click to enlarge

Photograph of Reunion
performance by
Shigeko Kubota, 1968

Figure 1
George Maciunas, Fluxus
(Its historical development
and relationship to
avant-garde movements)
Diagram No. 1-2, 1966

Figure 2
Cunningham
Dance Foundation,
Walkaround Time, 1968

More And moRe.
rules are esCaping our  noticE. they were Secretly put in the museum. ⁽¹⁾

Born in Niigata, Japan, in 1937, Shigeko Kubota grew up in a monastic environment during WWII and the subsequent postwar period. She later studied sculpture in Tokyo in the late 1950s and early 1960s, during which Japan strived to reestablish its financial, political and psychological welfare from the devastation of the war. This period also offered a chance for Japanese artists to move away from fairly confined notions of presentation and cultural isolation from the global art community. Although such avant-garde group, as Gutai, began to evoke innovative ideas in the 1950s. For instance, painting by foot, crashing through papers, throwing paint, or displaying water in Osaka and Tokyo, a gender-biased phenomenon was still a fixed hierarchy of the society. After the failure of local art community to put up any critical response to her work, Kubota took off on a Boeing 707, leaving her native country for New York in 1964. She was drawn to the glittering landscape of the New York art scene, where Pop art, Happening, Minimal and Conceptual work were the dominant manners of the time. Through Yoko Ono, she was soon acquainted with George Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus, and became a core member of Fluxus participating in various street events and performances.

Fluxus’ rebellious ideas (Fig. 1) and its multicultural constitution embraced Kubota and provided her with a nurturing environment to explore an innovative outlet for her creative impulse. Kubota had learned of Duchamp and the underlying concepts and intellectual approach of his work when she was still in Japan and became even more inspired by him when she visited the Duchamp exhibition by Pontus Hulten at the Stockholm Museum in 1967. The next year she met Duchamp in person when she was flying to the opening of Merce Cunningham’s Walk Around Time (Fig. 2) , a performance based on Duchamp’s Large Glass(1915-23) with a setting designed by Jasper Johns. In a lovely story vividly remembered by Kubota:

 

“I met Duchamp on an American Airline flight to Buffalo for the opening of ‘Walkaround Time’ by Merce Cunningham. It was a cold winter in 1968. The airplane couldn’t land at the airport in Buffalo because there was a blizzard from Niagara Falls. We landed at the airport in Rochester, then took a bus to Buffalo. In Toronto later in 1968, I photographed Marcel and John Cage playing chess at the ‘Reunion’ concert.”(2)

Despite the newly raised confusion with regard to the sequence of the precise dates for these two events from which an anecdote on the beginning of their friendship is woven,⁽³⁾ Duchamp had a profound impact on Shigeko Kubota. Not only was he the inspiring father icon for the Fluxus group and for Kubota’s creative impulses, he also offered an unforgettable friendship during the final year of his life. Kubota took part in and photographed Reunion, a chess game organized by John Cage which turned out to be the last public reunion between these two masters of the contemporary creative mind,⁽⁴⁾ and it was here that Kubota began to utilize video technology, a novel means through which dream and reality meet. Three works based on this chess event set forth her artist career as a pioneering video artist.

Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (1970; 1971) & Video Sculpture (1968-75)

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Figure 3
The wire-up chessboard
for Reunion,
Toronto, 1968

Performed at Ryerson Theatre of Ryerson Polytechnic, Toronto, on March 5, 1968, Reunion was organized by John Cage and included the musicians David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, and David Behrman and a wired-up chessboard designed by Lowell Cross (Fig. 3). When Teeny and Marcel Duchamp took turns playing chess with Cage on the stage, the pre-modulated photoreceptors served as a gating mechanism to receive messages of movements and to transmit sound and light. Depending on the moves of the chess pieces, the sound was cut off or rerouted to generate a kind of random music by means of the pre-configured chance operation of two “intellectual minds.” With the photographs she took and material acquired later, Kubota slowly developed three works based on this memorable event: a book, a videotape and a video sculpture in a period of time ranging from 1968 to 1975.

Published in 1970 in a limited edition of 500 numbered copies with a blue cover and inserted in a blue cardboard box, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (Fig. 4) consists of photographs taken during the Reunion performance and a 33 1/3 rpm blue flexidisc (phonograph) of the Reunionsound recording, accompanied by text written by John Cage under the title of “36 Acrostics re. and not re Duchamp.”

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Click to listen
download QuickTime Player

Figure 4
Shigeko Kubota, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, 1970

The videotape of 1972, carring the same title as the book, includes segments of John Cage–telling stories, mediating, playing a piano, sitting bandaged while Nam June Paik measures his brain waves (Figs. 5 & 6)–with still images of Teeny, Duchamp and Cage playing chess inReunion alternating throughout as though they are the interlude in music composition. In addition, footage from Kubota’s visit to the graveyard of the Duchamp family in Rouen in 1972 (Fig. 7)⁽⁵⁾, captures the fleeting movement of wind dancing with the patchy light that pierces through the shadowy grove. A sense of euphoria generates. On and off for three times, the exotic and shaman-like voice of Kubota chanting “Marcel Duchamp, 1887 to 1968,” is the only literal sound intervening with the seemingly timeless silence. The life-death confrontation in an infinite circle is further reinforced through the repetitive expression. This footage was later edited and colored for Kubota’s astounding installation, Marcel Duchamp’s Grave (Fig. 8), at The Kitchen, New York in 1975.

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• 
• 
• 

• Figure 5
• Figure 6
• Figure 7

Shigeko Kubota, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, 1972 [details]

Figure 8
Shigeko Kubota, installation view of Marcel Duchamp’s Grave, 1972-75

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Figure 9
Shigeko Kubota,
Video Chess, 1968-75

The concluding work, the Video Chess (1968-75) (Fig. 9), a sculptural TV, is constructed and posited on the floor with its monitor facing up. A transparent chessboard with transparent chess pieces sits above the TV monitor. Kubota reworked the 1968 Toronto photographs by having them transferred, keyed, matted, and colorized at the Experimental TV Center in Binghampton, NY with the assistance of Ken Dominik, and later at WNET-TV Lab in New York. The monitor plays the transferred and colorized images of Duchamp and Cage playing chess with the original soundtrack emitting. Every crosspoint of the chess matrix has a hole and light cell which are modulated by the proceeding of a chess game. As viewers/players look down/play chess on this transparent chessboard, in Kubota’s words, they are “accompanied by the videotape of the two great masters playing from the otherside of this world.” ⁽⁶⁾

Don’t
yoU ever want to win?
(impatienCe.)
How do you
mAnage to live with
just one sense of huMor?
she must have Persuaded him to smile.⁽⁷⁾

The porta-pack video camera is an integral part of Shigeko Kubota’s work, given that the video camera is to open up a dialogue with the self that is encountered everyday as well as with unknown natures which are uncovered. Margot Lovejoy pinpoints the benefit for the presence of the first portable video camera to the art world:

“Some saw video as an agit-prop tool. Installed in closed-circuit elaborated gallery settings, the video camera with a delayed feedback loop could confront and interact with the viewer in a new dialogue which placed the spectator within the production process as part of the conceptual intentions of the artists. Combined with sound/music or spoken dialogue and text, the medium opened up new aesthetic ground for exploring time/motion/sound/image relationships in a broad range of contexts.” (8)

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Figure 10
Shigeko Kubota

During the 1960s, the Fluxus’ adoption of video into their happening and performance in Europe and the United States created a different climate of aesthetic discourse which attracted a young generation and resulted in their reflecting on video as an effective medium for new art. The possibility to commit personal testaments to tape in any environment, however intimate, and in complete privacy, has made video an exciting feature. Despite its exhausting weight to carry, video recording equipment has always been relatively simple to operate and it is possible to work alone without the intrusive presence of the crews demanded by 16mm filmmaking. It is also easy and relatively cheap to record long monologues on tape. Kubota bought her SONY porta-pack camera in 1970. The flexibility and easy operation of a video camera allows Kubota to document her daily encounters with herself and others during her travels (Fig. 10). Later, she works on the footage acquired, transforming personal narratives into a confronting public display. It is noteworthy that Kubota is used to handling video work herself throughout the process. Herewith, she gains a total control over what she choses to preserve or erase.

To Kubota, the unique qualities of video with “no past history, no objecthood, and no agree-upon-value”⁽⁹⁾have set up a new category for equal competition among artists. In a long interview conducted by Katsue Tomiyama in 1991, Kubota praises video because “male and female artists began the competition at an equal point.” ⁽¹⁰⁾ Her attraction to the video, furthermore, is educed by its “oriental” and “organic” nature–“like brown rice, brown curb, like seaweed, made in Japan.” ⁽¹¹⁾–the single-channel TV is capable of bridging two extreme worlds–“TV is always somewhere between dream and reality.” ⁽¹²⁾ She later contemplates, “video acts as an extension of the brain’s memory cells. Therefore, life with video is like living with two brains, one plastic brain and one organic brain. One’s life is inevitably altered. Change will effect even our relationship with death, as video is a living altar. Yes, videotaped death negates death as a simple terminal.”⁽¹³⁾

the wind-break becaMe
A
woRk of art
(it began Casually
likE
the firepLace).⁽¹⁴⁾

Closely examining these three works, one can tell the apparent contrast between the independence of individual segments seen in the blue book (1968-72) as well as in the videotape (1972), and the integration of Video Chess (1968-75) as the sculptural entity. The 1972 videotape of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage in which fragments of images alternate with one another, barely has the trace of editing revealed. In the 1991 interview, Kubota admitted her reluctance to alter the video-recorded images, which is coherent with what we see in the 1972 videotape, an open-ended quality register with a sense of naivety. On the contrary,Video Chess is eloquently constructed and presented under an authoritative art form. This time, Kubota ruminates on the overall presentation as a whole as oppose to co-existing fragments presented in the prior video of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. The conceptual connection is reinforced by the absence of both intellectual minds. In other words, the absence of both Cage and Duchamp has turned into an abstract physicality. The spectator can only be aware of their presence by the arbitrary appropriation offered by Shigeko Kubota. It is as if she is the invisible and all-powerful shaman who channels and embodies the men-objects with our living world in a simulated territory where life and death negate each other, forming an endless cycle.

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Figure 11
Num June Paik,
T.V. Cello with
Charlotte Moorman, 1971

Figure 12
Peter Campus, Head
of a Man with Death
on His Mind, 1978

Figure 13
Bill Viola, The
Veiling, 1995

During visit to Duchamp’s grave, the ritual act of presenting an offering (her blue book) on Duchamp’s grave and chanting was “as in the oriental family custom of putting rice cookies on the dead ancestor’s altar.”⁽¹⁵⁾ Usually performed by an official in ancient eastern culture, chanting during the funeral rite is regarded as the emotional mourning toward the loss of loved ones and a communication with them on the other side of the world.

Aesthetically, the poetic and exquisite elaboration of Video Chess is quite appealing and from this Kubota would further mature as an original and independent video artist and become a significant figure among her peers, such as Nam June Paik (Fig. 11), Peter Campus (Fig. 12), Bill Viola (Fig. 13), Gary Hill, and Dan Graham, who together mark the first phase of Video Art. However, not so much to deduce the conceptual connection between Kubota’s Japanese and Duchampian “roots,” ⁽¹⁶⁾ her ability to integrate personal memories and history into an exquisite sensibility substantiates Kubota’s identity as a female artist who tackles motifs rooted in art and life and elevates them to the hegemonic discourse of art history. To Kubota, art making is always something deeply associated with nature and culture alike. In the case of these three works derived from the chessReunion, the materialization of Duchamp and Cage is appropriated and manipulated by Kubota. The search for truthful perceptions of history, perhaps, is best summed up by Kubota’s self-description for her video sculpture Adam and Eve of 1991. An environmental work drawn on Kubota’s friendship with Al Robbins and the influence by which Duchamp played Adam with Brogna Perlmutter as Eve in Picabia’s Relâche (1926), a ballet work inspired by Lucas Cranach’s painting, Adam and Eve is “an appropriation of an appropriation of an appropriation of an appropriation.”⁽¹⁷⁾From this perspective, the duality between subject and object has been erased because it no longer represents authenticity but a repetition of the past.

---

Notes

 

1. John Cage, “36 Acrostics re. and not re Dcuhamp,” in Shigeko Kubota, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage(Takeyoshi Miyazawa, 1968) no. 19.

2.Shigeko Kubota: Video as a Form of Spiritual Collision with the World, exhibition catalogue, Fondazione Mudima, Italy (19 May 1994) 38.

3. During my research on this memorable event held in Toronto, 1968, I came across the confusion of dates as to the first performance of the Walkaround Time by Merce Cunningham and that of the Reunion performance by John Cage and Duchamp. According to the chronological table available on the web site of the Merce Cunningham Organization <http://www.merce.org/repertory_chronology.html>, Walkaround Time was first performed on 10 March 1968, while Reunion was scheduled on 5 March 1968, which is five days prior to the Cunningham performance in Buffalo. Judging by the performing dates for these two events, Ms. Kubota couldn’t possibly have known Teeny and Duchamp when she was attending the Reunion and photographed the chess game. Unable to reach Ms. Kubota for the clarification of the confusion, thus, it seems more logical that the trip to Buffalo could well have been a planned reunion with the Duchamps and participation in the event, other than an accidental encounter on a plane to Buffalo for the opening of Walkaround Time.

4. Duchamp died a few months later in October 2, 1968.

5. According to Kubota, “It was a very windy day. I took a train from Paris to Rouen, then took a cab to his cemetery. There were two entrances. I didn’t know which one to take. At the flower shop nearby the cemetery, I asked a woman, ‘where is Marcel Duchamp’s grave?’ She looked at me and said, ‘Who is he?’Then she opened the telephone book. I was very shocked. Alone, after a long search in the vast cemetery, the weight of my porta-pack crushing on my shoulder, I finally found Duchamp’s grave next to that of Jacques Villon, his brother. …” See Shigeko Kubota: Video as a Form of Spiritual Collision with the World 41.

6. Shigeko Kubota, 1981.

7. Cage, in Kubota, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, no. 6.

8.Margot Lovejoy, Postmodern Currents, Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media (Ann Harbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989) 195.

9. Ibid.

10. Shigeko Kubota: Video as a Form of Spiritual Collision with the World, exhibition catalogue, Fondazione Mudima, Italy (19 May 1994) 9.

11. Cited from Moira Roth, p. 106; first published in Jeanine Mellinger and D. L. Bean, “Shigeko Kubota,” interview in Profile 3.6 (November 1983): 3.

12.Shigeko Kubota, 1981.

13. Artist’s statement in the exhibition catalogue, Shigeko Kubota, Video Sculpture,ed. Zdenek Felix (Berlin: Daadgalerie; Essen: Museum Folkewang; Zürich: Kunsthaus Zürich, 1982) 13.

14.Cage, in Kubota, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, no. 7.

15. Mary Jane Jacob, ed., Shigeko Kubota: Video Sculpture (New York: American Museum of the Moving Image, 1991) 24.

16. Because of the monastic association of her father’s family, Kubota had frequently witnessed funerals as a child. She recalled, “I often did homework inside a temple room where fresh bones were stored. How I plyed with ghosts…all these childhood memories flashed back to my head.” Mary Jane Jacob, ed., Shigeko Kubota, Video Sculpture80.

17. Ibid, 68.

Fig. 2 © Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation, Inc., NY, 2002
Fig. 13 Collection of the artist, courtesy Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London

(The following example of Marcel Duchamp’s encounter with the mind of Leonardo da Vinci is excerpted from a longer essay. Duchamp discovered Leonardo’s anatomical writings and drawings, through photogravure reproductions, in the Bibliotheque Sainte Genevieve in Paris, first as a curious visitor in 1910, then as a professional librarian with a great deal of spare time, in 1913-14. Outside the library, the publication of a new French translation of Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting in 1910 aroused great interest among all three Duchamp brothers and their Cubist friends at Puteaux.)

In his Treatise on Painting Leonardo da Vinci advised:

“When you wish to remember well something you have studied, do this: when you have drawn the same object so many times that you have it in your memory, try to execute it without the model. Now trace the model on a thin smooth glass, and place it upon the drawing you have made without the model, and note well where the tracing does not coincide with your drawing. Where you find that you have made errors, resolve not to repeat your mistakes. Return to the model and draw the wrong part again so many times that you will have committed its image to the mind.” (1)

Leonardo urged young painters to study nature, observe acutely, and remember everything, in order to develop the ability to produce complex compositions with many figures in motion on a broad expanse of landscape. Marcel Duchamp, in a note in the Green Box, (Fig. 1) contradicted this passage from the Treatise on Painting. He seemed to acknowledge its significance by undoing it. He ran Leonardo’s advice in reverse;

“To lose the possibility of recognizing 2 similar objects– 2 colors, 2 laces, 2 hats, 2 forms whatsoever. To arrive at the Impossibility of sufficient visual memory to transfer from one like object to another the memory imprint. –Same possibility with sounds; with brain facts” (2)

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Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp, Note from
the Green Box, 1934

Duchamp evoked a psychic state in which, from one instant to the next, the mind would sustain no overlapping visual imprint (or tracing on glass, as Leonardo might say). He called for a total collapse of short–term memory. This would be a terrifying experience. But looked at in another way, it would be intensely interesting. Everything would be new all the time. An artist who could attain this frame of mind, even to a minute degree, would produce some unforeseen works. Such an artist, Duchamp hoped, might even become liberated from the bounds of practice and tradition, and “make works which are not works of ‘art’.”

