Trennung von ihr und Breton ging Streit voraus, der unter anderem von tropfenden Wasserhähnen verursacht wurde. So hatte Breton sich gegenüber einem Freund beschwert: “Kannst Du Dir vorstellen, wie einen das in einem Hotelzimmer oder einer winzigen Wohnung irritieren kann, wenn der andere niemals die Wasserhähne zudreht?”⁽⁴⁷⁾. Der Wasserhahn hier ist zu, er tropft nicht mehr, und – mit der Definition von TrägenEisenwaren -: Jacqueline hört Breton auch nicht länger zu, denn sie ist gegangen. Die Schürze dagegen steht für Elisa, die keinen eigenen Kopf hatte, die in der Rolle der ergebenen Gattin und fürsorglichen Stiefmutter voll aufging. Das Exemplar von Bretons Buch, das die Puppe in den Händen hält, bezeichnet Breton als Bezugspunkt für beide Frauen. Breton sind diese Andeutungen des Freundes, wie bereits bei der Gradiva-Tür, jedoch scheinbar nie zu Bewusstsein gelangt, was dafür spricht, wie dezent Duchamp seine Kritik anbrachte, denn Breton war bei beiden Projekten die Person, die sie am ehesten hätte verstehen können.

Ein weiteres bemerkenswertes Element dieses Schaufensters war das Plakat, das Matta eigens dafür angefertigt hatte. Es ist ein merkwürdiger Umstand der Geschichte, dass, obwohl nicht die Puppe, sondern die weibliche Brust in Roberto Mattas Bild der Auslöser für erneuten Ärger mit der Auslage (am zweiten Standort) war, die neuere Forschung eher an der Puppe als an der nackten Brust in Mattas Bild Anstoss genommen hat ⁽⁴⁸⁾. Das Plakat ist heute nur in einer Schwarz-Weiss Reproduktion zugänglich, dürfte aber in Analogie zu anderen Werken dieser Zeit durchaus mit verschiedenen hellen Farben ausgeführt worden sein. Das Hochformat, das an der linken Seite des Schaufensters des Gotham Bookmart von der Decke abgehängt worden war, zeigt eine für Matta damals typische Strichzeichnung, in die etwa mittig Fahnen mit “arcane 17” und am unteren Ende mit “André Breton” gesetzt sind. Die Bildhälfte oberhalb von “arcane 17” deutet mit vielen kleinen Punkten und einem grösseren zackigen Objekt den Sternenhimmel an, von dem in Bretons Buch die Rede war. Die untere Bildhälfte füllt ein nacktes Liebespaar, das in einem ‘verschlingenden’ Kuss ineinander verflochten ist. Die Köpfe sind insektenhaft auf Öffnungen und Rüssel reduziert. Dass es die Frau ist, die auf dem Rücken liegt, lässt sich allein an ihrer Brust ablesen. An dieser Brust machten am zweiten Standort der Auslage die Sittenwächter der Vice Society in Person eines gewissen John Sumner ihre Kritik fest. Die Besitzerin von Gotham Bookmart, Frances Steloff, auf die diese Anekdote zurückgeht, wies zunächst seine Vorwürfe zurück mit dem Hinweis: “Ich kann dieses Fenster genauso wenig anrühren, wie ich ein Meisterwerk verändern könnte. Es wurde von Breton und Duchamp persönlich hergerichtet” ⁽⁴⁹⁾. Doch Sumner bestand auf einer Änderung. Steloff berichtete über ihr weiteres Vorgehen:

An diesem Abend kam mir die Idee, die ‘anstössige’ Stelle mit Herrn Sumners Visitenkarte, die er mir zurückgelassen hatte, abzudecken. Mit grossen Buchstaben stand das Wort ‘Censored’ (zensiert) auf einer Karte darunter. Die Menschenmengen wuchsen dadurch noch mehr, und die Auslage verblieb eine volle Woche im Fenster. ⁽⁵⁰⁾

Die Photographien zeigen allerdings keine Karte über der Brust, sondern eine Schürze, die jener ähnelt, die Schaufensterpuppe trägt ⁽⁵¹⁾. Eine raffinierte Anspielung auf die engstirnige bürgerliche Moral, die Kind-Frau symbolisierte, und in deren Dienst sich die Vice Society gestellt hatte.

click to enlarge

Abb. 14
Duchamp, Marcel: Schaufenster
für Le Surréalisme et la Peinture
von André Breton, Herbst 1945, Brentano’s
Fifth Avenue New York,Photographie.
Aus: Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of
Marcel Duchamp (3. überarb. und erw. Aufl.),
New York 2000,Nr. 512, S. 782.

Abb. 15
Duchamp,Marcel: Étant Donnés:
1. la chute d’eau /
2. le gaz d’éclairage
(Gegeben Sei: 1. Der Wasserfall /
2. Das Leuchtgas), Innenansicht,
1946-66, mixed media assemblage, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Abb. 16
Cézanne,Paul: L’Eternel
Feminin, 1880-82, Öl/Lw, 43,2×53,3cm,
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Das Schaufenster für Arkanum 17 belegt besonders anschaulich die Vielschichtigkeit der Auslegungsmöglichkeiten, die Duchamp auch in diesen Werken offeriert. Es bietet sowohl persönliche, als auch weltanschauliche Anspielungen. Duchamp äussert sich zum künstlerischen Prozess ebenso wie zur Banalität von Schaufensterauslagen. Die Rollen von Künstler, Betrachter, Kaufmann und Kaufendem werden gleichermassen angesprochen wie der in den beiden Hauptwerken thematisierte Topos der (vermeintlichen) Erotik des Blicks. Duchamp unterzieht all diese Aspekte derselben Befragung. Das Betrachten des Schaufensters wird somit zum Betrachten der eigenen Anschauungen, zur Befragung der eigenen Person.

Ebenfalls 1945 entstand ein weiteres Schaufenster für den Buchladen Brentano’s an der Fifth Avenue (Abb. 14). Das Buch, das es diesmal anzuzeigen galt, war Bretons Der Surrealismus und die Malerei, das gerade bei Brentano’s eine neue Auflage erhalten hatte. Rechts in der Auslage standen auf zwei Stufen jeweils eine Plastik von Enrico Donato und tiefer eine von Duchamp. Beide Paare Fuss-Schuhe gehen auf ein Bildmotiv von Magritte zurück (Das Rote Modell, 1937), das als Titelbild des anzuzeigenden Buches gewählt worden war. Während Donatis “Füsse” Magrittes Motiv ins Dreidimensionale übersetzten, zeigten Duchamps “Füsse” die Unterseite dieser sich verdinglichenden Glieder. Thomas Girst hat Duchamps Fuss-Plastik zu Recht als erotisches oder gar fetischistisches Motivt gedeutet ⁽⁵²⁾. Im Zentrum dieses Fensters hing ein Papier-Schleier, der, in der Mitte fixiert, nach zwei Seiten auseinanderfiel. Unter dem Schleier stand eine abstrakte Plastik der Bildhauerin Isabelle Waldberg. Durch die Künstlerin ist überliefert, dass Duchamp der Erfinder dieser Auslage war ⁽⁵³⁾. Girst ist die wichtige Entdeckung zu verdanken, dass es sich bei der Figur von Waldberg um eine Person handelte, der eine ähnliche Körperhaltung aufwies wie später jener in Étant Donnés(Abb. 15) ⁽⁵⁴⁾. Vor diesem Ensemble stand ein vorgefertigter Torso aus Maschendraht, wie er vermutlich häufig in professionellen Friseur- oder Oberbekleidungs-Schaufenstern verwendet wurde.

Folgt man Girsts Argument und erkennt in der Figur ein Vorstadium für Etant Donnés, dann fällt auf, dass der Schleier nur dem Schaufenster, nicht der späteren Installation eigen ist. Es ist vor allem das Motiv einer lasziv sich darbietenden Frau unter einem solchen Schleier das nahe legt, verschiedene Werke von Paul Cézanne könnten hier als Anregung gedient haben. Dessen Gemälde L’Eternel Féminin (1880-82) weist besonders markante formale Parallelen zu Duchamps Bildschöpfung auf (Abb. 16) ⁽⁵⁵⁾. Die Körperhaltung beider Frauen – das angewinkelte rechte Bein und die weggesteckten Arme – ist durchaus vergleichbar. Der Schleier schaffte der Frau in beiden Fällen einen Innenraum. In beiden Darstellungen hatte der fallende Stoff eine trennende Funktion. Er grenzte die Frau vom Umfeld ab und schaffte somit einen Innenraum, der auch in Anspielung auf das weibliche Geschlecht auf die intime Seite der Erotik anspielte. Durch die Abgrenzung betonte er die Frau jedoch auch und transformierte sie zu einem Objekt der allgemeinen Betrachtung. Damit legte Duchamp die öffentliche Seite der Erotik offen. Diese Dichotomie von Intimität/ Öffentlichkeit teilen Schaufenster und Erotik. Doch Duchamp ging weiter und befragte die Zuschauerreaktion. War der Betrachter hier wie bei Cézanne ein tumber lüsterner Voyeur? ⁽⁵⁶⁾ Oder war er wie der Maschendraht-Torso bei Duchamp potentiell ein Jedermann, der von des Schaufensters Gestaltung oder des Betrachters Phantasie erst mit Identität bekleidet werden musste (der Scheinwerfer im Schaufenster strahlt nicht die Figur unter dem Schleier, sondern den Betrachter-Torso an)? In Duchamps Auslage gab es kein Urteil im Vorhinein. Nicht Darstellung (Kunst), sondern Handlung (Betrachten, Bekleiden, etc.) ist in diesem Sinne wertend zu verstehen, wie es das “q.e.d.” am Ende von Duchamps Text zu Schaufenstern nahegelegt hatte. In dieser Auslage werden die beiden Pole des künstlerischen Prozesses thematisiert, wie Duchamp sie definiert hatte: der Künstler und der Betrachter ⁽⁵⁷⁾. Letzterer war es, der ein Urteil (verdict) an die Kunst/ Ware herantrug, doch die Kunst/ Ware würde unabhängig von der Qualität dieses Urteils bestehen bleiben.

Somit wurde speziell in diesem Schaufenster die von Duchamp in dem Text von 1913 angesprochene “Frage der Schaufenster”, seine Thematisierung der Moral von erotischer/kaufender Begierde wieder aufgenommen. Gerade in diesem Schaufenster veranschaulichte Duchamp noch einmal die Parallelität von Erotik in der Schaufenster- und in der Kunst-Betrachtung. Nicht das Objekt der Betrachtung bestimmte die Qualität des Erlebnisses, sondern das Subjekt. Wie später in Etant Donnés inszenierte hier Duchamp in bewusst provokanter Weise eine nackte Frau, um den Betrachter mit sich selbst, seinem Voyeurismus und seinem Begehren zu konfrontieren. Mit diesem Prozess zeigte der Künstler, dass die vermeintliche Grenze zwischen Betrachter und Voyeur moralischer nicht künstlerischer Natur war, dass vom Standpunkt der Kunst eine solche Grenze nicht so leicht zu bestimmen war. Und dass, wie bei Cézanne auch, die Eindeutigkeit moralischer Positionen zwischen Betrachter und Betrachtetem eine Illusion ist. So erübrigte es sich, von Schuld überhaupt noch zu sprechen, denn wer war hier Täter, wer Opfer? Bereits Duchamps Zeilen von 1913 hatten beide Rollen in eine Person verlegt.

click to enlarge

Abb. 17
Duchamp,Marcel: Schaufenster
mit Akt die Treppe Herabsteigend
Nr. 3, 29.1.1960, Bamberger Department
Store, Newark, Photographie, Philadelphia Museum
of Art. Aus: Jennifer Gough-Cooper/
Jacqüs Caumont, Ephemerides
on and about Marcel Duchamp and
Rrose Sélavy. 1887-1968,London
1993, 29.1.1960.

Ein weiteres Schaufenster von Marcel Duchamp entstand erst 1960 und trotz seiner Suggestivität ist es in der Duchamp-Literatur erstaunlicherweise bisher mit einer Ausnahme unberücksichtigt geblieben (Abb. 17) ⁽⁵⁸⁾. Diesmal war es nicht wie bei Lazy Hardware der Kopf, der dem Mannequin, oder vielmehr, den fünf Mannequins fehlte, sondern die Arme. In einem Schaufenster für das Warenhaus Bamberger im New Yorker Vorort Newark hatte Duchamp alle fünf unbekleideten, armlosen Mannequins auf Stufen nebeneinander gestellt, so dass es aussah, als stiegen sie hintereinander diese Treppe herab ⁽⁵⁹⁾. Das Gemälde Akt die Treppe Herabsteigend, auf das dieses Ensemble anspielte, hing gleich neben der Puppe auf der obersten Stufe. Gemälde und Puppen standen in einem Wechselverhältnis, das Duchamp als Variation auf das Thema abstrakte versus figurative Kunst angelegt hatte. Hier aber dominierte nicht eine der beiden Richtungen, vielmehr stellte sich in der Nebeneinanderstellung die grundlegendere Frage nach dem Wesen der Kunst. Wie wir wissen, hatte Duchamp in seinen Ausführungen zum “Creative Act” (1957) dem Betrachter eine gleichwertige Bedeutung neben dem Künstler im künstlerischen Schaffensprozess zugeschrieben ⁽⁶⁰⁾. Übertragen auf eine Auslage im Schaufenster bedeutet dies, dass möglicherweise ein ähnliches Verhältnis zwischen Käufer und Schaufenstergestalter besteht.

Im Januar 1960 nahm Marcel Duchamp in dieser Auslage für Robert Lebels gerade erschienene Duchamp-Monographie Sur Marcel Duchamp (1959) nochmals auf das Gemälde Bezug, das ihm 1913 bei der Armory Show amerikaweite und lang anhaltende Berühmtheit als dem Maler von Akt die Treppe Herabsteigend (1912) eingebracht hatte. Mit diesem Schaufenster adressierte Duchamp zugleich mehrere Anliegen: Erstens dankte er damit dem Kunsthistoriker und Freund Robert Lebel, der wiederum mit seiner Monographie den Künstler ehrte; zweitens setzte sich Duchamp mit dem Akt, seiner amerikanischen Rezeption und dem daraus entstandenen Mythos auseinander; drittens stellte diese Auslage mit der Ansammlung wichtiger Dokumente von Duchamps öffentlichem Werdegang, demAkt, der Schachspieler-Zeichnung, dem Rotorelief und dem doppeltbelichteten Portrait, eine Art künstlerischen Resümees dar; viertens betrafen alle diese Punkte zugleich auch das Verhältnis zwischen Künstler und Publikum.

Es war angemessen, dass Duchamp auch für Lebels Buch eine Auslage schuf, hatte dieser doch, wie gesagt, die drei Schaufenster aus den 1940er Jahren als eigenständige Werke anerkannt, indem er sie in das Duchamp-Werkverzeichnis aufgenommen hatte ⁽⁶¹⁾. Bereits die in den 1940er Jahren entstandenen Schaufenster waren stets durch Freundschaft, nicht durch monetäre Vergütung motiviert gewesen.

Die räumliche Nähe der Puppen zum Gemälde sowie das grosse Schild mit dem Hinweis auf den Titel des Gemäldes warfen die Frage auf, ob nicht auch die Puppen als Kunst anzusehen seien. Zudem beleuchteten Puppen und Gemälde einander gegenseitig und stellten somit einen Bezug zum Konkurrenzkampf abstrakter – figurativer Kunst her. Diese Auslage entblösste diese Konkurrenz als redundant. Die Nebeneinanderstellung hatte aber auch den Vorteil, dass Duchamp den Moralisierungen der Ordnungshüter von Schaufensterauslagen zuvorkam, indem er den dort gezeigten Gegenständen, den unbekleideten Puppen, zumindest im Rahmen des Schaufensters das Prädikat “Kunst” verliehen hatte. Gar nicht so subtil amüsierte sich der Künstler hier, so scheint es, über die oftmals ungelenken Versuche (nicht nur) seiner Kritiker, Grenzen zwischen hi&low und zugleich auch zwischen Kunst und Pornographie festzulegen.

Zahllose Male hatte Duchamp sein Gemälde seit dem Skandal bei der Armory Show 1913 erklären müssen:

mein Ziel war eine statische Darstellung von Bewegung, eine statische Komposition von Verweisen auf verschiedene Positionen, die eine Form in Bewegung einnehmen kann – ohne die Absicht, einen cineastischen Effekt durch Malerei zu erreichen. Die Reduzierung eines Kopfes in Bewegung auf eine einfache Linie erschien mir vertretbar (…) Daher fühlte ich mich gerechtfertigt, eine Figur in Bewegung auf eine Linie anstatt auf ein Skelett zu reduzieren. Reduzieren, reduzieren, reduzieren war mein Gedanke – aber zur gleichen Zeit war mein Ziel eine Wendung nach Innen anstatt zu Äußerlichkeiten. ⁽⁶²⁾

Im Schaufenster von 1960 drehte er diese Aussage in ihr Gegenteil: Aus den Linien wurden ganze Körper, aus der Reduktion wurde Addition, die Wendung nach innen ersetzte eine Schau der Körper. Und auch der cineastische Effekt der Malerei, den der Künstler zuvor zurückgewiesen hatte, wurde hier geradezu heraufbeschworen durch den glamourösen und zugleich einförmigen Eindruck, den die Puppen trotz Arm- und Haarlosigkeit machten. Der goldfarbene Rahmen, der nicht nur das Gemälde selbst, sondern auch die fünf nackten Damen einrahmte, und am unteren Ende von den Buchauslagen sowie einer Zeichnung, derStudie für das Portrait der Schachspieler (1911), und einem Rotorelief überschnitten wurde, verlieh der Auslage musealen und zeitlosen Charakter ⁽⁶³⁾. Das gleich sechsmal wiederholte doppelbelichtete Portrait Duchamps von Victor Obsatz fügte den Mannequins ein (weiteres) ironisches Moment hinzu: Die Profile der oberen Aufnahmen schauten den herabsteigenden Puppen nämlich entgegen, während die jeweilige Frontalaufnahme den Betrachter verschmitzt anlächelte.

Das Schaufenster für Bamberger belegt, wie unvermindert spielerisch und zugleich ideenreich und raffiniert Duchamp mit dem Medium Schaufenster umging. Die Auslage vermittelte aber auch den Eindruck, dass der Künstler mittels Ironie eine gewisse Distanz zu dem für seinen Werdegang so bedeutenden Werk Akt die Treppe Herabsteigendeingenommen hatte. Für diese Auslage hatte Duchamp aufwendigere und langwierigere Vorbereitungen getroffen als für jene bei Brentano’s und Gotham Bookmart. Er entlieh 1960 eigens die Schachzeichnung sowie den Akt aus dem Philadelphia Museum of Art ⁽⁶⁴⁾. Mit diesem Schaufenster, in dem das Schachspiel mit dem Akt zusammengeführt wurde, thematisierte und resümierte Duchamp diese beiden Mythen seines Lebens. Das anzuzeigende Werkverzeichnis hatte sein künstlerisches Werk als Thema für diese Auslage vorgegeben. Duchamp nutzte die Gelegenheit, sich selbst noch einmal in den Rollen vorzustellen, in denen die breitere Öffentlichkeit ihn kannte. Wenn das erklärte Ziel für das Gemälde Akt die Treppe herabsteigend “eine Wendung nach Innen anstatt zu Äusserlichkeiten” gewesen war, dann wurden jetzt ostentativ die Äusserlichkeiten vorgeführt, um zu betonen, dass es sich hier um Rollen handelte. Die Mannequinimitation war grösser als das Gemälde, von dem sie inspiriert war, wie auch die skandalträchtige Popularität grösser als die kritische Beachtung des Gemäldes selbst gewesen war. In dem Schaufenster wirkte vor allem die Nacktheit der Puppen skandalös, während diese in dem Gemälde nicht der Stein des Anstosses war, sondern der Malstil, der mit Geometrisierung und Brechung der Darstellung auffiel.

Schliesslich können die Puppen auch parallel zu Henry Adams’ berühmtem Mannequin verstanden werden. Der Historiker und Kulturkritiker hatte seine Autobiographie nach dem Vorbild Rousseaus als einen Lehr-Bericht des Versagens stilisiert ⁽⁶⁵⁾. Adams wählte die Metapher eines Mannequins, um ein Mass für sein Lebenswerk finden: die Kleider als eine massgeschneiderte Erziehung, die ein Zurechtkommen in der Welt des 20. Jahrhunderts ermöglichen würde. Bei Henry Adams passten die Kleider seiner Erziehung nicht, er beschrieb sein Leben als Scheitern. Bei Duchamp blieben die Mannequins nackt. Sie waren wie der Drahttorso im früheren Schaufenster Projektionsflächen für die Vorstellungen des Betrachters. Diesen Teil des Kunstwerkes überliess Duchamp als ostentative Veranschaulichung seines in “Creative Act” geäusserten Credos dem Betrachter.

Aus dem Vorangegangenen sollte ersichtlich geworden sein, dass Schaufenster Duchamp aus vielerlei Gründen während seines ganzen Lebens interessierten. Im Gegensatz zu vielen seiner Kollegen war er zu keinem Zeitpunkt gezwungen gewesen, Schaufenster für seinen Unterhalt zu gestalten, sondern er hatte diese Projekte aus Freude an der Herausforderung angenommen. Oft nutzte er sie für humorvolle persönliche Anspielungen. Beide Hauptwerke, sowohl das Grosse Glas als auch Etant Donnés sind in der Rezeption zu Recht mit Schaufenstern verglichen worden. Der Künstler war fasziniert von der Überlagerung verschiedener räumlicher Ebenen, die das Schaufenster suggerierte oder auch provozierte. Zudem reizte ihn, wie bei den Ready-Mades auch, die grosse Nähe von Kunst zu Konsumgütern, deren Trennung er oftmals als künstlich entlarvte und in Frage stellte. “Die Frage der Schaufenster” beschränkte sich bei Duchamp folglich nicht nur auf moralische oder persönliche Aspekte, sondern erstreckte sich durchaus auf fundamental künstlerische Zusammenhänge.

*Dieser Artikel geht aus einem Kapitel meiner Dissertation SchaufensterKunst hervor, die im Herbst 2003 im Böhlau Verlag/ Köln erscheint (ISBN 341202903-3, ca. € 34,90). Wertvolle Hinweise verdanke ich Ulrich Rehm, Thomas Girst und Michael Taylor.

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Notes

(1) Cf. Robert Lebel, Sur Marcel Duchamp, Paris 1959, Kat.-Nr. 183, 188 und 189.

(2) Die erste ernsthafte und ausführliche Auseinandersetzung mit einem dieser Werke Duchamps seit dem verdienstvollen Artikel von Charles Stuckey (“Duchamp’s Acephalic Symbolism”, in: Art in America, Jan./Feb. 1977, S. 94-99, verdankt sich Thomas Girst (tout-fait.com, Jan 2002, Jg. 2, Nr. 4, Article, Window Display).

(3) Zu dem Geschäft des Konfektionärs Gamelin, cf. Thomas Girst “Diese Objekte obskurer Begierden – Marcel Duchamp und seine Schaufenster”, in: Hollein, Max und Christoph Grunenberg (Hrsg.) Shopping. 100 Jahre Kunst und Konsum (Ausst.-Kat.), Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2002, S. 142-147.

(4) Marcel Duchamp im Interview mit James Sweeney, 1995, in: James Nelson (Hg.), Wisdom:Conversations with the Elder Wise Men of Our Day, New York 1958, S. 89-99, S. 93. Auf Sweeneys Frage: “I imagine you feel that The Chocol ate Grinder heralded something in your work, something of that break you have often told me about?” antwortete Duchamp: “It was really a very important moment in my life. I had to make great decisions then”.

(5) Duchamp zitiert in: Kynaston McShine und Anne d’Harnoncourt, Marcel Duchamp (Reprint des Ausst. Kat. von 1973), 1989, S. 272 [(…) an architectural, dry rendering (…)].

(6) Duchamp zitiert nach Karin von Maur, “Marcel Duchamp ‘Fenêtrier'”, in: Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Baden Württemberg, 18. Jg., 1981, S. 99-104, S. 100: “Statt als Maler angesehen zu werden, würde ich lieber als Fenstermacher (‘Fenêtrier’) gelten wollen”.

(7) Anne d’Harnoncourt und Walter Hopps, Etant Donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage. Reflections on a New Work by Marcel Duchamp (2. Reprint), Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, Jg. 64, Nr. 299+300, April-Sept. 1969, Philadelphia 1969, S. 31 (Duchamp’s first window is his greatest: The Large Glass is less a picture than it is a vast window on the constant flux of life around it. Conversely, the images etched and glued onto its surface can be imagined as projections of objects in an admittedly extraordinary shop-window case behind it. Given a shifting environment of passers-by, with their attendant hopes, fears, and desires, the Glasscontinually reconstitutes a brilliant synthesis of the ‘outside world’ and the inside world of the imagination).