A painter could make a sculpture. That would be nothing new. But in an extreme state of self–induced forgetfulness, a painter might lose track of which of the five senses governs his art form. He might slip away from the use of the retina, the organ of sight, and start hearing, for example, rather than seeing. He could become a composer of music without even noticing it.

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Marcel Duchamp, Note #183,
in Paul Matisse
(ed. & trans.),
Marcel Duchamp,
Notes, 1983

A previously unknown collection of notes by Duchamp was published in 1980, a dozen years after his death. The sheet which came to be designated as #183 reads: (Fig. 2)

“…like…luminous electric lights which light up successively, a line of identical sounds could turn around the listener in arabesques (on the right/ left/ over/ under)…

Develop: one could, after training the listener’s ear, succeed in drawing a resembling and recognizable profile. With more training make large sculptures in which the listener would be a center. For example, an immense Venus de Milo made of sounds around the listener. This probably presupposes an aural training from childhood and for several generations.”⁽³⁾

A proposal for another musical occurrence, a construction made of a single sound drawn out over time, sprang out of the mind of Marcel Duchamp during his study of Leonardo’sWindsor Anatomy, Folio B. It is as if Duchamp, in the course of pondering the most succinct and beautiful anatomical drawings ever made, was overcome by a wave of the esthetic amnesia he had only dared to imagine. Had he succeeded in making one of those “works which are not works of ‘art'”?

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Figure 4
French translation
of da Vinci’s manuscript

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Figure 3
Leonardo da Vinci,
Transcription of
the manuscript page

Duchamp jotted down instructions for “The Tuner,” a performance for a solo piano tuner on an empty stage. It was based on another jotting– the number 3, written backwards eight times, by Leonardo da Vinci. The numerals run like leaking water down the right–hand margin of Leonardo’s manuscript page, disconnected from the block of text. (Fig. 3) A transcription of the original Italian, and a translation into French, follow the photogravure facsimile of Leonardo’s original, and here the eight 3’s are lined up in a neat horizontal row that stands out as a peculiar typographical feature, an unexpected visual rhythm. (Fig. 4) Any reader, with no knowledge of Italian or French, can decipher this line: “3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3.”

Duchamp and Leonardo shared an infatuation with the number “3.” A triad was used by both artists to hold back the tide of infinity, or infinite complexity, at a very early point in the enumerating or measuring process. “Three is infinity,” Duchamp said. “One is unity, two is double, duality, and three is the rest.”⁽⁴⁾ There was no need to go any further. “When you’ve come to the word three, you have three million–it’s the same as three.”⁽⁵⁾

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Figure 5
Marcel Duchamp,
The Bride Stripped Bare
by Her Bachelors,
Even [a k.a. The
Large Glass], 1915-23

The list of components of the Large Glass executed in triplicate covers the work from top to bottom: 3 draft pistons, 3 isolating plates, 3 standard stoppages,3 rollers on the chocolate grinder, 3 oculist witnesses, 3 X 3 cannon shots, 3 X 3 malic molds, 3 X 3 capillary tubes. A catalog of the unexecuted tripled parts, called for in the Green Box and the posthumous notes but ever appearing in the Large Glass, includes the following: 3 splash/rashes, 3 falls, 3 feet for the Juggler of Gravity, 3 summits for the combat arbles, 3 desire centers,”⁽⁶⁾3 “positive rods of the desire dynamo,”⁽⁷⁾and the “hot chamber of the triple decision.”⁽⁸⁾
So Duchamp used the number three to tie together, as with bits of wire, the members of his ungainly automaton called The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.(Fig. 5)

Leonardo used tripling for the reverse project, the project of aking apart a once–living human body. He needed an ordering mechanism for material that might otherwise slip out of his control. As he removed the outerlayers of the body and probed into the tissues of a human corpse he repeatedly,at each step of the way, for each limb and each organ, called for three separatedissections: one carried out from the top, one from the side,and one from the ottom. Each dissection, in turn, would require, if he could get it, a fresh pecimen.

Anatomists in Leonardo’s time had no preservatives, and corpses egan to decompose even as the investigators worked. If a forearm, for example, ere placed on the table with its palm facing downward, tissue could be removed with a scalpel and, very gingerly, with fingers, to reveal the blood vessels. The next step, in theory, would be to turn the arm over. The anatomist could then trace, on the underside of the arm and hand, the sources and destinations of the vessels already laid bare. But this was impossible because of disintegration. The specimen would already be undermined by rot, and “on account,” said Leonardo,
“of the very great confusion which results from the mix–up of membranes with veins, arteries, nerves, tendons, muscles, bones, and especially blood, which itself dyes every part the same color….Therefore it is necessary to perform more dissections. You need three to acquire full knowledge of the veins and arteries, destroying with the utmost diligence all the rest, and another three to obtain knowledge of the membranes, and three for the tendons, muscles, and ligaments, three
for the bones and cartilages and three for the anatomy of the bones.”⁽⁹⁾

Clearly this was goullish work, and Leonardo issued a warning to prospective artist–anatomists; “Though you may have a love for such things you will perhaps be deterred by a weak stomach, or, if this does not restrain you, then
perhaps by the fear of living through the night hours in the company of these corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to behold.”⁽¹⁰⁾

Leonardo needed the number three to organize and objectify, and perhaps to keep some of the horror at bay. Proposals for a great series of dissections, to be accompanied by drawings and diagrams, appear as unrealized fragments in several of his manuscripts. In the Windsor Anatomy, Folio Bhe writes:

“We shall make three diagrams…with the bones sawn asunder so as to show their thickness and hollowness. Three other diagrams we shall make for the bones entire, and for the nerves which spring from the nape of the neck and showing into what limbs they ramify. And three others for the bones and veins and where they ramify, then three for the muscles and three for the skin and the measurements,and three for the woman to show the womb and the menstrual veins which go to the breasts.”(11)

At this moment, while writing this passage, Leonardo was seized by a fit of graphic exuberance. At least this is what the evidence on the manuscript page appears to record. His hand would not stop drawing a mark that looks like the letter E, eight times, down the side of the page. This marginal calligraphy reveals a childlike excitement. It also demonstrates a simple truth about human anatomy. The musculature of the right hand is structured so that, when manipulating a writing implement or tool, a clockwise circular motion feels natural and pleasurable. (This fact has come to determine the design of cork–screws, can–openers, and the configurations of our written alphabet.) Leonardo was a born draftsman, perhaps the greatest to ever live, and a born lefty. At an early age he developed full command of his most important tool, the drawing hand. But the left hand wants to follow a counter–clockwise path, and he refused to impede its natural movement in any way. It is for this reason that Leonardo taught himself to produce ‘mirror–writing,’ running across the page backwards, from right to left. But now his hand would not stop spinning like a tiny funnel cloud, delineating the numeral 3 in reverse. It escaped from his text and spilled in a free–fall down the side of the page.

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Figure 6
Marcel Duchamp,
Bride, 1912

Marcel Duchamp arrived on this scene, on the back of Sheet #20 in the Windsor Anatomy, Folio B, over four–hundred years later, in 1910. For the next two years he struggled as a painter, secretly, with Leonardo’s anatomical images. He was in awe of their mechanical complexity, and their chilling sense of precision. Yet they were terribly alive, sometimes almost eliciting an olfactory experience of life and death. At the end of this struggle, during the summer of 1912, Duchamp produced the painting the Bride. (Fig. 6) He was approaching artistic maturity by following the solitary path he had set for himself, a path that would call for spells of lengthy contemplation intertwined with impulsive, illogical actions.

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Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp,Note
#183,in Paul Matisse
(ed. & trans.),
Marcel Duchamp, Notes, 1983

Duchamp was deliberately constructing within himself a pathway to delirium, a controlled and self-imposed delirium. He wanted to have this state of mind available as an artist’s tool, to provide the possibility of bringing together
two ideas that had never been joined before, or to jumble up the senses, switching, for example, seeing and hearing. At some moment during these two years Duchamp must have, following his own prescription, lost “the possibility of recognizing 2 similar objects…2 forms whatsoever…” His mind stumbled upon the aberrant trail of reversed 3’s in Leonardo’s anatomical manuscript. In an instant, it seems, his mind was cleared of his growing preoccupation with the number 3. He had ‘lost the possibility’ of recognizing the number, but saw it instead as an E, not the written letter, but the musical note. His hand took off like Leonardo’s and started to spin out backward 3’s, or E’s. The initial effort was botched (Fig. 7); Duchamp was right-handed, so the counter-clockwise motion of his pen went awry. But in his next attempt he produced eight exuberant E’s in an upwardly tilted procession,followed, for good measure, by another row of four. Duchamp had emerged with a piece of music, a miniature “happening,” composed solely of the note E from the musical octave. He took a “readymade” activity, the maintenance of a musical instrument, and transformed it into the performance itself. He was fifty years ahead of his time:

“THE TUNER–

Have a piano tuned on stage–

EEEEEEEE

EEEE

or

make a movie of the tuner tuning, and synchronize the tunings on a piano.

Or rather, synchronize the tuning of a hidden piano.

or

have a piano tuned on the stage in the dark.

Do it technically and avoid

all musicianship–“⁽¹²⁾

Duchamp left this note unpublished, among the group to be discovered after his death.It shows that readymade music was a step on the path to readymade objects,and that this path led him through Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, past the number 3.

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NOTES

1. A. Phillip McMahon, trans., Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1956) 47; Josephin Peladan, trans. and ed., Leonard de Vinci, Traite de la Peinture (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1910) 101.

2. Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson, eds., The Writings of Marcel Duchamp
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1973) 31.

3. Paul Matisse, ed. and trans., Marcel Duchamp, Notes (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983) note #183.

4. Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (New York: Viking Press, 1971) 47.

5. Cabanne, Dialogues 47.

6. Matisse, Notes, notes #63 and #251.

7. Ibid., note #162 recto.

8. Ibid., note #131.

9. Edward MacCurdy, ed., The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (New York: George Braziller, 1954) 160;and Serge Bramly, Leonardo (New York: Penguin Books, 1991) 374.

10. MacCurdy, Notebooks 166.

11.Ibid. 131-132.

12. Matisse,Notes, note #199.

 

Figs. 1, 2, 5-7
©2002 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

The apparatus composing the piece is comprised of three parts: a funnel, several open top cars, and a set of numbered balls. … The placing of notes (numbers) in the score was determined by the way in which the balls came through the funnel and were taken out of the cars. … The composition itself was determined by Duchamp in his description of the system and his examples of musical scoring⁽¹⁾

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• 
• 

• Figure 1 (recto)
• Figure 2 (verso)

In discussing how he arrived at his implementation of Marcel Duchamp’s musical “score,”La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même: Erratum Musical, (Figs. 1 and 2) for his 1987 performance of Duchamp’s music, Peter Kotik first explained the technical instructions which produced the score itself, noting that “I intentionally avoided implementing my own musical ideas. Indeed, it was a realization rather than a composition.”⁽²⁾ The reason for his description of the score he used as a “realization” is simply that the score was determined by a particular kind of “chance operation” laid out in a set of instructions from 1912-1913. The kind of “chance” used by Duchamp is one where the precise sequence of a set of carefully described elements are assembled into one instance of a very large, complex permutation itself deflected from being purely mechanical through the intervention of an interpreting consciousness. What creates this situation are the lacunae left in the instructions, thus leaving aspects of the implementation uncertain, open to the interpretation of the one who sets up the apparatus and employs it. As a result, even though these works are technically deterministic–limited set of elements, limited set of possible outcomes (all the possible arrangements of notes in the score could be worked out mathematically)–the actual implementation has the character of being “random” because there is no overriding intelligence actually setting the pieces into a particular order, even though their arrangement is (paradoxically) dependent on an overriding intelligence. It is only possible to perceive the order from the vantage point of process, where each individual “score” or “implementation” is a particular instance of the rules being followed in a specific way. This is the meaning of what Duchamp terms his “chance operations.” La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical (as used by Kotik) is simply one instance of those operations.

The omissions left in the instructions for these works are significant. Because there are areas which remain unknown in the how of implementation, each time these instructions are implemented, the one following the instruction is forced to “fill in” the missing details,⁽³⁾thus introducing a very significant variable into an otherwise mechanical process. It is not possible to simply sit down and perform the necessary permutations of elements (using a computer program for example) and produce the totality of all possible scores; such a construction would only result in all possible scores producible using those assumptions about how to fill in the details. Logically, different assumptions produce a different score. This is an important factor since it sets the emphasis in neither the results nor the mechanical process, but in how that mechanical process is imagined by the implementer.

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp,
Note from the
Green Box, 1934

Figure 4
Marcel Duchamp,
The Bride Stripped Bare
by Her Bachelors, Even
[a k.a. The Large
Glass], 1915-23

Figure 5
Marcel Duchamp,
Note from the
Green Box, 1934

On a note in the Green Box, (Fig. 3) Duchamp makes the following comment, suggestive given both the title of La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical and the problem of its score:

Use ‘delay’ instead of picture or painting: ‘picture on glass’ thus becomes ‘delay in glass’–but ‘delay in glass’ does not mean ‘picture on glass’

[translator’s note: The expression “retard en verre” is a homophone of several others, notably, “retard d’envers” (delayed reversal), “retard envers” (delay in relation to/delay towards), etc.]⁽⁴⁾

The piece is a musical notation to La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (The Large Glass)(Fig. 4) that comes very early in the planning stages for this major work. The idea of delays, particularly “delays towards,” is useful since the apparatus produces a delay in the creation of the score, a process which is itself delayed by the points before and after the functioning of the apparatus which require interpretation to continue. It produces music whose performance is delayed by the method of its composition, putting the performer in the position of one of the “bachelors” confronted by a “bachelor machine”–a device which does not produce an artwork so much as the instructions for producing an artwork (a musical score is a set of instructions for making music, but is not itself music). At the same time, the performer who would normally “realize” the score as music is forced into the position of the composer, since the composer must provide an essential element for the realization of the instructions (hence, the creation of the music). This is the event being displayed through the bottom plane of La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même, which makes the role of “retard” (delay) a literal one: as Kotik notes, not only are the instructions for the apparatus incomplete (Duchamp’s title for the system is: An apparatus automatically recording fragmented musical periods), its functioning as a score is also left uncertain, forcing the performer to find ways of implementing it.⁽⁵⁾ The kinds of problems associated with this score are paralleled by the instructions for the readymades, also recorded on a note in the Green Box: (Fig. 5)

Specifications for ‘Readymades’ By planning for a moment to come (on such a day, such a date, such a minute), ‘toinscribe a readymade‘–the readymade can later be looked for–(with all kinds of delays). The important thing is just this matter of timing, this snapshot effect, like a speech delivered on no matter what occasion but at such and such an hour. It is a kind of rendez-vous.(6)

click to enlarge

Figure 6
Marcel Duchamp,
In Advance of the
Broken Arm, 1915
(Studio Photograph)

What is notable about this description is the way that it does not mention any of the typically significant characteristics of readymades: their arbitrariness, their lack of aesthetic response, etc.⁽⁷⁾ Instead it suggests that the decision to make a readymade comes first linguistically, for which an object is later simply picked up. For example, Snow Shovel (In Advance of the Broken Arm)(Fig. 6) may have begun as the statement, with the shovel later purchased, adjusted, and then presented as a “readymade.” This note suggests that these objects are first and foremost language–inscribed–rather than related to conventional aesthetics in either positive or negative terms. The selection is based on how well it fits the words which will be attached to it; the words come first, the readymade simply their illustration. The object is then an imaginary (subjective) connection between those words and some physical construction in the world, whereby this connection repeats the emphasis on the mind of the interpreter as decisive in the “chance” operation of discovering the score–the necessary “missing” element in Duchamp’s instructions for La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical.

“Chance operations” are left “open to chance” only in the sense that the missing details of the instructions are open to interpretation in their implementation. The character of a “speech delivered on no matter what occasion but at such and such an hour” would be a statement of whatever happened to be the most recent subject of personal thought, a representation of the “desire” of that particular instant. By making this the analogy for the process–a snapshot–Duchamp implies the readymade is a presentation of his subjective moment, which is then connected to some physical support (the actual “readymade” we know) whose realisation depends on how he implements his instructions at some later moment which could include reconsideration, revision and reinterpretation (the “delays”). The initial statement limits the possible implementations, but only just. This is the same situation in La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même: Erratum Musical, the apparatus with its funnel and row of boxes. As the balls fall into the boxes, they present one order which is then altered further by their being removed and ordered into the score based on another set of instructions. Further complicating this is the fact that there are six voices, but they are not specified.⁽⁸⁾ While there are a finite number of possible arrangements in each interpretation of the instructions, it is also not directly discernable which arrangement will appear at any given moment, nor, considering the role interpretation plays in implementing the apparatus, are the results necessarily always going to be the same even if the sequence of balls is the same. Depending on how the framework for making the selection is decided based on the written instructions, different results will follow. The initial conditions of the search determine the outcome.

It is this dependence on initial conditions that renders the outcome of this process indeterminate. It is the change between one interpretative framework and another which is the significant point in this “physics,” and which is relevant to understanding the role of the interpretation of the implementer in the “measurement”:

Luggage Physics Determine the difference between the volumes of air displaced by a clean shirt (ironed and folded) and the same shirt when dirty.(9)

click to enlarge

Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp,
Three Standard
Stoppages, 1913-14

While the different volumes of clean and dirty laundry may seem an absurdity, if treated seriously, one is forced to make a decision about the physical state of the dirty shirt–ironed and folded, or crumpled into a ball, or in some other state, etc.–before even being able to contemplate the possibility of measurement. Each situation will obviously result in a different value. Some of the dirty shirts would have more volume than the clean ones, while others may have the same volume, or possibly less volume; it depends on what the conditions are at the moment of measurement. This repeats the Three Standard Stoppages: (Fig. 7) we are left with an approximation of the unit of measure, rather than a singular “standard”⁽¹⁰⁾–in this case the question of what kind of shirt, state of that shirt when dirty, physical dimension of both clean and dirty shirts, etc., determines what volume results. “Chance” within this framework is the particular choices made by the implementer following the instructions, with concomitant effects on the measurements through the implementation. How the instructions apply to the situation renders an otherwise apparently mechanical, deterministic situation indeterminate. The key factor in this situation is “desire”: the desire to know the result, compounded by the (subjective) desire which directs the implementer in a particular direction. In the case of Kotik’s implementation of La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical, it is his “desire” to allow the SEM Ensemble to perform this score which structures his interpretation of it.⁽¹¹⁾

There is a dialectic opposition in this situation between defined (instructions) and undefined (interpretation / desire of interpreter). The instructions appear to produce a framework of specific limitations, a system which is then undermined at its foundation by the role an interpreter must play in order to actually follow the instructions as written. However, once that point of indeterminacy passes, the apparatus functions mechanically until another point of interpretation intervenes in its functioning, producing a “delay” in the apparatus: a stoppage. We stop, awaiting further interpretation before proceeding. This is what is meant by “chance operations”–rather than those aspects which are not left to human will and understanding, it is the human element which is the locus of “chance” itself:

Your chance is not the same as my chance, just as your throw of the dice will rarely be the same as mine.(12)

The process of each person doing something–which Duchamp relates directly to “chance”–is unique to that person. This is the basis of the first of the musical scores he produced: three people draw notes out of a hat. However, this kind of chance is a very simple one, where it is possible to describe all possible results through a permutation of the possibilities; the apparatus used for La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même: Erratum Musical is a development and refinement of this earlier process where the permutation becomes problematic.

Duchamp has emphasized the importance of the “chance operation” being something other than the manipulation of a sequence of permutations. Simply because some of his early chance procedures (1912-1913) are reducible in these terms does not necessarily mean that this was important to his later procedures which develop from them. It is a configuration of personal possibilities. In describing the “possible,” he emphasizes the relation of the elements as other than a set of probable outcomes:

Possible
The figuration of a possible.(not as the opposite of impossible
nor as related to probable nor as subordinated to likely) possible is only a physical “caustic”[vitriol type] burning up all aesthetics or callistics⁽¹³⁾

The implication within this construct of “possible” is based on the physical implementation in a negative sense–the literal application reducing all outcomes to a particular one, a situation where aesthetics no longer applies because of the deterministic result. Taken in relation to “chance operations” this would be the functioning of the apparatus independent of human control. This discussion of “possible” can be understood as related to “chance operations”: the permutation of elements described in the first musical piece (also titledErratum Musical) could be produced by purely mechanical means (a process of substitution) since the elements are not so much altered through the understanding of the instructions as they are selected, then presented in a particular order–that of their selection from inside the hat. This “chance operation” is qualitatively different from that which Kotik encountered: necessary details must be supplied by the implementer. It is only through the “chance” (personal) invention of the missing details that subsequent “random” action happens. Even though when operated, the apparatus produces a sequence of elements within set parameters, the meaning of that sequence is not actually determined within Duchamp’s instructions. There are six “voices,” but the parameters and relationship of those voices is unknown. On both sides of the apparatus’ functioning there are points of unknown significance, making us aware of the gap between looking at his instructions and trying to follow them.

In spite of the emphasis on the spaces between instruction and implementation in his version of “chance operations,” Duchamp has claimed a distrust of language. However, this failure to communicate is literally necessary for the kind of “chance” his work employs. Without the problem posed by the abstraction where “you’re lost,” the human intervention is unnecessary.

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted. Language is just no damn good–I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. Once I became interested in that group of philosophers in England, the ones who argue that all language tends to become tautological and therefore meaningless. I even tried to read that book of theirs on The Meaning of Meaning. I couldn’t read it, of course, couldn’t understand a word. But I agree with their idea that only a sentence like ‘the coffee is black’ has any meaning–only the fact directly perceived by the senses. The minute you go beyond that, into abstractions, you’re lost.(14)

click to enlarge

Figure 8
Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain, 1917
(Photograph by
Alfred Stieglitz, 1917)

Figure 9
Marcel Duchamp, Given: 1.
The Waterfall / 2.
The Illuminating Gas,
1946-66

This statement sounds odd given the very abstract nature of his work and the high degree of misinformation Duchamp has provided over the years about it. Simply considering the many variations of the Fountain (Fig. 8) incident,⁽¹⁵⁾ and the degree to which he was unwilling to provide any information about Etant Donnés (Fig. 9) during his lifetime⁽¹⁶⁾ suggests that he may be providing yet more misinformation about his work and working process. Yet, these comments are suggestive considering the kinds of problems his instructions present in their implementation. They are an illustration of the difficulty which abstractions present to communication: to return to the luggage physics problem, how do we approach measuring the “dirty shirt”? While a clean and a dirty shirt do present different, individually understandable aspects, the problem is not one of clean or dirty shirts, but of deciding how to proceed with measuring them. Any measurement would either be provisional or, more likely, incomplete and contingent–an approximation based on several different measurements, as the Three Standard Stoppages refer to the meter and present approximations of the meter, but not the actual meter itself.

Underlying this whole discussion of what Duchamp says is his working process is the problem of “Can he be believed?”–presented by the intentional fallacy.⁽¹⁷⁾ Whether he actually worked in the fashion he has claimed, or did something very different in actuality, is distinct from the problem posed by “chance operations.” The version of “chance” which Duchamp suggests has been (in)directly influential through its influence on John Cage.⁽¹⁸⁾ This makes an examination of Duchamp’s “chance” not only appropriate, but necessary and important to evaluating his “chance operations.”

In interpreting this “chance” process we are confronted by the same problems Peter Kotik encountered in attempting to implement La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical and produce his score. We are forced to look elsewhere for more details to help answer the unknown aspects of the equation. That these are things which Duchamp said does have some bearing on other things he said, and while the reconstruction here does omit certain details and emphasize others in order to create the impression of clarity, there may actually be no clarity at all. Statements made at different times in his life and edited over long periods may not be as consistent as those statements made all at once, as with a speech delivered on no matter what occasion but at such and such an hour. The idea that these “chance operations” are limited within specific frameworks gives us the possibility of a rendez-vous with his ideas of chance, but we are left uncertain as to whether we will simply find ourselves waiting at the station for a train which may never arrive.

NOTES

1. Peter Kotik, Music by Marcel Duchamp, CD liner notes and recording, Edition Block EB-202, Berlin,1991, np.

2. Kotik, op. cit., np.

3. Kotik, op. cit., np.

4. Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp & Co (Paris: Finest Sa/Editions Pierre Terrail, 1997) 76.

5. Kotik, op. cit., np.

6. Marcel Duchamp, The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, eds. Michael Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson (New York: Da Capo Press, 1989) 32.

7.In contrast to the Green Box note, these are the characteristics which Duchamp emphasized in his later discussions of the readymades. “Apropos of ‘Readymades'” in The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, pp.
141-142, is typical.

8. Kotik, op. cit., np.

9. Duchamp, op. cit., 192.

10. Rhonda Roland Shearer and Stephen Jay Gould,”Hidden in Plain Sight: Duchamp’s 3 Standard Stoppages, More Truly a “Stoppage” (An Invisible Mending) Than We Ever Realized,” in Tout-Fait 1, no. 1 (December 1999). In examining the instructions Duchamp provided for the Standard Stoppages, Shearer and Gould discovered that the set of instructions provided were not the actual system which Duchamp had used; the “meter long thread” was not dropped–instead it was sewn to its canvas support, thus producing the work in question. The actual procedure,which has always failed to produce results resembling Duchamp’s “drop” is incapable of producing the work inquestion. The relevance of the Standard Stoppages to his consideration lies in the generally held belief that they were products of that procedure, even if such a belief is an easily falsifiable intentional fallacy.

11. Kotik, op. cit., np.

12. Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors (New York: Penguin, 1968) 33.

13. Duchamp, op. cit., 73.

14. Tomkins, op. cit., 31-32.

15. William Camfield, Fountain (Houston: Houston Fine Art Press, 1989).

16. Bonnie Clearwater, ed., West Coast Duchamp (Miami Beach: Grassfield Press, 1991) 70.

17. Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1958).

18. Richard Kostelanetz, ed., John Cage, (New York: Praeger, 1970) 171.

Figs. 1-9
©2002 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

Am ersten Dezember 2000 wurde mit Thomas Hirschhorn der Prix
Marcel Duchamp bekanntgegeben, der in diesem Jahr erstmalig verliehen wurde. Für zeitgenössische, in Frankreich lebende Künstler bestimmt, ist die Auszeichnung mit einem Preisgeld von FF 200.000 (etwa DM 60.000) verbunden sowie der Möglichkeit einer zweimonatigen Ausstellung im Centre Pompidou, Paris. Hirschhorns “Pole Self” wurde dort zwischen dem 28. Februar und dem 30. April 2001 gezeigt.

Hirschhorn ist natürlich der Kunstwelt nicht fremd. 1957 in Bern geboren, hatte der Künstler bereits europaweit seine Werke gezeigt, als ihn Catherine David 1994 im Jeu de Paume präsentierte. Und mit fünf Einzelausstellungen allein in 2001, von Zürich bis Barcelona, sowie seiner Teilnahme an internationalen Kunstschauen, etwa der Biennale von Venedig, ist auch die Nachfrage an seinen Werken stetig gewachsen.

click images to enlarge

• 
• 
• 

Various installation views of Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Pole Self,”
Paris, Centre Pompidou, February 28 – April 30, 2001

SSein Oeuvre indes ist nicht leicht zu erfassen und fast unmöglich zu vergessen. Hirschhorn verwendet alltägliche Materialien wie Silberfolie, Pappe und Klebestreifen für seine meist mehrere Räume umspannenden Installationen. Wo immer sie gezeigt wird, scheint seine Kunst zu wachsen und sich auszubreiten. Einigen Betrachtern mögen seine Environments schlichtweg hässlich, seine Werkstoffe zu billig und der Versuch, den Besucher intellektuell zu involvieren als allzu didaktischer Eifer erscheinen. Natürlich, hier findet man nicht die unnahbar glattpolierten Oberflächen eines Jeff Koons. Der Gebrauch des Materials gründet sich auf einer demokratisch-egalitären Vorstellung, die dem Betrachter die Nachvollziebarkeit der Kunstproduktion möglich macht. Und Kunst ist nicht nur zum ästhetischen Wohlbefinden gedacht sondern erfordert eine Auseinanderzeitung, die Zeit bedarf, den Betrachter einbezieht und Ideen wie Vorstellungen generiert. Oft baut Hirschhorn “Altäre” oder “Kioske” im öffentlichen Raum, die er Schriftstellern und Künstlern wie Raymond Carver oder Robert Walser, Ingeborg Bachmann und Meret Oppenheim widmet. Er setzt sich mit dem Holocaust auseinander und verballhornt die Obsession seines Heimatlandes mit der Produktion von Luxusgütern. Für “Pole Self” hat Thomas Hirschhorn mehrere Räume im Centre Pompidou in eine Bibliothek umgewandelt, in der Bücher an Metallketten von der Decke baumeln. Andere Installationen beherbergen Sandsäcke zum Reinschlagen und einen “antikapitalistischen Müllcontainer” mit Büchern über Luxus und Wohlstand.

• 
  Figure 1

   

  Thomas Hirschhorn,
  Sas de Contamination, 2000
• 
  Figure 2

   

  Thomas Hirschhorn,
  Raymond Carver-Altar, 2000
• 
  Figure 3
  Thomas Hirschhorn,
  Deleuze Monument, 2000

 

• 
  Figure 4

   

  Thomas Hirschhorn,
  Critical Laboratory, 2000
• 
  Figure 5

   

  Thomas
  Hirschhorn, Rolex, etc, Freudlichs Aufstieg and
  Skulptur-Sortier-Station, 2000
• 
  Figure 6

   

  Thomas
  Hirschhorn,
  Flying Boxes, 1993

*All documentation (figures 1-6) from Gilles Fuchs (ed.), Le Prix Marcel Duchamp 2000, Paris: ADIAF, 2001

Als Gilles Fuchs, Präsident der Association pour la Diffusion de l’Art Français, den Prix Marcel Duchamp übergab, soll Hirschhorn diesen nach der Laudatio lediglich mit einem “Merci” auf den Lippen entgegengenommen haben. Tout-Fait wollte es bezüglich Hirschhorns Wertschätzung Duchamps etwas genauer wissen. Was folgt sind dessen Antworten auf sieben Fragen, die wir neugierig an ihn gerichtet haben.
Tout-Fait: Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Erhalt des ersten Marcel Duchamp Preises. Wie erklären Sie sich, dass dieser im Jahre 2001 erstmalig vergeben wurde?
Thomas Hirschhorn: Es ist ein Zufall, dass dieser Preis den Namen “Marcel Duchamp” trägt. Es ist ein Zufall, dass mir der Preis zugesprochen wurde
Tout-Fait: Gibt es ganz spezifische Projekte, für die Sie Ihr Preisgeld verwenden?
Thomas Hirschhorn:Ich habe das Preisgeld für die Produktion der Arbeit “Pole Self” verwendet.

click to enlarge

Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp, Design
for “The Temptation
of St. Anthony,”
1946 (on the cover,
the catalogue shows
Max Ernst’s winning entry
for the Hollywood movie
The Private Affairs of Bel Ami)

Tout-Fait: D Duchamp hat sich stets kritisch Preisen und Jurys gegenüber geäussert, obschon er Auszeichnungen, nicht wie Breton, durchaus entgegennahm. 1946 wählte Duchamp gemeinsam mit Alfred H. Barr und Sidney Janis Max Ernsts “The Temptation of St. Anthony”(Fig.7) als Gewinner eines Wettbewerbs unter einer Anzahl von Gemälden aus, die sich alle mit dem gleichen Thema auseinandersetzten. Duchamp bemerkte zu seiner Erfahrung als Juror: “Juroren neigen dazu, falsch zu liegen…selbst die Überzeugung gerecht zu sein vermindert nicht die Zweifel am Recht, überhaupt etwas zu beurteilen.”
Thomas Hirschhorn: Einen Preis zu erhalten engagiert nicht den Preisträger sondern den, der den Preis vergibt. Ich hingegen bin gegenüber meiner Arbeit engagiert und nur ihr gegenüber.
Tout-Fait: Die Beiträge Duchamps zur Ausstellung “Internationale du Surréalisme” (Fig.8)
in Paris und die “First Papers of Surrealism”(Fig.9)in New York haben mich begeistert. Was mich beeindruckt ist sein Künstlersein-Verständnis. Marcel Duchamp war frei mit dem Eigenen.

click to enlarge

Figure 8
Marcel Duchamp, Twelve
Hundred Coal Bags Suspended
from the Ceiling
over a Stove, 1938
(part of his installation for
the Exposition Internationale
du Surréalisme, Paris)

Figure 9
Marcel Duchamp, Sixteen
Miles of String, 1942
(part of his installation
for the First Papers of
Surrealism exhibition, NY)

Tout-Fait: Erinnern Sie sich an das erste Mal, als Sie mit Duchamps Werk konfrontiert wurden?
Thomas Hirschhorn: Das war in der Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich (heute Schule für Gestaltung) im Kunstgeschichteunterricht. Wir diskutierten das Bild “The Passage from Virgin to Bride” (Fig.10), die Arbeiten, die er danach machte wie die “Broyeuse de Chocolat” (Fig.11) oder das grossartige Werk “The Large Glass”(Fig.12) und die “Ready-Made”. Dann las ich das für mich sehr wichtige Buch von Thierry de Duve “Nominalisme Pictural”. Später sah ich im Philadelphia Museum of Art die wunderschöne Louise und Walter Arensberg Collection.

click images to enlarge

• 
• 
• 

• Figure 10
  Marcel Duchamp, The Passage from Virgin, 1912
• Figure 11
  Marcel Duchamp, Chocolate Grinder, No.1, 1913
• Figure 12
  Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, (aka the Large Glass), 1915-23

Tout-Fait: Sie haben einmal gesagt “Was mich interessiert, ist das Zu-viel-Tun, das Leisten einer Über-Arbeit, wie beim Licht”. Ist diese Bemerkung mit Duchamps Notizen zu “Infra-mince” vergleichbar (erstmals posthum publiziert in “Marcel Duchamp, Notes”, Paul Matisse, Hrsg., 1980, Nr.1-46). Darin bekundet er unter anderem sein Interesse an der Wärme von Stühlen, nachdem man auf ihnen gesessen hat, die Extra-Energie, die man auf das Herabdrücken eines Lichtschalters, etc., verwendet.
Thomas Hirschhorn: Das kann man nicht vergleichen. Mich interessiert das “zuviel”, zuviel-tun, zuviel-geben, sich ausgeben, Kraft verschwenden. Verschwendung als Werkzeug oder Waffe.
Tout-Fait: In Ihren Arbeiten meine ich ständig den inhärenten Unwillen zu erkennen, überhaupt etwas im gegebenen Kunstweltkontext auszustellen. Ihre Installation im Guggenheim Shop vor einigen Jahren war so eine Totalverweigerung ohne dabei Nein zu sagen. Duchamp stellte seine Readymades zu Beginn nicht aus und weigerte sich oft, an Ausstellungen teilzunehmen. Sind Ihre neuen Arbeiten (die ich erstmalig auf der Armory Show 2001 sah) im klassischen Öl-auf-Leinwand Grossformat (mit Rahmen, zum an die Wand hängen) ein erster Kompromiss hinsichtlich der Vorführbarkeit Ihrer Werke (in Wohnungen von Sammlern z.B.), ähnlich wie Duchamps spätere Editionen der Ready-mades?

click to enlarge

Figure 13(left)..Figure 14(right)
Thomas Hirschhorn’s
handwritten response (in German),
faxed on September 20, 2001

Thomas Hirschhorn: Duchamp hat keine Kompromisse gemacht. Er war der intelligenteste Künstler seines Jahrhunderts.