(8) Diese Deutung beruht auf Duchamps Vorstellung von der vierten Dimension. Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp. A Biography, 1996, S. 60, hat sie treffend wie folgt zusammengefaßt: Duchamps “line of reasoning was quite simple: since light falling on a three-dimensional object projected a two-dimensional shadow image, he reasoned, why couldn’t our own, three-dimensional world be seen as the projection of another reality in four dimensions”?

(9) Marcel Duchamp, Die Schriften (2 Bde.), Zürich 1981, Bd. 1, S. 69, (54) (‘Schokoladenzerreiber’ bei Stauffer ersetzt zwecks Anpassung an den übrigen Text). Die Streichungen hier wie in den folgenden Zitaten gehen auf Duchamp zurück. – Signifikanterweise sind Titel und Signatur des Großen Glases auf der Rückseite der Schokoladenmühle angebracht worden, was sie nach Duchamp zu Etiketten werden läßt. – Randall K. Van Schepen, “Duchamp as Pervert”, in: Art Criticism, 7. Jg., H. 2, 1992, S. 53-75, S. 65, beläßt es nicht bei der Deutung der Rotation als Onanie, vielmehr geht seine Interpretation (der die These zugrunde liegt, Duchamp sei insofern pervers, als er im anal-sadistischen Entwicklungsstadium seiner Sexualität steckengeblieben sei) dahin, das Produkt des Reibens sei “closer to feces than to sperm”.

(10) Duchamp, 1981, cf. Anm. 9, Bd. 1, S. 125 (117). Der deutsche Wortlaut folgt Stauffer, Satz und Interpunktion sind jedoch üblichen Regeln angeglichen.

(11) Maur, cf. Anm. 6, ist bemüht, ihre Interpretation auf eine platonische Ebene zu verschieben. Herbert Molderings, (Marcel Duchamp: Parawissenschaft, das Ephemere und die Skepsis, Frankfurt 1983), begreift den Text wie auch die Fenstermotivik bei Duchamp als Meditationen des Künstlers zum Verhältnis Voyeur-Exhibition und im nächsten Schritt als “Paradigm[en] für die gesamte Situation zeitgenössischer Kultur” (S. 71). Jerrold E. Seigel (The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp: Desire and Liberation, and the Self in Modern Culture, Berkeley/ London 1995) argumentiert, Duchamp “used the image of the shop window to meditate on the relations of desire and satisfaction that recurred in his work” (Kap. 6). Eine Interpretation, die beides verbindet, bietet John Golding (Marcel Duchamp. The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, New York 1972): “Like Mallarmé, Duchamp appears to be obsessed with the idea of the work of art as a symbol or substitute for the object of love or desire which cannot be touched, for to do so would break the spell” (S. 53). – Eine Ausnahme von diesen auf Erotik konzentrierten Ansätzen ist der Aufsatz von Shelley Rice (“‘The Qüstion of Shop Windows…'”, in: Lynn Gumpert (Hg.), Art of the Everyday: The Quotidian in Postwar French Culture, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center (New York), etc.New York/ London 1997/98), die – leider ohne weitere Begründung oder Erläuterung – Duchamps Text mit den Trödelschaufenstern in Verbindung bringt, die Atget vorzugsweise photographierte, die Aragon in Pariser Landleben und Benjamin in demPassagenwerk beschrieben hatte.

(12) Molderings, cf. Anm. 11, S. 79. Cf. auch Kap. VI und VII, passim.

(13) Antje von Graevenitz, “Duchamps Tür ‘Gradiva’. Eine literarische Figur und ihr Surrealistenkreis”, in: Klaus Beekman und Antje von Graevenitz (Hg.), Marcel Duchamp (Reihe Avantgarde, Heft 2), Amsterdam 1989, S. 63-93, bes. S. 69, wo es heißt: “(…) dass Duchamp Hanolts [sic] Wandlung auf den Betrachter transponieren will. Die äußere, tatsächliche Passage würde dann mit einer inneren verbunden, einem ‘rite de passage’ (…)”. Graevenitz’ Ansatz ist leider nicht zuletzt aufgrund sprachlicher Ungenauigkeit anfechtbar.

(14) Zitiert nach Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (3. überarb. und erw. Aufl.), New York 2000, S. 742 [(…) she who sees ‘the beauty of tomorrow – still hidden from most people’]. Ähnlich Breton in der Ankündigung, die Galerie solle “die Schönheiten von morgen [präsentieren], die vor den meisten noch verborgen sind und auf die wir dann und wann durch die Berührung eines Objektes, durch das Vorübergehen eines Gemäldes, durch eine Wendung in einem Buch einen Blick erhaschen” (zitiert bei Mark Polizzotti, Revolution des Geistes. Das Leben André Bretons (engl. Erstveröff. 1995), München/ Wien 1996, S. 638).

(15) Die kräftige Statur der größeren Person könnte, obwohl es damals niemand aussprach, Breton selbst gemeint haben, der eindrucksvoll groß gewesen ist. Vielleicht kommentierte Duchamp hier also Bretons eigenes Verhältnis zur Liebe, zu Frauen. Breton sah in diesen gern die Muse und tolerierte Selbstständigkeit kaum (zu Bretons Verhältnis zu den von ihm geliebten Frauen ist aufschlußreich Polizzotti, cf. Anm. 14, Kap. 17).

(16) Denis de Rougemont zitiert bei Schwarz, cf. Anm. 14, S. 768, Nr. 489 [(…) a ceiling made of open umbrellas hanging by their handles]. Schwarz zitiert ausführlich aus Rougemonts Tagebuch (Journal d’une époqü,1926-1946, Paris 1968, S. 526f.) und enthält sich selbst überraschenderweise einer Deutung des Schaufensters im Sinn seiner alchemistischen oder psychoanalytischen Theorien.

(17) Cf. Rougemont in Schwarz, cf. Anm. 14, S. 768, Nr. 489 [(…) all the women will understand].

(18) Henri-Pierre Roché, “Erinnerungen an Marcel Duchamp”, in: Lebel, cf. Anm. 1, S. 176.

(19) Cf. Salvador Dalí, Das Geheime Leben des Salvador Dalí (engl. Erstveröff. 1942), München 1984, S. 466, wo Dalí stolz von den “von der Pavillondecke hängende[n] umgestülpte[n] Regenschirme[n]” berichtete.

(20) Cf. Polizzotti, cf. Anm. 14, S. 728f., der berichtet, dass Breton diesen Laden häufig auch in Begleitung von Max Ernst und Claude Lévi-Strauss aufsuchte.

(21) Die Ausnahme war ein Schwarzer, der wie Rougemont berichtete, mit wilden Sprüngen und Rufen auf eine Figur im Schaufenster reagierte (cf. Schwarz, cf. Anm. 14, S. 768, Nr. 489). Donati behauptet, in seinen an verschiedenen Punkten anfechtbaren Erinnerungen, es sei die Heilsarmee (!) gewesen, die sich bei dem Buchladen beschwert habe, was wenig plausibel klingt (cf. Kim Whinna: “A Friend Fondly Remembered: Enrico Donati on Marcel Duchamp”, in: tout-fait.com, Dezember 2000, Jg. 1, Nr. 3, Interviews).

(22) Lebel, cf. Anm. 1, Kat. Nr. 189. Hier die bisher einzige Begründung für die erzwungene Verlegung. Stuckey (cf. Anm. 2), S. 95 und Anm. 13, behauptet, ohne eine andere Quelle als Lebel zu nennen, die Brust habe auch hier den Anstoß erregt. Quellengeschichtlich ist der Grund des Anstoßes am ersten Standort der Auslage ansonsten nicht belegt.

(23) Stuckey (cf. Anm. 2), S. 99, Anm. 18, gibt eine Liste der Photographien sowie Stellen, an denen sie bis dahin veröffentlich worden waren. Stuckey erwähnt jedoch nicht, dass es von der Photographie, in der Breton sich spiegelt, mindestens zwei Versionen gibt.

(24) Stuckey, cf. Anm. 2, S. 96 (Perhaps it is foolish to examine such a short-lived work as Lazy Hardware, an attempt merely to promote a friend’s book).

(25) Hans Belting: Das Unsichtbare Meisterwerk. Die Modernen Mythen der Kunst, München 1998, S. 373, Abb. 144. Belting stellte das Kapitel zu Duchamp anläßlich der Tagung “Marcel Duchamp. Das Große Glas. Herausforderung für Kunstgeschichte und Philosophische Ästhetik”, Bonn 8.-10.10.1998, vor. Die These, das Schaufenster mit Lazy Hardware fasse alle Thesen des Großen Glases zusammen, wurde dort mündlich geäußert und ist in Beltings Buch selbst nicht zu finden.

(26) Amelia Jones, Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp, New York 1994, S. 84, wo Lacans These wie folgt auf die Photographie bezogen wird: “The gaze makes the subject ‘exist’ by posing her or him in relation to an other (…) This photo-graph of Duchamp’s window marks not Duchamp’s disseminating authorship but the fact that he exists only through our desiring ‘gazes’ as a reflection, as photo-graphed”.

(27) Werner Spies, Max Ernst – Collagen. Inventar und Widerspruch, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf), Köln 1988/89, S. 186. 1. La femme cent têtes; 2. La femme sans tête; 3. La femme s’entête; 4. Femme sang tète.

(28) Stuckey, cf. Anm. 2, S. 96 [The active role Duchamp gives to the window (…)].

(29) Stuckey (cf. Anm. 2) beruft sich auf die Information von Brentano’s, die immerhin von 12 bis 18 Zoll Höhe sprachen. Damit wäre eine Spiegelung des Betrachterkopfes, so es überhaupt eine gab (Stuckey setzt voraus, dass die Lichtverhältnisse in beiden Geschäften dieselben waren, was äußerst unwahrscheinlich ist), günstigstenfalls in Brusthöhe des Mannequins möglich gewesen.

(30) Deutsche Fassung nach Molderings, cf. Anm. 11, S. 71. Duchamp zitiert in: André Breton, Anthologie de l’Humour Noir, Paris 1940, S. 233. – Molderings, cf. Anm. 11, S. 71, hebt Duchamps Betonung des “reziproke[n] Verhältnis[esses] der Wahrnehmung” hervor.

(31) Donati behauptet fälschlicherweise, “piss flowed through a faucet attachted to her upper thigh”, was von keinem anderen Zeitzeugen oder den Photographien belegt wird (Enrico Donati im Interview mit Kim Whinna, tout-fait, cf. Anm. 21).

(32) Stuckeys Spekulationen zum Ursprung des Wasserhahns und der Schürze gehören zu den Schwachstellen seines Aufsatzes (cf. Stuckey, cf. Anm. 2, S. 96f.). Daher wird hier nicht näher darauf eingegangen.

(33) Craig Adcock, “Duchamp’s Eroticism: A Mathematical Analysis”, in: Rudolf E. Künzli und Francis M. Naumann (Hg.), Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the Century, Cambridge/ London 1989, S. 149-167, S. 163, wo es heißt: “The faucet on the mannequin is an obvious phallic symbol and transforms the female figure into a male (…)”. Schwarz, cf. Anm. 14, S. 227, kommt ganz ähnlich zu dem Schluß, dass der Wasserhahn die Puppe zum Hermaphroditen werden läßt. Zudem interpretiert er die Kopflosigkeit als Kastration. – Enrico Donati will sich erinnern, dass bei Brentano’s “piss flowed through a faucet”, was recht unwahrscheinlich ist (cf. Anm. 21).

(34) Abgebildet bei Adcock, cf. Anm. 33, S. 164. Bei Schwarz, cf. Anm. 14, S. 840, Nr. 606.

(35) [Marcel Duchamp], “The Richard Mutt Case”, in: The Blind Man, abgedruckt in: Tomkins, cf. Anm. 8, S. 185 (It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ show windows).

(36) Cf. Polizzotti, cf. Anm. 14, S. 760.

(37) André Breton, Arkanum 17 (franz. Erstveröff. 1944), München 1993, S. 110. Ausführliche Deutungen der Karte auf den S. 70, 84 und 110ff. Ein informativer Kommentar bei Bernd Mattheus, “Ein neün Mythos”, in: Ibid., S. 149-191, bes. S. 151-157.

(38) Ibid., S. 112.

(39) Ibid., S. 112.

(40) Cf. Peter Lindamood, “I Cover the Cover”, in: View, März 1945, zitiert nach: Charles Henri Ford, View. Parade of the Avant-Garde. An Anthology of View Magazine (1940-1947), New York 1992, S. 119f.

(41) Cf. Tomkins, cf. Anm. 14, S. 140.

(42) Breton in einem Brief an seinen Freund Péret, zitiert in: Polizzotti, cf. Anm. 14, S. 733. Breton hatte etwas blauäugig die Hoffnung geäußert, dass sein 1942 erschienenes drittes surrealistisches Manifest diese Wirkung erzielen würde.

(43) Polizzotti, cf. Anm. 14, S. 757.

(44) Ibid., S. 758. Polizzotti beschreibt auch, dass Elisas Phlegma von manchen Freunde als unerträglich empfunden wurde.

(45) Breton, cf. Anm. 37, S. 60.

(46) Ibid., S. 59. Wenn Bernd Mattheus (“Ein neuer Mythos?”, in: Breton, cf. Anm. 37, S. 149-191) in seinem Aufsatz daher zu dem Schluß kommt, “André Bretons ‘Feminismus’ dürfte nicht nach dem Geschmack der Feministinnen sein” (S. 169), so ist das eine starke Untertreibung. Breton, so scharfsinnig er auch in anderen Aspekten war, erlag genau in diesem Punkt dem”Undurchsichtigen”, das er im selben Buch als den “große[n] Feind des Menschen” (ibid., S. 36) bezeichnet hatte. Gemeint waren Vorurteile, die den Blick auf die Menschen oder Dinge dahinter verstellten.

(47) Polizzotti, cf. Anm. 14, S. 738, zitiert Thirion, dem Breton sein Leid klagte.

(48) Amelia Jones spricht von der Puppe als “blatantly abused” (Jones, cf. Anm. 26, S. 84).

(49) Frances Steloff, “In Touch with Genius”, in: Journal of Modern Literature, 4. Jg., April 1975, o.S., S. 771 (I can no more disturb that window than I could alter a masterpiece. It was arranged by Breton and Duchamp themselves). Der Bericht in ähnlicher Fassung auch in: W.G. Rogers, Wise Men Fisch Here. The Story of Frances Steloff and the Gotham Book Mart, New York 1965, S. 155f.

(50) Steloff, cf. Anm. 49, S. 770 (That evening I conceived the idea of covering the ‘objectionable’ spot with Mr. Sumner’s personal card which he had left with me, and in large letters on a card beneath it the single word, ‘CENSORED.’ This drew larger crowds than before, and the display remained in the window a full week).

(51) Merkwürdigerweise hat sich bisher kein Kunsthistoriker die Mühe gemacht, die Anekdote mit der Photographie zu vergleichen und diesen Unterschied zu bemerken (cf. Abb. in: McShine/D’Harnoncourt, cf. Anm. 5, S. 137).

(52) Thomas Girst: “Marcel Duchamp’s Window Display for Breton’s Le Surréalisme et la Peinture (1945)”, tout-fait, cf. Anm. 2.

(53) Cf. einen Brief von ihr an ihren Mann Patrick Waldberg, datiert 10.11.1945 (zitiert bei Thomas Girst, tout-fait cf. Anm. 2).

(54) Nur bei Donati findet man den Hinweis, die Figur sei ein Ready-Made gewesen. Donati schreibt ihre Beschaffung jedoch nicht Waldberg, sondern Duchamp selbst zu (so Donati gegenüber Kim Whinna, tout-fait, cf. Anm. 21).

(55) Das Schleiermotiv findet sich bei Cézanne, jedoch nicht mit solch großer formaler Übereinstimmung zu Duchamps Schaufenster, auch bei Versionen der Badende, cf. Badende vor einem Zelt, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Überlegenswert ist auch, ob nicht der Torso aus Maschendraht, besonders aufgrund der duttartigen Ausformung auf dem Kopf, gewisse formale Parallelen mit Portraits der Madame Cézanne teilt.

(56) Benjamin Harvey (“Cézanne and Zola: ” Reassessment of L’Eternel Fémin“, in: Burlington Magazine, Jg. 140, Mai 1998, S. 312-318) unterstreicht die negative Konnotation von Cézannes Zuschaürn in L’Eternel Féminin, wenn er den Bezug dieses Gemäldes zu Emile Zolas Roman Nana herstellt. Harvey identifiziert die einzelnen Personen im Gemälde mit bestimmten Charakteren des Romans, die alle, gleich welchen sozialen Standes, der Prostituierten verfallen sind. Zola befindet sich im Vergleich zu Duchamp offensichtlich am anderen Ende des Bemühens, das Verhalten des Betrachters der Erotik moralisch zu werten.

(57) Cf. Marcel Duchamp, “The Creative Act”, Vortrag Houston 1957, abgedruckt z.B. bei Tomkins, cf. Anm. 14, S. 509f.

(58) Hinweis und Abbildung finden sich bei Jennifer Gough-Cooper und Jacques Caumont, Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy. 1887-1968, London 1993, 29.1.1960.

(59) Das Warenhaus Bamberger konnte auf eine lange Geschichte der Kunstförderung zurückblicken, denn nicht der Gründer hatte das Kapitel für den Bau des örtlichen Museums finanziert und lange eine enge Freundschaft mit John Cotton Dana, dem Museumsleiter und Pionier der amerikanischen Museumswissenschaft, gepflegt.

(60) Cf. Anm. 57.

(61) Cf. Lebel, cf. Anm. 1, Kat.-Nr. 183, 188 und 189.

(62) Duchamp in einem Interview mit James Johnson Sweeney, 1946, zitiert bei Tomkins, cf. Anm. 14, S. 79 [My aim was a static representation of movement, a static composition of indications of various positions taken by a form in movement – with no attempt to give cinema effects through painting. The reduction of the head in movement to a bare line seemed to me defensible (…) Therefore I felt justified in reducing a figure in movement to a line rather than to a skeleton. Reduce, reduce, reduce was my thought – but at the same time my aim was turning inward, rather than toward externals].

(63) Die Zeichnung wird bei Schwarz, cf. Anm. 14, unter der Kat.-Nr. 223 geführt. Das Archiv des Philadelphia Museum of Art belegt, dass Duchamp den Akt die Treppe Herabsteigend Nr. 3 (1916) für dieses Schaufenster ausgeliehen hat. Bei Gough-Cooper/ Caumont, cf. Anm. 58, der Hinweis, dass Duchamp die Zeichnung der Schachspieler ebenfalls dort ausgeliehen hatte.

(64) Cf. Cooper/ Caumont, Anm. 58, 29.1.1960.

(65) Cf. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, in: ders., Novels, Mont Saint Michel, the education, The Library of America, Bd. 14, S. 716-1192, bes. S. 721f. – Der Vergleich Duchamp – Adams liegt auch aus verschiedenen anderen Gründen (etwa dem gemeinsamen Interesse an Maschinen- und Jungfrauenmetaphorik) nahe. Erste durchaus erweiterbare Überlegungen hat Dikran Tashjian geleistet: “Henry Adams and Marcel Duchamp: Liminal Views of the Dynamo and the Virgin”, in: The Arts, vol. 51, May 1977, S. 102-107.

Figs. 2-7, 10-12 ©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

The following article is published in two parts within the exhibition catalogue for “Aftershock: The Legacy of the Readymade in Post-War and Contemporary American Art,” Dickinson Roundell, Inc., New York, May – June 2003”^*

In a 1961 interview with Katherine Kuh, Marcel Duchamp, when asked about his readymades, let it be known that the concept behind those objects might be “the most important single idea to come out of my work.” ⁽¹⁾ In June 1967, the self-proclaimed “an-artist”⁽²⁾ – anticipating his final departure a mere sixteen months hence (“Quite simply, I am waiting for death”) – elaborated on his concept of the readymade: “Ultimately, it should not be looked at… It’s not the visual aspect of the Readymade that matters, it’s simply the fact that it exists.… Visuality is no longer a question: the Readymade is no longer visible, so to speak. It is completely gray matter. It is no longer retinal.” When pressed by his interviewer about the paradox of the readymades having “ended up being ‘consumed’ in museums and exhibitions, and sold as art objects” (particularly in light of the editions produced by the Galleria Schwarz in Milan in 1964), Duchamp replied:

“There is an absolute contradiction, but that is what is enjoyable, isn’t it? Bringing in the idea of contradiction, the notion of contradiction, which is something that has never really been used, you see? And all the more since this use doesn’t go very far. If you make an edition of eight Readymades, like a sculpture, like a Bourdelle or you name it, that is not overdoing it. There is something called “multiples,” that go up to hundred and fifty, two hundred copies. Now there I do object because that’s getting really too vulgar in a useless way, with things that could be interesting if they were seen by fewer people. There are too many people in this world looking. We have to reduce the number of people looking! But that’s another matter.” ⁽³⁾

To “reduce the number of people looking” echoes an early note by Marcel Duchamp, “Limit the no. of rdymades yearly (?).” ⁽⁴⁾ This comment, first published in the Green Box of 1934(Fig. 1), was most likely written between 1911 and 1915, during the period of the first readymades, such as the Bicycle Wheel (1913) (Fig. 2) and the Bottle Dryer (1914) (Fig. 3).⁽⁵⁾ As he was never keen on showing them publicly, early on they may have functioned as works of private contemplation (not unlike Descartes’ famous piece of wax or William of Occam’s razor), responses, perhaps, to his note of 1913: “Can one make works which are not works of ‘art’?” ⁽⁶⁾ Accordingly, with the exception of one single New York exhibition in 1916, the readymades were unknown outside his small circle of friends and family until the 1940s. We should bear in mind that even the urinal entitled Fountain (Fig. 4) –– submitted not under Duchamp’s name, but under the pseudonym “R. Mutt” –– was rejected for display at the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. Throughout his life Duchamp often declined to participate in exhibitions, especially when his readymades were involved. The Bicycle Wheel, for example, was not shown until 1951, and even then as a replica of the lost original. Duchamp is thus to be believed when he says that the readymades “were a very personal experiment that I had never intended to show to the public.” ⁽⁷⁾
click images to enlarge

• 
  Figure. 1
  Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped
  Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (aka
  the Green Box), 1934
• 
  Figure.2
  Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913

• 
  Figure. 3
  Marcel Duchamp, Bottle Dryer, 1914
• 
  Figure. 4
  Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

click to enlarge

Figure 5
Marcel Duchamp, Nude
Descending a Staircase, 1912

As for their actual number, Duchamp once spoke of thirty to thirty-five, though today only about a third of them are known. ⁽⁸⁾ Many objects qualifying as readymades –– mentioned in his notes and in early accounts by Charles Sheeler, William Carlos Williams, and Edgar Varèse –– were never realized or are lost without a trace. In any case, their limited number, and the fact that at least a few of them are unaccounted for, strongly suggest that they were indeed the “personal experiment” that the an-artist described. Duchamp sought from the beginning to assure that his choice of objects would be limited in order to avoid redundancy, an inevitable consequence if a larger number of original readymades had been produced. In the 1930s Duchamp declined an offer from the Knoedler Gallery in New York, whose director offered him a substantial sum if he would continue to produce the works for which he was most famous (such as the Nude Descending a Staircase of 1912) (Fig. 5). “It would force me to repeat myself. I will not even envisage this possibility. I value my independence too much.” ⁽⁹⁾ Despite the temptation, Duchamp kept the readymades out of the fray and, accordingly, they remained virtually unknown.

Duchamp’s refusal to have the readymades treated as works of art led him to claim that “for a period of thirty years nobody talked about them and neither did I.” ⁽¹⁰⁾ His often-pronounced aesthetic indifference towards these objects also excluded the possibility of their appearance in large numbers, as that would have allowed for taste to infiltrate his “experiment.” In later years, to maintain this indifference despite their newly acquired fame, Duchamp –– always worried about the unavoidable aesthetics of patina –– thought of swapping them for newer mass-produced objects, replacing, for example, the Bottle Dryerwith a plastic bucket. ⁽¹¹⁾

click to enlarge

Figure 6
Marcel Duchamp,Boîte-en-Valise,
(open; edition started in 1941)

Outside of his notes in the Green Box, his private correspondence, and the miniatures and photographic reproductions in the Boîte-en-valise (which premiered in 1941) (Fig. 6), ⁽¹²⁾ Duchamp did not publicly mention the readymades until 1945. ⁽¹³⁾ In fact, the sole definition of the readymade published under Duchamp’s name, in 1938 –– “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist” –– turns out not to have written by Duchamp but by André Breton. ⁽¹⁴⁾

All of the above can only hint at the intricacies of Duchamp’s early concept of the readymade and the many misreadings that followed. From the immediate post-war period until today, Duchamp’s readymades have been all too often taken as carte blanche for “anything goes,” mere nihilistic or iconoclastic gestures based on the belief that, generated by the choice of the artist, it is only the changing of the context (i.e. a urinal at a plumbing-fixture store vs. Fountain at a gallery) through which an ordinary object is transformed into a work of art. ⁽¹⁵⁾ Misreading Duchamp of course, is what the ambivalent an-artist himself must have anticipated and, to a certain extent, encouraged, as Dieter Daniels observed:

Whenever other artists embrace the principle of the Readymade, the idea becomes completely detached from the historical objects and begins a life of its own. In so doing, it illustrates in the best way possible Duchamp’s dictum that it is the viewer who makes the pictures. The continued artistic influence of the Readymade may therefore be understood only as a permanent redefinition of its meaning. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Duchamp’s continuing fame, and his influence on a younger generation of artists, were unexpected: it took some time before it was established that “this whole bloody, revolutionary, contradictory century has basically been a big Duchampian-Beckettian burlesque.” ⁽¹⁷⁾ His own attitude towards his heirs seemed to be, at best, one of aloofness (of the same sort he had earlier professed towards Dada and Surrealism), and, at worst, frustration, as was articulated to the Dadaist Hans Richter:

This Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did. When I discovered the ready-mades I sought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my readymades and found aesthetic beauty in them, I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty. ⁽¹⁸⁾

There is a problem with this infamous quote, however. Hans Richter asserted that it came straight from a letter written to him by Duchamp in 1961. Only years later did he admit that those words were not Duchamp’s. Richter had sent Duchamp this paragraph for comment, writing: “You threw the bottle rack and the urinal into their face…,” etc. Duchamp simply scrawled: “Ok, ça va très bien” into the margins. ⁽¹⁹⁾

In fact, the an-artist’s overall assessment of the new movements spreading all around him (and to which, to a certain degree, he owed his enormous renaissance) was, though disengaged, much more sympathetic than Richter’s misleading quote would suggest. In 1964, Duchamp, though unmoved by Pop artists’ sense of humor and choice of material, made the following favorable comments:

Pop Art is a return to “conceptual” painting, virtually abandoned, except by the Surrealists, since Courbet, in favor of retinal painting… If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas. ⁽²⁰⁾

From the 1950s on, Duchamp’s influence on the American art scene has grown precipitously. Beginning in 1942 he lived permanently in New York, and his presence was undoubtedly a factor in the numerous exhibitions that were held in this country in succeeding years. ⁽²¹⁾ In 1952 Life magazine honored his continuing presence as “Dada’s Daddy” in a ten-page photo spread, ⁽²²⁾ and by the mid-50s some of his readymades were permanently installed in American museums. Robert Motherwell made a significant contribution toward a Duchamp renaissance with the publication of the anthology The Dada Painters and Poets (1951), in which he characterized the Bottle Rack as at once a “sculpture” and an “anti-art and consequently dada gesture,” concluding, “it is evident, thirty-five years later, that the bottle rack he chose has a more beautiful form than almost anything made, in 1914, as sculpture.” ⁽²³⁾ The game was on, and it certainly didn’t please everyone, least of all the Abstract Expressionists.

In 1957, Barnett Newman voiced his displeasure with the Whitney Museum of American Art, particularly with Robert Motherwell’s contribution to a catalogue for the memorial exhibition of Bradley Walker Tomlin. In a letter to John I. H. Baur, the Whitney’s director, Newman accused Motherwell of “smear and slander,” stating that he wanted to “make clear that if Motherwell wishes to make Marcel Duchamp a father, Duchamp is his father and not mine nor that of any American painter that I respect.” ⁽²⁴⁾ Four years earlier, in a similar tirade against the Museum of Modern Art, he had insinuated that Duchamp’s works in that institution merely added to its “popularizing role of entertainment,” and asserted “that the American public… seeks more from art than just gadgets.” ⁽²⁵⁾ In 1952, he confirmed that the “gadgets” of his scorn were indeed the readymades: “Marcel Duchamp tried to destroy art by pointing to the fountain, and we now have museums that show screwdrivers and automobiles and paintings. [The museums] have accepted this aesthetic position that there’s no way of knowing what is what.”⁽²⁶⁾

This was precisely the view of Clement Greenberg, the preeminent art critic of America’s post-war era. Greenberg attacked the tendency to produce art without the guidance of aesthetic judgment, a factor many artists wanted to do away with “in the hope, periodically renewed since Marcel Duchamp first acted on it fifty-odd years ago, that by dint of evading the reach of taste while yet remaining in the context of art, certain kinds of contrivances will achieve unique existence and value. So far, this hope has proved illusory.” ⁽²⁷⁾ With the advent of “Assemblage, Pop, Environment, Op, Kinetic, Erotic, and all the other varieties of Novelty Art” ⁽²⁸⁾ –– all movements, that is, which were more or less indebted to Duchamp – Greenberg bemoaned not only the passing of Abstract Expressionism but of “authentic art values.” ⁽²⁹⁾ These movements were fulfillments of “Duchamp’s dream of going ‘beyond’ the issue of artistic quality.” the “real failure of Pop art,” on top of its “easiness,” was its “vulnerability to qualitative comparisons,” something Duchamp had supposedly initiated in his “‘transcending’ the difference between good and bad in general.” ⁽³⁰⁾ It follows that at the heart of this confusion are the readymades in their three-dimensionality, a spatial “coordinate that art has to share with non-art.” ⁽³¹⁾ That Greenberg saw the readymade as belonging to the history of painting rather than to that of sculpture clearly evolved from these observations. ⁽³²⁾

On the other end of the spectrum, it was Duchamp himself who spoke out vividly against the movement heralded most by Greenberg:

The recent examples of Abstract Expressionism clearly show the ultimate in the retinal approach begun by Impressionism. By “retinal” I mean that the aesthetic pleasure depends almost entirely on the impression on the retina, without appealing to any auxiliary interpretation… The young artist of tomorrow will refuse to base his work on a philosophy as over-simplified as that of the “representative or non-representative” dilemma. ⁽³³⁾

In the field of art theory, similar opposing voices made themselves heard. To give but one example: early on, New York’s young and infamous art critic Gene Swenson rejected the tradition that linked everything from Cubism to Color Field painting and instead proposed a different trajectory declaring Dada and Surrealism the ancestors of Pop. In 1966, he curated the exhibition “The Other Tradition” at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. According to the catalogue, the show’s declared goal was “1) seeing certain twentieth-century works of art which have been overlooked or neglected by art historians, and 2) suggesting alternative ‘intellectual’ rather than formal ways of dealing with this art.” Swenson’s checklist is topped off by four contributions from Duchamp, leading him to ask: “How much longer will we rest content with our defective and infectious critical tools and our academic standards? How many more times can we see the words ‘picture plane,’ ‘modernism,’ ‘crisis,’ new,’ and ‘literary’ without flushing?” ⁽³⁴⁾

Swenson was reacting to a paradigmatic shift in American art, and many young artists were enthralled to find out that Duchamp’s newly discovered oeuvre spoke to their own strategies of subverting what came before them. He was simply “in the air,” ⁽³⁵⁾ as Bruce Nauman put it. John Cage began lecturing on Duchamp at Black Mountain College (starting in 1952) as well as at the New School of Social Research (1956-58), to a new generation of artists that included Robert Rauschenberg, George Brecht, Alan Kaprow, Al Hensen, Dick Higgins, and Jackson McLow. George Segal remarked that “Marcel Duchamp had a revived life through John Cage.” ⁽³⁶⁾ In 1958 Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns went to see the Duchamp collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Years before, during the War years, Joseph Cornell had befriended Duchamp in the course of his collaboration on the latter’s Boîte-en-valise. Yet to comprehend fully the scope of Duchamp’s deep appreciation by post-war generation and contemporary American artists as well as the influence he wielded over them –– especially with his readymades –– nothing serves the purpose better than to hear it in their own words ⁽³⁷⁾ :

Robert Motherwell

“I would say that one of the most astonishing things in my lifetime as an artist is his prominence. Thirty years ago, if somebody had said to me, ‘he may become the major the major influence on the art scene,’ I’d have said: ‘You’re out of your mind,’ and most of my judgments were quite accurate then.”

– Vivien Raynor, “A Talk with Robert Motherwell,” Art News, vol. 73, no. 4 (April 1974). p. 51, quoted in: Dieter Daniels, “Marcel Duchamp: The Most Influential Artist of the 20^thCentury?,” in: Museum Jean Tinguely Basel (ed.) Marcel Duchamp, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2002 [exh. cat.], pp. 37-40, pp. 25-33, p. 25.

Barnett Newman

I want particularly to make clear that if Motherwell wishes to make Marcel Duchamp a father, Duchamp is his father and not mine nor that of any American painter that I respect.”

– in a letter to John I. H. Baur, October 20, 1957, quoted in John P. O’Neill (ed.), Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990: p. 208.

George Segal

“Marcel Duchamp had a revived life through John Cage.”
– cited by Wouter Kotte, Marcel Duchamp als Zeitmaschine/Marcel Duchamp als Tijdmachine, Köln, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, 1987: p. 86, n. 236.

John Cage

“It is astonishing how very much Marcel Duchamp makes others creative”
– cited by Serge Stauffer in: Thomas Zaunschirm, Bereites Mädchen Ready-made, Klagenfurt: Ritter, 1983, p. 10., quoted in: Marcel Duchamp: The Most Influential Artist of the 20^th Century?,” p. 27.
“Say it’s not a Duchamp. Turn it over and it is.”

– “26 statements Re Duchamp” (1969), in: Susan Hapgood, Neo-Dada: Redefining Art 1958-62, New York: The American Federation of Arts, 1994 [exh. cat.], p. 137.

Nam June Paik

“Marcel Duchamp has already done everything there is to do – except video…only through video art can we get ahead of Marcel Duchamp.”

– interview with Irmeline Lebeer, in: Chroniques de l’art vivant, nr. 55 (February 1974), p. 35, quoted in: “Marcel Duchamp: The Most Influential Artist of the 20^th Century?,” p. 27.

Robert Morris

“The Readymades are traditionally iconic art objects”

– “Notes on Sculpture 4: Beyond Objects” (1969), in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (eds.), Art in Theory: 1900-1990. An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Oxford and Cambridge, MA: 1992, vol. 2, p. 872, quoted in: “Marcel Duchamp: The Most Influential Artist of the 20^th Century?,” p. 30.

Joseph Kosuth

The event that made conceivable the realization that it was possible to ‘speak another language’ and still make sense in art was Marcel Duchamp’s first unassisted Readymade. With the unassisted Readymade, art changed its focus from the form of the language to what was being said…This change – one from ‘appearance’ to ‘conception’ – was the beginning of ‘modern’ art and the beginning of conceptual art. All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually.”

– “Art after Philosophy” (1969), in: Art in Theory: 1900-1990. An Anthology of Changing Ideas, p. 844, quoted in: “Marcel Duchamp: The Most Influential Artist of the 20^thCentury?,” p. 30.

Allan Kaprow

“[Duchamp] deliberately stopped making art objects in favor of little (ready-made) hints to the effect that you could pick up art anywhere you wanted. In other words, he implied that the whole business of art is quite arbitrary”

– “Interview with Allan Kaprow,” Allan Kaprow, Pasadena: Pasadena Art Museum, 1967 [exh. cat.], p. 8, quoted in: John Tancock, “The Influence of Marcel Duchamp,” in: Anne d’Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine (eds.), Marcel Duchamp. A Retrospective Exhibition, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973 [exh. cat.], pp. 160-178, p. 171.

“His readymades… are radically useful contributions to the current art scene. If a snow shovel becomes a work of art by simply calling it that, so is all of New York, so is the Vietnam war, so is a pedantic article on Marcel Duchamp… The Readymade is a paradigm of the way humans make and unmake culture. Better than ‘straight’ philosophy and social science, a good Readymade can ‘embody’ the ironic limits of the traditional theory that says reality is nothing but a projection of mind or minds. ”

– “Doctor MD”, in: “A Collective Portrait of Marcel Duchamp,” quoted in: Anne d’Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine (eds.), Marcel Duchamp. A Retrospective Exhibition, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973 [exh. cat.], pp. 204-205, p. 205.
“I think we all learned from… Duchamp. A key feature was discreetness, a timing and a restraint that many of us didn’t learn well enough. Duchamp was personally very helpful to us, no question… both practically and intellectually.”

– interview with Susan Hapgood, quoted in: Neo-Dada: Redefining Art 1958-62, p. 116.

Vito Acconci

“Did this film [Conversions of 1971] record a process parallel to the multivalence between Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy? ”

“Yes. ”

– interview with Robert Pincus Witten, “Vito Acconci and the Conceptual Performance,” in Artforum, vol. 10, nr. 8 (April 1972), p. 49, quoted in: John Tancock, “The Influence of Marcel Duchamp,” p. 178.

William T. Wiley

“What we can learn from Marcel Duchamp is the same message from any artist who has made his presence manifest in the form of personal achievement: is essentially that we do not have to follow his example. Yet should we find in his example a path that interests us we should trust ourselves enough to follow that path as long as it is possible without an overabundance of human misery”

– “Thoughts on Marcel Duchamp,” in: Brenda Richardson, Wizdumb: William T. Wiley, Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1971, p. 42, quoted in: “The Influence of Marcel Duchamp,” p. 173.

Paul Pfeiffer

“Somewhere I read a statement by Duchamp to the effect that his art was intended as a destroyer, specifically of identity. I find that really inspiring. Putting a mustache on Mona Lisa makes a pretty basic point about the fluidity of identity and the depths to which gender, race and nationality are encoded into vision. I’m interested in multiple meanings and a kind of ambiguity that frustrates any attempt to pin it down.”
– Linda Yablonsky, “Making Microart that can Suggest Macrotruths,” in: The New York Times, December 9, 2001, p. 39.

Richard Pettibone
“My response to Duchamp hasn’t changed at all in the last 34 years. His work is just as beautiful. Being a visual artist I feel that it’s very important what things look like & in spite of all that talk about chance & giving up taste, etc. Duchamp’s work is still drop dead gorgeous.”

– letter to Francis M. Naumann, August 1997, quoted in: Francis M. Naumann, Apropos of Marcel. The Art of Making Art after Duchamp in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, New York: Curt Marcus Gallery, 1999 [exh. cat.], p. 13.

Sanford Biggers

“Duchamp’s readymades are now aesthetically and formally pleasing, though they were controversial for their time and opposed the conventions… I also follow the idea of keeping the form as one of the most important elements but also feel strongly about challenging prescribed notions in art theory. The fact that I am the creator or author of these pieces also adds to how these pieces are interpreted by art theory.”
– Lauren Wilcox, “ Transformation and Tradition: Interview with Sanford Biggers,” in:Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 2, nr. 4, Art & Literature (January 2002)

Elaine Sturtevant
“[Duchamp’s] concern with trying to redefine what we consider art was a very big factor in terms of my own work.”

– Francis M. Naumann, Apropos of Marcel. The Art of Making Art after Duchamp in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, New York: Curt Marcus Gallery, 1999 [exh. cat.], p. 22.

Claes Oldenburg
“[Duchamp] was certainly on the scene. But I believe that the sort of thing I was into, which really was about the very gritty aspects of the Lower East Side, was very remote from Duchamp.”

– interview with Susan Hapgood, in: Neo-Dada: Redefining Art 1958-62, p. 124.

“Yes, he was a historical figure.”

– interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (1985), quoted in: Martha Buskirk and Mignon Nixon (eds.), The Duchamp Effect. Essays, Interviews, Round Table. Cambridge, MA: MIT/October, 1996, pp. 33-36, p. 33. [(originally published as “Three Conversations in 1985: Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Robert Morris,” in: October 70 (Fall 1994).]

George Brecht
“The difference between a chair by Duchamp and one of my chairs could be that Duchamp’s chair is on a pedestal and mine can still be used.”

– Henry Martin, An Introduction to George Brecht’s Book on the Tumbler on Fire, Milan: Multhipla Edizioni, 1978, p. 71, quoted in: Neo-Dada: Redefining Art 1958-62, p. 27.

“I read somewhere, quite a while ago, that an interviewer asked: “How does it feel now, Mr. Duchamp, that everyone knows your name?” And Duchamp answered, “My grocer doesn’t.”

– “Notes on the Inevitable Relationship GB-MD (If there is one)” (1973), quoted in: Anthony Hill (ed.), Duchamp: Passim. A Marcel Duchamp Anthology, Langhorne, PA: G+B Arts International, 1994, p. 167.

Andy Warhol
“Well, yeah, we saw him a lot, a little bit. He was around. I didn’t know he was that famous or anything.”

– interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (1985), in: The Duchamp Effect. Essays, Interviews, Round Table., pp. 37-45, p. 37.

Jasper Johns

“Duchamp’s wit and high common sense (“Limit the no. of rdymades yearly”), the mind slapping at thoughtless values (“Use a Rembrandt as an ironing board”), his brilliantly inventive questioning of visual, mental and verbal focus and order (the beautiful Wilson-Lincoln system, which was never added to the glass; ‘lose the possibility of identifying … 2 colors, 2 laces, 2 hats, 2 forms’; the vision of an alphabet ‘only suitable for the description of this picture’) inform and brighten the whole of [the Green Box].”

– “The Green Box,” Scrap (December 23, 1960), p. 4, in: Joseph Masheck (ed.), Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975, p. 111.

“Marcel Duchamp, one of this century’s pioneer artists, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon another.… The art community feels Duchamp’s presence and his absence. He has changed the condition of being here.”

– “Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968),” Artforum, vol. VII, nr. 3 (November 1968), p. 6, in:Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, 1975, p. 147.
“The ready-made was moved mentally and, later, physically into a place previously occupied by the work of art.”

– quoted in Wouter Kotte, Marcel Duchamp als Zeitmaschine/Marcel Duchamp als Tijdmachine, Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, 1987, p. 84 (footnote 203).

Donald Judd

“Duchamp invented several fires but unfortunately didn’t bother with them.… The work Duchamp does have is of course highly interesting, but it’s a mistake not to have developed it. His work and his historical importance are different things. It’s to other people’s credit to have developed his or related ideas… The roto-reliefs and the ready-mades and assisted ready-mades are fine.”

– “Marcel Duchamp and/or Rrose Sélavy,” Arts Magazine, vol. XXXIX, nr. 6 (March 1965), pp. 53-54, in: Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, p. 121.

Robert Smithson

“I see Duchamp as a kind of priest of a certain sort. He was turning a urinal into a baptismal front… In other words, a Readymade doesn’t offer any kind of engagement. Once again it is the alienated relic of our modern postindustrial society. But he is just using manufactured goods, transforming them into gold and mystifying them.

– Moira Roth, “Robert Smithson, an Interview”, Artforum, vol. XII, nr. 2 (October 1973), p. 47, in: Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, pp. 134-137, p. 136.

William N. Copley

“If Marcel Duchamp ever died, his phoenix Rrose Sélavy lifted herself from the remains of the past that the former had desecrated by putting an ink-moustache on the Mona Lisa, thus creating a present for himself and all of us in which nouns like ‘art’ and ‘poetry’ melt into a single word.”

– “Art is not Furniture”, in: Alfred M. Fischer and Dieter Daniels (eds.), Übrigens Sterben Immer die Anderen. Marcel Duchamp und die Avantgarde seit 1950, Köln: Museum Ludwig, 1987 [exh. cat.], p. 283 (translated from the German).

Mike Bidlo

“Many artists have spent significant energies exploring his legacy”

– The Fountain Drawings, Zurich/New York: Bischofberger/Shafrazi, 1998 [exh. cat.], p. 54.

Joseph Cornell
“I believe that surrealism has healthier possibilities than have been developed. The constructions of Marcel Duchamp who the surrealists themselves acknowledge bear out this thought, I believe.”

– letter to Alfred Barr, 13 November 1936, quoted in: Anne Temkin, “Habitat for a Dossier,” in: Polly Koch (ed.), Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp…in resonance, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 1999 [exh. cat.], pp. 79-93, p. 87.

Robert Rauschenberg

“[Duchamp’s] recognition of the lack of art in art and the artfulness of everything, I think, is probably his most important contribution.”

– transcribed from the film Rebel Ready-Made: Marcel Duchamp (BBC, June 23, 1966), quoted in: Francis M. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp. The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, New York: Abrams, 1999, p. 294.

“Marcel Duchamp is all but impossible to write about. Anything you may say about him is at the same time untrue, but when I think of him I get a sweet taste in my body.”

– “A Collective Portrait of Marcel Duchamp,” p. 217.

Yoko Ono

“drink an orange juice laced with

sunshine and spring and you’ll see Duchamp.”

– “A Collective Portrait of Marcel Duchamp,” p. 215.

Jason Rhoades

“Duchamp for me is like L. Ron Hubbard. He’s a slippery figure who keeps popping up.”

– Russell Ferguson, “Given: 1. The Caprice, 2. The Ferrari,” in: Parkett, No. 58 (2000), pp. 122-125, p. 123.

Hannah Wilke

“To honor Duchamp is to oppose him… The issue that remains, was Duchamp trying to control his own death by killing art while he was still alive – aesthetic impotence for the sake of survival… Objecting to art as commodity is an honorable occupation that most women find it impossible to afford. Is this ready maid, having collected many of the readymades now in Oldenburg’s Ray Gun Wing owned by Peter Ludwig, owed an equal share for her part in the collaboration? Could commodities but speak, they would say; Our use, value may be a thing that interests men… In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange values.”

– “I Object. Memoirs of a Sugar Giver”, in: Übrigens Sterben Immer die Anderen. Marcel Duchamp und die Avantgarde seit 1950, pp. 263-271, pp. 269,270.

Arakawa & Madeline Gins

Managing to position objects to hold their own in relation to that which ubiquitously happens along and even to redirect it, using very-adjusted and less-adjusted ready-madeinsertions into symbolizing power, an inchoate emanating-out ready-made in its own right, to convey and express enough and more than enough, M. D. changed the history of expression (read symbolizing) and redefined (artistic) purpose — two remarkable achievements.

– e-mail to the author, February 7, 2003.

Ed Ruscha

“If [Duchamp] hadn’t come along, we would have needed to invent him.”

– interview with Robert L. Pincus, October 30, 1990, in: Robert L. Pincus,” ‘Quality Material…’: Duchamp Disseminated in the Sixties and Seventies,” in: Bonnie Clearwater (ed.), West Coast Duchamp, Miami Beach: Grassfield Press, 1991, pp. 87-101, p. 100.

“What do you think is Duchamp’s most significant contribution?”

“That he discovered common objects and showed you could make art out of them.”

– interview with Elizabeth Armstrong, June 17, 1994, in: The Duchamp Effect. Essays, Interviews, Round Table., pp. 55-56, p. 55.

Bruce Connor

“I still feel that he dealt with enigmas and arbitrariness in the world with a sharp analytical mind.”

– interview with Elizabeth Armstrong, June 9, 1994, in: The Duchamp Effect. Essays, Interviews, Round Table., pp. 57-59, p. 57.

Vija Celmins

“I was greatly influenced by Duchamp, if only indirectly, by questioning what painting is – and should be.”

– interview with Robert L. Pincus, March 26, 1991, in: ‘Quality Material…’: Duchamp Disseminated in the Sixties and Seventies,” p. 88.

Sherrie Levine
“I was very surprised when I saw my first Fountain. When I made the decision to cast the urinal, I was thinking primarily about Duchamp, but the finished high polish bronze sculpture more readily evoked Brancusi.”

– interview with Martha Buskirk, May 13, 1994, in: The Duchamp Effect. Essays, Interviews, Round Table., pp. 177- 181, p. 179.

Louise Lawler

“[T]o me, Duchamp signaled a ‘bottle rack’ (who uses that?), a weird looking urinal, and a lot of pictures of him smoking and enjoying the sun with other people.…]n fact, all the readymades are interesting-looking things now, and their normalcy is gone. …This discussion of Duchamp seems a good opportunity to express my discomfort with too much referencing of authority that is restrictive, rather than enjoying the work’s ‘kindling’ effect and use.”

– interview with Martha Buskirk, May 20, 1994, in: The Duchamp Effect. Essays, Interviews, Round Table., pp. 183- 186, pp. 183, 186.

“Duchamp’s fetishization gets on my nerves.”

– e-mail to the author, February 2, 2003.

Chris Burden

“He was definitely a formative figure for me… In an age of Cal Arts and Jeff Koons, Duchamp is a different role model”

– interview with Robert L. Pincus, September 26, 1990, in: “ ‘Quality Material…’: Duchamp Disseminated in the Sixties and Seventies,” pp. 98, 100.

John Baldessari

“There is a serious unseriousness going on… I see a kinship there, I feel I understand what [Duchamp’s] about.”

-interview with Moira Roth, January 6, 1973, in: ‘Quality Material…’: Duchamp Disseminated in the Sixties and Seventies,” p. 88.

Clyfford Still

“Few men could better exemplify the antithesis of my work than Marcel Duchamp.”

– “Letter to the Editor,” Artforum (February 1964), quoted in Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp. A Biography, New York: Henry Holt, 1996, p. 438.

William de Kooning

“And then there is that one-man movement, Marcel Duchamp – for me a truly modern movement because it implies that each artist can do what he thinks he ought to – a movement for each person and open for everybody.—”

– “What Abstract Art Means to Me,” Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, vol. 18, nr. 3 (June 1951), p. 7.

Shigeko Kubota

“Are we dancing still on the gigantic palm of Duchamp, thinking it is a big continent and ocean?”