Das Das Interview wurde von Thomas Girst via e-mail und Fax geführt. Thomas Hirschhorns Antwortschreiben ging ASRL am 20. September 2001 in Form zweier handgeschriebener Seiten, exkl. Deckblatt, zu. Frau Petra Gördüren,Arndt&Partner, Berlin, sei für die Herstellung des Kontakts und Frau Sophie Pulicani, Atelier Thomas Hirschhorn, Paris, für die Zusendung der Abbildungen gedankt.

Figs. 7-12
©2002 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris.
All rights reserved.

JEAN NEYENS:Marcel Duchamp, puis-je vous demander de quelle réflexion peut-être sur l’art d’alors ou sur le monde d’alors procédaient vos premières œuvres?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: C’est trés compliqué et complexe parce que, à cinquante ans ou quarante ans de distance, on a un mal de chien à se rappeler comment, dans quelles conditions toutes ces choses-là se sont faites, et surtout que, au moment où elles ont été élaborées, ces choses sont venues pêle-mêle, sans ordre. Il n’y avait pas une sorte de schéma qui dirigeait toute l’organisation et, je vous dis, c’est une chose aprés l’autre qui arrivait sans savoir elle-même qu’elle s’apparentait à une chose précédente ou à une chose future. Et pour nous, quarante ans après, ça fait un tout assez homogène, mais c’est difficile d’expliquer comment c’est venu.
J.N.: Mais si même vous ne nous livrez que la signification que vous attribuez aujourd’hui à votre démarche d’alors, ça n’en est pas plus faux.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Oui, évidemment, il y a une différence énorme, n’est-ce pas… c’est que… Ia différence énorme est d’ordre… je ne sais pas, pécuniaire, si vous voulez… Quand nous avons fait tout ça dans le groupe des Dada il n’y avait surtout aucune recherche d’en profiter.

Alors ça fait vraiment une différence énorme, parce qu’il n’y avait pas de marchand. Nous n’avons jamais montré nos choses à ce moment-là. Nous ne Ies gardions même pas. Personne ne les connaissait. Personne que nous-mêmes, et même entre nous on en parlait sans y attacher d’importance puisque c’était vraiment en réaction antisociété, n’est-ce pas. Alors, il n’y avait aucune raison que ça prenne une forme quelconque. Et nous ne pensions pas que ça la prendrait jamais.
J.N.: Est-ce que cette réaction contre la société en 1910 était déjà tellement vive? Qu’est-ce qui la motivait?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Oui, en 1910, c’était moins… déjà… Non… en 1910, c’était déjà l’art abstrait avec Kandinsky, Kupka, Picabia et… Mondrian, qui, eux, ne faisaient que continuer une tradition commencée par Courbet, si vous voulez. Mais ie réalisme de Courbet ensuite s’est transformé en impressionnisme, énsuite en fauvisme, ensuite en cubisme et enfin la dernière formule était l’abstraction, surtout chez Kandinsky et Kupka et Mondrian.

Alors il a fallu attendre la guerre pour arriver à Dada, n’est-ce pas, au dadaïsme, qui était justement plus qu’une réaction d’ordre pictural ou d’ordre artistique, même: c’était une réaction antisociété comme je vous le disais… même pas politique dans le sens politique, ce n’était pas du tout un communisme ou une chose comme ça, c’était une réaction intellectuelle, une réaction cérébrale, presque.
J.N.: Vos ready-made datent-ils d’aprés-guerre, ou d’avant-guerre?

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp,
Bottle Dryer, 1914

Figure 2
Marcel Duchamp,
Pharmacy, 1914

MARCEL DUCHAMP:C’est-à-dire que j’en ai fait un… j’en avais fait un en 1913, par conséquent c’était avant la guerre. Je ne l’appelai pas ready-made à ce moment-là parce que je ne savais pas que c’était un ready-made. Je n’avais fait… j’avais fait simplement une roue qui tourne, une roue de bicyclette qui tourne sur un tabouret, pour le plaisir de la voir tourner. Sans autre idée que de la voir tourner dans mon atelier comme j’aurais eu ce feu-là qui brûle, n’est-ce pas. C’est une chose qui—par le mouvement— m’était… distrayante comprenez-vous, un accompagnement de la vie, mais pas du tout une œuvre d’art dans le sens… ou même une œuvre d’antiart d’aucune sorte. Ensuite j’ai fait le Bottlerack.(Fig.
1)
J.N.: Le Séchoir à bouteilles.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Le séchoir à bouteilles, qui, lui, n’était pas… qui ne bougeait pas. Donc il y avait du mouvement et du pas-mouvement. Et cependant il y a eu une relation entre les deux choses. Il y a eu aussi d’autres choses encore plus intéressantes à mon avis, c’était de prendre une chose toute faite d’un modèle, c’est-à-dire pour la Pharmacie, (Fig. 2) n’est-ce pas,n’est-ce pas, c’etait un petit paysage de neige fait par je ne sais qui, que j’avais acheté chez un marchand, auquel j’avais ajouté simplement deux points—un rouge et un vert—qui indiquaient les bocaux de pharmacie qu’on voit. Tout ça faisait un paysage de vue dans la neige, n’est-ce pas, en ajoutant ces deux choses qui pourraient et… auraient pu être des lumières de chaumière, étaient en réalité… avaient été transformées en pharmacie, n est-ce pas…

Ensuite à New York en 1915 j’avais fait une pelle à neige qui ne m’intéressait pas du tout spécialement et alors l’intéressant, dans tout ça, ce n’était pas tellement la réaction en soi, mais il y avait aussi l’idée de trouver quelque chose dans ces objets, qui ne soit pas attrayant au point de vue esthétique. La délectation esthétique était exclue. Ça n’était pas comparable à ce qu’on appelle I’«objet trouvé», par exemple. L’objet trouvé est une chose, c’est une forme, soit un bois à trouver sur la gréve ou des choses comme ça, qui ne m’intéressent pas, parce que c’était du domaine encore esthétique, c’est-à-dire… une belle forme, etc. Ça avait été déjà supprimé complètement de mes recherches.
J.N.: Vous ne cherchiez pas à faire rêver en affichant ces formes nouvelles, non ?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Au contraire, la chose intéressante pour moi était de l’extraire de son domaine pratique ou utilitaire et l’amener dans un domaine complètement… vide, si vous voulez, vide, de tout, vide de tout à un point tel que j’ai parlé d’anesthésie complète pour le faire, comprenez-vous, c’est-à-dire qu’il fallait… ce n’était pas si facile à choisir, quelque chose qui ne vous plaise pas et qui, vous, ne vous plaise pas, comprenez-vous ce que je veux dire par là… non seulement qui ne doit pas vous plaire esthétiquement, mais qui ne devait pas non plus vous déplaire esthétiquement, c’est-à-dire le contraire: le mauvais goût au lieu du bon, ce qui est la même chose, n’est-ce pas. Il n’y a aucune différence entre le bon et le mauvais goût… deux choses aussi peu intéressantes pour moi que—I’un que l’autre, I’une que l’autre.
J.N.: Donc votre entreprise était purement négative à l’époque. Il n’y avait pas du tout, par exemple… I’ambition… d’apprendre à l’œil à admirer ou à…
MARCEL DUCHAMP:
… I’œil…
J.N.: … ou à s’adapter, disons, à des formes nouvelles dans un esprit un peu fonctionnaliste.
MARCEL DUCHAMP:Non, aucunement, aucunement, aucunement. Et c’est pour ça que tous ces ready-made, en somme, sont assez différents l’un de l’autre…tellement différents qu’il n’y a pas, si vous voulez… un air de famille entre eux… Il n’y a aucun air de famille entre cette Pharmacie dont je vous parle et le Séchoir à bouteilles ou la Roue de bicyclette qui tourne! Évidemment on a dit «objets manufacturés». Mais ce n’est pas toujours des objets manufacturés. J’ai même fait une fois pour m’amuser une… Dans un restaurant, je dînais avec des amis à New York, il y avait un grand tableau d’une décoration, qui décorait ce restaurant et qui était complètement ridicule, comme peinture et à tous les points de vue, et je me suis levé, puis j’ai été le signer, comprenez-vous. C’est donc… il y a là encore là… ce ready-made n’était pas manufacturé, il était fait à la main quand même par un autre peintre!… Et même, dans un de mes tableaux, j’avais mis une main qui indique, vous savez, la direction, qu’on emploie dans les établissements publics. J’avais mis cette main, mais que je n’avais pas peinte moi-même. Je l’avais fait peindre par un peintre d’enseignes.
J.N.:
Pourtant, dans le fait d’appeler… une pissotière en faïence…
MARCEL DUCHAMP: … oui oui oui…
J.N.: une fontaine…
MARCEL DUCHAMP: … oui oui…
J.N.: … c’était quand même…

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain, 1917
(Photograph by
Alfred Stieglitz)

Figure 4
Marcel Duchamp,
In Advance of
a Broken Arm, 1915
(Studio photograph)

MARCEL DUCHAMP: … un urinoir, que j’ai appelé Fontaine (Fig. 3) pour le dégager de sa destination utilitaire! L’idée de fontaine…
J.N.: … oui…
MARCEL DUCHAMP: … était complètement ironique, puisqu’il n’y avait même pas de fontaine, mais enfin ce support, et puis alors le titre n’était pas absolument nécessaire, quoique j’ajoutais souvent une phrase… par exemple dans le Séchoir à bouteilles j’avais acheté… ajouté une phrase que je ne me rappelle pas parce que le Séchoir à bouteilles est perdu, a été perdu en 1916, quelque chose comme ça—dans un déménagement—et j’avais écrit une phrase dessus et je ne me la rappelle absolument pas et rien, même aucun mot que je puisse me rappeler.

Mais dans la Pelle à neige j’avais écrit: «En avance du bras cassé», (Fig. 4) tâchant de trouver aussi une phrase qui ne veuille rien dire. Parce que même si ça peut vouloir dire quelque chose… l’avance du bras, «En avance du bras cassé» a un sens vraiment inutile, comprenez-vous, et sans grand intérêt!
J.N.:
Il n’y avait pas du tout d’intention de farce?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Non plus, non plus! Non, la farce était une gra… pour moi, c’était moi qui… d’autant plus il n’y avait pas de farce puisque personne ne s’en occupait! Il n’y avait pas de public, il n’y avait pas… ce n’était pas présenté au public. Il n’y avait pas du tout de participation du public ou acceptation du public ou même prendre le public à témoin et lui demander ce qu’il en pensait, comprenez-vous… c’est différent dehors tout de même, je vous dis, l’ensemble de toutes ces choses-là était dans un climat où le public n’était pas convié! Il n’y avait pas de public—le public n’était pas convié, n’était pas nécessaire… du tout!
J.N.: Vous n’êtes pas du tout peintre professionnel?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: C’est ce que j’ai voulu éviter toujours, d’être professionnel dans le sens d’être obligé de vivre de sa peinture, ce qui la rend un petit peu quand même… sujette à caution puisque c’est fait… et surtout vous savez ce que c’est que les marchands de tableaux quand ils vous disent «Ah! si vous me faisiez dix paysages dans ce style-là, j’en vendrais autant que vous voudrez». Alors—comme ce n’était pas du tout mon intérêt ou mon amusement, je ne le faisais pas. Je ne faisais rien. Alors c’est pour ça, je suis allé à une conférence. Une table ronde qu’on avait faite à Philadelphie, on m’avait demandé «Où allons-nous?». Moi j’ai simplement dit: «Le grand bonhomme de demain se cachera. Ira sous terre.» En anglais c’est mieux qu’en français—«Will go underground». Il faudra qu’il meure avant d’être connu. Moi, c’est mon avis, s’il y a un bonhomme important d’ici un siècle ou deux—eh bien! il se sera caché toute sa vie pour échapper à l’emprise du marché… complètement mercantile (rire) si j’ose dire.
Figs. 1-4
©2002 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All
rights reserved.

GUY VIAU:Marcel Duchamp, quel pouvoir attribuez-vous à l’humour ?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Un grand pouvoir: I’humour était une sorte de sauvetage pour ainsi dire, car jusque-là l’art était une chose tellement sérieuse, tellement pontificale que j’étais trés heureux quand j’ai découvert que je pouvais y introduire l’humour. Et ça a été vraiment une époque de découverte. La découverte de I’humour a été une libération. Et non pas l’humour dans le sens «humoriste» d’humour, «humor» humoristique d’humour. L’humour est une chose beaucoup plus profonde et plus sérieuse et plus difficile à définir. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de rire. Il y a un humour qui est I’humour noir, qui ne rit pas et qui ne pleure pas non plus. Qui est une chose en soi, qui est un nouveau sentiment pour ainsi dire, qui découle de toutes sortes de choses que nous ne pouvons pas analyser par les mots.
G.V.: Est-ce qu’il y a une grande part de révolte dans cet humour?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Une grande part de révolte, une grande part de dérision sur le mot sérieux, tout à fait sujet à caution, naturellement. Et c’est seulement par l’humour que vous pouvez en sortir, que vous vous libérez.
G.V.: Et en quoi l’humour est-il noir ?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Noir, c’est une façon de parler, puisqu’il fallait donner une couleur. Évidemment il n’y avait pas de couleur plus explicative, parce que noir est le sombre, le sombre de cet humour en fait une chose presque méchante au lieu d’être aimable et dangereuse. C’est presque comme une sorte de dynamite, n’est-ce pas, de l’esprit. Et c’est pour ça qu’on l’a appelé noir. Noir n’a aucun sens, mais c’est un peu comme le drapeau noir de l’anarchie, si vous voulez, des choses comme ça. Le noir généralement a pris ce côté sombre et enterrement qu’on est obligé d’accepter, puis voilà tout.
G.V.: V Vous avez dit quelque part que la réalité possible s’obtient en distendant un peu les lois physiques et chimiques. Qu’est-ce que vous voulez dire par là?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Par là, c’est simplement l’idée qu’il est facile de croire qu’en frottant une allumette on obtient du feu, enfin que la cause amène l’effet. Mais je trouve que les lois physiques telles qu’elles sont, telles qu’elles nous sont enseignées, ne sont pas forcément la vérité. Nous y croyons ou les expérimentons chaque jour, mais je crois qu’il est possible de considérer l’existence d’un univers où ces lois seraient étendues, changées un tout petit peu, exactement limitées. Et par conséquent on obtient immédiatement des résultats extraordinaires et différents et qui ne sont certainement pas loin de la vérité, parce que, Après tout, tous les cent ans ou tous les deux cents ans un nouveau physicien arrive qui change toutes les lois, n’est-ce pas? Après Newton, il y en a d’autres et même il y en aura d’autres après Einstein, n’est-ce pas, il faut s’attendre à ce changement des lois en question, donc.
G.V.: Mais toute votre activité, je pense, a tendu vers ce possible au-delà de l’immédiat?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Sûrement. En tout cas, sans être un scientifique moi-même, on peut avec l’espoir arriver à obtenir des résultats parallèles à l’influence, si vous voulez, dans l’art. Et qui donne des résultats satisfaisants en tout cas… satisfaisants, dans le sens du nouveau de la chose, qui apparaît comme une chose qui n’a jamais été vue avant. Du non-déjà-vu.
G.V.: Cela dit, Marcel Duchamp, vous n’en fûtes pas moins au début de votre carrière un impressionniste comme tout le monde.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Oui, absolument comme tous les jeunes. Un homme jeune ne peut pas être un vieil homme, c’est impossible. Il faut passer par la filière des influences. On est obligé d’être influencé et on accepte cette influence très normalement. D’abord on ne s’en rend pas compte. La première chose à savoir: on ne se rend pas compte qu’on est influencé. On croit déjà être libéré et on est loin de l’être! Alors il faut l’accepter et attendre que la libération vienne d’elle-même, si elle doit jamais venir, parce que certaines gens ne l’obtiennent jamais, ne la voient jamais venir.
G.V.: Mais on a dit que vous aviez fait ces expériences impressionnistes un peu pour vous prouver que vous pouviez Ies faire…
MAPCEL DUCHAMP: Non, non…
G.V.: … comme un tour de force.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Non, je ne crois pas que ce soit exact. Si vous voulez, quand on peint comme un impressionniste à 17 ans ou à 16 ans, on est déjà tellement content de peindre, puisqu’on aime ça, qu’il n’y a pas d’analyse, de self-analyse qui explique pourquoi on fait ceci plutôt que cela et surtout on ne sait jamais ces choses-là que quarante ans après.
G.V.: Et qu’est-ce à ce moment-là que la Section d’Or?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: La Section d’Or date déjà de 1912. Ça a été un petit salon qui eut lieu une année seulement, où se sont réunis tous les cubistes de cette époque-là, sauf Picasso et Braque, qui sont restés dans leur coin. Il y avait une sorte, déjà, de scission entre deux groupes de cubistes. Et alors là nous avons fait, grâce, avec Picabia, à mon frère Jacques Villon… toute une exposition de tableaux qui a eu beaucoup de succès, avec Apollinaire. Apollinaire, je crois, a fait une conférence pour présenter les jeunes peintres qui, à ce moment-là, étaient des iconoclastes, comme bien vous pensez.
G.V.: Et ce cubisme, est-ce qu’il ne se teintait pas, si je puis dire… d’un peu de futurisme?