– “Twenty Questions About My Work,” quoted in: Zdenek Felix (ed.), Shigeko Kubota. Video Sculptures, 1981 [exh. cat.], p. 51.

Jeff Koons

“You can look at Marcel Duchamp… Everything comes back to the ability of the artist to be able to communicate, to focus.

– “Jeff Koons. I have my finger on the eternal,” interview with Andrew Renton, in: Flash Art, vol. XXIII, nr. 153 (Summer 1990), pp. 110-115, quoted in: Thomas Zaunschirm, Kunst als Sündenfall. Die Tabuverletzungen des Jeff Koons, Freiburg: Rombach, 1996, pp. 7-20, p. 16.

“My process of distancing myself from subjective art continued through the late ‘70’s, which included exposure to Marcel Duchamp. He seemed the total opposite of the subjective art I had been immersed in. It was the most objective statement possible, the readymade. I loved that aspect and started doing my first inflatables.”

– interview with Alan Jones, in: Temaceleste, nr. 88 (November/December 2001), pp. 34-39, p. 36.

Bruce Naumann

“The kind of questions important to Duchamp were absorbed and circulated. Many people dealt with them and thought about them. In this regard he certainly was an influence.”

– interview with Lorraine Sciarra (1972), quoted in: Christine Hoffmann (ed.), Bruce Nauman. Interviews 1967-1988, Amsterdam: Verlag der Kunst, 1966, pp. 66-87, p. 69 (translated from the German).

“He leads to everybody and nobody”.

– “A Collective Portrait of Marcel Duchamp,” p. 211.

It is obvious what Barry Schwabsky meant when he reviewed the Arturo Schwarz’s revised edition of The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp in 2001: “Duchamp’s work is so deeply encoded in the fabric of contemporary art that I’m tempted to keep this book not with other art monographs, but on the ready-reference shelf next to Roget, Bartlett, and Merriam-Webster: Duchamp is to a great extent, our vocabulary.” ⁽³⁸⁾ The an-artist quickly had become the Über-father par excellence, creating an anxiety of influence some felt was too overpowering. ⁽³⁹⁾ Particularly within the American context.

Duchamp’s significance as originating father is generally seen to be identical to the significance of the readymades in relation to postmodernism. As paternal, theological origin, Duchamp is the readymades and the “readymades Duchamp” comes to signify postmodernism.… Duchamp has become a powerful authorizing function by which works produced by contemporary artists claim nepotistic validation as begotten by the Duchampian seed. ⁽⁴⁰⁾
Today, with the concept of irony co-opted and empty gestures of shocking for shock’s sake⁽⁴¹⁾ held in high regard (with no one within the art world ever offended), many artistic strategies add up to nothing more than a “conformity of refusal.” ⁽⁴²⁾ Could it be that the readymade – just one decade short of its 100th birthday – is finally losing its disruptive potential? ⁽⁴³⁾ Maybe so, if its concept is only interpreted as an excuse for “anything goes” or the mere provocative gesture declaring anything to be art via a change of context. Duchamp himself had already noticed as much when he allowed his readymades to be turned into an edition precisely at that moment in the early 1960s when they had become celebrated icons and art-world commodities. Nowadays, it is not enough simply to appropriate formally the an-artist’s work. Every artist borrowing Duchamp’s highly charged visual vocabulary walks a fine line between creating a token pastiche (an art-world inside joke based solely on recognizing affinities) and intellectually engaging the ideas surrounding the work.

Duchamp –– except for his fleeting fame at the Armory Show of 1913, caused by the succès de scandale of the Nude Descending a Staircase–– had the luxury of being unrecognized as a major artistic force until he had reached his sixties. Left to himself, far away from the spotlight and thus from any system’s intricacies of interdependence, he could proclaim himself to be nothing but a “breather,” being mostly (and somewhat wrongfully) known for having abandoned all artistic activity from the mid-20’s on. Besides his many artist friends and a few wealthy patrons, Duchamp lived completely detached from the art world as we know it. He carefully kept himself independent, seeing to it personally that his works would end up grouped together with a few collectors and museums. Later in life, Duchamp thought the contemporary art market responsible for the impossibility of young artists truly to concentrate on what they were doing. He came to lament the perpetually increasing tide of attention, of dealers, galleries, collectors, critics, and exhibitions, turning art into an “over-developed exoteric”:

By that I mean that the general public accepts and demands too much from art, far too much from art; that the general public today seeks aesthetic satisfaction wrapped up in a set of material and speculative values and is drawing artistic output towards an enormous dilution.

This enormous dilution, losing in quality what it gains in quantity, is accompanied by a leveling down of present taste and its immediate result will be to shroud the near future in mediocrity.

In conclusion, I hope that this mediocrity, conditioned by too many factors foreign to art per se, will this time bring a revolution on the ascetic level, of which the general public will not even be aware and which only a few initiates will develop on the fringe of a world blinded by economic fireworks. The great artist of tomorrow will go underground. ⁽⁴⁴⁾
Underground, the artist would examine whole new ways of expression to subvert the overall status quo of the art world in all of its wide-ranging aspects. In a 1922 survey by Alfred Stieglitz regarding the status of photography as a form of art, Duchamp had answered: “You know exactly how I feel about photography. I would like to see it make people despise painting until something else will make photography unbearable. There we are.” ^(45)< Today, installation and video art are ever on the rise, figurative painting yet again en vogue (with often surprising results), and the idea of a single work of art often substituted for the impact of a whole group of them or an environment. More than ever, artists “on the fringe” (geographically and ethnically) make themselves heard. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ As a critique of biotechnology, some artists are using new materials such as DNA, treating the body as a readymade.

click to enlarge

Figure 8
Marcel Duchamp, Étant Donnés(inside
and outside view), 1946-1966

It remains to be seen how these strategies will eventually play out. An interesting aspect pertaining to Duchamp’s oeuvre is a renewed interest in his last major work,Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas (1946-1966) (Fig. 8), Étant Donnés for short. in a recent interview, Björk, Iceland’s Queen of Pop, declaring Duchamp a “genius,” expressing awe for the Étant Donnés: “And then he created an artwork, when he was already very old, when everyone thought he’d already be over with, and this artwork changed completely the 20th century.” ⁽⁴⁷⁾ For the New York photographer Gregory Crewdson, “it’s extraordinarily photographic, to the point of looking through an aperture at a frozen moment in time. It’s everything I want from an art piece. It’s haunting, mysterious, troubling, beautiful, heightened, disturbing.” ⁽⁴⁸⁾ Looking through two peepholes drilled at eyelevel into a massive wooden door in a separate room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the viewer becomes aware of a 3-D multimedia assemblage depicting the partly hidden body of nude woman (with a prominently displayed, shaved vulva) lying on a bed of twigs and clutching a gas burner in front of a trompe l’oeil landscape with a running waterfall and clouds made of cotton. Duchamp had secretly worked on Étant Donnés for twenty years. It was revealed only after his death in the summer of 1969. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ After seeing the an-artist’s last work, Hannah Wilke, another artist greatly inspired by him, asked: “Did Dr. Duchamp (MD) disguise with dignity or despair the destruction, degeneration, and denigration of the maimed model of mortality – Mother?” ⁽⁵⁰⁾ Since Socrates, asking questions often proves more beneficial and generates more creative energy than trying to provide that one right answer. Duchamp himself was not always right, of course. In 1961, for example, he predicted that “in five or six years, no one would talk about [the readymade] anymore.” ⁽⁵¹⁾Throughout his late interviews in the sixties, he often pointed out that he was mostly interested in an audience fifty or a hundred years hence. Thirty-five years after his death, that audience is ever-growing.
 

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Notes

* Parts of this essay were presented as a lecture entitled “Marcel Duchamp, Stephen Jay Gould and the End of ‘Anything Goes’,” on 15 June 2002, on the occasion of a symposium held during the run of a Duchamp exhibition at the Museum Jean Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland. I thank Francis M. Naumann for suggesting the title, drawing my attention to various sources and providing copies of some articles while my Duchamp library was being shipped from New York to Munich.

1. Katharine Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York, Harper & Row, 1962: p. 92.

2. In a 1959 interview, Duchamp coined the sobriquet “an-artist” for himself, a pun on anarchist – while dismissing the term “anti-artist” as someone who would depend on his opposite too much in order to exist (and would thus still be as much of an artist as the one without the prefix “anti-“); from an an interview with George Heard Hamilton and Richard Hamilton, “Marcel Duchamp Speaks,” BBC – Third Program (series: Art, Anti-Art, ca. October 1959); issued as an audio tape by William Furlong (ed.), Audio Arts Magazine, vol. 2, nr. 4, 1976 (London). I thank André Gervais for providing me with the source of Duchamp’s first mention of “an-artist.”

3. “Marcel Duchamp Talking about Readymades” (Interview by Phillipe Collin, 21 June 1967), in Museum Jean Tinguely, Basel (ed.), Marcel Duchamp, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2002 [exh. cat.]: pp. 37-40.

4. Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson (eds.), The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, New York, Da Capo, 1989, p. 33.

5. In his Marcel Duchamp. The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (New York, Abrams, 1999) Francis M. Naumann differentiates between “assisted readymade,” “imitated rectified readymade,” “ printed readymade,” “ readymade (or ready-made),” “ rectified readymade,” and “semi-readymade” (pp. 308-309), not to mention the “reciprocal readymade,” as discussed in one of Duchamp’s notes in his Green Box: “Use a Rembrandt as an Ironing Board,” (in The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, p. 32), a remark that may well have inspired Robert Rauschenberg to do his Erased de Kooning (1953) and Jasper Johns to use Duchamp’s small bronze Female Fig Leaf for a surface imprint (albeit almost undetectable) on his painting No (1961). Throughout this essay, I concern myself with the “unassisted readymade.”

6. Naumann 1999, p. 74.

7. Anonymous, “Artist Marcel Duchamp Visits U-classes, Exhibits at Walker,” Minnesota Daily, 22 October 1965.

8. Dieter Daniels, Duchamp und die Anderen. Der Modelfall einer künstlerischen Wirkungsgeschichte in der Moderne, Köln: DuMont, 1992, p. 205.

9. Duchamp, cited in Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, New York: Delano Greenidge, 2000, p. 68.

10. “Marcel Duchamp Talking about Readymades,” interview with collin, 1967, p. 40.

11. Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Collagen, Köln: 1988, p. 23.

12. It has been argued that only with their documentation within the Boîte -en-Valise did Duchamp take the significant step of both defining the readymades as a clearly defined group of works (deciding which ones he would include when starting to work on the Boîte around 1936) and placing them within the context of art (Duchamp und die Anderen. Der Modelfall einer künstlerischen Wirkungsgeschichte in der Moderne, p. 217).

13. Hector Obalk, “The Unfindable Readymade,” in: Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, (Articles)

14. Hector Obalk, “The Unfindable Readymade,” (as confirmed by André Gervais).

15. George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic. An Institutional Analysis, Ithaca and London, Cornell UP, 1974: pp. 38-39.

16. Dieter Daniels, “Marcel Duchamp: The Most Influential Artist of the 20^th Century?,” in Museum Jean Tinguely Basel (ed.), Marcel Duchamp: p. 29.

17. Brooks Adams “Like Smoke: A Duchampian Legacy,” in: Christos M. Joachemides and Norman Rosenthal, eds., The Age of Modernism. Art in the 20^th Century, Ostfildern: Hatje, 1997 [exh. cat.], p. 321. In this regard, see also Pontus Hulten’s remark (in Pontus Hulten, ed., Marcel Duchamp, Milano: Bompiani, 1993 [exh. cat.], p. 19): “ If, in 1953, somebody had said that forty years later [Duchamp’s] work would be considered more important than Picasso’s, that person would have been looked on as a madman. Et pourtant…”

18. Duchamp, in Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, New York, McGraw Hill, 1965: pp. 207-208.

19. Hans Richter, Begegnungen von Dada bis Heute, Köln, DuMont: pp. 155ff.

20. Rosalind Constable, “New York’s Avant-garde, and How It Got There,” cited in Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, “Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy, 1887-1968,” in Pontus Hulten, ed., Marcel Duchamp, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993, entry for May 17, 1964.

21. Among the important shows of Duchamp’s work in the late 40s and early 50s were those at the Sidney Janis Gallery, the Rose Fried Gallery, and the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, as well as various exhibitions at the Yale University Art Gallery. Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century was already displaying his works in the early 40s, and in 1957, the Guggenheim Museum launched a major travel exhibition of the three Duchamp brothers, entitled “Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp.”

22. Sargeant Winthrop, “Dada’s Daddy: A New Tribute is Paid to Duchamp, Pioneer of Nonsense and Nihilism,” in: Life, vol. 32, no. 17 ( 28 March 1952): pp. 100-110.

23. Robert Motherwell, ed., The Dada Painters and Poets. An Anthology, Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1989: xxiii. Other significant English-language publications on Duchamp before 1960 include Marcel Duchamp: From the Green Box (New Haven, The Readymade Press, 1957; 25 notes translated by George Heard Hamilton and published in an edition of 400), Robert Lebel’s widely available monograph Marcel Duchamp (New York, Grove Press, 1959), and Richard Hamilton’s typographic version of all of the Green Box notes in The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (London and Bradford, Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., and New York, George Wittenborn, 1960).

24. Newman, in John P. O’Neill (ed.), Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990: p. 208.

25. Newman, in O’Neill 1990: p. 39.

26. Newman, in O’Neill 1990: p, 247. Newman went on to suggest that MoMA should “put on an exhibition of machine guns.” It bears notice that in September 1999, when the New York gallery owner Mary Boone presented Tom Sach’s “Haute Bricolage,” in which firearm paraphernalia were displayed and 9-millimeter bullets were placed in a bowl for visitors to take home, she was briefly arrested by the police for the illegal distribution of live ammunition.

27. Greenberg, “Avant-Garde Attitudes: New Art in the Sixties,” in John O’Brian, ed., Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 4., Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 293.

28. Clement Greenberg, “Recentness of Sculpture,” in O’Brian 1993, p. 252.

29. Donald B. Kuspit, Clement Greenberg: Art Critic, Madison: The university of Wisconsin Press, 1979, p. 114.

30. Greenberg, “Avant-Garde Attitudes: New Art in the Sixties,” in O’Brian 1993: pp. 301-2.

31. Clement Greenberg, “Recentness of Sculpture,” in O’Brian 1993: p. 254.

32. See Thierry de Duve, Clement Greenberg: Between the Lines, Paris: Dis Voir, 1996 as well as hisRésonances du Readymade, Nîmes 1989, p. 132 (referred to in Dieter Daniels, “Marcel Duchamp: The Most Influential Artist of the 20^th Century?,” p. 31.)

33. Marcel Duchamp, “Where Do We Go From Here?,” address to a symposium at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, March 1961, in Anthony Hill, ed., Duchamp: Passim. A Marcel Duchamp Anthology, Langhorne, PA: G+B Arts International, 1994, p. 89. Duchamp seems to have had an unfavorable opinion of Abstract Expressionism’s major player, Jackson Pollock. According to Thomas B. Hess, Duchamp “complained” to him that Pollock “still uses paint, and we finished that… [Pollock] never will enter the Pantheon!” (Hess, “J’accuse Marcel Duchamp,” in Joseph Masheck, ed., Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1975: p. 120). Duchamp had declared painting dead with his last oil on canvas, Tu m’ from 1918. In regard to Pollock, there is yet another anecdote worth telling: In 1945, Peggy Guggenheim called in Duchamp and David Hare to deal with a crisis involving a twenty-foot-long mural by Pollock. The mural was too long for the space it had been commissioned to fill, in the entrance hall of Guggenheim’s apartment. Duchamp coolly advised cutting eight inches off one end. According to Hare, “Duchamp said that in this type of painting it wasn’t needed” (Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, New York, Henry Holt, 1996: p. 362).

34. Scott Rothkopf, “Banned and Determined,” in Artforum, vol. 40, no. 10 (Summer 2002): p. 144.

35. John Tancock, “The Influence of Marcel Duchamp,” in Anne d’Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, eds.,Marcel Duchamp. A Retrospective Exhibition [exh. cat.], Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973: p. 174.

36. Segal, cited in Wouter Kotte, Marcel Duchamp als Zeitmaschine/Marcel Duchamp als Tijdmachine, Köln, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, 1987: p. 86, n. 236.

37. Marcel Duchamp’s influence was not limited to the acknowledgment of his readymades. His The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelor’s, Even (a.k.a. theLarge Glass, 1915-23) (Fig. 7) proved equally inspiring to many artists. As this exhibition focuses on the impact of the readymades on the post-war and contemporary American art scene,
click to enlarge

Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp, The
Bride Stripped Bare by
her Bachelors,
Even (a.k.a. the Large Glass),
1915-23
his influence on European artists since the 1940s is not discussed (from Arman, Gianfranco Baruchello, Joseph Beuys, Guillaume Bijl, Marcel Broodthaers, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ilya Kabakov, Martin Kippenberger, Piero Manzoni, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Daniel Spoerri, André Thomkins, Jean Tinguely and Ben Vautier to the “Young British Artists,” many artists come to mind – and those, of course, of other parts of the world). A more complete list of quotations by post-war American artists would also include statements from Bill Anastasi, Michael Asher, John Armleder, Richard Artschwager, Matthew Barney, Jim Dine, Mark Dion, Brian O’Doherty, Robert Gober, Al Henson, Eva Hesse, Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson, Mike Kelley, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Kienholz, Alison Knowles, Barbara Kruger, Les Levine, Roy Lichtenstein, Glenn Ligon, George Maciunas, Walter de Maria, Allan McCollum, Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Haim Steinbach, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Watts, Tom Wesselman, Emmett Williams, Fred Wilson, and Christopher Wool. In a recent statement, Laurence Weiner – believing that his answer would come to late to be acknowledged in the survey – denied any influence Duchamp might have had on his work: “I seemed to have missed the deadline, which is as close to being Duchampian as I hope I’ll ever be” (fax to the author, February 3, 2003). Jeanne-Claude, speaking for Christo, also saw no connection between her husband’s work and Duchamp: “When he showed his Bicycle Wheel, he did not do anything to it. With Christo it is the opposite, starting with his early works in the 50’s.” (telephone conversation with the author, February 1, 2003). One should keep in mind that the Duchamp effect is not only limited to the visual arts. He has inspired many works of literature, and – starting with John Cage – many minds of the music world (among them Merce Cunningham, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Grant Hart, REM, Beck, and Björk).

38. Schwabsky, in “Coffee Table: Barry Schwabsky and Andy Grundberg on Art and Photography,”Bookforum, vol. 8, no. 2 (Winter 2001): p. 42.

39. Regarding Duchamp’s overpowering influence, three examples come to mind: Joseph Beuys’ 1964 performance Das Schweigen des Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet (The Silence of Duchamp is Overrated) andVivre et laisser mourir ou la mort tragique de Marcel Duchamp (To Live and Let Die or the Tragic Death of Marcel Duchamp), also of 1964, a series of eight canvases by Gilles Aillaud, Eduardo Arroyo, and Antonin Recalati. More recently, Peter Saul painted Pooping on Duchamp (1996).

40. Amelia Jones, Postmodernism and the En-gendering of Marcel Duchamp, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 8, 14.

41. On the issue of Duchamp and concepts of taste and disgust, see the argument between Jean Clair, “Duchamp at the Turn of the Centuries” (a translated excerpt from his Marcel Duchamp et la fin de l’art, Paris: Gallimard, 2000), in: Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 1, no. 3 (Winter 2000), News, and Arthur C. Danto, “Marcel Duchamp and the End of Taste: A Defense of Contemporary Art,” in: Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 1, nr. 3 (Winter 2000), News,

42. I have borrowed the phrase from the title of an article by Peter Bürger, “Der Konformismus der Verweigerung. Anmerkungen zur Neo-Neo-Avantgarde,” in: Texte zur Kunst, vol. 12, no. 48 (December 2002): p. 165.

43. Since 1997, the artist Rhonda Roland Shearer and her husband, the late Stephen Jay Gould, have raised havoc, at least within the discipline of art history, by arguing that Duchamp did not select his objects, but fabricated them himself, or altered early studio photographs depicting the original readymades, now mostly lost, see the transcriptions of their conference Methods of Understanding in Art and Science: The Case of Duchamp and Poincaré, November 5-7, 1999 and Rhonda Roland Shearer, “Why the Hatrack is and/or is not Readymade,”Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 1, nr. 3, Multimedia (December 2000). Their hypotheses seem to revive some of the readymade’s upsetting possibilities.

44. “Where Do We Go From Here?” (1961), in: Duchamp: Passim. A Marcel Duchamp Anthology, p. 89.

45. The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, p. 165; originally published in Manuscripts, No. 4 (New York, December, 1922).

46. For a scathing examination of the contemporary art world’s mechanisms (while holding up the figure of Duchamp as an important predecessor), see Bedri Baykam, Paint and the Post-Duchamp Crisis. The Fight of a Cultural Guerilla for the Rights of Non-Western Artists and the Empty World of the Neo-Ready-Mades, Istanbul: Literatür, 1994. An excerpt follows: “The West, which is moving anyway more and more into the ‘multi-cultural art world,’ behaves as if it was doing a favor to the East and South. This is definitely wrong and no ‘favor’ is needed. In fact they are only starting to pay the interest of years of constipation and prejudiced blockheadedness. They are also trying to bring a fresh breath to their once again bored art world, which is sinking in an unspoken crisis generated paradoxically by the ever-growing importance of Marcel Duchamp, provoking lost generations working on pasticheideas” (p. 212); “At this moment, Marcel Duchamp’s timeless, a-national, ambiguous, ready-mades and concepts, interpretable in 1000 different ways, come as handy and as opportune as water in the desert, although in its new variations the humor and witty sarcasm of Marcel, of course, is not present” (p. 303).

47. Björk, from an interview Thomas Venter, in “Der Look Passiert Nicht,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27 August 2001 (translated from the German).

48. Dodie Kazanjin, “Gregory Crewdson. Twilight Zone,” Vogue (May 2002): p. 300.

49. The appearance of the Etant Donnés after Duchamp’s death came as a complete surprise to most, contrary to many later accounts. John Canaday, reviewing the work for The New York Times, wrote that it was “very interesting, but nothing new, ” just “an entertaining invention that has arrived a bit late to make a sensation.… For the first time, this cleverest of 20^th-century masters looks a bit retardaire. Edward Kienholz, as the major specific example, has gone so far beyond the spent and sterile slickness of this final Duchamp work that he makes Duchamp look like Bouguereau” (“Philadelphia Museum Shows Final Duchamp Work,” in The New York Times, July 7, 1969. Warhol, in 1971, is the first artist on record to be inspired by Duchamp’s last work, while contemplating an idea for a gallery show consisting only of binoculars with which the visitors would have to find the actress/artist Brigid Polka performing in the window of a faraway building: “It also has to do with the same thing Duchamp was doing [inEtant Donnés], looking through a box [sic]. Sex…in the window…Oh, that would be nutty. That’s just the kind of thing you’d want to see with binoculars-some perversion, right? Somebody jerking off. Brigid could be the art. She could stand in the window.” (David Bourdon, Warhol, New York: Abrams, 1989, pp. 315-316; the quotation is from a telephone conversation between Bourdon and Andy Warhol in June 1971. I thank Ms. Yona Backer for drawing this source to my attention).

50. “I Object. Memoirs of a Sugar Giver”, in: Übrigens Sterben Immer die Anderen. Marcel Duchamp und die Avantgarde seit 1950: p. 270.

51. “Marcel Duchamp Talking About Readymades,” p. 40.

Fig. 8 ©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

Der folgende Beitrag erscheint unter gleichem Titel in einer Publikation des Staatlichen Museums Schwerin, siehe: Marcel Duchamp, Cantz: Ostfildern, 2003 (bearbeitet von Gerhard Graulich, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe, Markus Dauss, Sabine Fett, Kornelia Röder, etc.

Das von der Künstlerin Rhonda Roland Shearer und dem Harvardprofessor Stephen Jay Gould 1998
begründete, gemeinnützige Art Science Research Laboratory (ASRL), New York, verfügt über die weltweit grösste Privatsammlung der Werke Marcel Duchamps. Ausgehend von seinen Notizen und Interviews, Duchamps Lektüre des französischen Mathematikers Henri Poincaré⁽¹⁾ sowie von der Wissenschaftstheoretie zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts und Überlegungen zur vierten Dimension, versuchen Shearer und Gould unter anderem die Non-Existenz der meist nur noch auf alten Photographien erhaltenen, originalen Readymades als Massenprodukte nachzuweisen,⁽²⁾ Objekte, die sich erheblich von den späteren, allgemein bekannten Editionen unterscheiden.⁽³⁾ Neben den Werken Marcel Duchamps liegt daher der Ausstellungs- und Sammelschwerpunkt von ASRL bei der Präsentation (im Sinne einer prä-musealen Wunderkammer) bzw. Archivierung von Firmen- und Versandhauskatalogen, Pissoirs, Kleiderhaken Schneeschaufeln, Vogelkäfigen und vielen weiteren Gebrauchsgegenständen, sofern diese Ähnlichkeit mit Duchamps Readymades aufweisen und in der Zeit ihrer Entstehung hergestellt wurden.

Ein rein kunsttheoretischer Ansatz wird dabei durch die intensive Arbeit am Objekt erweitert, oft unter Miteinbeziehung von bzw. der Kollaboration mit u.a. Physikern, Mathematikern, Dermatologen und Ex-Fotospezialisten des CIA. Im ASRL arbeiten Kunsthistoriker Seite an Seite mit 3D-Graphikern und Webdesignern, die ihrerseits sowohl deren Ergebnisse graphisch umsetzen und online publizieren helfen als auch Duchamps Werke im Computer einer genauen Analyse unterziehen.

Seit Dezember 1999 erscheint mit ASRLs non-profit “Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal”(www.toutfait.com) die erste interdisziplinäre Multimedia-Zeitschrift zu einem Künstler der Moderne und seinem Umfeld. Neben Artikeln von international renommierten Kunsthistorikern und Duchampforschern sowie Studenten und Künstlern werden schwer zugängliche Quellentexte veröffentlicht, bedeutende Sammlungen vorgestellt sowie auf aktuelle Ereignisse verwiesen. In den ersten vier Ausgaben publizierte “Tout-Fait” weit über 100 Beitrage, ausschliesslich Erstveröffentlichungen und viele davon zweisprachig. Im folgenden werden neue Forschungsergebnisse zu drei in der Schweriner Sammlung befindlichen Werke Duchamps vorgestellt.

Kamm, 1916/1964

click to enlarge

Abb. 1
Marcel Duchamp, Kamm, 1916

“3 oder 4 Höhentropfen haben nichts zu tun mit der Wildheit – Feb. 17 1916 11 Uhr vormittags”.⁽⁴⁾ Die Inschrift auf dem Rücken des Kamms von 1916 (Abb. 1) gibt das genaue Datum und die Uhrzeit an, so wie es Duchamp in einer Notiz über die Readymades in der “Grünen Schachtel” von 1934 festgelegt hat. “Datum, Stunde, Minute, natürlich auf dem Readymade eintragen, als Information”.⁽⁵⁾ Was Duchamp hier beabsichtigt, ist “eine Art Rendezvous”: Um jegliches ästhetische Urteil bei der Auswahl zu vermeiden, beabsichtigt er, die Readymades zu “präzisieren”, indem er sie “vormerkt”. Was für ein Gegenstand auch immer sich “mit genügender Frist”⁽⁶⁾ zur vorgegebenen Zeit in Duchamps Nähe einfindet, wird zum Readymade erklärt und dementsprechend beschriftet.

Keine zwei Wochen zuvor, am 6. Februar 1916, schickt Duchamp einen wenig Sinn ergebenden, auf vier Postkarten getippten Schreibmaschinentext an das Sammlerehepaar Walter und Louise Arensberg. Auf der Rückseite hat er den Titel vermerkt: “Rendezvous vom Sonntag 6. Februar 1916 um 1 Uhr ¾ Nachmittags”. “Kamm” wie “Rendezvous”, in ihrer Entstehung nur elf Tage auseinanderliegend, scheinen sich penibel genau an Duchamps zwischen 1911-1915 entstandene Readymade-Notiz zu halten. Von den 100 Fragen, die Serge Stauffer von Zürich aus am 24. Juli 1960 an Marcel Duchamp im spanischen Cadaques schickt, befasst sich Frage 39 mit dem Schreibmaschinentext für die Arensbergs. Stauffer muss davon ausgehen, dass es sich hier um ein Readymade handelt: “Auf welche Art haben Sie den Text für ‘Rendezvous vom 6. Februar 1916’ gefunden?”⁽⁷⁾ Die Antwort Duchamps vom 6. August 1960 fällt so knapp wie überraschend aus: “Ich habe ihn nicht gefunden – sondern geflissentlich gemacht während mehrerer Wochen” ⁽⁸⁾.

Dem gegenüber wird Duchamps “Kamm” auch weit mehr als 80 Jahre nach seiner Entstehung als reines Readymade klassifiziert⁽⁹⁾, dass einzige, das im Original erhalten blieb und im Philadelphia Museum of Art ausgestellt ist. Dieser Ur-Kamm unterscheidet sich erheblich – wenn auch nicht auf den ersten Blick – von der Reproduktion aus dem Jahr 1964 (Abb. 2). Denn vergleicht man die Anzahl der Zähne des Kamms von 1916 mit den im Rahmen der Readymade-Edition von Marcel Duchamp und dem Mailänder Galeristen Arturo Schwarz entstandenen Kämmen, so stellt man fest, das ersterer über 55 bzw. 57 Zähne verfügt, die Edition dagegen nur über 53 bzw. 55 Zähne⁽¹⁰⁾. “Die Kämme ordnen nach der Anzahl ihrer Zähne”⁽¹¹⁾, schrieb Marcel Duchamp in seinen 1934 publizierten Notizen in der “Grünen Schachtel”. Auf weiteren, erst posthum veröffentlichten Zetteln, weist er in seinen Bemerkungen zum Inframince mehrmals auf die feinen Unterschiede von nur scheinbar identisch aussehenden Objekten hin, selbst dann, wenn diese aus der gleichen Gussform stammen⁽¹²⁾. Was der Stahlkamm von 1916 und die Edition von 1964 tatsächlich gemeinsam haben, das ist neben dem Material die Inschrift “Chas F. Bingler / 166 – 6th Ave. N.Y.” sowie zwei zu den Aussenrändern parallel liegende Aussparungen auf der Breitseite des Objekts. Die beiden kreisrunden Löcher weisen das Readymade aber als Assisted Readymade bzw. Semi-Readymade aus, da es Teil eines grösseren Gebrauchsgegenstands gewesen sein muss. Entweder die Löcher dienten Schrauben, die den Kamm über eine Metallschiene an einem Holzgriff befestigten⁽¹³⁾(Abb. 3)oder sie waren für zwei dünne Metallstäbe vorgesehen, die ihrerseits zwischen drei und sechs gleichartige Kämme zusammenhielten und ebenfalls in einen Griff mündeten (Abb. 4a und 4b). In beiden Fällen kann man kaum mehr von einem Hundekamm sprechen ⁽¹⁴⁾. In den damaligen Warenhauskatalogen wurden diese Modelle unter “Cattle Comb” bzw. “Curry Comb” geführt und in ihrer Nutzung ausschliesslich zum Striegeln von Pferden oder zum Auskämmen von Rinderfell angeboten.

Abb. 4A
Verschiedene Modelle eines “Curry Comb”, aus: Wholesale Hardware
and Associate Lines, New York, Nashville: H.G. Lipscomb &
Company [Warenkatalog], 1913 [Achtung: fuer Abb. 4
ebf. ein Detail zur Auswahl]

Bezüglich der Inschrift des Kamms, “Chas F. Bingler / 166 – 6th Ave. N.Y.”, lässt sich feststellen, dass bis 1915 unter der angegebenen Adresse tatsächlich ein gleichnamiger Messerschmied (“Cutler”) in Manhattan zu finden war, der uns ein Jahr später laut New Yorker Telefonbuch als Charles F. Bingler, “Cutler and Grinder, Importer and Manufacturer of Cutlery” wieder begegnet, mit nur leicht veränderter Adresse: 182, 6th Avenue. ⁽¹⁵⁾ Das Problem ist nur, dass Melvin J. Bingler, einziger Sohn von Chas F. Bingler, ganz und gar nicht davon ausgeht, dass das Geschäft seines Vaters jemals Kämme herstellen liess. ⁽¹⁶⁾ Bingler war vor allem für seine Rasiermesser bekannt ⁽¹⁷⁾ und stellte ausserdem Scheren, Messer und Schreinerwerkzeug her. Von Chas F. Bingler konnten Privatkunden zudem jederzeit Produkte individuell anfertigen lassen, was sich sowohl der überschaubaren Grösse des Betriebes sowie der Tatsache, dass Produkte nie in allzu hoher Anzahl hergestellt wurden, verdankt.

James Joyce soll im Scherz über Duchamps “Kamm” gesagt haben, dass seine dicken Zähne “Finnegans Wake”, den hochkomplizierten Nachtroman des irischen Schriftstellers, zu entwirren vermögen. ⁽¹⁸⁾ Die vielen Fragen, die der Kamm von 1916 bei genauerem Hinsehen aufwirft, können bei allen verbleibenden Ungereimtheiten zumindest determinieren, auf welche Weise und mit wieviel Vorsicht bei der Untersuchung weiterer Objekte aus Duchamp’s Oeuvre vorgegangen werden sollte. ⁽¹⁹⁾

Pariser Luft (50 cc), 1919/1964⁽²⁰⁾

Im Januar 1968 teilt Salvador Dalí in seiner gewohnt hyperbolischen Schreibweise mit, dass “Duchamp König sein könnte, wenn er anstatt der ‘Schokoladenreibe’ eine ‘Heilige Ampulle’ hergestellt hätte, das einzigartige, göttliche Readymade, um sich selber damit zu salben. Duchamp hätte dann in Rheims gekrönt werden können.” ⁽²¹⁾ Seitdem der heidnische Begründer des Frankenreiches, Clovis I., aufgrund der vereinten Kräfte seiner Frau und des Bischofs zum Christentum übertrat und schliesslich um 500 n. Chr. in Reims zum König geweiht wurde, war die “Heilige Ampulle” fester Bestandteil der Krönungszeremonie in Frankreich. ⁽²²⁾ Ursprünglich in Form einer kleinen, bauchigen Phiole mit gestrecktem Hals, gestaltete sich das Aussehen der “Heiligen Ampulle” ab dem 16. Jahrhundert abwechslungsreicher. ⁽²³⁾ Im Musée des Antiquités von Rouen – der Stadt, in der Duchamp zur Schule ging, seine Eltern bis 1925 wohnten und er 1968 im Familiengrab beigesetzt wurde – befinden sich zwei kleine solcher Flakons (Abb. 5), die im 18. Jahrhundert zum Bewahren von Weihwasser hergestellt worden sind und Duchamps der gängigen Überlieferung nach in einer Pariser Apotheke für “Pariser Luft” (Abb. 6) erworbenem Glasbehältnis weitaus ähnlicher sehen als jedweder um 1919 hergestellte pharmazeutische Gegenstand.⁽²⁴⁾ Übrigens nicht nur die “Heilige Ampulle” wurde bei Krönungszeremonien eingesetzt. Duchamps beschrifteter “Kamm” von 1916 erinnert an weitere bei diesem Ritual oft verwendete Objekte: Kämme, meist aus Elfenbein bzw. “wertvollem Metall gefertigt und mit biblischen Zitaten oder anderem verziert” (Abb. 7).⁽²⁵⁾

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Abb. 8
Marcel Duchamp, Pariser
Luft, 1964

Bleibt die Form von Duchamps “Pariser Luft” zumindest zweideutig, so enthält auch der Titel dieses Objekts, dessen Status als letztes, eigentliches Readymades Duchamp in einem Interview von 1959 bestätigt, ⁽²⁶⁾ ein weiteres Rätsel. Die verschiedenen Versionen von “Pariser Luft”, entstanden zwischen 1919 und 1964 (Abb. 8), unterscheiden sich in ihrem Volumen und werden doch alle mit demselben Fassungsvermögen benannt: 50 cc. Bei einer genauen Untersuchung stellt man fest, dass keine Version tatsächlich genau die angegebenen fünfzig Kubikzentimeter Luft enthält. ⁽²⁷⁾ Was vorerst als intelligenter Dada-Scherz durchgehen mag, das fügt sich in der Gesamtbetrachtung von “Pariser Luft” zu einem noch trickreicheren Ganzen. Denn auch die Existenz dieses Readymades als massenhaft produzierter Gebrauchsgegenstand muss nicht nur aufgrund der Nähe zur “Heiligen Ampulle” in Frage gestellt werden. Von seinem Frankreichaufenthalt bringt Duchamp 1919 “Pariser Luft” dem Sammlerehepaar Louise und Walter Arensberg aus Paris mit, wo ein Apotheker die mit Flüssigkeit gefüllte Ampulle aufgebrochen, geleert und wieder zugeschweisst haben soll. Zu beachten ist dabei aber, dass Apotheker zu dieser Zeit meist ausgebildete Glasbläser
waren. ⁽²⁸⁾ Und als Duchamp 30 Jahre später seinen Freund Henri-Pierre Roché darum bittet, ihm aus Paris eine möglichst ähnlich aussehende Ampulle zuzusenden (während seinem Aufenthalt bei den Arensbergs in Kalifornien musste Duchamp feststellen, dass “Pariser Luft” von 1919 zerbrochen war, weswegen er Roché unmittelbar um Ersatz ersuchte), dann ist wahrscheinlich, dass Roché dieses zweite Readymade von “Pariser Luft” ebenfalls herstellen liess. ⁽²⁹⁾

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Abb. 9
Marcel Duchamp, Weibliches
Feigenblatt, 1961

Auf dem gleich unterhalb des Glashakens angebrachten Typenschild des Originals von 1919 befindet sich ausserdem vor der Bezeichnung “Sérum Physiologique” ein Asterisk: *. In der Sprachtypologie bedeutet der kleine schwarze Stern, dass es sich bei dem ihm folgenden Wort um eine erschlossene, nicht schriftlich belegte Form handelt. Zudem wird der Asterisk verwandt, um in einem gegebenen Kontext Wörter zu unterscheiden, deren Herkunft bzw. Gebrauch unklar bleiben. In Duchamps posthum veröffentlichten Notizen taucht der Asterisk gleich zweimal als Wortspiel auf, als “Asstricks” (deutsch etwa “Arschtricks”), wobei sich der gesamte Titel von “Pariser Luft” ausgerechnet auf der Rückseite einer wichtigen Bemerkung zum Inframince wiederfindet. ⁽³⁰⁾ Soviel der Asterisk über den Readymade-Charakter von “Pariser Luft” preisgeben mag, soviel Aufschluss können die “Asstricks” vielleicht über ein späteres Objekt Duchamps zu geben, sein “Weibliches Feigenblatt” (Abb. 9)von 1950/1961.

Weibliches Feigenblatt, 1950/1961

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Abb. 10A

Abb. 10B


Marcel Duchamp, Gegeben sei: A. Der Wasserfall /
B. Das Leuchtgas,1945-1966 (Innen- und Aussenansicht)

Als Marcel Duchamp erstmals sein “Weibliches Feigenblatt” 1953 in der New Yorker Rose Fried Gallery ausstellte, konnten die Rezensenten natürlich noch nicht ahnen, dass es neben drei weiteren erotischen Objekten auf die vom Künstler geheim gehaltene und erst nach seinem Tod im Philadelphia Museum of Art ab 1969 öffentlich ausgestellte Installation “Gegeben sei: 1. Der Wasserfall/ 2. Das Leuchtgas” (1945-1966) (Abb. 10A und 10B) ⁽³¹⁾verwies. Die New York Times sprach von “bizarren Artefakten” und Arts & Decoration beschrieb das “Weibliche Feigenblatt” als “aus Gips, dreieckig [und] très femelle“. ⁽³²⁾Duchamp indes arbeitete zu dieser Zeit bereits an seinem letzten Hauptwerk und das “Weibliche Feigenblatt” sollte sich retrospektiv als deutlicher Hinweis auf den wichtigsten Bestandteil dieses letzten Hauptwerks herausstellen: die markant entblösste, kahlrasierte wie geöffnete weibliche Scham als zentraler und am hellsten ausgeleuchteter Fluchtpunkt von “Gegeben sei…”.

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Abb. 11
Marcel Duchamp, Weibliches
Feigenblatt, 1961 (Computergraphik
von Yong Duk Jhun/ASRL, 2000)

Aber ist das “Weibliche Feigenblatt” tatsächlich als positiver Gipsabdruck der Vulva des weiblichen Torso von “Gegeben sei…” bzw. als Abdruck eines lebenden Modells anzusehen, wie das Francis M. Naumann in seiner Besprechung des Werks wiederholt aufführt? ⁽³³⁾ Dieser Auffassung läuft allemal die Eintragung zum “Weiblichen Feigenblatt” in Richard Hamiltons Katalog zur grossen Duchamp-Retrospektive von 1966 in der Londoner Tate Gallery entgegen: “[E]in enigmatisches Objekt, scheinbar ein Abdruck der weiblichen Scham, tatsächlich aber handgefertigt.” ⁽³⁴⁾ Des weiteren hat Thomas Zaunschirm schon 1983 Zweifel bezüglich der anatomischen Korrektheit des “Weiblichen Feigenblatts” angemeldet. ⁽³⁵⁾ Bei soviel kursierender Unklarheit konnte im Sommer 2000 bei zahlreichen Versuchen des Art Science Research Laboratory mit Gipsabdrücken weiblicher Geschlechter ⁽³⁶⁾ zu folgendem, verblüffendem Ergebnis gelangt werden ⁽³⁷⁾ : Das ASRL in Form der 1961 gefertigten Bronzeversion vorliegenden “Weibliche Feigenblatt” ist geschlechtsspezifisch nicht eindeutig zuzuordnen. Die Ausbuchtung der in der Mitte des Objekts vertikal verlaufenden Linie stellt einzig das Perineum dar, also den zwischen unterem Vulvaansatz (bei der Frau) bzw. Skrotum (beim Mann) und After befindlichem Damm (Abb. 11). Dass Duchamp bei seinem “asstrick” mit den Geschlechtern spielt mag bei einem bis ins Mark ambivalenten Künstler nicht verwundern, der die Mona Lisa mit Oberlippen- und Kinnbärtchen versieht (“L.H.O.O.Q.”, 1919), über Jahre ein weibliches Alter Ego namens “Rrose Sélavy” für seine Werke verantwortlich zeichnen und sich wiederholt in Frauenkleidern ablichten lässt (1920, 1921). Bei der fortschreitenden Entschlüsselung von “Gegeben sei…” und den sich auf dieses Werk beziehenden Arbeiten und Notizen darf bis hin zum Torso seiner letzten Installation aller Voraussicht nach mit weiteren androgynen Überraschungen gerechnet werden.

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Notes

[1] Zu diesem Themenkomplex fand Ende 1999 ein von ASRL organisiertes, dreitägiges Symposium an der Harvard University statt, “Methods of Understanding in Art and Science: The Case of Marcel Duchamp and Henri Poincaré”, 5.-7. November 1999.

[2] In Europa bleibt diese Hypyhese weniger umstritten als in den USA. Der Kunsthistoriker Thomas Zaunschirm meldete schon in seiner 1983-1986 erschienenen Buchtrilogie zu Duchamp Zweifel an (siehe v.a sein “Bereites Mädchen Readymade”, Klagenfurt: Ritter, 1986) .”[D]ass es sich bei Duchamps Readymades um individüll geformte Objekte handelt”, hält auch die deutsche Kunsthistorikerin Monika Wagner nach einem Besuch bei ASRL im Oktober 1999 durchaus “für möglich” (siehe Monika Wagner, “Das Material der Kunst: Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne”, München: C.H. Beck, 2001, S. 305, FN 38). Und für Jean Clair, den Duchampexperten und Direktor des Pariser Musée Picasso, war es Shearer, die mit ihrer Forschung seine ehemalige “Leidenschaft für Duchamp wieder neu entfacht hat” (persönliche Widmung in: Jean Clair, “Sur Marcel Duchamp et la Fin de l’Art”, Paris: Gallimard, 2000, Archiv ASRL).

[3] Seit 1997 sind in der internationalen Presse eine grosse Anzahl von Artikeln über ASRL erschienen (u.a. in Artnews, New York Times, SZ-Magazin), sowie Dutzende Beiträge von Mitarbeitern des ASRL, u.a in Science,Nature und Science News. Für eine bibliographische Auswahl der Titel, siehe<https://www.asrlab.org/articles/why_bicycle_wheel.htm>

[4] Die Übersetzung aus dem Französischen aus: Serge Stauffer, “Marcel Duchamp: Die Schriften”, Zürich: Theo Ruff, 1994 (1981), S. 191.

[5] Ibid., S. 100.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid. S. 283.

[8] Ibid.

[9] “Ready made” ist der Titel, mit dem Duchamp den “Kamm” in seiner ab 1941 gefertigten “Schachtel-im-Koffer” benennt. Zum Teil auf Duchamps eigenen Klassifizierungen beruhend, unterscheidet Francis M. Naumann im Glossary zu seinem Buch “Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Ludion/Abrams: Ghent/New York, 1999) zwischen insgesamt sechs Typen von Readymades: “assisted readymade, imitated rectified readymade, printed readymade, readymade (or ready-made), rectified readymade, semi-readymade” (S. 298-299).

[10] Die verschiedene Zählweise ergibt sich aus der Möglichkeit, die zwei breiteren, gebogenen Abschlusszapfen des Kamms am linken und rechten Ende den eigentlichen “Zähnen” hinzuzurechnen oder nicht. So oder so, der Unterschied zwischen der Anzahl der Zähne des Originalkamms und den Kämmen aus der späteren Edition (sowie dem signierten, von Ulf Linde 1963 für das Moderna Museet in Stockholm angefertigten Kamm) bleibt stets Zwei.

[11] Stauffer, “Schriften”, S. 99.

[12] Siehe Notizen 18 und 35 in Paul Matisse (Hrsg.), “Marcel Duchamp, Notes”, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980, o. S. Notizen 1-46 fassen Duchamps Gedanken zum “Inframince” bzw “Infradünnen” zusammen und sind für eine Theorie der Readymades unerlässlich.

[13] Siehe Kirk Varnedoe, Adam Gopnik (Hrsg.), “High & Low: Modern Culture and Popular Art”, New York: Abrams, 1990, Ausst.-Kat. (The Museum of Modern Art), S. 274, Abb. 76.

[14] In einem Vortrag vom 24. November 1964 im City Art Museum of St. Louis, Missouri, spricht Duchamp ausdrücklich von einem Hundekamm; siehe Stauffer, “Schriften”, S. 243.

[15] Molly Nesbit und Naomi Sawelson-Gorse haben in ihrem Aufsatz “Concept of Nothing: New Notes by Marcel Duchamp and Walter Arensberg” (in: Martha Buskirk, Mignon Nixon (Hrsg.), “The Duchamp Effect: Essays, Interviews, Roundtable”, MIT: October, 1996, S. 131-176) zürst auf die historische Authentizität Chas F. Binglers hingewiesen (siehe v.a. die Fussnoten 44 und 45, S. 151, 152). Ich beziehe mich hier auf die Eintragungen im “New York City Directory 1915 (A-M)”, NY:NYPL (Microfilm Zan G 67, reel 64), S. 332 sowie im “New York City Directory 1916 (A-M)”, NY: NYPL (Microfilm Zan – 67, reel 68), S. 272.

[16] Diese und die folgenden Aussagen beruhen auf einem Telefongespräch mit Melvin J. Bingler (Getzville, New York), 7. April 2000.

[17] Die Sammlung des Art Science Research Laboratory, New York, verfügt über ein Rasiermesser mit dem Aufdruck “Chas F. Bingler” (der Firmenname ist ebf. auf dem Etui vermerkt).

[18] Als Duchamp 1937 den Umschlag der Zeitschrift “Transition” (New York, Winter 1937, Nr. 26) mit einer Abbildung des “Kamms” versah, hat Joyce sich laut seiner Verlegerin Sylvia Beach ihr gegenüber dementsprechend geäussert (vgl. Arturo Schwarz, “The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp”, New York: Delano Greenidge, 1999, S. 744).

[19] Nur in den ersten zwei Auflagen seines Werkverzeichnisses, “The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp” (New York: Abrams, 1969, 1970), geht Arturo Schwarz in seiner Eintragung zum “Kamm” auf eine weitere Notiz Duchamps aus der “Grünen Schachtel” ein, die mit “Sept. 1915” unterschrieben ist und damit dem Bingler-Objekt nur fünf Monate vorausgeht. In dieser Notiz erwähnt Duchamp einen Kamm mit abgebrochenen Zähnen, der die Möglichkeit birgt, als “proportionale Kontrolle” (S. 461 [meine Übersetzung], von Stauffer aus dem Französischen als “proportionale Leitung” übersetzt; siehe “Schriften”, S. 99) – und im folgenden paraphrasiert Schwarz den übrigen Teil der Notiz – “für andere Objekte bzw. als Ausgangspunkt für andere Schöpfungen” (S. 461 [meine Übersetzung] genutzt zu werden.

[20] Die folgenden Beobachtungen zu “Pariser Luft” fassen einige der zuerst im Dezember 1999 in “Tout-Fait” veröffentlichten Ergebnisse zusammen; siehe Thomas Girst und Rhonda Roland Shearer, “‘Paris Air’ or ‘Holy Ampule’?”, in: “Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal” 1, 1 Articles (December 1999) <https://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_1/Articles/ampul.html>

[21] “L’Échecs, C’est Moi”, in” Pierre Cabanne, “Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp”, New York: Da Capo, 1987, S. 13-14 [meine Übersetzung]. Schon in seinem Gemälde von 1965 – Salvador Dalí in the Act of Painting Gala in the Apotheosis of the Dollar, in which One may also Perceive to the Left Marcel Duchamp Disguised as Louis XIV, behind a Curtain in the Style of Vermeer, which is but the Invisible Monument Face of the Hermes of Praxiteles– hat Dalí Duchamp als französicshen Sonnenkönig dargestellt. Duchamp selbst spielte 1957 in Hans Richters Film “8×8” einen schwarzen König und trug anlässlich der Feierlichkeiten zu seinem 70. Geburtstag eine grosse Krone auf dem Kopf. Mindestens drei frühe Werke Duchamps (alle von 1912) tragen,vom Schachspiel ausgehend, das Wort “König” im Titel.