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp,
Nude Descending a
Staircase, No. 2, 1912

MARCEL DUCHAMP:Oui, il y avait une parenté en tout cas. L’époque était faite pour ça. Il y avait une chose un peu différente chez les futuristes, qui était la préoccupation de rendre un mouvement, de rendre le mouvement. D’essayer, si on rend le mouvement, de le rendre d’une façon impressionniste, c’est-à-dire naturaliste, de donner l’illusion du mouvement, ce qui était une erreur en soi, puisqu’on ne rend pas une chose, on ne rend pas le mouvement–d’une façon réaliste–par un tableau statique, n’est ce pas? Ce n’est pas possible. D’où ça a échoué, parce que c’était la continuation de l’idée impressionniste attribuée au mouvement. Tandis que, par exemple, dans mon cas, où j’ai voulu faire la même chose avec le Nu descendant l’escalier, (Fig. 1) c’était un peu différent. Je me rendais très bien compte que je ne pouvais pas rendre l’illusion du mouvement dans un tableau statique. Je me suis donc contenté de faire un état de chose, un état de mouvement, si vous voulez, comme le cinéma le fait, mais sans le déroulement du cinéma comme le film le fait. À superposer l’une sur l’autre.
G.V.: Chacune de ses phases?
MARCEL DUCHAMP:
Chacune de ses phases… indiquée d’une façon complètement graphique
et non pas à intention de donner l’illusion du mouvement.
G.V.: Et c’est ce Nu descendant l’escalier qui a fait sensation à l’Armory Show en 1913.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: C’est cela.
G.V.: … à New York.
MARCEL DUCHAMP:Et ça a eu une sorte de succés-scandale qui a été d’ailleurs tel, que beaucoup de gens ont connu le Nu descendant l’escalier soi-disant et ils n’ont jamais connu qui l’avait fait. Et ça ne les intéresse absolument pas de savoir qui était le peintre. Parce que le tableau les intéressait pour le tableau et c’était la seule chose qui les intéressait, de sorte que j’ai été complètement… comment dirais-je…
G.V.: … ignoré.
MARCEL DUCHAMP:… ignoré du public, parce que le public connaissait mon œuvre sans savoir qui j’étais ou que j’existais.
G.V.: Est-ce que c’est à partir de ce moment-là que vous renoncez plus ou moins à la notion traditionnelle de tableau?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Oui, c’est vers 1913, vers 1912, et c’est en 1913 que j’ai commencé à douter même de mon cubisme. J’ai commencé à… j’étais probablement trés difficile à satisfaire à ce moment-là, je suppose… Et quand j’ai fait un an ou deux de ces choses-là, j’ai déjà pensé que c’était la fin, que ça ne menait pas trop loin, excepté que ça aurait pu faire beaucoup d’argent peut-être si j’avais continué. Mais alors, j’ai déjà changé d’idée en 1913, et je me suis trouvé engagé dans une autre forme d’expression où la peinture perd de sa priorité, si vous voulez. L’idée pour moi a été, à ce moment-là, de faire intervenir la matière grise en opposition à la rétine. Pour moi la rétine est une chose qui durait déjà depuis Courbet. Avec Courbet et après le Romantisme, toute la série des cent ans de peinture ou d’art plastique était basée sur l’impression rétinienne.
G.V.: Pour vous, depuis cent ans c’est donc que la peinture n’était pas uniquement rétinienne.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Non, pas du tout, loin de là, au contraire. Tout ce qui représente la peinture religieuse, la peinture depuis la Renaissance, toute la Renaissance italienne, est entièrement matière grise, si j’ose employer ce terme quand je veux dire par là que l’idée était de glorifier une religion, la religion catholique, le Dieu catholique ou autre, enfin, mais le côté peinture lui-même, le côté rétinien du tableau était très secondaire… plus que secondaire… c’était I’idée qui importait à ce moment-là. Et c’est ce qui est arrivé, ce qui m’est arrivé à ce moment-là en 1912 ou 1913 avec l’idée de vouloir changer ou du moins me débarrasser de l’héritage rétinien des cent dernières années.
G.V.: Vous dites à ce moment-là: «Les tableaux ont de la poussière au derrière.»
MARCEL DUCHAMP: C’est ce qui m’a fait dire des choses comme ça parce qu’il fallait se débarrasser et obtenir une autre ouverture sur d’autres paysages pour ainsi dire.
G.V.: Est-ce à ce moment-là, Marcel Duchamp, qu’intervient Dada?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Non, c’est déjà plus loin. C’est déjà après. Je parle de 1912 et en 1912 quand j’ai déjà élaboré l’idée de la Mariée mise à nu par le céliba… par les célibataires, c’était encore sans teinte de dadaïsme. Il y avait évidemment en germe des choses semblables au dadaïsme, mais ça n’avait pas le caractère organisé d’un mouvement comme le dadaïsme l’a été en 1916, 1917 et 1918. Il y avait déjà des annonces d’un mouvement tel et même dans la Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même il y a des détails ou des développements qui sont du domaine dadaïste. Mais c’était quand même une chose beaucoup plus large d’esprit qu’une chose tendancieuse comme le dadaïsme l’était… Après tout, le dadaïsme était une tendance à se débarrasser d’une façon violente des choses acceptées et admises. Mais là c’était encore une chose personnelle qui me concernait seulement, de faire un tableau ou une œuvre quelconque avec ma responsabilité seule et non pas un manifeste d’ordre général. Après, vers 1916, 1917 en effet, le dadaïsm est intervenu et j’y ai collaboré, parce que ça entrait tout à fait dans mes vues.

click to enlarge

Figure 2
Marcel Duchamp,
The Bride Stripped Bare
by Her Bachelors,
Even, 1915-23

G.V.: Alors si vous voulez nous reviendrons au dadaïsme tout à l’heure. J’aimerais bien que vous nous parliez davantage de la Mariée mise à nu par ses Célibataires, même. (Fig. 2) Quelle est la clef de ce tableau? J’ai cru lire d’André Breton qu’il y avait un fil d’Ariane au tableau.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Il n’y a pas un fil d’Ariane, il y a le fait que dès l’abord le tableau n’est pas conçu comme une toile sur laquelle vous mettez de la peinture. Le tableau est comme un morceau de verre. D’abord, il est peint sur verre, sur lequel est en effet peint: de la peinture à l’huile est peinte, mais les formes qui y sont sont d’abord vues avec l’idée de transparence. L’idée de toile disparaît. Pour déjà me satisfaire, me satisfaire dans l’idée que le tableau n’est pas un tableau, c’est-à-dire un châssis avec de la toile dessus et des clous autour. J’ai voulu me débarrasser de ça, qui est une impression physique. Après cela, chaque partie du tableau, de ce verre, avait été préparée minutieusement avec des idées et non pas avec des coups de crayon. Des idées inscrites sur des petits papiers au fur et à mesure qu’elles venaient. Et finalement quelques années après j’ai réuni toutes ces idées dans une boîte qui s’appelle la Boîte verte, et qui sont des petits papiers… découpés ou déchirés, plutôt, que j’ai fait déchirer pour en faire une édition de 300 exemplaires et qui sont dans la même forme que les papiers déchirés originaux et dans lesquels presque toutes les idées qui sont dans ce grand verre sont écrites, ou indiquées, en tout cas.
G.V.: Quels sont les principaux protagonistes de Dada à ce moment-là?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Les premières manifestations de Dada eurent lieu à Zürich en 1916, avec Tzara et Arp et Huelsenbeck et c’est à peu près tout. Et ça a duré deux ou trois ans. Après ça, Tzara est venu à Paris, où il a fait la connaissance de Breton, Aragon… plusieurs autres qui sont devenus les Dada de Paris. La différence est que, à Zürich, il n’y a pas eu vraiment de grande manifestation publique, c’est-à-dire il y avait un Cabaret Voltaire avec des manifestations, mais plus ou moins privées, de cabaret. A Paris, ça a pris une ampleur plus grande et Breton et Aragon ont fait des manifestations dans des salles comme la salle Gaveau, où vraiment le public est venu et en masse avec l’idée de chahuter, pour ainsi dire, trés copieusement. Et d’ailleurs, c’est ce qui a fait toute l’histoire de Dada. Pendant trois ans il y a eu des manifestations différentes dans chacune des grandes salles de Paris, et ça ne s’est terminé que vers 1920, 1922 ou 1923, quand vraiment il y a eu des dissensions internes entre les différents dadaïstes, qui n’étaient plus contents. Chacun voulant être le grand protagoniste, naturellement il y a eu des fâcheries. Ils se sont fâchés et Breton a décidé de commencer une autre chose qui s’appelait le Surréalisme. D’ailleurs le nom «Surréalisme» avait été donné par Apollinauire sans le savoir à une pièce qui s’appelle les Mamelles de Tirésias, donnée pendant la guerre à Paris dans un petit théâtre et ça s’appelait, je crois, Drame surréaliste. Mais en tout cas le mot «Surréalisme» a été… fabriqué par Apollinaire et il ne savait pas que ça allait prendre tellement d’importance, j’en suis sûr, quand il y a pensé.
G.V. : Et votre amitié avec Picabia remonte à ce moment-là?
MARCEL DUCHAMP:Oh oui! Picabia naturellement était un des grands, a été pour ainsi dire le go-between, il est différent parce qu’il était à New York et nous avons déjà connu Dada en 1916 à New York quand il était ici et ensuite il a quitté New York en 17-18, il est allé à Barcelone. De là, il est allé en Suisse. Il est allé en Suisse où il a fait la connaissance de Tzara. Tzara et lui sont revenus à Paris, se sont liés d’amitié avec Breton et vraiment le mouvement a commencé là. D’ailleurs, c’est ce qui n’a pas été approuvé par les Dada allemands, qui, eux, voulaient en faire une chose complètement politique et d’ordre politique seulement, dans le sens communiste du mot.
G.V. : Vous parliez de manifestations Dada. C’était quoi, ces manifestations là ? C’étaient des manifestes, ou quoi?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Non. C’étaient des manifestations théâtrales. Ah non! C’était sur la scène, par exemple dans la salle Gaveau qui n’est pas une scène, mais enfin c’est tout de même la scène où l’orchestre s’assoit pour jouer les concerts. Il y avait des pièces de théâtre fabriquées pour l’occasion par Breton, par Ribemont-Dessaignes, par des gens comme ça, qui étaient jouées avec des décors appropriés, c’est-à-dire des bonnets de coton, des entonnoirs, tout ce qu’il y avait comme fantaisie… imaginative.
G.V.: Marcel Ducharnp, qu’est-ce qu’un ready-made?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Un ready-made (rire), c’est d’abord le mot inventé que j’ai pris pour désigner une œuvre d’art qui n’en est pas une. Autrement dit, qui n’est pas une œuvre faite à la main. Faite par la main de l’artiste. C’est une œuvre d’art qui devient œuvre d’art par le fait que je la déclare ou que l’artiste la déclare œuvre d’art, sans qu’il y ait aucune participation de la main de l’artiste en question pour la faire. Autrement dit, c’est un objet tout fait, l’on trouve, et généralement un objet de métal… plus qu’un tableau en général.
G.V.: Voulez-vous donner un exemple d’un ready-made à l’état pur?

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain, 1917
Photograph by Alfred
Stieglitz (1917)

Figure 4
Marcel Duchamp,
L.H.O.O.Q., 1919

MARCEL DUCHAMP: Nous avons… l’urinal, que j’avais exposé aux Indépendants de 1917 à New York et qui est une chose que j’avais achetée simplement chez M. Mutt Works, et que j’avais signé Richard Mutt. (Fig. 3)
Et qui a été d’ailleurs refusé par les Indépendants, qui ne sont pas supposés refuser quoi que ce soit. Mais enfin, ils l’ont refusé, ils l’ont jeté derrière une partition et j’ai été obligé de le retrouver après l’exposition pour ne pas le perdre.
G.V.: Mais il y a ce que vous appelez des ready-made «aidés».
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Alors dans le «ready-made aidé», c’est justement un objet dans le même genre auquel l’artiste ajoute quelque chose comme la moustache à la Joconde, (Fig. 4) qui est une chose ajoutée et qui donne un caractère spécial (rire) à la Joconde, on va dire.
G.V.: Est-ce que vous avez pensé à ajouter un titre à ce tableau?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Mais ça, je n’ose pas vous en donner la traduction, même en anglais.
(rires)
G.V.: Et qu’est-ce qu’un «ready-made réciproque», maintenant?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Un «ready-made réciproque»… ça a été le cas de… ça n’a pas été fait, mais ça aurait pu être fait. C’est de prendre un Rembrandt et de s’en servir comme planche à repasser, n’est-ce pas, c’est réciproque par le fait que le tableau devient le ready-made d’un vrai tableau fait par Rembrandt, qui devient un ready-made pour en repasser les chemises, comprenez-vous?
(rires)
G.V.: Je pense que vous avez toujours été… un esprit intransigeant, votre œuvre a été rare, cet acte rare, mais vous l’avez réunie dans une espèce de musée portatif…

click to enlarge

Figure 5
Marcel Duchamp,
Boite Series F, 1941

MARCEL DUCHAMP:Oui, j’avais fait une grande boîte, la Boîte en valise, (Fig. 5)
c’est-à-dire une boîte qui était en carton plus ou moins avec toutes les reproductions des choses que j’avais faites, à peu près, tout ce que j’ai pu retrouver en tout cas, et ça ne représente d’ailleurs que 90 ou 95… articles et j’en avais fait faire une reproduction et j’ai… en couleur, en noir et il y a même trois petits ready-made qui sont en dimension réduite de l’original, qui sont la machine à écrire, l’ampoule d’air de Paris que j’avais apportée à mon ami Arensberg comme souvenir. J’avais fait remplir une ampoule, d’air de Paris, c’est-à-dire j’avais simplement fait ouvrir une ampoule et laissé l’air entrer tout seul et fermé l’ampoule et rapporté à New York comme cadeau d’amitié, en tout cas. Et il y a aussi des jeux de mots.
G.V.: Je pense que c’est là une de vos spécialités.
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Oui, je ne sais pas si vous vous les rappelez… je ne me les rappelle pas toujours par cœur, mais enfin je vais vous en lire un ou deux:
«Avez-vous déjà mis la moelle de l’épée dans le poil de l’aimée?»
II faut lire très lentement, parce que c’est comme des jeux de mots, il faut…
G.V.: (rire)
MARCEL DUCHAMP: «Nous estimons les ecchymoses des esquimaux aux mots exquis.»
Ça faisait partie des choses qui tournent avec un moteur. Et un autre encore:
«Inceste ou passion de famille à coups trop tires.»
G.V.: (rire)
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Et ensuite:
«Moustiques domestiques demi-stock pour la cure d’azote sur la Côte d’Azur.»
G.V.: (rire)
MARCEL DUCHAMP:
Il y en a encore un autre:
«Le système métrite
par un temps blenorrhagieux.»
G.V.: (rire)
MARCEL DUCHAMP:
Qu’est-ce qu’il y a encore?
«Parmi nos articles
de quincaillerie paresseuse, Rrose Sélavy et moi recommandons le robinet
qui s’arrête de couler quand on ne l’écoute pas.»
G.V.: Quelle
gentillesse! Et, dites, ce nom de Rrose Sélavy revient souvent dans
vos œuvres. Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire, Rrose Sélavy?
MARCEL DUCHAMP:En 1920, j’ai décidé que ça ne me suffisait pas d’être un seul individu avec un nom masculin, j’ai voulu changer mon nom pour changer, pour les ready-made surtout, pour faire une autre personnalité de moi-même, comprenez-vous, changer de nom, simplement. Et c’est un…
G.V.: Vous
parlez de la négation du dadaïsme. Quelle a été l’affirmation surréaliste?
Qu’cst-ce que ça a été…
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Il y a eu beaucoup de points d’affirmation. Un des points importants, c’est l’importance du rêve. L’importance des poèmes oniriques et le côté freudien aussi, le côté interprétation self-analytique. Quoiqu’ils ne se soient pas complètement sentis élèves de Freud ou disciples de Freud du tout, mais ils se sont servis de Freud. Ils se sont servis de Freud comme un élément pour analyser leur subconscient, en tout cas.
G.V.:Et toutes ces œuvres surréalistes dont on a parlé tout à l’heure, est-ce qu’elles avaient, à ce moment-là, une valeur de préfiguration de…
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Oui, je crois. Toute œuvre écrite est empreinte d’un peu de surréalisme et toutes les œuvres, même une œuvre visuelle peinte. On sent que le peintre qui l’a faite a vu le surréalisme avant, même s’il l’a refusé, comprenez-vous.
G.V.: On a l’impression que le surréalisme a donné une nouvelle orientation tout à fait… trés nette à l’imagination de l’homme contemporain.
MARCEL DUCHAMP:Très nette, et je dis… c’est une scission absolue et comme toujours donnée par la littérature et par la peinture ou par les arts, cette scission aura des répercussions dans le monde actuel politique ou autre ou interplanétaire, presque.
G.V.: Le fait est que votre activité à vous, Marcel Duchamp, se soit déroulée aux États-Unis… est-ce que ça lui donnait cette activité, une urgence particulière, soit par contraste ou par…
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Non, le contraste a été pour moi personnel. La vie aux États-Unis a été beaucoup plus simple qu’en France, ou qu’en Europe. Parce que… il y a un respect de l’individu ici qu’il n’y a pas en Europe. L’individu n’est pas respecté en Europe. On force l’individu à entrer dans une catégorie, soit politique, soit de camarades, soit d’école, soit des choses. Ici vous êtes complètement seul si vous voulez l’être. Et il y a un respect de l’individu qui est remarquable, à mon avis.
G.V.: Et vous croyez que cette généreuse liberté… n’est pas compromise ici, qu’elle est sans danger pour l’instant?
MARCEL DUCHAMP: Beaucoup moins qu’ailleurs, en tout cas. Chez nous, un homme libre, ici, est un homme presque libre, tandis qu’en Europe il n’y a pas d’homme libre.
G.V.: Et vous croyez qu’il peut, qu’il pourre le demeurer longtemps, presque libre?MARCEL DUCHAMP: Probablement. On y reviendra, à l’homme libre, parce que… on ne pourra pas, on ne peut pas devenir des fourmis pour le plaisir de devenir des fourmis.

Figs. 7-12
©2002 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All
rights reserved.

click to enlarge


Figure 1
Photograph of Duchamp
taken by
Katherine
Dreier, Buenos Aires, 1918

Figure 2
Man Ray, Photograph
of Duchamp in
his
hammock, date unknown

Chez Marcel Duchamp, la filière hispanophone passe d’une part par Buenos Aires, en Argentine, et le long séjour qu’il y fait en 1918-1919 (avec sa compagne Yvonne Chastel),(Figure 1) d’autre part par Cadaquès, en Espagne, et les séjours qu’il y fait en 1933 (avec sa compagne Mary Reynolds) puis de 1958 à 1968 (avec son épouse Alexina, dite Teeny).(Figure 2)

Bien qu’il n’y ait pas, pour cette filière, l’équivalent de ce qu’il y a pour les séjours de Duchamp dans l’Ouest des États-Unis en 1936, 1949 et 1963,⁽¹⁾ou de ce qu’il y a pour le long séjour, en Argentine justement, de l’écrivain polonais Witold Gombrowicz, ⁽²⁾
plusieurs analyses des oeuvres faites ou continuées durant ces séjours ainsi que plusieurs documents (correspondance, photographies, etc.) et témoignages relatifs à ces séjours ont été publiés.⁽³⁾
Une bibliographie regroupant ces éléments, cependant, manque.

Mais voici, mettant en scène des gens peu connus, sinon pas connus des duchampiens, deux brefs témoignages inédits à propos des années 1960.

 

I.

Conversation sans guillemets avec Grati Baroni.⁽⁴⁾

Grati Baroni et Jorge Piqueras, tous deux nés en 1925, ont quatre jeunes enfants lorsqu’ils rencontrent Teeny et Marcel Duchamp en 1960.

Cela s’est fait par le biais d’Emilio Rodríguez-Larraín, peintre péruvien, qui passait l’été à Llançà, près de Cadaquès, avec son ami Piqueras, peintre péruvien d’origine espagnole.

C’était en août, Francesca, notre dernier enfant (né le 10 juin), avait un peu moins de trois mois.⁽⁵⁾

Pendant huit ans, jusqu’à la mort de Marcel, les Piqueras et les Duchamp se sont vus à Cadaquès, à Paris et à Wissous, près d’Orly, Wissous où ils habitent de 1961 à 1966. Presque tous les jours à Cadaquès (sauf en juillet-août 1968, où Grati est à Rome pour une question familiale), et plusieurs fois quand les Duchamp étaient en France: chez eux et chez les Lebel quelquefois.

Nous gardions la voiture des Duchamp pendant qu’ils étaient aux États-Unis et c’est nous, plusieurs fois, qui, avec ou sans Jacqueline Matisse, la fille de Teeny, allions chercher les Duchamp à Orly lorsqu’ils arrivaient de New York.

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp,
Faux-Vagin [
false Vagina], 1962-63

Figure 4
Marcel Duchamp,
Faux-Vagin [false
Vagina],
1962-63, detail

C’est comme ça qu’un jour de 1962 ou de 1963, plutôt 1963 quand j’y repense, au retour de Cadaquès,⁽⁶⁾ a été “ fait ” Faux-Vagin: (Figure 3) lors d’un repas à Wissous, comme une “ joke ”, sans papier officiel et sans inscription du titre sur l’oeuvre.⁽⁷⁾ Juste une dédicace et une signature: “ pour Grati / affectueusement / Marcel ”. Et Teeny disant: “ Tiens, tu as un readymade! ”(Figure 4)

Vous ne pouvez pas imaginer les “ combines ”, les jeux de mots que Marcel faisait déjà avec la Volkswagen: “ Teeny est partie avec sa Faux-Vagin ”, par exemple⁽⁸⁾

Nous l’accompagnions dans les petits villages autour de Cadaquès où il allait afin de participer à des tournois d’échecs importants et où il gagnait très souvent.

Cette amitié a été une amitié tranquille, non intéressée. En 1961, on se tutoyait déjà; les années suivantes, l’amitié sera plus grande encore.

 

***

Baroni est un nom italien. Je suis née à Florence: une Florentine ne peut pas être naïve, elle peut décider d’être bonne, mais elle ne peut pas être naïve! Grati est un prénom probablement inventé par mon parrain, un prénom qui a toujours été utilisé à mon sujet et qui est devenu mon vrai prénom. Et Grati Baroni de Piqueras (avec un de), c’est mon nom d’épouse. Depuis la séparation, je suis redevenue Grati Baroni, tout simplement.

J’ai vécu en Italie, au Pérou (1952-1956), puis en France. J’ai une formation en histoire de l’art, mais sans le diplôme. J’ai été peintre très jeune, à partir de l’âge de 14 ans, jusque dans les années cinquante et soixante, puis j’ai recommencé après une interruption.

Marcel, terriblement concerné par tout ce qui est art contemporain, parlait avec moi de la peinture de la Renaissance. Tout, en ce sens, l’intéressait. Et il était très éveillé sur la beauté physique. Il nous aimait, je pense, pour le couple que nous étions, que nous formions: un couple symbiotique, “ mythique ”. On était très beaux.

Et je me souviens qu’il m’a raconté qu’un jour, il a 40, 41 ans, il est à New York et très en amour, il est devant un trou profond dans une rue qu’on répare; il est soûl et, voyant ce trou, d’un seul coup il dessoûle, et pour toujours!⁽⁹⁾

Marcel ayant été drôlement aidé (par Arensberg, Dreier, etc.), n’a-t-il pas voulu aider à son tour? Il a été très généreux pour Piqueras, par exemple, en lui présentant la galerie Staempfli. George et Emily Staempfli avaient une maison à Cadaquès. Je me souviens particulièrement d’un soir où les Dali, les Duchamp et nous, nous étions chez les Staempfli. Dali, le jour même sauf erreur, avait peint un petit tableau intitulé Le twist, une allusion à la danse qui faisait rage ces mois-là⁽¹⁰⁾

En revanche, je n’ai jamais été au courant de la démarche de Marcel pour Piqueras auprès de Noma et Bill Copley faite début juin 1964 et qui n’a pas donné de résultats.

click to enlarge

Figure 5
Check from Marcel
Duchamp to Grati Piqueras,
December 20, 1967,
collection G. Baroni, Paris

Marcel était très généreux dans la connaissance, dans les conseils. Chaque Noël, il envoyait un chèque aux enfants et ce, jusqu’à la fin. Le dernier chèque, ce qui aura été le dernier chèque, le 20 décembre 1967, on ne l’a pas touché. Marcel était très généreux dans la connaissance, dans les conseils. Chaque Noël, il envoyait un chèque aux enfants et ce, jusqu’à la fin. Le dernier chèque, ce qui aura été le dernier chèque, le 20 décembre 1967, on ne l’a pas touché. ((Figure 5)

J’étais à Cadaquès le jour où Marcel a fait ce qui s’intitulera Medallic Sculpture. Cela s’est passé, si mes souvenirs sont bons, la même année que Man Ray est venu à Cadaquès voir Marcel. Dans son Autoportrait, il parle de ce séjour de 1961. Il s’agissait pour Marcel de trouver le moyen de “ boucher ” le bain-douche de son petit appartement: plutôt Bouche-douche, en effet, que Bouche-évier. (Figure
6) Il a d’abord fait un modèle en plâtre, puis en plomb, et cela est resté un objet utilitaire pendant plusieurs années, en fait jusqu’à ce qu’il consente à autoriser la International Collectors Society de New York à en faire un objet d’art en 1967.

click images to enlarge

• 
• 

• Figure 6 (recto)
• Figure 6 (verso)

• Marcel Duchamp, Bouche-évier
  [ Sink Stopper],1964, Collection
  Rhonda Roland Shearer
• Marcel Duchamp, Bouche-évier
  [ Sink Stopper],
  1964, Collction Rhonda Roland Shearer

Cette année-là, Man Ray et Marcel s’étaient fait un téléphone avec des boîtes de conserves vides et une corde, afin de se parler–comme des enfants–depuis leur tour louée!

C’est à Paris en 1962, si je me souviens bien, que nous avons présenté Marcel à Gianfranco Baruchello, le peintre italien, lequel les invitera en Italie plusieurs fois par la suite.⁽¹¹⁾ Et ce dernier connaissait Arturo Schwarz qui travaillait déjà sur Duchamp.⁽¹²⁾En Europe, l’activité artistique de Duchamp, à cette époque en tout cas, n’était pas si connue.

Et nous avons présenté Baruchello au critique d’art Alain Jouffroy, déjà venu à Wissous dîner chez nous avec Marcel; Jouffroy écrira et sur Baruchello et sur Piqueras.⁽¹³⁾

click to enlarge

Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp, Aimer
tes héros [Love
Your Heros], 1963

C’est aussi à Paris, en 1962 je crois, que nous avons présenté Marcel à Bruno Alfieri, directeur de la revue mETRO et parrain de notre fille Francesca. On connaît la suite: le petit dessin intitulé M.É.T.R.O. (1963). (Figure
7)

C’est à Cadaquès en août 1962, par Marcel, que j’ai connu sa soeur Suzanne. J’ai sympathisé beaucoup avec elle. Elle m’a raconté bien des choses sur lui, entre autres que, lorsqu’ils étaient des enfants et des adolescents, ils avaient une complicité, une communion incroyable: elle pensait à une chose et il la concrétisait, et vice-versa, ils étaient à l’unisson.

Le 30 septembre 1968, deux jours avant sa mort: “ C’est vous, je veux vous voir seuls ”. Un message d’une affection énorme. Nous sommes allés dîner chez lui, à Neuilly.

Après sa mort, la relation s’est à peu près estompée. Notre rupture, Jorge et moi, a lieu en 1969, notre séparation en 1973. C’est bien plus tard, par notre fils Lorenzo, qu’a été repris le fil de l’amitié avec Teeny et Jacqueline qui ont beaucoup apprécié cette exposition, intitulées L’époque, la mode, la morale, la passion, à laquelle il a travaillé comme architecte.⁽¹⁴⁾

C’est après l’exposition Paris-New York,⁽¹⁵⁾où j’avais prêté une oeuvre de Suzanne Duchamp que j’aimais beaucoup, qu’Étienne-Alain Hubert est venu chez moi et a “ découvert ” la targue (Faux-Vagin), une chose privée, intime. On ne découvre pas une oeuvre chez moi. Elle sera exposée pour la première fois dans un musée au Japon en août-septembre 1981 et reproduite pour la première fois, bien qu’en noir & blanc, dans le catalogue de cette exposition.

Quand j’ai dû vendre ce readymade, et cela me faisait de la peine de le vendre à quelqu’un qui n’aurait pas aimé Marcel comme nous, j’ai contacté Bill Copley en premier, mais il n’était pas intéressé. J’ai aussi essayé avec Jasper Johns, mais cela ne l’intéressait pas non plus. Alors il a disparu dans le marché de l’Art! Dommage… Je donnerais aujourd’hui n’importe quoi pour l’avoir encore.

 

***

J’ai connu beaucoup d’artistes (Fernand Léger, Constantin Brancusi, Henri Cartier-Bresson, etc.), mais suis restée volontairement en retrait.

J’ai un respect total pour l’autre: ce qu’il est (sa personne), ce qu’il fait (son oeuvre).

Je n’ai rien – rien conservé, rien thésaurisé – et je ne veux rien. Je ne voulais pas prendre ce que mes amis italiens – Giacometti, Magnelli, Fontana – me suggéraient de choisir. Ce qui reste de nos rapports, de mes rapports avec les Duchamp? C’est peut-être Rodríguez-Larraín qui pourrait avoir conservé des documents comme des lettres ou des photos de vacances avec nous.⁽¹⁶⁾

Toutefois, je regrette de n’avoir pas tenu de journal, même minimal, à cette époque. Les vrais amis ne calculent pas!

Je vivais intensément toutes nos relations qui étaient exceptionnelles, de qualité, et qui me suffisaient. Avec ma famille, c’est la même chose: j’ai très peu de photos.

***
Annexe

Carte postale de Teeny (New York, 31 octobre 1965) à Grati: (Figure 8)

click images to enlarge

• 
• 

• Figure 8 (recto)
• Figure 8 (verso)

Mme Jorge Piqueras 5 Rue Lamartine
Wissous S. et. O. [Seine-et-Oise] France
Oct. 31st

Dear Grati –

I sent the ektachromes Air Mail today – Hope they arrive safely
–

How is the little V.W.? Did they come and plombé it [?]⁽¹⁷⁾

We’re back to the old N.Y. routine – not much going on in the galleries – everyone is complaining, but the weather is beautiful like Paris before we left.

Hope you are all well. Bernard⁽¹⁸⁾
arrives tomorrow & we hope to have news of you all. We both send our love –

Teeny

[31 oct.

 

Chère Grati –

 

J’ai envoyé aujourd’hui par avion les ektachromes – J’espère qu’ils arriveront à bon port
–

Comment va la petite Volkswagen? Sont-ils venus et l’ont-ils plombée?

Nous sommes revenus à la vieille routine newyorkaise – pas beaucoup de sorties dans les galeries – tout le monde se plaint, mais la température est belle comme à Paris avant que nous quittions.

J’espère que vous êtes tous bien. Bernard arrive demain et nous espérons avoir des nouvelles de vous tous. Amitiés de nous deux –

Teeny

II.

Cinq questions à Emilio Rodríguez-Larraín⁽¹⁹⁾

 

Quelles sont les grandes lignes de votre curriculum vitae?

Je suis né à Lima en 1928. Ma première exposition individuelle remonte à 1950, ma première exposition collective à 1951.

 

 

À l’époque de ma rencontre avec Marcel Duchamp, j’ai des expositions individuelles à Milan (1959, 1960, 1961 et 1963), Cologne (1960), Francfort (1960), Berlin (1960), New York (1962 et 1965, à la Staempfli Gallery; 1967, à la Rose Fried Gallery), Washington (1963), Bruxelles (1965), etc.

 

 

J’ai reçu en 1965 le prix de la William and Noma Copley Foundation; Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta et Walter Hopps, entre autres, étaient du jury.

 

 

Comment avez-vous été amené à rencontrer Marcel Duchamp? Où, quand et comment cela s’est-il passé?

 

 

J’ai connu Marcel Duchamp par Gordon Washburn, directeur du Carnegie Institute de New York. Il était venu à Milan m’inviter à une exposition au Carnegie Institute.⁽²⁰⁾ Nous sommes devenus très copains avec lui et sa famille. Il m’a demandé où nous passions nos vacances, et ils sont venus se joindre à nous à Llançà, sur la Costa Brava. Une fois là, il a réalisé que nous étions tout près de Cadaquès, lieu de séjour de Marcel Duchamp, de Salvador Dali, de Man Ray et d’autres.

Nous y sommes allés et il m’a fait connaître tous ces grands artistes.

Où aviez-vous coutume de le retrouver?

Avec Marcel Duchamp a commencé tout de suite une grande amitié. Il venait à Llançà, nous allions à Cadaquès, nous nous sommes retrouvés à Paris, à Neuilly, à New York.

Quels étaient vos rapports avec lui et avec Teeny?

Vie quotidienne avec Marcel Duchamp et Teeny, donc art, échecs, langage, promenades, toros, autant à Paris qu’à New York ou sur la Costa Brava.

Qu’aura été Duchamp pour vous, finalement?

Un grand ami, autant lui que sa femme, et un artiste que j’ai respecté et respecte encore beaucoup, le trouvant l’homme le plus lucide que j’aie connu, généreux, courageux.

Documents joints:

click to enlarge

Figure 9
Marcel Duchamp, Self-
Portrait in
Profile, 1958

click to enlarge

Figure 10
Emilio Rodrígue
z-Larraín, 1965

Figure 11
Emilio Rodríguez
-Larraín, 1965

• Dédicace du livre de Robert Lebel, Sur Marcel Duchamp (1959), à M. et Mme Piqueras, 1960 selon toute vraisemblance. (Coll. G. Baroni, Paris.(Figure
9)

• Deux photos d’Emilio Rodríguez-Larraín au vernissage de Not Seen and/or Less Seen of/by Marcel Duchamp/Rrose Sélavy, 1904-1964, New York, Cordier & Ekstrom, 13 janvier 1965. À sa droite sur une photo: George Staempfli; derrière son coude droit sur une autre photo: Marcel Duchamp! (Coll. E. Rodríguez-Larraín, Lima.) (Figure
10 & 11)

• Carte postale de Teeny Duchamp à Mme Jorge Piqueras, 31 octobre 1965. (Coll. G. Baroni, Paris.)