[22] Zur Geschichte und Legende der “Heiligen Ampulle” siehe Patrick Demouy, “Du Baptême du Sacre”, in: “Connaissance des Arts” 92 (1996), S. 7-9.

[23] Siehe Jacqueline Bellanger, “Verre: D’Usage et de Prestige. France 1500-1800”, (Paris: Éditions de l’Amateur, 1988); Etienne Michon, “La Collection d’Ampoules à Eulogies du Musée du Louvre,” Mélang. Archeol. Hist. 12 (Rome, 1892), S. 183-201. Diese Quellen verdanke ich den Hinweisen von Virginia Wright and Rosalind S. Young, Corning Museum of Glass, New York.

[24] Laurence Flavigny, Konservatorin am Musée des Antiquités, Rouen, konnte keine Auskunft darüber geben, seit wann die Phiolen Bestandteil in der Sammlung des Museums sind. Rhonda Roland Shearer hat schon früh auf die materielle Unmöglichkeit eines medizinischen Infusionsbehältnisses mit Glashaken hingewiesen; siehe Rhonda Roland Shearer’s “Marcel Duchamp’s Impossible Bed and Other ‘Not’ Readymade Objects: A Possible Route of Influence From Art to Science”, Part 1, in: “Art & Academe” 10, 1 (Fall 1997), S. 26-62. Dem widerspricht Dr. Tobias Else, Hamburg, in seinem Leserbrief an “Tout-Fait”: siehe “‘Infusion Ball’ or ‘Holy Ampule'”? Tobias Else responds to ‘Paris Air or ‘Holy Ampule?’ (with a reply by Rhonda Roland Shearer)”, in: “Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal” 1, 2 Letters (May 2000) < https://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Letters/else.html.Else zeigt auf, dass vor allem ein von Maurice Boureau 1898 entwickelter “Infusionsball” aus Glas Duchamps “Pariser Luft” sehr ähnlich ist, und gleichfalls, wie auf Duchamps Typenschild ausgezeichnet, “Sérum Physiologique” enthielt, die Bezeichnung für eine einfache Sodium-Chlorid-Lösung. Die grosse, im Art Science Research Laboratory, befindliche Sammlung pharmazeutischer Glasampullen beherbergt kein Duchamps “Pariser Luft” entfernt ähnliches Objekt, deren Existenz gleichfalls von Prof. Gregory Higby, School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin, ebenso vehement bestritten wird (aufgezeichnete Telefonnachricht vom Sommer 1998, Archiv ASRL).

[25] Henry John Frasey, “The Use of the Comb in Church Ceremonies,” in: “The Antiquary” XXXII (January/December 1896), S. 314, 312-316.

[26] siehe Serge Stauffer (Hrsg.), “Marcel Duchamp: Interviews und Statements”, Graphische Sammlung Staatsgalerie Stuttgart/Edition Cantz, 1992, S. 75.

[27] Die im November 1999 im Art Science Research Laboratory durchgeführten Tests ergaben für die Schwarz Edition von “Pariser Luft” aus dem Jahr 1964 ein Volumen von 123 cc; für die insgesamt etwa 300 Miniaturversion der verschiedenen “Schachteln” sowie der “Schachtel-im-Koffer” wurden 35 cc festgestellt. Die “Pariser Luft” von 1949 und jene von 1963 wirken etwas kleiner als das Original von 1919, dass gleichfalls einen voluminöseren Bauch als die Edition von 1964 aufweist (an diesen drei Versionen konnten keine Messungen vorgenoimmen werden).

[28] siehe Fax von Virginia Wright, Corning Museum of Glass, New York, 27. April 1998 (Archiv ASRL); ebenso W.A. Shenstone, “The Methods of Glass Blowing and of Working Silica in the Oxy-Gas Flame”, London: Longman’s, 1916, S. 7; hier wird ein ein Gasbrenner für kleine Arbeitsräume aufgeführt (ähnliche Bücher waren in Frankreich zu dieser Zeit wohlbekannt).

[29] siehe Duchamps Brief vom 9. Mai 1949 an Roché, in: William Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp: Fountain”, Houston: Houston Fine Arts Press, 1989, S. 76. Am 29. Mai schreibt Duchamp abermals an Roché und bittet ihn erneut darum, sich bzgl. “Pariser Luft” an die von ihm in seinem ersten Brief angegebene Grösse (125 cc) zu halten, da Roché ihm zwischenzeitlich empfohlen zu haben scheint, doch einfach eine Miniaturversion aus der “Schachtel” zu verwenden (siehe Ecke Bonk, “Marcel Duchamp: The Box-in-a-Valise”, New York: Rizzoli, 1989, S. 202). Wahrscheinlicher, als dass Roché nach vorerst vergeblicher Suche und drei Jahrzehnte später in Paris eine der (als Massenprodukt womöglich non-existente) Version von 1919 ähnliche Ampulle für “Pariser Luft” aufzutreiben vermag, ist die Möglichkeit, dass Roché die “Pariser Luft” von 1949 bei der Glasbläserei Obled herstellen liess. Diese befand sich unweit von Duchamps Atelier und war bei der Herstellung der Miniaturversionen von “Pariser Luft” für die “Schachtel” involviert (Ibid.).

[30] Siehe “Marcel Duchamp, Notes”, 1980, Notizen 217 und 235; auf dem Verso von Notiz 32 befindet sich die Notiz “50 cent. cubes d’air de Paris” (im Buch nicht reproduziert). Zu Duchamps Wortspiel “Asstricks” fällt André Gervais in seinem “La raie alitée d’effets: Apropos of Marcel Duchamp”, Québec: Hurtubise, 1984, S. 242, folgendes ein: “asstricks: tours du cul, arse et attrapes, trucs cul(s) lent(s), etc.” In einer e-mail an den Autor vom 6. Dezember 1999 weist Gervais auf die vielen Asteriske in einem anderen Werk Duchamps hin, der Manuskriptseite “The” von 1915.

[31] Zur Vordatierung von Duchamps aktiver Arbeit an “Gegeben sei…” um ein Jahr, siehe Thomas Girst, “Duchamp’s Window Display forAndré Breton’s Le Surréalisme et la Peinture (1945), in: “Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal 2, 4 Articles (January 2002)

[32] “Marcel Duchamp/Francis Picabia”, Rose Fried Gallery, NY, 7. Dezember, 1953 – 8. Januar 1954; bzgl. der Rezensionen siehe Stuart Preston, “Diverse Facets: Moderns in Wide Variety”, in: The New York Times. December 20, 1953, sect. 10, S. 11 [meine Übersetzung] sowie James Fitzsimmons, “Art”, in: Arts & Decoration, February 1953, S. 31 [meine Übersetzung].

[33] Siehe Francis M. Naumann, “The Mary and William Sisler Collection”, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984, S. 214 sowie Naumann, “Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art”, S. 171.

[34] Siehe Ausst.-Kat. “The Almost Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp” (Tate Gallery, London, 18. Juni – 31 Juli 1966), S. 10 [meine Übersetzung]. In einem Telefongespräch mit dem Autor vom 29. Juni 1999 bestätigte Richard Hamilton erneut seine Feststellung von 1966: In einer Unterredung zwischen Hamilton und Duchamp habe sich der Künstler darüber gewundert, wie man davon ausgehen könne, dass er eine Frau der Prozedur eines solchen Abdrucks unterziehen würde und machte mit seinen Daumen und Zeigefinger eine modellierende Geste, um Hamilton zu erklären, wie “Weibliches Feigenblatt” tatsächlich entstanden sei.

[35] Siehe Thomas Zaunschirm, “Marcel Duchamps Unbekanntes Meisterwerk”, Klagenfurt: Ritter, 1986, S. 138 (mit der Abbildung des Gipsabdrucks eines weiblichen Geschlechts: “Bisherige Interpretationen haben kritiklos Duchamps Angaben übernommen, doch selbst dabei bleibt das meiste rätselhaft”.

[36] Hierfür stellten sich im v.a. die jungen amerikanischen Collegestudentinnen Tracy Berglund und ihre Freundin Nancy Hankins bereitwillig zur Verfügung.

[37] Im folgenden fasse ich u.a. die Ergebnisse von ASRL und Rhonda Roland Shearer zusammen, die erstmalig am 21. November 2000 bei Shearers Vortrag “This is Not a Vulva Mold (and Other Discoveries Regarding How and Why Duchamp’s Readymades Are Not Readymades)” im Bard College, Annendale-on-Hudson, NY, präsentiert wurden.

Abb. 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10A, 10B, 11 ©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

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Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp, Three Standard Stoppages, 1913

Marcel Duchamp’s readymade, but “not quite,” as he called the Three Standard Stoppages(Fig. 1), is a highly ramified work of art.⁽¹⁾The pieces of string used in its construction are related to sight lines and to vanishing points. In addition to their ostensive references to perspective and projective geometry, the Stoppages allude to happenstance. They are perhaps the artist’s best known work that incorporates uncertain outcomes into its operation. (In one of his Green Box notes, Duchamp says that the Stoppages are “canned chance.”)⁽²⁾ To make the work, he glued three pieces of string to three narrow canvases painted solid Prussian blue. (Each string had a different randomly generated curvature.) He then cut three wooden templates to match the shapes of these “diminished meters.”⁽³⁾

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Figure 2
Marcel Duchamp, Network of Stoppages, 1914

Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp, Bride Stripped Bare
by Her Bachelors, Even, 1915-23

As this description indicates, the piece was quite unusual physically, and it was conceptually unprecedented. In terms of his personal development, Duchamp said the work had been crucial: “… it opened the way–the way to escape from those traditional methods of expression long associated with art. …For me the Three Standard Stoppages was a first gesture liberating me from the past.”⁽⁴⁾
Duchamp used the Stoppages to design the pattern of lines in his painting Network of Stoppages (Fig. 2) and then, after rendering this plan view in perspective, transferred it to The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (Fig. 3). In the Large Glass, as the Bride Stripped Bare . . . is also known, the “network” comprises the “capillary tubes,” iconographical elements that connect the “nine malic molds.”⁽⁵⁾ The Three Standard Stoppages, the Network of Stoppages, and the Large Glass are associated with one another through geometrical projection and section. Duchamp’s approach, with respect to establishing their mutual relationships, is complex. He not only redrew the Network
of Stoppages in perspective so that he could incorporate the scheme into the imagery of the Glass, he also recast physical counterparts of the Stoppages into the actual structure of the Glass: the
three plates used in the Three Standard Stoppages are conceptually related to the three narrow sections of glass used to construct the “garments” of the Bride (Fig. 4). In each work, two plates
are in green glass, and one is in white glass.⁽⁶⁾ The strips of glass at the horizon line of the Large Glass are seen edge-on, an arrangement comparable to looking down into the box of the Three
Standard Stoppages with the sheets of glass inserted into their slots. To my knowledge, this relationship was first pointed out by Ulf Linde:

The Bride’s Clothes are to be found on the horizon–the line that governs the Bachelor Apparatus’ perspective and which is in the far distance. Thus, the Clothes seem to be the source of the waterfall. Moreover, the Clothes are undoubtedly the hiding-place
of the Standard Stoppages, as well. For this part, as it is executed on the Glass, looks exactly like the glass plates as they appear set in the croquet case–as if the Clothes simply repeated the three glass plates in profile. One might say that it is the three threads that set the Chariot in motion.⁽⁷⁾

click still images to enlarge

Figure 4
Marcel Duchamp, Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (Detail:The “garments”
of the Bride), 1915-23

Figure 5
Marcel Duchamp,Chocolate
Grinder, No. 2, 1914

Although some of what Linde says here is unclear, at least to me, it is nonetheless suggestive, especially his proposition that the Stoppages are hidden in the Bride’s clothing. Duchamp’s use of different colored glass in just the same way in both applications (and the colors are more apparent when the glass plates are seen edge-on) indicates that he somehow meant for the Stoppages and the Bride’s “garments” to be linked together. I believe that their most important affiliation is perspectival: the vanishing point at the horizon line of the Glass is tied to the “garments” through geometry.

In a note from the Box of 1914 that was subsequently republished in the Green Box, Duchamp explains that pieces of string one meter long were to be dropped from a height of one meter, twisting “as they pleased” during their fall. The chance-generated curvatures would create “new
configurations of the unit of length.”⁽⁸⁾ Although we do not know exactly how he constructed the work, we do know that he almost certainly did not use this method. The ends of the pieces of string in the Stoppages are sewn through the surfaces of the canvases and are attached to them from behind.⁽⁹⁾ Presumably, Duchamp sewed down the strings, leaving them somewhat loose, jiggled and jostled them back and forth until he obtained three interesting curves, and then glued the segments to the canvases using varnish. Sewing would not have been out of keeping with his general working methods, especially since he was also at this time (1914) sewing thread to his painting Chocolate Grinder, No. 2 (Fig. 5)

Duchamp wanted to relate his various works to each other. The moving segments of thread in the Three Standard Stoppages are conceptually similar to the moving lines and shapes in his cubo-futurist paintings. They are also conceptually similar to the parallel lines on the drums of the “chocolate grinder,” which can, in their turn, also be related to the chronophotographic sources of the earlier paintings. Chronophotography was among Duchamp’s primary interests during this period.⁽¹⁰⁾ What I have in mind here can be seen by comparing Duchamp’s works with Étienne-Jules Marey’s images of moving lines Figs. 6 and 7). These kinds of time-exposure photographs not only recall such paintings as Sad Young Man on a Train (Fig. 8) and Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Fig. 9), but also the Three Standard Stoppages and Chocolate Grinder, No. 2.⁽¹¹⁾

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• 
• 
• 

• Figure 6
  Étienne-Jules
  Marey, Image of moving lines
• Figure 7
  Étienne-Jules
  Marey, Image of moving lines
• Figure 8
  Marcel Duchamp,
  Sad Young Man
  on a Train, 1911

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In addition to implying something being stopped, the word “stoppage” also suggests something being mended or repaired. In French, “stoppage” refers to sewing or reweaving a tear in a fabric in such a way that the tear can no longer be seen.⁽¹²⁾ From this perspective, the individual lines in the sculpture and the network of lines in the painting can be compared with the breaks in the Large Glass. In his early monograph, Robert Lebel pointed out that the Network of Stoppages bears a strange resemblance to the pattern of fissures in the Glass, as if the painting had somehow been a preliminary study for the subsequent breakage.⁽¹³⁾ When Duchamp put the Glass back together, or perhaps we could also say when he “rewove” it, he no doubt also noticed the fortuitous similarities. The shapes of the line segments generated by the pieces of thread were random, but they seemed planned. Likewise, the line segments caused by the Glass being smashed were determined by chance, but they also seemed necessary for its completion (or definitive incompletion).⁽¹⁴⁾
When Duchamp rebuilt the work, he was “stopping” an accidental event that had somehow made the Glass “a hundred times better.”⁽¹⁵⁾ The mended cracks in the glass are not wholly invisible, but they do approach a point of disappearance–like pieces of string falling away toward some mysterious knot at infinity. Duchamp’s lines, his fractures and strands, intersect at a vanishing point in the fourth dimension, a realm that cannot be seen from our ordinary perspectives.

The Bride’s “garments” and the Three Standard Stoppages can also be discussed in terms of yet another kind of “stoppage.” Glass, as a physical substance, is an insulator, and as such is often
used to arrest or impede the flow of electrical current through circuits. Duchamp may very well have been thinking of his glass plates in these kinds of terms when he was constructing the Large Glass. ⁽¹⁶⁾ He also refers to the Bride’s clothing as a “cooler”:

(Develop the desire motor, consequence of the lubricious gearing.) This desire motor is the last part of the bachelor machine. Far from being in direct contact with the Bride, the desire motor is separated by an air cooler (or water). This cooler (graphically) to express the fact that the bride, instead of being merely an asensual icicle, warmly rejects (not chastely) the bachelors’ brusque offer. This cooler will be in transparent glass. Several plates of glass one above the other. In spite of this cooler, there is no discontinuity between the bachelor machine and the Bride. But the connections will be electrical and will thus express the stripping: an alternating process. Short
circuit if necessary.⁽¹⁷⁾

In addition to the terms “vêtements de la mariée” and “refroidisseur,” Duchamp uses the expression “plaques isolatrices” to describe his strips of glass. (18)

This phrase can be translated as “isolating plates” or “insulating plates.” In one of his posthumously published notes, he calls the horizontal division of the Glass a “grand isolateur,”
a “large insulator,” and explains that it should be made using “three planes five centimeters apart in transparent material (sort of thick glass) to insulate the Hanged [Pendu] from the bachelor machine.”⁽¹⁹⁾

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Figure 10
Marcel Duchamp,
Draft Pistons, 1914

Figure 11
Marcel Duchamp,
Travelor’s Folding Item, 1916

Figure 12
Photograph of
the unbroken Large Glass

Glass may play a similar exclusionary role in the workings of the Three Standard Stoppages, but in ways that are perhaps less “transparent.” While Duchamp was apparently interested in exploring a frustrated relationship between the Bride and the Bachelors, involving as it does a “short circuit,” he was also trying to “delay”  communication. Whatever talking occurs, or fails to occur, between
the separated Bride and Bachelors pertains to seeing or not seeing through words. In his notes, Duchamp explains that the Bride sends her commands to the Bachelors through the “draft pistons,”
“triple ciphers” that use a formal alphabet constructed using the Three Standard Stoppages. Because the chance-determined “draft pistons” (Fig. 10) which are deformed planes, are conceptually similar to the Stoppages, which are deformed lines, these interpretations again converge geometrically. It might also be pointed out that Duchamp’s readymade Traveler’s
Folding Item (Fig. 11) can be taken as a next logical step in this sequence: a one-dimensional
line generating a two-dimensional surface, which in its turn, generates a three-dimensional “solid”–one that can fold up.⁽²⁰⁾ By looking somewhat further into the n-dimensional implications
of these works (from the Latin implicatio, an entwining or interweaving), we may be able to ascertain how Duchamp’s arrangements, his strings and fabrics, which seem to have topological insinuations, might actually operate. Just how do the Three Standard Stoppages disappear into the Bride’s clothing?

At some later point in the construction of Three Standard Stoppages, Duchamp cut the narrow strips of canvas from their stretchers, reducing them in size in the process, and then glued them down to thick pieces of plate glass. He probably carried out this reworking when he was repairing
the Large Glass at Katherine S. Dreier’s home in Connecticut during the spring and summer of 1936.⁽²¹⁾ Also at this time, he probably decided to put the various components of the Three Standard Stoppages into a specially constructed wooden case that resembles a croquet box. Duchamp’s decision to amplify the Stoppages along these lines was almost certainly connected with how he was repairing the “garments” of the Bride, which had presumably been pulverized when the Glass was accidentally broken in 1927. From the photograph of the unbroken Large Glass taken at the Brooklyn Museum

(Fig. 12),

it is difficult to determine how the original “garments” were constructed, but they do not appear to have been as elaborate as the repaired strips of glass. As pointed out earlier, Duchamp must have intended for the Stoppages and the “garments” to be related to one another because he used similarly colored strips of glass and parallel edge-on arrangements in their respective reconstructions.

Did Duchamp somehow “betray” his work by not actually dropping the pieces of string when he originally made the Three Standard Stoppages or when, over twenty years later, he further modified his original conception of the piece? No more than he betrayed himself by learning to appreciate the breaks in the Large Glass, or by elaborating the Bride’s “garments” when he repaired them. Such operations are, I believe, commensurate with his general attitudes about such matters.⁽²²⁾ Recall his statement to Katherine Kuh: “the idea of letting a piece of thread fall on a canvas was accidental, but from this accident came a carefully planned work. Most important was accepting and recognizing this accidental stimulation. Many of my highly organized works were initially suggested by just such chance encounters”⁽²³⁾

Dropping pieces of string was not a rule that Duchamp had to follow, but rather a point of departure in his thinking, just as the damage to the Glass wound up inspiring his admiration.⁽²⁴⁾
His artistic approach was analogous to scientists establishing hypotheses at the beginning of a research program, but then modifying their hypotheses once work has been carried out in the laboratory. Over the course of time, Duchamp’s examples of “hasard en conserve” ⁽²⁵⁾were supplied with controls that had not been deemed necessary in the beginning. As with the chance breakage he preserved in the Large Glass, the important thing was recognizing the accidental stimulation. Moreover, by allowing the pieces of thread to do more than simply fall upon the canvas surfaces by actually sewing them through to the other side, Duchamp could emphasize the notion that they had intersected the canvases. The encounter involved both chance and mathematics.

In works such as the Three Standard Stoppages, Duchamp creates physical analogues for the abstract concept of “intersection”: the one-dimensional pieces of string, the curved line segments, intersect the two-dimensional surfaces of the canvases (and they literally share points in common where they are sewn together). The strings are thus further implicated (I am tempted to say intertwined), along geometrical lines, with the fabric of the canvas strips. The cracks in the Glass are also a fundamental part of it. They are “inside” the broken sheets of glass, which are, in their turn, encased inside the heavy panes of glass that Duchamp used to effect their repair. In an analogous way, the ends of the strings in the Stoppages are sandwiched between the strips of canvas and the rectangles of glass that back them.

Duchamp’s works on glass are flat, but they are nonetheless rather thick. They are “spaces” that can be thought of, especially in this context, as rectangular solids. Because the sheets of glass themselves have thickness, a depth that is often layered, they can be taken as three-dimensional sections out of higher-dimensional continua. When, for example, all the configurations of the Stoppages (the strings, the templates, and the plates of glass) are considered together, their n-dimensional implications are manifest. They are one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional, and they have n-dimensional possibilities. Each configuration is related to the others through projection and intersection: the lines can be taken as slices out of surfaces, the surfaces as slices out of solids, and the solids as slices out of hypersolids. Esprit Pascal Jouffret, one of Duchamp’s most important mathematical sources, characterized such cuts as “infinitely thin layers.” ⁽²⁶⁾

Duchamp’s approach–moving from lines to surfaces, and from spaces to hyperspaces–is couched in terms of perspective. He considers how vanishing points and changing points of view would operate in 2-space, 3-space, 4-space, or any given n-space. He suggests using “transparent glass” and “mirror” as analogues of four-dimensional perspective systems (analogues because such systems cannot actually be constructed in three-dimensional space).(27)

Especially when the narrow sheets of glass are seen edge-on in the slots in their croquet box, they suggest their membership in an infinite series (reflections in mirrors can also imply infinite reiterations). In an interview with Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp emphasized the serial characteristics of the Stoppages: “When you’ve come to the word three, you have three million–it’s the same thing as three. I had decided that the things would be done three times to get what I wanted. My Three Standard Stoppages is produced by three separate experiments, and the form of each one is slightly different. I keep the line, and I have a deformed meter.”
⁽²⁸⁾

he specifics of how Duchamp kept his line and used his deformed meter is worth exploring further. He tells Cabanne that he had been interested in working on glass for several reasons, including the way color “is visible from the other side.” Glass was also useful in laying out its various elements: “perspective was very important. The Large Glass constitutes a rehabilitation of perspective, which had been completely ignored and disparaged. For me, perspective became absolutely scientific.”⁽²⁹⁾

y using linear perspective in his design, Duchamp could arrange the Bachelors’ domain in such a way that the vanishing point coincided with the horizontal division between the upper and lower panels of the Glass.

From this perspective, or from the point of view of perspective, Duchamp’s saying that a “labyrinth” lies at the “central part of the stripping-bare” is significant: the Large Glass and the Three Standard Stoppages are about occlusion.⁽³⁰⁾

They involve unusual station points, and unusual distance points, in a perspectival system that can only be reconstructed from isolated positions outside normal space. If Duchamp were thinking of his “strips” of glass as physical puns on the notion of “stripping” the Bride, then their structure is doubly suggestive.⁽³¹⁾ Because her clothing consists of transparent sections of glass that
are entailed with a “point de fuite,” it can be taken to include a complex set of folds, not only in the cloth of the garments, but also in the fabric of space. Recall that Traveler’s Folding Item is conceptually related to the Three Standard Stoppages.Also, the typewriter cover has been called the “Bride’s Dress.” ⁽³²⁾Perhaps the disappearance of the Stoppages, their dropping away toward infinity at the position of the Bride’s garments, can be taken as an interdimensional folding up, a stripping bare thatrequires orthogonal translation into higher space.

Perhaps the disappearance of the Stoppages, their dropping away toward infinity at the position of the Bride’s garments, can be taken as an interdimensional folding up, a stripping bare that requires orthogonal translation into higher space.