• Chèque de Marcel Duchamp à Grati Piqueras, 20 décembre 1967. (Coll. G. Baroni, Paris.)

• Deux photos d’un mur du bar Meliton, Cadaquès. (Coll. André Valois, Montréal, 1994.)
Autour d’une plaque qui se lit “ AQUI JUGAVA ALS / ESCACS L’INOBLIDABLE / MARCEL DUCHAMP [ici jouait aux / échecs l’inoubliable / Marcel Duchamp] ”, des artefacts rappellent la présence de l’homme: deux photos, une lettre (à propos d’une rencontre chez Meliton), la reproduction d’une toile de Jacques Villon le représentant vers 1951, et un miroir dans lequel est décomposé, entre “ ciel ” et “ champ ”, le nom du bar (“ me / mel / elit / lito / liton ”, etc].⁽²¹⁾
(Figure 12 & 13)

click images to enlarge

• 
• 

• Figure 12
  The wall at the
  bar Meliton,
  Cadaqués
• Figure 13
  The wall at the bar Meliton,
  Cadaqués

---

1. Bonnie Clearwater (sous la dir. de), West Coast Duchamp, Miami Beach, Grassfield Press, 1991, 128 p.

2. Voir Rita Gombrowicz, Gombrowicz en Argentine. Témoignages et documents, 1939-1963, Paris, Denoël, 1984, 295 p.

3.Exemples d’oeuvres faites durant ces séjours: À regarder (l’autre côté du verre) d’un oeil, de près, pendant presque une heure (1918), Readymade malheureux (1919), With my tongue in my cheek (1959), Torture-morte (1959), Sculpture-morte (1959).

4.Rédigée à partir de notes prises lors d’un téléphone de Grati Baroni (19 juillet 1998), d’une part, d’une longue conversation chez elle (4 juin 1999), d’autre part, puis revue par elle le 29 juin 1999 et légèrement augmentée le 20 juillet 1999.

5. En 1960, les Duchamp sont à Cadaquès du 1er juillet au 1er septembre.

6. Entre le 19 septembre et le 1er octobre 1963, donc, quelques jours avant Signed sign (Pasadena, 7 octobre 1963).

7.La graphie du titre sera donc celle de Duchamp lui-même dans une lettre à Arne Ekstrom (Cadaquès, 3 septembre 1966), et ce bien qu’il parle de son automobile: “ Nous rentrons à Neu-Neu le 21 sept. par Volkswagen (Faux-Vagin) et N.Y. vers le 15 oct. par avion. ” Neu-Neu, c’est-à-dire Neuilly, en banlieue ouest de Paris.

8.Voir aussi, dans la carte postale de Teeny à Grati en 1965 reproduite en annexe, ce qui concerne la V.W.

9.Ce séjour a plutôt lieu lorsqu’il a 39 ans: du 20 octobre 1926 au 26 février 1927, en effet, il est aux États-Unis afin d’organiser deux expositions Brancusi, l’une à la Joseph Brummer Gallery, New York, 17 novembre-15 décembre 1926, l’autre à l’Arts Club of Chicago, 4-22 janvier 1927. Cette femme pourrait bien être Alice Roullier, de l’Arts Club.

click to enlarge

Figure 9
Salvardo Dali,
Twist dans l’atelier
de Vélasquez, 1962

10. En 1962, selon toute vraisemblance, la première version de Twist dans l’atelier de Vélasquez, huile sur toile (mais s’agit-il de cette oeuvre?), est de cette année-là. Quant aux chansons à succès, elles sont essentiellement de 1961-1962: The twist et Let’s twist again (interprétées par Chubby Checker), Twist and shout (par the Isley Brothers) et Twistin’ the night away (par Sam Cooke).

11. Voir Marcel Duchamp in 20 photographs by Gianfranco Baruchello, avant-propos de Piero Berengo Gardin, Rome, Edizioni Gregory Fotografia, 1978; photos prises entre 1962 et 1966 en Italie (à Rome, à Bomarzo, à Cerveteri et en Ombrie), en Espagne (à Cadaquès) et aux États-Unis (au Philadelphia Museum of Art).

12. Arturo Schwarz commence à travailler sur l’oeuvre de Duchamp en 1957.

13. Alain Jouffroy, “ Piqueras chez Eiffel ”, XXe siècle, Paris, nouvelle série, n° 48, juin 1977; “ Baruchello, navigateur en solitaire ”, n° 50, juin 1978).

14.Bernard Blistène, Catherine David et Alfred Pacquement (sous la dir. de), L’époque, la mode, la morale, la passion. Aspects de l’art aujourd’hui, 1977-1987, Centre d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, 21 mai-17 août 1987; Katia Lafitte et Lorenzo Piqueras, assistés de Diane Chollet, en sont les architectes. Voir par ailleurs Roselyne Marsaud Perrodin, “ Qualifier l’espace. Entretien avec Lorenzo Piqueras ”, Pratiques, Rennes, n° 2, automne 1986, p. 117-139.

15.Centre d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, 1er juin-19 septembre 1977. Cette exposition a lieu immédiatement après l’exposition Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp, 31 janvier-2 mai 1977), exposition inaugurale.p>

16.Ce dernier m’écrit (Lima, 24 août 2000): “ Toutes les photos et tous les documents que j’avais concernant mes rapports avec Marcel Duchamp (dont une rasée L.H.O.O.Q., invitation à un vernissage chez Cordier & Ekstrom) m’ont été volés à Miami lorsque j’y vivais il y a quelques années.”

17.Jacqueline Matisse, dans deux télécopies (27 avril 2001), précise le contexte: “ Marcel and Teeny’s VW bug was parked unused at the Piqueras’ in Wissous over the winter. In order to pay less tax on the car, the customs authorities required a lead seal on the vehicle when not in use. That is what Teeny is inquiring about in her card. […] Teeny used her best “franglais”… when talking about this car […]. ” [La coccinelle de Marcel et Teeny était stationnée chez les Piqueras à Wissous durant l’hiver lorsqu’elle n’était pas utilisée. Afin de payer une taxe moindre sur cette automobile, les autorités douanières exigeaient qu’un sceau de plomb soit apposé sur le véhicule. Voilà ce que demande Teeny dans la carte. […] Elle utilise son meilleur “ franglais ”… en parlant de l’aut […].”

18.Bernard Monnier, mari de Jacqueline Matisse.

19. Lima, 24 août 2000, en réponse à des questions écrites d’André Gervais envoyées le 21 juillet.

20. La Pittsburgh Triennial se tiendra en 1961 au Carnegie Institute.

21. Sur ce haut lieu de Cadaquès, voir Henri-François Rey,
Le café Meliton, Paris, Balland, 1987).

On December 1st, 2000, Thomas Hirschhorn was announced the winner of the Prix
Marcel Duchamp, the first time this new award was presented. Aimed at contemporary artists living in France, the winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp receives FF 200,000 (a little less than US $30,000) and gets a two-month show at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Hirschhorn’s “Pole-Self” was exhibited there between February 28 — April 30, 2001.

Hirschhorn, of course, is no stranger to the art world. Born in Berne, Switzerland, in1957, he had been on the rise even before Catherine David showed his work at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, in 1994. And with five solo shows in 2001 alone, from Zurich to Barcelona, as well as his participation in major art events such as the Venice Biennale, the demand for his works is way up.

• 
• 
• 

Various installation views of Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Pole Self,”
Paris, Centre Pompidou, February 28 – April 30, 2001

Hirschhorn’s oeuvre is not easy to grasp and almost impossible to forget. Using everyday material such as silver foil, cardboard or duct tape, his installations incorporate entire rooms. His art seems to grow and spread wherever it is displayed. To some viewers Hirschhorn’s environments appear plain ugly, his material too cheap and his eagerness to intellectually involve the visitor is seen as too didactic. To be sure, his is not the inaccessibly polished surface of a Jeff Koons. The use of material is embedded in a democratic and egalitarian notion of the viewer having the possibility to see exactly how his art is made. And art is not only for glances or aesthetic pleasantries but for spending some time with, for engaging the viewer and generating ideas. Often, Hirschhorn builds “altars” or “kiosks” in public spaces, dedicating them to writers and artists such as Raymond Carver or Robert Walser, Meret Oppenheim or Ingeborg Bachmann. He tackles the Holocaust straight-on (no niceties here) and pokes fun at his native country’s obsession with the production of luxury goods. For “Pole Self” Thomas Hirschorn transformed various rooms of the Centre Pompidou into a library, with books attached to metal chains dangling from the ceiling. Other installations included sandbags to wrestle with as well as an “anticapitalist trash heap” in which books on luxury and wealth could be found.

Most recently, in Artforum’s December issue of 2001, London-based art critic Kate Bush praised Hirschhorn’s “distinctive nonaesthetic–based on rickety form, cheap materials, and a blizzard of images and words–[…] powered by a sense of urgency and incomprehension in the face of catastrophe that leaves us, under his unforgiving neon, nowhere to hide.”

• 
  Figure 1

   

  Thomas Hirschhorn,
  Sas de Contamination, 2000
• 
  Figure 2

   

  Thomas Hirschhorn,
  Raymond Carver-Altar, 2000
• 
  Figure 3
  Thomas Hirschhorn,
  Deleuze Monument, 2000

 

• 
  Figure 4

   

  Thomas Hirschhorn,
  Critical Laboratory, 2000
• 
  Figure 5

   

  Thomas
  Hirschhorn, Rolex, etc, Freudlichs Aufstieg and Skulptur-Sortier-Station, 2000
• 
  Figure 6

   

  Thomas
  Hirschhorn,
  Flying Boxes, 1993

*All documentation (figures 1-6) from Gilles Fuchs (ed.), Le Prix Marcel Duchamp 2000 (Paris: ADIAF, 2001)

When awarded the Prix Marcel Duchamp through Gilles Fuchs, the president of the Association pour la Diffusion Internationale de l’Art Français, a simple “Merci” is reported to be all Thomas Hirschhorn said during the ceremony. Tout-Fait wanted to know a little more regarding the artist and his appreciation of Marcel Duchamp. What follows are Hirschhorn’s answers to seven questions we were eager to ask him.

Tout-Fait: Congratulations on the Prix Duchamp 2001. Any idea about why it was you who received it?

Thomas Hirschhorn: It is by chance that the price bears Marcel Duchamp’s name. It is by
chance that the price was given to me.

Tout-Fait: Are there any specific projects you have used your winnings for?

Thomas Hirschhorn:
I have used the money for the production of the work “Pole Self.”

click to enlarge

Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp, Design for
“The Temptation of St. Anthony,”
1946 (on the cover, the
catalogue shows Max Ernst’s
winning entry for the
Hollywood movie The
Private Affairs of Bel Ami)

Tout-Fait: Duchamp seemed to despise the very idea of a jury although unlike Breton, he did not refuse awards. In 1946, together with Alfred H. Barr and Sidney Janis, Duchamp chose “The Temptation of St. Anthony”(Fig. 7) from a number of submissions on the same subject to be the winning entry of a competition. Regarding his experience as a juror, Duchamp said: “Jurors are always apt to be wrong…even the conviction of having been fair does not change any doubts on the right to judge at all.”

Thomas Hirschhorn: Receiving an award engages the giver more than it does the laureate. I on the other hand am engaged towards my work and to my work alone.

Tout-Fait: To what extent, if at all, has Duchamp influenced your work?

Thomas Hirschhorn: I enthusiastically embraced Duchamp’s contributions to the Paris exhibition
“Internationale du Surréalisme” (Fig. 8) as well as the show in New York “First Papers of Surrealism” (Fig. 9). What fascinates me is his understanding of being an artist. Marcel Duchamp was free with his own.

• 
• 

• Figure 8
• Figure 9

• Marcel Duchamp, Twelve Hundred
  Coal Bags Suspended from the Ceiling
  over a Stove, 1938 (part of his
  installation for the Exposition
  Internationale du Surréalisme, Paris)
• Marcel Duchamp, Sixteen
  Miles of String, 1942 (part of
  his installation for the First Papers
  of Surrealism exhibition, NY)

Tout-Fait: Do you remember the first time you became aware of Duchamp’s art?

Thomas Hirschhorn: This was at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Zurich during art history class. We discussed The Passage from Virgin to Bride (Fig. 10), works he did back then, like The Chocolate Grinder (Fig. 11), or this magnificent Large Glass (Fig. 12) as well as the “Ready-mades.” Then I read the book Pictorial
Nominalism by Thierry de Duve, which was very important to me. Later I saw the wonderful collection of Louise and Walter Arensberg at the Philadelphia
Museum.

click images to enlarge

• 
• 
• 

• Figure 10
• Figure 11
• Figure 12

• Marcel Duchamp,
  The Passage from V
  irgin, 1912
• Marcel Duchamp,
  Chocolate Grinder,
  No.1, 1913
• Marcel Duchamp,
  The Bride Stripped Bare
  by Her Bachelors, Even,
  (aka the Large
  Glass), 1915-23

Tout-Fait: You once said that what you are interested in is the “doing-too-much, the provision of extra-work, as is the case with light.” Is this statement comparable to Duchamp’s notes about “infra-mince” (a concept first published posthumously in Marcel Duchamp, Notes, Paul Matisse, ed., Boston: G.K. Hall & Company, 1980, notes 1-46), in which he makes known his interest in the warmth of chairs, after sitting on them, the extra-energy used when pushing down a light-switch, etc.

Thomas Hirschhorn:One cannot compare the two. I’m interested in the ‘too much,’ doing too much, giving too much, putting too much of an effort into something. Wastefulness as tool or weapon.

Tout-Fait:Within your works, I sometimes sense the inherent unwillingness to even do as much as to exhibit within the given context of the artworld. Your installation for the Guggenheim Museum Store in Soho was such a total refusal without having to say. In the beginning Duchamp did not exhibit his Ready-mades and often refused to participate in exhibitions. Are your new works in the classic size of large oil on canvas (with picture frame to hang from a wall) a first compromise regarding the possibility of displaying your work (i.e., within the apartments of collectors), comparable to Duchamp’s later editions of the Ready-mades?

• 
  Figure 13
• 
  Figure 14

Thomas Hirschhorn: Duchamp never made any compromises. He was the most intelligent artist
of his century.

The interview was conducted by Thomas Girst via e-mail and fax. Thomas Hirschhorn’s
answers were sent to ASRL on September 20^th, 2001, consisting of two handwritten pages, excl. the cover page. Many thanks to both Ms. Petra Gördüren of Arndt&Partner, Berlin, for establishing contact, as well as to Ms. Sophie Pulicani, studio Thomas Hirschhorn, Paris, for making the images available.

Figs. 7-12
©2002 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris.
All rights reserved.

JEAN NEYENS: Marcel Duchamp, may I ask you where your first works came from, from what reflection upon art at that time or the world at that time?

MARCEL DUCHAMP: It’s very complicated and complex, because, fifty or forty years later, one gets a headache trying to remember how, for what reason, all these things were made and for the most part, when they were created, these things just came pel-mel, without any order. There wasn’t a sort of plan directing all the organization, and, I tell you, it was one thing after another which arrived without any predilection but which pertained to the work preceding it and to the work following it. And for us, forty years later, it all seems to be so homogenous but it’s difficult to explain how it came about.

J. But even if you only reveal to us the significance which you attribute today to your methods of before, that wouldn’t be more false.

MD. Yes, evidently there’s an enormous difference isn’t there… it’s just… the enormous difference is…. I don’t know, the pecuniary order, if you will… When we were making all of that as part of Dada there was never any thought of profiting from it… So it makes an enormous difference, because there wasn’t a plan. We never showed our ongoing works. We didn’t hide them either. Nobody but ourselves, and even among us we spoke of them without attaching any significance to them since that was truly an anti-society position, wasn’t it. So there wasn’t any reason that it would all take some form. And we didn’t think one would ever take.

J. Was this position against society in 1910 already so alive? What was motivating it?

MD. Yes, in 1910, it was less… yet… no… in 1910, there was already the abstract art of Kandinsky, Kupka, Picabia and … Mondrian who were creating only to continue a tradition begun by Courbet, if you will. But the realism of Courbet was then transformed into impressionism, then into fauvism, then into cubism and finally the last incarnation was abstraction, above all with Kandinsky and Kupka and Mondrian.

Then it was necessary to wait for the war in order to arrive at Dada, you see at dadaism which was justly more than a reaction to schematic order or artistic order, even: it was an anti-society reaction as I’ve told you–not even political in the political sense, it wasn’t at all like communism or anything like that, it was an intellectual reaction, a cerebral reaction, almost.