All of the works here under discussion are related to one another through perspectivalism (and also perspectivism). For Duchamp, the use of perspective as a system was not a matter of creating single, fixed-point ways of looking at things. It was, on the contrary, involved in dislodging viewers from their ordinary ways of understanding. And with this objective in mind, his choosing readymades during the same period he was working on the Stoppagescan be seen as a related activity. When Duchamp made his remark about Three Standard Stoppages being a readymade, but “not quite,” he continued by saying, “it’s a readymade if you wish, but a moving one.”⁽³³⁾

The curving pieces of string and our shifting notions of the meaning of the readymades seem to trail off from a “vanishing point”at the horizon of our own thinking. The readymades refuse to abide
by our ordinary definitions of art, and the Stoppages allude to geometries that have challenged our traditional epistemological structures.
⁽³⁴⁾
Their curvatures can be taken as references to non-Euclidean or topological geometries, complications that necessitate our reconsidering our vanishing points. The strings, when taken as analogues for lines of sight, are transposed, or rotated, into a hidden space.

click to enlarge

Figure 13
Girard Desargues’s discussions
of perspective

Figure 14
Girard Desargues’s discussions
of perspective

What I have in mind here can be seen in the illustrations that accompany Girard Desargues’s discussions of perspective (Figs. 13 and 14). Desargues was the first mathematician to see connections between linear perspective and conic sections, and is generally considered to be the founder of projective geometry.⁽³⁵⁾ He contributed to the “mathematicization” of perspective,
helping to transform the practical Renaissance practice of artists into the deductive science of geometers.⁽³⁶⁾
In the illustrations, threads from lines of sight are bunched up at the plane of the picture, as if they were lying at, or perhaps it would be better to say “in,” the surface of the representation. Rather than being part of the representations, which are behind the surface and inside the three-dimensional structure represented by the picture, they are meant to be seen as separate from it.⁽³⁷⁾
In other words, they lie in a transparent perspectival section of our visual pyramid, the surface of the picture plane that we do not normally look at in a Renaissance picture, but through.⁽³⁸⁾

Such lines are also connected by a technological protocol involving an “arbor.” Desargues is one of the most likely sources for Duchamp’s referring to the “Bride” as an “arbor-type.”⁽³⁹⁾ The mathematician uses the term “arbre” in his discussions of perspective, as J. V. Field has explained:

“Arbre” is usually translated as “tree,” but the word can equally mean “arbor” or “axle.” Like the central axle in a machine, Desargues’ arbre is the member to which others are referred, that is, their relation to it is what chiefly defines their significance in the overall arrangement. The standard metaphorical usage whereby engineers called an axle a tree might thus have suggested to Desargues an extension of the same metaphor to provide names for subsidiary elements in the geometrical scheme.
⁽⁴⁰⁾

In Desargues’ usage, an “arbre” becomes a geometrical axis.⁽⁴¹⁾ His unusual vocabulary was probably inspired by his engineering and military experience, as Field suggests. Desargues employs a number of other “arbor-type” terms, such as tronc (trunk), noeud (knot), rameau (branch), souche (stump), and branche (limb). A “trunk” is a straight line that is intersected by other straight lines, “knots” are the points on the “trunk” through which the other lines pass, the other lines themselves are called “branches,” a point common to a group of segments on a line is a “stump,” one of these segments is a “limb,” etc.⁽⁴²⁾

Desargues’ general approach of adopting an affective vocabulary for geometrical entities recalls Duchamp’s practice. For example, Desargues’ term essieu (axletree) is reminiscent of Duchamp’s term charnière (hinge). “Perhaps make a hinge picture (folding yardstick, book); develop the principle of the hinge in the displacements, first in the plane, second in space. Find an automatic description of the hinge. Perhaps introduce it in the Pendu femelle.”⁽⁴³⁾ The mechanical engineering term “axletree” refers, basically, to a fixed beam with bearings at its ends. Because the axletree has
other devices, such as wheels, branching from it, we can perhaps see why Desargues saw a comparable situation in the way geometrical projections branch off from the axes of his perspective system. In English, the similar term “arbor” was apparently used during the seventeenth
century to designate any kind of axle, but is now generally used to refer to the axles in small mechanisms such as clocks.⁽⁴⁴⁾

Duchamp hints that he was familiar with these kinds of distinctions. In one of his posthumously published notes (actually notations on a folder that originally contained several other notes), he associates the Bride, the “Pendu” (femelle), with a “standard arbor (shaft model).”
⁽⁴⁵⁾
In another, he connects the Bride, a “framework–standard arbor,” and a “clockwork apparatus.”
⁽⁴⁶⁾
In Desargues’s way of thinking, an “arbor” or an “axletree” was analogous to an axis of rotation, a mathematical “axle,” around which the elements of his transformative system revolved. In
Duchamp’s descriptions of the complex workings of the Bride, “hinges” operate in comparable ways.

That Desargues was one of Duchamp’s sources can be given further credence by analyzing another important iconographical element of the Bride’s domain, the “nine shots,” an area of the Large Glass that was also reconstructed in 1936.⁽⁴⁷⁾ At a conceptual level, the “nine shots” seem to have an “Arguesian” perspectival demeanor.⁽⁴⁸⁾ It has recently been noticed that a number of Duchamp’s notes have been split in two.⁽⁴⁹⁾  One of the most interesting instances involves the “nine shots.”
A note included in his posthumously published Notes is the top part of a note published in the Green Box. Taken together, the two parts read as follows:

Make a painting on glass so that it has neither front, nor back; neither top, nor bottom. To use probably as a three-dimensional physical medium in a four-dimensional perspective.
⁽⁵⁰⁾
Shots. From more or less far; on a target. This target in short corresponds to the vanishing point (in perspective). The figure thus obtained will be the projection (through skill) of the principal points of a three-dimensional body. With maximum skill, this projection would be reduced to a point (the target).
With ordinary skill this projection will be a demultiplication of the target. (Each of the new points [images of the target] will have a coefficient of displacement. This coefficient is nothing but a souvenir and can be noted conventionally. The different shots tinted from black to white according to their distance.)
In general, the figure obtained is the visible flattening (a stop on the way) of the demultiplied body. Cannon; match with tip of fresh paint. Repeat this operation 9 times, 3 times by 3 times from the same point: A–3 shots; B–3 shots, C–3 shots. A, B, and C are not in a plane and represent the schema of any object whatever of the demultiplied body.

⁽⁵¹⁾

Desargues used the unusual term “ordinance” for the orthogonals in a perspective system, the sheaf of lines that recede into the distance toward a vanishing point at the horizon. An “ordinance of lines” (ordonnance de droictes) corresponds to what we would now call a “pencil of lines” in modern geometrical parlance.⁽⁵²⁾
Desargues, who had worked as a military engineer, may again have been prone to thinking of the trajectories of cannon shots toward a target as analogues for lines diminishing toward a vanishing point in a perspective system (or toward the vertex of a pencil of lines in a more purely geometrical representation). His term for a vanishing point (or for the vertex in an “ordinance of lines”) is “but.” He uses the expression “but d’une ordonnance,” which can be translated as “butt of an ordinance,” but which is probably more comprehensibly rendered as “target of an ordinance”). Duchamp’s line from the note above, “This target in short corresponds to the vanishing point (in perspective),” reads in French, “Ce but est en somme une correspondance du point du fuite (en perspective).”

⁽⁵³⁾

click to enlarge

Figure 15
Marcel Duchamp, Pharmacy, 1914

Before leaving the potential influence of Desargues’ vocabulary, it might be pointed out that the notion of an “arbor-type” seems to inform several of Duchamp’s readymades. Pharmacy (Fig. 15), chosen in 1914, is a tree-filled landscape with a red and green dot added by Duchamp (at vanishing points?) on the horizon line. In addition to being a reference to the colored bottles in drugstore windows, the colors may also be a subtle reference to the techniques of anaglyphy, a practice related to stereoscopy that we know Duchamp was interested in, probably because of its n-dimensional implications.⁽⁵⁴⁾ In the layout of Robert Lebel’s early monograph, a design that Duchamp was largely responsible for, Pharmacy is juxtaposed to the Bottlerack (Fig. 16),
also chosen in 1914. On the facing page are the Network of Stoppages, 1914, and Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries, No. 2(Fig. 17), 1914, the drawing that Duchamp used to transfer the design of the “capillary tubes” and the “nine malic molds” to the Large Glass.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Above Pharmacy and the Bottlerack is Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries, No. 1 (Fig. 18), which in the more multi-layered French edition of the book, had a color image of Nine Malic Molds (Fig. 19) tipped in over it.⁽⁵⁶⁾

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• 
• 

• Figure 16
• Figure 17

• Marcel Duchamp,
  Bottle Dryer, 1914/1964
• Marcel Duchamp,
  Cemetery of Uniforms
  and Liveries, No. 2, 1914

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• 
• 

• Figure 18
• Figure 19

• Marcel Duchamp,
  Cemetery of Uniforms
  and Liveries, No. 1, 1913
• Marcel Duchamp,Nine
  Malic Molds, 1914-15

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Figure 20
Photograph of Duchamp, 1942

With Desargues’ terminology such as “tree,” “trunk,” “branch,” and “limb” in mind, these works look positively geometrical. InNetwork of Stoppages, for example, the pattern of lines resemble branches, especially if the painting is rotated ninety degrees clockwise. In the background, the nude woman in “Young Man and Girl in Spring,” the first layer of Network of Stoppages, is then centered in the boughs of the tree. From this perspective, she becomes a precursor for the Bride as an “arbor-type.” In theBottlerack, the prongs appear to be rotated around a central axis (anarbre) and suggest reiterated line segments (rameaux or branches). That these interpretations can be taken seriously is reinforced by an interesting photograph of Duchamp taken in 1942 showing him standing in front of a tree that has been provided with prongs so that it can act as a bottle dryer (Fig. 20). A number of bottles, which have been hung upon this “arbre-séchoir,” can be seen behind Duchamp, and he has a network of linear shadows, which have been cast from the branches of the tree, falling across his face.⁽⁵⁷⁾

The various connections here under discussion can perhaps be made more evident, in the sense of our being able to “see” into Duchamp’s n-dimensional realm, by bringing his important painting Tu m’ (Fig. 21) into the discussion.

click to enlarge

Figure 21
Marcel Duchamp, Tu m’,
1918

This work has “anamorphic” aspects and is closely related to the Three Standard Stoppages, which were used to draw a number of its curving shapes.⁽⁵⁸⁾ The shadows of readymades–the Bicycle Wheel, the Corkscrew, and the Hat Rack–stretch out across the surface of the picture plane suggesting an anamorphic transformation. At one level, of course, Tu m’ is about the “shadowy” existence of art objects.⁽⁵⁹⁾ The Corkscrew, in fact, exists only as a shadow on this painting. But
on more important levels, the work is about geometry–both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry. In addition to these geometries of constant curvature, Duchamp may also have been thinking about topology: some elements in the painting seem to be stretched and pulled, as if they
were elastic.⁽⁶⁰⁾
The shadows of the readymades are themselves distorted transformations, and they are cast onto a surface that seems to be warped and curved, and the space behind the surface is filled with strangely bent geometrical objects.

On the right-hand side of the canvas, there is an irregular, open-sided rectangular “solid.” The left side of this solid is a white surface that recedes into the space of the canvas according to one-point perspective. From each corner of the white surface, two lines, drawn with the templates of the Three Standard Stoppages, extend at more or less right angles toward the right. One of each of these is black and the other red. The black lines at all four edges are drawn with the same template. Each set of lines at the upper boundary of the solid cross one another at two points, and each set are drawn in the same way. The two lines at the lower edges of the solid do not cross one another, and they are rotated and inverted with respect to one another.

There are also a series of color bands (twenty-four in all) extending orthogonally back into the space of the “solid,” or into its virtual shape. They seem to continue on behind it. These bands are connected to the curved line segments that comprise the ambiguous edges of the transparent solid, a volume we could think of as a 3-space with fluctuant, transparent faces. Each of the color bands is surrounded by a number of concentric circles that also recede back into the painting’s virtual space according to one-point perspective. The vanishing point coincides with the bottom edge of the canvas just to the right of center below the indexical hand, which, incidentally, is a hand-painted readymade element executed by a certain A. Klang, a sign painter Duchamp hired to carry out this task. Klang’s minuscule signature is visible near the sleeve.

Duchamp’s complex geometrical arrangement is made even more complex by the shadow of the Hat Rack, which occupies the same region of the canvas as the “solid.” On one level, the Hat Rack resembles a tree, and the shadows cast from its multiple branches suggest yet another “arbor-type.” We know that the Bride is based, in part, on the idea of the cast shadow, “as if it were the projection of a four-dimensional object.”⁽⁶¹⁾

The way the Hat Rack interacts with the “solid” is indicative of the complexities that would be involved in such spaces: The lines and color bands seem to overlay the shadow, but the shadow seems to overlay the white rectangle at the left side of the “solid.” The shadow can thus be read as both in front of and behind the chunk of space outlined and bounded by the elements of Duchamp’s design.

The spatial complexities of Tu m’ can also be seen in the recession of its orthogonals. They plunge backward in a way that is comparable to the convergence of orthogonals in the Large Glass. In the former, the lines come together just at the lower edge of the painting, in the latter, just at the upper boundary of the Bachelors’ domain. In Tu m’, the vanishing point is where the “solid” (and also its edges drawn with the Three Standard Stoppages) would disappear. In the Large Glass, the point is at the center of the three plates of glass running across the Bride’s horizon. It is where these “lines” would disappear, if rotated ninety degrees. The Bride’s garments, when thus folded up, can be taken as orthogonals to a point of intersection–the intersection of parallel lines at infinity.

In Euclidean geometry, parallel lines do not intersect. The mathematical convention that they do intersect at infinity was one of Desargues’ important contributions. (Parallel lines do seem to intersect at the vanishing point of a perspective system, which may have given Desargues his idea.) Thinking of parallel lines as meeting at infinity eventually contributed to the development of non-Euclidean geometries in the nineteenth century.⁽⁶²⁾

The conceptual point where parallel lines meet cannot be seen, any more than the curvature of space can be perceived directly. If the curved lines in theThree Standard Stoppagesare taken as references to non-Euclidean lines of sight, then they are fundamentally hidden in “garments” of the Bride, just as the vanishing point in Tu m’seems to disappear off the edge of its hyperspatial expanse.

The left side of Tu m’ is also complicated. In addition to the shadows of the Bicycle Wheel and the Corkscrew, lines drawn with the templates of the Three Standard Stoppages are placed at the lower left-hand side of the canvas. Each of these line segments is at the edge of three curved surfaces that seem to fall back into the space of the canvas. If these irregular planes are thought of as a “pencil of surfaces” (Desargues uses the term “ordonnance de plans“), they would withdraw downward at more or less right angles to the space of the canvas toward a line of intersection located at an infinite distance. (Desargues says that a sheaf of parallel planes can be imagined converging at an “essieu,” an “axle,” just as an “ordinance of lines” can be imagined intersecting at a “point à une distance infinie.”)

⁽⁶³⁾
The edge of the upper member of this pencil of planes is black, and it is drawn with the same “stoppage” that was used at each edge of the rectangular “solid” on the right side of the canvas. The edge of the line segment in the middle register was used as the other line at the edges of the upper boundary, and the edge of the line segment in the lower register was used as the other line at the edges of the lower boundary of the “solid.” The shadow of the Bicycle Wheel seems to overlay this arrangement of superposed curved surfaces. There is also a sequence of flat color squares receding according to a plunging perspective back from the center of the canvas into an infinite space at the upper left corner of the canvas. This arrangement of color squares seems to overlay the shadow of the Bicycle Wheel. In contrast, the shadow of the Corkscrew, which seems to spiral out from the axle of the wheel, overlays the color squares. Reading the shadows as riding on the surface of the actual canvas is thus complicated by their relationships with objects occupying the virtual space depicted “inside” the canvas. Duchamp further emphasizes the spatial oddities of his picture by using various forms of “intersection.” The corkscrew intersects the canvas by seeming to spiral into it; the safety pins pierce the surface of the canvas; and the bottle brush and the bolt go through the front side of the picture and are fastened to it from behind.

click to enlarge

Figure 22
Marcel Duchamp, Tu m’, 1918
(side view)

Duchamp is obviously playing with real and represented objects and with real and represented space in Tu m’. To further complicate the issues, he paints a trompe l’oeiltear in the surface of the canvas, which is held together by the real safety pins. In addition to these ready-made elements, the bottle brush juts out from the tear at right angles to the canvas. As an actual object, a readymade, the bottle brush casts actual shadows that can be contrasted with the virtual shadows of the Bicycle Wheel, the Corkscrew, and the Hat Rack, which Duchamp traced onto the surface with pencil. In terms of its geometry, the bottle brush is really only visible when we look at Tu m’ from the side, at an oblique angle (Fig. 22). When we view the canvas straight on, all we see is the end of the brush. Looking at the canvas from the side also allows us to see the other elements of the painting, and they seem less stretched out, less constrained by the plunging perspective. The shift is particularly apparent in the sequence of color squares at the upper left side of the canvas. In fact, we now notice that these shapes are not really squares, but parallelograms that look more “natural” from the side than from the front.

click to enlarge

Figure 23
Jean-François Nicéron,
Thaumaturgus opticus,
1646

Duchamp probably learned something about these kinds of anamorphic effects during the period he was working at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris. One of his notes for the Large Glass, which he wrote at this time, suggests consulting the library’s collection: “Perspective. See the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. The whole section on perspective: Nicéron (Father J.-F.), Thaumaturgus opticus.”⁽⁶⁴⁾ Many of the books on perspective available to Duchamp at the library deal with the unusual, or “aberrant,” systems used in anamorphosis. These include works by Father Jean-François Nicéron, whom Duchamp mentions by name in his note.⁽⁶⁵⁾
One of Nicéron’s images from Thaumaturgus opticus (Fig. 23) is evocative of Tu m’, especially if the
sketch is fully extended (the left-hand side of the upper part continues at the right-hand side of the lower part).
⁽⁶⁶⁾
Thus reconnected, the long, narrow dimensions of the image approximate those of Tu m’. Duchamp may also have seen a similarity here between the string held by the assistant in the left-hand part of the drawing and the segments of string in Three Standard Stoppages. In Nicéron’s illustration, as in perspective drawings generally, the curling end of the line is meant to indicate that it is a thread used in the construction of the image, rather than being an integral element of the imagery.

click to enlarge

Figure 24
Hans Holbein the Younger,
The French Ambassadors of King
Henri II at the court of the
English King Henry VIII, 1533

Duchamp’s thread is more complex. The strings in theThree Standard Stoppagesare themselves spaces, one-dimensional spaces, and they are intended to indicate a more difficult geometry than the one Nicéron had in mind. But Duchamp’s manner of taking an oblique view and his interest in observing a scene through a visual system rotated away from normal space, is very similar to the way Nicéron turns his outstretched images onto the wall. Duchamp’s (and Nicéron’s) procedure is also reminiscent of Hans Holbein’s famous portrait, The French Ambassadors (Fig. 24), in which a distended skull crosses the picture plane at more or less right-angles to the orthogonals of the perspective system used to construct the painting.⁽⁶⁷⁾The French Ambassadorsis a favorite
image among postmodernists, primarily because it brings together two different ways of looking at objects in one picture.⁽⁶⁸⁾The primary visual order, the three-dimensional space of the scientific perspective, is undermined by the anomalous skull falling across it. The abnormal space of the death’s head interpenetrates the normal space where the ambassadors live, casting a shadow across their existence. It also displaces the dominant viewing subject from a position in front of the painting to one at the side–to a position that is essentially outside the picture’s frame of reference.⁽⁶⁹⁾
As the skull comes into adjustment, the painting becomes distorted, and vice versa. Jean Clair has discussed Tu m’ in terms comparable to those just used to describe Holbein’s painting. He points out that, when looked at obliquely, “the shadows of the readymades and the design of the parallelepiped straighten up.”⁽⁷⁰⁾ He also notices the way in which the bottle brush seems to rotate out from the surface of the canvas, changing from a “dot,” or point, into “no more than a line.” According to Clair, the function of the bottle brush is similar to that of the skull in Holbein’s picture: namely, “to expose the vanity of the painting.But this time of all paintings.”⁽⁷¹⁾

We can amplify Clair’s remarks by pointing out that, as we move to the side of Tu m’, the surface of the picture is visually rotated. If we were able to continue on around the picture in order to look at it edge on, the surface would be reduced to a line segment, from which the “line segment” of the bottle brush would extend at a right angle. The bottle brush is a readymade, a counterpart of an orthogonal, one that comes out into our space rather than receding into the space of the painting. The sequence of color squares, apparently attached to the surface of the canvas with the bolt, would presumably be receding in the opposite direction along the axis of the shaft (the axle) of the bolt back into the space of the canvas, which as we move to the side, is not only flattened into a two-dimensional surface, but further reduced to a one-dimensional line segment. Clair’s statement that as the “painting vanishes, the readymade makes its appearance,” is quite true. We could also say that the actual readymade (the bottle brush) makes its appearance as the virtual readymades and their shadows disappear. And vice versa: as the real elements of the work vanish, the virtual elements reappear.

A similar language could be used to describe the intersection of the strings with the glass plates of the Three Standard Stoppages. They trail off at right-angles, as it were, along lines that are orthogonal to the canvas strips, as if they had been rotated out of the virtual space of the “Prussian blue” into the actual space of the canvases. If the strings are analogous to “lines of sight,” they are like threads lying “in” the surface of the perspectival plane, as we have seen in Desargues’ perspective renderings (Figs. 13 and 14) or in Nicéron’s illustration (Fig. 23). In this sense, the strings can be taken as anamorphic lines crossing the representational space of the sheets of glass. Recall what Duchamp’s space was intended to show: his glass has “neither front, nor back; neither top, nor bottom,” and it can be used as a “three-dimensional physical medium” in the construction of a “four-dimensional perspective.” In the Large Glass and the Three Standard Stoppages, Duchamp was both literally and figuratively boxing and encasing the geometrical elements of his iconography–inside glass and inside an n-dimensional projective system. With Tu m’, he was also enclosing the basic elements of his own working method, and, indeed, the basic elements of painting as a general practice, inside a complex pictorial space, one with unusual curvatures.

Duchamp’s works such as the ones I have discussed in this paper, with their various projections and intersections, each in their turn folding up into the next, suggest that he was thinking about different kinds of geometries. Henri Poincaré, among the artist’s most likely mathematical sources, often discusses the interrelationships of geometries.⁽⁷²⁾

Projective geometry, which was prefigured in Renaissance perspective and initially elaborated in the work of such seventeenth-century mathematicians as Desargues and Blaise Pascal,⁽⁷³⁾
was later, during the nineteenth century, recognized as being central to mathematics in general. By the end of the century, both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry had been subsumed under the principles of projective geometry.
⁽⁷⁴⁾

Projective geometry deals with properties of geometrical figures that remain invariant under transformation. It studies mappings of one figure onto another brought about by projection and section, and it tries to find qualities that remain fixed during these procedures (Desargues’ Theorem and Pascal’s Theorem describe famous examples). Twentieth-century mathematicians have invented methods of transformation that are even more general than projection and section. One of the most important of these approaches, topology, considers geometrical properties of figures that are unchanged while these figures undergo deformations such as stretching and bending. Especially in the context of the present discussion, Poincaré can be thought of as the “father
of modern topology,” ⁽⁷⁵⁾ a subject that he referred to as analysis situs (Latin for “analysis of the site”; “topology” coming from the Greek equivalent for “study of the place”). He points out that this geometry “gives rise to a series of theorems just as closely interconnected as those of Euclid.”
⁽⁷⁶⁾

Duchamp’s Tu m’ can very nearly serve as an illustration for Poincaré’s arguments. As pointed out earlier, the elongated shadows can be taken as anamorphic deformations, and thus as references to topological transformations with four-dimensional, or more generally, n-dimensional ramifications (branchings), particularly insofar as anamorphic projections seem to intersect normal space at oblique angles. In ways that are like Holbein’s famous skull, the cast shadows in Tu m’ seem to traverse the space of the picture and, in this sense, they are orthogonal to it (shadows are literally orthogonal to the surfaces on which they are cast). From the perspective of the fourth dimension, the strings in Three Standard Stoppages can also be interpreted as falling away from normal space along perpendicular lines, at least insofar as they plummet toward the horizon of the Bride. Duchamp’s cast shadows, and perhaps his cast segments of strings, are projective analogies for higher-dimensional spaces. His general approach can be seen in the following note:

For an ordinary eye, a point in a three-dimensional space hides, conceals the fourth direction of the continuum–which is to say that this eye can try to perceive physically this fourth direction by going around the said point. From whatever angle it looks at the point, this point will always be the border line of the fourth direction–just as an ordinary eye going around a mirror will never be able to perceive anything but the reflected three-dimensional image and nothing from behind.⁽⁷⁷⁾

Looked at “edge-on,” in the sense of being seen undergoing an n-dimensional rotation, the individual “stoppages” can be taken as trailing off into the fourth direction of what Duchamp
calls the “étendue.”⁽⁷⁸⁾From such a perspective, they would be perceived as points. The viewer equipped with a four-dimensional visual system, to use Duchamp’s words, would be able to ascertain that a “point” is always a “border line” of this “fourth direction.” At the center of the Bride’s garments, the Stoppages recede anamorphically into the labyrinth of the fourth dimension, a space that is orthogonal to normal space. Duchamp was probably aware that in descriptions of n-dimensional geometry, when n is greater than 3, the convention is to say that planes intersect at points, unlike what happens in three-dimensional space where, of course, they intersect along lines.⁽⁷⁹⁾ The curvature of the string does not really affect this n-dimensional argument since curvature depends upon whether or not the space is Euclidean, non-Euclidean, or whatever.⁽⁸⁰⁾ We can, in a sense, choose the space to have any curvature we want.⁽⁸¹⁾

In Tu m’, readymades cast shadows onto the surface of the painting, but these shadows do more than ride on the surface. As we have seen, they are interlocked in curious ways with the entities depicted in the space of the picture, convolutions that indicate Duchamp was interested in the readymades and their shadows as geometrical objects. The shadows themselves have perspectival implications and topological associations; and they are obviously seen differently under changing angles of view. As we walk “around” the picture, it presents shifting aspects. In Tu m’, and, indeed, in most of his works, Duchamp was interested in exploring both actual viewpoint and philosophical point of view, as well as the effects of the two acting together.

Such consequences were apparently on Duchamp’s mind when he chose readymades: bicycle wheels, corkscrews, and hat racks were works of art depending upon how they were perceived. He was involved with a discourse of surface (and reflective surface) in many of his works (often using glass and mirror in their construction). Because projective analogies such as shadows and falling pieces of string can be related to several different geometries, not just to n-dimensional Euclidean, or for that matter n-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry, Duchamp can entail other regimes of meaning into his system. Within any given framework, one which might, say, be used to interpret theThree Standard Stoppages, Network of Stoppages, Tu m’, the Large Glass, Nine Malic Molds, or the readymades, Duchamp understood that the implications of choosing one standpoint over another were manifold (and the etymological associations of this last term are germane here).⁽⁸²⁾

Duchamp believed that, just as how we use a particular geometry to interpret the shape of the world is largely a matter of discretion, as Poincaré argued, so too is our choice of the interpretive frameworks that we use in making our aesthetic judgments. As an artist, Duchamp was engaged in self-referential, contemplative activities. He tried to look at himself seeing, and by so doing, to dislocate himself from the center of his own perspective.

1. Interview with Francis Roberts, “I Propose to Strain the Laws of Physics,”Art News 67 (December 1968): 62.

 

2.Marcel Duchamp, Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (Marchand du Sel), ed. Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson (New York:Oxford University Press, 1973) 33.

 

3.In a note included in the Box of 1914, Duchamp says that “the Three Standard Stoppages are the meter diminished.”Ibid., 22.

 

4.Interview with Katherine Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 81.

 

5.The Network of Stoppages and its relationship to the Large Glass is explained by Richard Hamilton, The Almost Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (London: Arts Council of Great Britain,1966), 49: “The curved lines are drawn using each template of the Standard Stoppages three times, once in each of the three groups. It was Duchamp’s intention to photograph the canvas from an angle in order to put the lines into the perspective required for the Large Glass–a means of overcoming the difficulty of transferring the amorphous curves through normal perspective projection. Photography did not prove up to the assignment and a perspective drawing had to be made.”

 

6. Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the “Large Glass” and Related Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) 63, 105; she credits Ulf Linde with drawing her attention to the different colors of the glass plates; see his Marcel Duchamp (Stockholm: Rabén and Sjögren, 1986) 138.

 

7. Ulf Linde, “MARiée CELibataire,” in Walter Hopps, Ulf Linde, and Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp: Ready-Mades, etc. (1913-1964) (Paris: Le Terrain Vague, 1964), 48; see also Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Abrams, 1970) 463. Henderson (cited n. 6) 105, quotes this passage from Linde in her interpretation of the Bride’s “clothing” as a condenser.

 

8.Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 22, 33.

 

9.This important discovery was made recently by Rhonda Roland Shearerand Stephen Jay Gould; see their essay “Hidden in Plain Sight:Duchamp’s Three Standard Stoppages, More Truly a `Stoppage'(An Invisible Mending) Than We Ever Realized,” Tout-Fait:The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal 1, no. 1 (December1999) News <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=677&keyword=.

 

10.See Craig Adcock, Marcel Duchamp’s Notes from the “Large Glass”: An N-Dimensional Analysis (Ann Arbor, Mich.:UMI Research Press, 1983) esp. 135-46, 189-90; see also, idem,”Marcel Duchamp’s `Instantanés’: Photography and the EventStructure of the Ready-Mades,” in “Event” Arts and Art Events, ed. Stephen C. Foster (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1988) 239-66.

 

11.Duchamp’s Three Standard Stoppages and Marey’s chronophotographs are discussed by Jean Clair, Duchamp et la photographie: Essai d’analyse d’un primat technique sur le développement d’une oeuvre (Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 1977) 26-28, 52. For statements by Duchamp about chronophotography, see his interviews with James Johnson Sweeney, “Eleven Europeans in America,” Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 13 (1946): 19-21, reprinted in Duchamp, Salt Seller, 123-26; and with Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, trans. Ron Padgett (New York: Viking Press, 1971) 34. For Marey’s work, see Étienne-Jules Marey, Le Mouvement (Paris: G. Masson, Éditeur, 1894).

 

12.Schwarz (cited n. 7) 444, says that Duchamp’s chose his title after seeing a sign on a Parisian shop advertizing “stoppage”; see also Francis Naumann, The Mary and William Sisler Collection (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984) 168-71. Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, “Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy, 1887-1968,” in Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, ed. Pontus Hulten (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), in their entry for May 19, 1914, have suggested that the sign read “stoppages et talons,” which would imply fixing holes in the heels (talons) of socks and stockings.

 

13.Robert Lebel, Marcel Duchamp, with texts by André Breton and H.-P. Roché, trans. George Heard Hamilton (New York: Grove Press, 1959) 54.

 

14.In an interview with James Johnson Sweeney filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and broadcast as part of the “Wisdom” series on NBC television in January 1956, Duchamp himself put forward a similar argument: “I like the cracks, the way they fall. You remember how it happened in 1926, in Brooklyn? They put the two panes on top of one another on a truck, flat, not knowing what they were carrying, and bounced for sixty miles into Connecticut, and that’s the result! But the more I look at it the more I like the cracks: they are not like shattered glass. They have a shape. There is a symmetry in the cracking, the two crackings are symmetrically arranged and there is more, almost an intention there, an extra–a curious intention that I am not responsible for, a ready-made intention, in other words, that I respect and love.” “A Conversation with Marcel Duchamp,” reprinted in Duchamp,Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 127-37, the quote is from p. 127. The Large Glass was on view at the “International Exhibition of Modern Art” at the Brooklyn Museum between November 17, 1926, and January 9, 1927. It thus must have been broken on its way back to Katherine S. Dreier’s home in West Redding, Connecticut, in early 1927, rather than in 1926 as Duchamp says.

 

15.Interview with Cabanne (cited n. 11) 75: “It’s a lot better with the breaks, a hundred times better. It’s the destiny of things.” See also Mark B. Pohlad, “`Macaroni Repaired is Ready for Thursday . . .’: Marcel Duchamp as Conservator,” Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal 1, no. 3 (December 2002) Articles <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=910&keyword=>.

 

16.Henderson (cited n. 6) discusses the Bride’s “garments” and their relationship with the Three Standard Stoppages in terms of “telegraphy,” comparing the glass plates in these works to such devices as condensers and insulators; see especially her chap. 8, “The Large Glass as a Painting of Electromagnetic Frequency.”

 

17.Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 39.

18.Marcel Duchamp, Notes, ed. and trans. Paul Matisse (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980), no. 154.

 

19.Marcel Duchamp, Notes, ed. and trans. Paul Matisse (Paris:Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980), no. 154.
 

20.For a more complete discussion of these ideas, see Craig Adcock, “Conventionalism in Henri Poincaré and Marcel Duchamp,” Art Journal 44 (fall 1984): 249-58; see also idem, Marcel Duchamp’s Notes (cited n. 10) 149-54.
 

21.Ecke Bonk, Marcel Duchamp, The Box in a Valise: de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy, trans. David Britt (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) 216-20. See also the letters Duchamp sent to Dreier during late 1935 and early 1936 in Affectionately, Marcel: The Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp, ed. Francis M. Naumann and Hector Obalk (Ghent and Amsterdam: Ludion Press, 2000) 199-207.
 

22.For a discussion of Duchamp’s approach, along somewhat different lines, see Craig Adcock, “Duchamp’s Way: Twisting Our Memory of the Past `For the Fun of It,'” in The Definitively
Unfinished Marcel Duchamp, ed. Thierry de Duve (Halifax: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1991) 311-34.

 

23.Interview Kuh (cited n. 4) 92.

   

24.Interview with Cabanne (cited 11) 75.

 

25.Duchamp, Duchamp du Signe (cited n. 18) 50.

 

26.Esprit Pascal Jouffret, Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions et introduction à la géométrie à n dimensions (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1903), xxviii. For a more detailed discussion of Jouffret’s usage and its importance for Duchamp’s concept of inframince, see Adcock, Marcel Duchamp’s Notes (cited n. 10) 48-55.

 

27. Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2), 88. For more detailed analyses of Duchamp’s use of glass and mirror as metaphors for four-dimensional perspective, see Adcock, Marcel Duchamp’s Notes (cited n. 10), esp. 75-79, 146-49; also idem, “Geometrical Complication in the Art of Marcel Duchamp,” Arts Magazine 58 (January 1984): 105-09

 

28.Interview with Cabanne (cited n. 11) 47.

 

29.Ibid., 38.

 

30.Duchamp, Notes (cited n. 19) no. 139; see also no.153.

 

31.See Henderson (cited n. 6) 63: “The Stoppages‘ arrangement of one clear and two greenish glass plates parallels exactly that of the glass strips mounted on the Large Glass: the top strip is clear and the two below are greenish in hue. Because Duchamp located the Bride’s “Clothing” at the midsection of the Glass, the gravity-drawn thread lines of the Stoppages may have become for him a metonymical sign for the fallen garment of the Bride.”

 

32.Linde, “MARiée CELibataire” (cited n. 7) 60; Arturo Schwarz (cited n. 7, p. 463) says that Duchamp related Traveler’s Folding Item to a “feminine skirt.” See also Molly Nesbit and Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, “Concept of Nothing: New Notes by Marcel Duchamp and Walter Arensberg,” The Duchamp Effect: Essays, Interviews, Round Table, ed. Martha Buskirk and Mignon Nixon (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1996) 131-75. For a number of fascinating connections between Duchamp’s Traveler’s Folding Item and the world at large, see Rhonda Roland Shearer, “Marcel Duchamp: A Readymade Case for Collecting Objects of Our Cultural Heritage along with Works of Art,” Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal 1, no. 3 (December 2000) Collections <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=1090&keyword=>.

 

33.Interview with Roberts (cited n. 1) 62.

 

34.Hilary Putnam, for example, has said that “the overthrow of Euclidean geometry is the most important event in the history of science for the epistemologist.” See his Mathematics, Matter and Method, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), x.

 

35.For one of the most complete discussions of Desargues’ work and for the most reliable translations of his texts, see J. V. Field and J. J. Gray, The Geometrical Work of Girard Desargues (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987). Desargues’ principal essay on projective geometry is Brouillon proiect d’une atteinte aux evenemens des rencontres du Cone avec un Plan (Paris, 1639); his earlier work on perspective, is entitled Exemple de l’une des manieres universelles du S.G.D.L. touchant la pratique de la perspective sans emploier aucun tiers point, de distance ny d’autre nature, qui foit hors du champ de l’ouvrage (Paris, 1636). “S.G.D.L.” is an abbreviation for “Sieur Girard Desargues Lyonnais.” This twelve page brochure included the two high-quality engraved illustrations reproduced here, which are almost certainly by Abraham Bosse (1602-1676); see J. V. Field, The Invention of Infinity: Mathematics and Art in the Renaissance (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 192. Desarques’ perspective treatise was included as an appendix in Bosse’s Maniere universelle de Mr. Desargues, pour pratiquer la perspective par petit-pied, comme le Geometral (Paris, 1648)

 

36.For a discussion of this trend, see Martin Kemp, “Geometrical Perspective from Brunelleschi to Desargues: A Pictorial Means or an Intellectual End?” Proceedings of the British Academy 70 (1984): 89-132.

 

37.Field (cited n. 35) 192-95.

 

38.Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher S. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991); originally published as “Die Perspektive als `symbolische Form,'” in Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, 1924-1925 (Leipzig and Berlin, 1927) 258-330. For a discussion of Panofsky’s contributions to perspective studies, particularly strong in its analysis of sources, see Kim Veltman, “Panofsky’s Perspective: A Half Century Later,” in La Prospettiva rinascimentale: Codificazione e trasgressioni, vol. 1, ed. Marisa Dalai Emiliani (Florence: Centro Di, 1980) 565-84.

 

39.Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 42: “This cinematic blossoming, which expresses the moment of the stripping, should be grafted onto an arbor-type of the bride. This arbor-type has its roots in the desire-gears, but the cinematic effects of the electrical stripping, transmitted to the motor with quite feeble cylinders, leave (plastic necessity) the arbor-type at rest. (Graphically, in Munich I had already made two studies of this arbor type.) Do not touch the desire-gears, which by giving birth to the arbor-type, find within this arbor-type the transmission of the desire to the blossoming into stripping, voluntarily imagined by the bride desiring.”

 

40.J. V. Field, “Linear Perspective and the ProjectiveGeometry of Girard Desargues,” Nuncius 2,no. 2 (1987): 3-40.

 

41.Henderson (cited n. 6) does not refer to Desargues in her discussion of the Bride as an “arbor-type.” She argues that because an “arbor” is an “axle,” Duchamp’s usage should be interpreted as a reference to such devices as the shafts in automobile transmissions or electrical generators. I completely agree that Duchamp could have had these kinds of associations in mind along with his taking an “arbre” to refer to a geometrical axis of rotation.

 

42.Field and Gray (cited n. 35) 61-175.

 

43.Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 27; see also idem, Duchamp du Signe (cited n. 18) 42.

 

44.Field, “Linear Perspective and the Projective Geometry of Girard Desargues” (cited n. 40) 21.

 

45.Duchamp, Notes (cited n. 19) no. 57.

 

46.Ibid., no. 155.

 

47.There are two new sections in the upper right corner of the Large Glass with holes drilled through them to create the “nine shots.” In photographs of the Large Glass taken at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926-27, the “nine shots” are not visible. Duchamp may have incorporated them into the Glass when he was repairing it in 1936.

 

48. “Arguesian” would be the adjectival counterpart of “Cartesian.” René Descartes (1596-1650) and Desargues (1593-1662) were almost exact contemporaries and communicated with one another about mathematical matters; see Field, Invention of Infinity (cited n. 35) 190-97; see also René Taton, L’Oeuvre mathématique de G. Desargues: Textes publiés et commentés avec une introduction biographique et historique, 2d rev. ed. (Lyon: Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Etudes Epistémologiques, distributed by the Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, Paris, 1988).

 

49.I am indebted to Hector Obalk for drawing this connection (or reconnection) to my attention in his talk “What Is an Object? The Belated Career of the Readymade,” at the interdisciplinary colloquium “Methods of Understanding in Art and Science: the Case of Duchamp and Poincaré,” Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 7, 1999.

 

50.Duchamp, Notes (cited n. 19) no. 67.

 

51.Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 35.

 

52.Field, Invention of Infinity (cited n. 37)197; see also Field and Gray (cited n. 35) 60-68.

 

53.Duchamp, Duchamp du Signe (cited n. 18) 54.

 

54.See Adcock, Marcel Duchamp’s Notes (cited n.10) 130-32.

 

55.Lebel (cited n. 13) 132-33.

 

56.Robert Lebel, Sur Marcel Duchamp, with textsby André Breton and H.-P. Roché (Paris and London:Éditions Trianon, 1958); a facsimile edition ofthis book was published by the Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris, in 1996.

 

57.This photograph appears in Robert Lebel, “Dernière soirée avec Marcel Duchamp,” L’Oeil (Paris) no. 167 (November 1968): 18-21; also reproduced in the supplement “Marcel Duchamp et Robert Lebel” in the facsimile edition of Sur Marcel Duchamp (cited n. 56); see also Gough-Cooper and Caumont (cited n. 12), under their entry for April 29, 1942. The photograph was taken just before Duchamp left France for the United States. Mirroring the famous movie script, he sailed from Marseilles to Casablanca, and from there to Lisbon and then to New York, arriving on June 25. See Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, Plan pour ecrire une vie de Marcel Duchamp, vol. 1, Marcel Duchamp catalogue (Paris: Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, 1977) 23.

 

58.Bonk (cited n. 21) 218, argues that Duchamp fashioned the templates for the Three Standard Stoppages in 1918 when he was working on Tu m’ and needed to draw their curvatures several times. This chronology would mean that he used something other than the templates, perhaps tracing paper or some other means, to draw the lines in Network of Stoppages in 1914. See also Duchamp’s correspondence with Katherine S. Dreier in Affectionately, Marcel (cited n. 21) 199-207.

 

59.For a more detailed discussion of Duchamp’s use of shadows on Tu m’, see Adcock, Marcel Duchamp’s Notes (cited n. 10) 41-49. For a more traditional approach, but nonetheless interesting for Duchamp’s work, see Thomas Da Costa Kaufmann, “The Perspective of Shadows: The History of the Theory of Shadow Projection,”Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 38 (1975): 258-87.

 

60.For a more detailed discussion of Tu m’ in relation to non-Euclidean geometry and topology, see Adcock, Marcel Duchamp’s Notes (cited n. 10) 55-58, 101-02.

 

61.Interview with Cabanne (cited n. 12) 40.

 

62.Kemp (cited n. 36) 123-24, points out that Desargues’ discussion of conic sections “helped sow the seeds of non-Euclidian geometry, but was only to be fully taken up by Poncelet in the nineteenth century. Vital steps in the development of new postulates appear to have been taken independently by Kepler and Desargues. The new geometry challenged central assumptions of Euclidian theory. Straight lines came to be interpreted as equivalent to circles which possess radiuses of infinite length, and parallel lines regarded as meeting at infinity.” For the contributions of Poncelet and Kepler alluded to here by Kemp, see Jean-Victor Poncelet, Traité des propriétés projectives des figures (Paris, 1822); Johannes Kepler, Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur (1604); a translation of this last work is included in an appendix, “Kepler’s Invention of Points at Infinity,” in Field and Gray (cited n. 35) 185-88.

 

63.See Field and Gray (cited n. 35) 60-72.

 

64.Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 86.

 

65.Jean-François Nicéron, Thaumaturgus opticus (Paris, 1646); Stephen Jay Gould and Rhonda Roland Shearer, “Drawing the Maxim from the Minim: The Unrecognized Source of Nicéron’s Influence upon Duchamp,”Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal 1, no. 3 (December 2000), argue that Duchamp is very likely to have also used Nicéron’s earlier French edition, which contains material not included in the Latin edition; see Jean-François Nicéron, La Perspective curieuse, ou magie artificielle des effets merveilleux (Paris, 1638) News <http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=896&keyword=>. For an interesting discussion of the ways in which epistemological perspective can affect the interpretation of data, see David Magnus, “Down the Primrose Path: Competing Epistemologies in Early Twentieth-Century Biology,” in Biology and Epistemology, ed. Richard Creath and Jane Maienschein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 91-121.

 

66. For a discussion of Nicéron’s image, see Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990) 210-11; Kemp does not mention Duchamp or Tu m’. Nicéron’s illustration was also included in La perspective curieuse, pl. 33; see Kim H. Veltman, in collaboration with Kenneth D. Keele, Linear Perspective and the Visual Dimensions of Science and Art, Studies on Leonardo da Vinci I (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1986) 164-65.

 

67.For a discussion of this painting, see Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Anamorphic Art, trans. W. J. Strachan (New York: Abrams, 1977) 91-114; for interesting analyses of anamorphosis, see Fred Leeman, Hidden Images: Games of Perception, Anamorphic Art and Illusion from the Renaissance to the Present, trans. Ellyn Childs Allison and Margaret L. Kaplan (New York: Abrams, 1976); see also Kim H. Veltman, “Perspective, Anamorphosis, and Vision,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenshaft 21 (1986): 93-117.

 

68.Holbein’s painting is discussed by Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller; trans. Alan Sheridan (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1981) 88; see also Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1994) 48, 362-64; and Tom Conley, “The Wit of the Letter: Holbein’s Lacan,” in Vision in Context: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight, ed. Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay (New York and London: Routledge, 1996) 45-60.

 

69.Dalia Judovitz, in a discussion of René Descartes’s interests in both “normal” and “aberrant” perspective systems, makes a similar point about Holbein’s image; see her essay “Vision, Representation, and Technology in Descartes,” in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, ed. David Michael Levin (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1993) 66-67. Judovitz discusses Tu m’ in her book Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1995) 221-26, but does not discuss the painting’s anamorphic characteristics.

 

70.Jean Clair, “Duchamp and the Classical Perspectivists,”Artforum 16 (March 1978): 40-49, the quote is from p. 47.

 

71.Ibid., emphasis in the original; see also Clair’s essay, “Marcel Duchamp et la tradition des perspecteurs,” in Abécédaire, vol. 3, Marcel Duchamp catalogue (Paris: Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, 1977) 52-59.

 

72.See Adcock, “Conventionalism in Henri Poincaré and Marcel Duchamp” (cited n. 20) 257.

 

73. For an early discussion of these mathematicians in the context of art history, see William M. Ivins, Jr., “Desargues and Pascal,” chap. 8 in Art & Geometry: A Study in Space Intuitions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946).

 

74.Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972) 285-301, 834-60; see also idem, “Projective Geometry,” in Mathematics in the Modern World, Readings fromScientific American, ed. Morris Kline (San Francisco and London: W. H. Freeman, 1968) 122-27.

 

75.For an accessible source that refers to Poincaré in these terms, see Albert W. Tucker and Herbert S. Bailey, Jr., “Topology,” in Mathematics in the Modern World, Readings from Scientific American, ed. Morris Kline (San Francisco and London: W. H. Freeman, 1968) 134-40.

 

76.Henri Poincaré, Mathematics and Science: Last Essays,trans. John W. Bolduc (New York: Dover, 1963) 58-59.

 

77.Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 91.

 

 

78.The complexities of the four-dimensional continuum are suggested by the following passage from the only note in the Green Box with a specific reference to a higher space (Duchamp’s term is “étendue 4” in the original French): “As there is gradually less differentiation from axis to axis, i.e., as all the axes gradually disappear in a fading verticality, the front and the back, the reverse and the obverse acquire a circular significance: the right and the left, which are the four arms of the front and the back, melt along the verticals. The interior and exterior (in a four-dimensional continuum) can receive a similar identification.” See Duchamp, Salt Seller (cited n. 2) 29; idem, Duchamp du Signe (cited n. 18) 45.

 

79.A modern way of putting this matter would be to say: “Two planes having a common point have at least one more common point. If this is satisfied, the space must be three-dimensional; if it is not satisfied, so that there are two planes with a unique common point, then the space is at least four-dimensional.” Encyclopaedia of Mathematics, s.v. “Higher-Dimensional Geometry,” by A. D. Aleksandrov. For a more sophisticated definition, see H. S. M. Coxeter, Introduction to Geometry (New York and London: John Wiley & Sons, 1961) 185-86.

 

80.There are a large number of possibilities. One of the textbooks that I have on my shelves begins with the following statement: “From the beginnings of geometry until well into the nineteenth century it was almost universally accepted that the geometry of the space we live in is the only geometry conceivable by man. This point of view was most eloquently formulated by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Ironically, shortly after Kant’s death the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry by Gauss, Lobachevski, and Bolyai made his position untenable. Today, we study in mathematics not just one geometry, or two geometries, but an infinity of geometries.” Albrecht Beutelspacher and Ute Rosenbaum, Projective Geometry: From Foundations to Applications(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 1.

 

81.For one of the best discussions of the kinds of issues this statement raises, see Graham Nerlich, The Shape of Space, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

 

82.

A generalized mathematical “surface” is a “manifold” and can have any number of dimensions. It can also have any number of curvatures. This important way of thinking about geometrical configurations is due to Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) and is customarily referred to as “Riemannian Geometry.” This sense of “Riemannian Geometry” can be distinguished from the sense used to refer to his prior invention of a specific (ungeneralized) non-Euclidean geometry with constant positive curvature, customarily referred to as “Riemann Geometry” or elliptical geometry; see Peter Petersen, Riemannian Geometry (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998). In a questionaire about the Three Standard Stoppages in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York dated 1953 (the year the work entered their collection), Duchamp said that the assemblage was “a humorous application of Riemann’s post-Euclidean geometry which was devoid of straight lines” (see Naumann, cited n. 12, p. 170). That Duchamp used the term “post-Euclidean,” rather than simply “non-Euclidean,” indicates that he may very well have been sophisticated enough to have understood the distinctions under discussion here.

 

Figs. 20-22
©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.