J. Do your ready-mades date from before the war or after the war?

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp,
Bottle Dryer,1914

Figure 2
Marcel Duchamp,
Pharmacy,1914

MD. One could say I made one… I created one in 1913, by chance that was before the war. I didn’t call it a ready-made then because I didn’t know what a ready-made was. I hadn’t made… I’d simply made a wheel which turned, a bicycle wheel which turned on a stool, for the pleasure of watching it turn, in my studio as I would have a crackling fire, you see. It was something which–by its movement–was for me… entertaining, you understand, an accompaniment to life, but not at all a work of art in the sense… or even a work of anti-art of any sort. Then I made the Bottlerack.(Fig. 1)

J. The Sechoir à bouteilles.

MD. Le séchoir à bouteilles, which itself wasn’t… which didn’t move. And so you had a movement and an anti-movement. And therefore there was a relation between the two. There were also other things still more interesting in my opinion, there was taking something already made for a model, whcih is what happened withPharmacy, (Fig. 2) you see. It was a small snow-covered landscape made by who knows, that I bought from a shopkeeper, to which I simply added two dots–a red and a green–which indicate the pharmaceutical jars that one sees. All of this made a landscape by sight in the snow you see by adding these two things which could and… would be the lights of a cottage, were in reality… were turned into pharmacy, you see…

Then in 1915 in New York I made a snow shovel that didn’t interest me at all, especially, and so the interesting thing, in all this, wasn’t so much the reaction itself but there was also the idea of finding something in these objects, which wasn’t attractive to the aesthetic point of view. The aesthetic delight was excluded. It’s not comparable to what one calls a “found object” for example. The object found is a thing, it’s a form, in other words a check found on the picket line, or something like that which didn’t interest me, because it was still from the aesthetic domain, by which I mean… a beautiful form, etc. It had already been completely removed from my research.

J. You weren’t trying to dream by exhibiting these new forms, were you?

MD. On the contrary, the interesting thing for me was extracting from its practical domain or its utilitarian domain and bringing it into a domain completely… empty, if you will, empty of everything, empty of everything to a point such that I spoke of a complete anesthesia in order to do it, you understand, which is to say it was necessary… it wasn’t so easy to choose, something which wasn’t pleasing to you and which, you, not pleasing to you, you understand, what I want to say by that… not only what must please you aesthetically but what wouldn’t anymore displease you aesthetically, which is to say the opposite: bad taste instead of good which is the same thing, isn’t it. There isn’t any difference between good and bad taste… two things as little interesting to me as–one or the other, one or the other.

J. So your enterprise was purely against the era. There wasn’t at all, for example… ambition… to teach the eye to admire or to…

 

MD. the eye…

J. … or to adapt itself, let’s say, to new forms in a spirit a little functionalistic.

MD. No, not at all, not at all, not at all. And it’s because of this that all these ready-mades, in sum, are so different from one another… so different that there isn’t, if you will.. the air of a family about them… there isn’t any air of family between Pharmacy, which we’ve spoken of, and the Bottlerack or the Bicycle Wheel that turns! Obviously we say “manufactured object.” But it’s not always about manufactured objects. I even once made to amuse myself… in a restaurant, I was dining with some friends in New York, there was a big decorative painting, which decorated this restaurant, and which was completely ridiculous, just like a painting, from every point of view, and I stood up, then I signed it, you understand. It is therefore… it’s still there… this readymade wasn’t manufactured, it was made by hand even if by another painter! And what’s more, in one of my works, I put a hand which indicates, you see, the management one uses in public establishments. I put this hand there but I myself hadn’t painted it. I had it painted by a painter of signs.

J. Nevertheless in the act of naming… an earthenware public urinal…

MD. … yes, yes, yes…

J. … a fountain…

MD. …yes, yes…

J. … it’s the same as…

click to enlarge


Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain, 1917
(Photograph by
Alfred Stieglitz)

Figure 4
Marcel Duchamp, In
Advance of a Broken
Arm, 1915
(Studio photograph)

MD. … a urinal, that I named Fountain (Fig. 3) in order to disengage it from its utilitarian purpose! The idea of a fountain…

J. …yes…

MD. …was completely ironic, since there wasn’t even a fountain there, but then this support, and then still the title wasn’t absolutely necessary, although I often used to add a phrase… for example with the Bottlerack I had bought… added a phrase that I don’t remember because the Bottlerack is lost, was lost in 1916, something like that–during a move–and I’d written a subtitle to it and I absolutely can’t remember it, not a thing, not even a word.

But with the snow shovel, I wrote “In advance of a broken arm”(Fig. 4) trying also to find a phrase which wanted to say nothing. Because even if this could want to say something… the advance of the arm, “in advance of a broken arm” has a truly useless meaning, you understand, and without great interest!

J. There wasn’t any intention there of farce?

MD. Not at all, not at all! No, the farce was… for me, it was me who… even more, there wasn’t a farce there since nobody was taking an interest in it! There wasn’t a public there, there wasn’t… it wasn’t presented to the public. There wasn’t participation at all from the public or acceptance from the public or even calling upon the public as witness and asking what the public thought of it, you understand… it was different outside, even so, I tell you, the ensemble of all these things was in a climate where the public wasn’t invited! There wasn’t any public–the public wasn’t invited, wasn’t necessary… at all!

J. You’re not at all a professional painter?

MD. That’s what I’ve always wanted to escape, being professional in the sense of being obligated to live from painting, which produces a little bit but… it’s unconfirmed once done… and above all you know what happens when the art dealers say to you, “Ah! If you make ten pictures for me in this style, I will sell as many as you want of them.” Then–well this wasn’t at all my interest or my amusement, soI didn’t do it. I made nothing. Then it was like this, I went to a conference. A round table which took place in Philadelphia, where I was asked, “Where are we going?” Me, I simply said, “The great fortune of tomorrow will hide itself. Will go underground.” In English it’s better than in French–“Will go underground.” It’ll be necessary that it dies before being known. Me, in my opinion, if there is an important fellow from now in a century or two–well! he will have hidden himself all his life in order to escape the influence of the market… completely mercenary [laughs] if I dare say.

Figs. 1-4
©2002 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

GUY VIAU. Marcel Duchamp, what power do you attribute to humor?
MARCEL DUCHAMP. A great power; humor was a sort of savior so to speak because, before, art was such a serious thing, so pontifical that I was very happy when I discovered that I could introduce humor into it. And that was truly a period of discovery. The discovery of humor was a liberation. And not humor in the sense “humorist” of humor, but “humor” humoristic of humor. Humor is something much more profound and more serious and more difficult to define. It’s not only about laughing. There’s a humor that is black humor which doesn’t inspire laughter and which doesn’t please at all. Which is a thing in itself, which is a new feeling so to speak, which follows from all sorts of things that we can’t analyze with words.
G. Is there a large amount of rebellion in this humor?
M. A large amount of rebellion, a large amount of derision toward the serious word, entirely unconfirmed, naturally. And it’s only because of humor that you can leave, that you can free yourself.
G. When is humor black?
M. Black, that’s a way of speaking, since it was necessary to assign a color. Obviously there wasn’t a more explicit color because black is somber, the somber of this humor makes it a thing almost mean instead of friendly and dangerous. It’s almost like a sort of dynamite, of the spirit, isn’t it? And that’s why we call it black. Black doesn’t have any meaning but it’s a little like the black curtain of anarchy, if you will, things like that. Black generally took this somber side and burial that we were obligated to accept, then that was it.
G. You’ve said somewhere that possible reality is obtained from a little stretching of the laws of physics and chemistry. What do you want to say about that?
M.About that, it’s simply the idea that it’s easy to believe that by scraping a match one gets a fire, that is, cause creates effect. But I find the laws of physics such that they are, such that they have taught us, aren’t inevitably the truth. We believe in them or the experiences each day, but I believe that it’s possible to consider the existence of a universe where these laws would be extended, changed a little bit, precisely limited. And as a result, one immediately obtains some extraordinary and different results which are certainly not far from the truth because, after all, every hundred years a new scientist comes along who changes the laws, right? Since Newton, there have been more and since Einstein there have been even more, haven’t there, so we must wait for changes to the laws in question.
G. But all your activity, I think, aims at the possible beyond the immediate.
M. Sure. In every case, without being a scientist myself, one can hope to arrive at obtaining some results parallel to the influence, if you will, in art. And what gives satisfying results in every case… satisfying in the sense of the new of the thing, what appears like a thing which was never seen before. Of the not already seen.
G. This said, Marcel Duchamp, you weren’t less of an impressionist at the start of your career than anyone else.
M. Yes, absolutely, like all youth. A young man can’t be an old man, it’s impossible. One must pass through the network of influence. One is obligated to be influenced and one accepts this influence very naturally. From the start one doesn’t realize this. The first thing to know: one doesn’t realize one is influenced. One thinks he is already liberated and one is far from it! Therefore one must accept it and wait for the liberation to come itself, if it must ever come, because certain people never obtain it, never see it come.
G. But it’s been said that you made these impressionistic experiences a little to prove that you could make them.
M. No, no…
G. … like a tour de force.
M. No, I don’t believe that this was so. If you wish, when one paints like an impressionist from the age of seventeen or sixteen, one is already so content to paint, since one loves this, that there isn’t analysis, self-analyzation that explains why one makes this rather than that and above all one never knows these things until forty years later.
G. And what was the Section d’Or back then?
M. The Section d’Or dates from 1912. It was a small salon which took place for only a year, where all the cubists of that era got together, except Picasso and Braque, who stayed in their corner. There was, already, a sort of schism between the two groups of cubists. And there we made, thanks to my brother Jacques Villon, and Picabia … quite an exposition of paintings, with Apollinaire, that had a lot of success. Apollinaire, I believe, created a meeting place for presenting young painters who, at that time, were iconoclasts, as well you’d think.
G. And this cubism, did it not contain, if I may say … a little futurism?

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp,
Nude Descending a
Staircase, No. 2, 1912

M. Yes, there was a relationship in everything. The time was made for this. With the futurists there was something a little different, which was the preoccupation of producing a movement, of producing the movement. To try, if one produces the movement, to produce it from an impressionistic manner, which is to say naturalist, to give the illusion of movement, this was the mistake in itself, since one can’t produce a thing, one can’t produce a movement–in any realistic manner–from a static tableau, you see? It’s not possible. Why did it fail, because it was the continuation of the impressionist idea attributed to the movement, given to the movement. Whereas, for example, in my case, where I wanted to make the same thing with Nude Descending the Staircase, (Fig.
1) it was a little different. I realized very well that I couldn’t produce the illusion of movement in a static painting. I was therefore content to make a state of thing, a state of movement, if you will, like the cinema does, but without the development of the cinema like a film. To superimpose one upon the other.
G. Each of these phases?
M. Each of these phases … indicated a completely graphic way and not the intention of giving the illusion of movement.
G. And it’s this that made Nude Descending the Staircase a sensation at the Armory Show in 1913.
M. That was it.
G. … in New York.
M.And this was a sort of scandalous success which was so much so, that a lot of people knew Nude Descending the Staircase itself and they never knew who had made it. And this absolutely didn’t interest them–knowing who was the painter. Because the painting was interesting them in the painting and this was the only thing which was interesting to them, so that I was completely … how should I say …
G. … ignored.
M. … ignored by the public because the public knew my work without knowing who I was or that I existed.
G. Was it from this moment that you renounced more or less the traditional notion of a painting?
M. Yes, it was around 1913, around 1912, and it was 1913 when I even began to doubt my cubism. I began to… I was probably very difficult to satisfy then, I suppose… And when I had already thought that that was the end, that this wasn’t going to lead very far, except that it would have been able to make a lot of money perhaps if I had continued. But then, I had already changed ideas in 1913, and I found myself engaged in another form of expression where the painter loses his priority, if you will. The idea for me was, at that time, to bring in gray matter in opposition to the retinal. For me the retinal is a thing that has lasted since Courbet. After Romanticism, with Courbet, every series for a hundred years of painting or plastic art was based on the retinal impression.
G. For you, it has been a hundred years since painting wasn’t so uniquely retinal.
M. No, not at all, far from it, on the contrary. Everything which represents religious painting, painting since the Renaissance, through the Italian Renaissance, is entirely gray matter, if I dare to use this term when I mean that that the idea was to glorify a religion, the catholic religion, the catholic God or something else, in the end, but the painting aspect itself, the retinal aspect of the painting was very secondary … more than secondary … it was the idea that mattered then. And this is what happened, this is what happened to me then in 1912 or 1913 with the idea of wanting to change or at least to rid myself of the retinal heritage of the last 100 years.

G. You said at that time, “Paintings have the dust of the past.”
M. What made me say things like that was because it was necessary to get rid of and to obtain another opening onto other landscapes, so to speak.
G. Was it then, Marcel Duchamp, that Dada took place?

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Figure 2
Marcel Duchamp,
The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors,
Even, 1915-23

M. No, that was still in the distance. That was still later. I spoke of 1912 and in 1912 I had already elaborated upon the idea of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bach…by Her Bachelors, still without a hint of Dadaism. There was obviously a germ of things resembling Dadaism, but it didn’t have the organized character of a movement like the Dadaism of 1916, 1917 and 1918. There had already been indications of such a movement, and even in The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even there are some details or developments which are of the Dadaist domain. But all the same, that was something a lot larger in spirit than a tendentious thing like Dadaism was … After all, Dadaism was a tendency to get rid of a violent way of accepted and permitted things. But then it was still a personal thing which alone concerned me, of making a picture or some kind of work with my responsibility alone and not a manifesto of the general order. Later, around 1916, 1917 in fact, Dadaism intervened and I collaborated there because it immediately went along with my views.
G. All right, if you want, we will revisit Dadaism now. I would very much like you to speak to us more about The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. (Fig. 2) What is the key to this painting? I believe I read from André Breton that there was a son of Ariane in the painting?
M.There isn’t a son of Ariane. There is the fact that from the start this painting wasn’t conceived like a canvas on which you put a picture. The painting is like a morsel of glass. From the start, it was painted on glass, which is in effect painted upon. Some oil paint is painted, but the forms which are there were from the start were seen with the idea of transparence. The idea of canvas disappeared. In order to still satisfy me, to satisfy me with the idea that the painting isn’t a painting, which is to say a frame with some canvas on top and some nails around. I wanted to rid myself of that, which is a physical impression. After this, each part of the painting, of the glass, was minutely prepared with ideas and not with the strokes of a pencil. From ideas written on little papers as they came to me. And finally some years after I gathered in a box called the Green Box all these ideas, these little papers… cut up or torn up, rather, which I made torn up in order to make an edition of 300 exemplary copies and which are in the same form as the cut, original papers and on which nearly all the ideas that are in this big glass are written, or indicated in any case.
G. Who were the principal protagonists of Dada then?
M. The first demonstrations of Dada took place in Zurich in 1916, with Tzara and Arp and Huelsenbeck and that was about it. And this lasted two or three years. After that Tzara went to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Breton, Aragon…several others who became the Dada of Paris. The difference is that, in Zurich, there wasn’t really a big public demonstration, which is to say there was a Cabaret Voltaire with some demonstrations but more or less private, in the cabaret. In Paris, it reached a much larger scale and Breton and Aragon made some demonstrations in rooms like la salle Gaveau, where the public really went, en masse, with the idea of very copiously causing an uproar, you might say. And moreover, this is what made all the fuss about Dada. For three years there had been different demonstrations in each of the big rooms of Paris, and this was only terminated around 1920, 1922 or 1923, when truly there was some internal dissentions between the different dadaists, who were no longer content. With each wanting to be the big protagonist, naturally there were some disagreements. They had a falling out and Breton decided to begin another thing called Surrealism. What’s more, the name Surrealism had been given by Apollinaire during the war without knowing it, to a piece called les Mamelles de Tirésias, in a small Parisian theater and it was called, I believe, Surrealist Drama. But in any case the word “Surrealism” was…fabricated by Apollinaire and he didn’t know that it was going to take on such importance, I am sure of that, when I think about it.
G. And your friendship with Picabia dates back to then?
M. Oh yes! Picabia naturally was one of the big ones, was, so to speak, the go-between, he was different because he was in New York and we had already known Dada in 1916 in New York when he was here and then he left New York in 1917-18, he went to Barcelona. From there he went to Switzerland. He went to Switzerland where he made the acquaintance of Tzara. Tzara and he went back to Paris, made friends with Breton and really the movement began then. Besides, this is what wasn’t approved by the German Dadaists, who wanted to make it a completely political thing, a political order only, in the communist sense of the word.
G. You spoke of Dada demonstrations. What were these demonstrations? Were they about manifestos, or what?
M. No. They were theatrical demonstrations. And yet! There was a scene, for example in la salle Gaveau which wasn’t a scene, but anyway it was a scene just the same where the orchestra sat to play concerts. There were theatrical pieces created for the occasion by Breton, by Ribemont-Dessaignes, by people like that, which were played with the appropriate décor, which is to say, with cotton caps, funnels, everything was like a fantasy…imaginative.
G. Marcel Duchamp, what is a ready-made?
M. A ready-made [laughs], was from the beginning an invented word that I took to designate a work of art which isn’t one. In other words, which isn’t a work made by hand. Made by the hand of the artist. It’s a work of art which becomes a work of art by the fact that I declare it or that the artist declares it a work of art, without there being any participation from the hand of the artist in question to make it so. In other words, it’s an object already made, that one finds, and generally an object of metal…more than a painting in general.
G. Would you want to give an example of a ready-made in its pure state?

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain, 1917
Photograph by Alfred
Stieglitz (1917)

Figure 4
Marcel Duchamp,
L.H.O.O.Q., 1919

M. We have…the urinal, that I exhibited at the Indépendants in 1917 in New York and which was a thing that I had simply bought at the M. Mutt Works, and that I signed Richard Mutt. (Fig. 3) And which was moreover refused by the Independents, who weren’t supposed to refuse it. But anyway, they refused it, they threw it behind a partition and I was obligated to find it after the exhibition in order not to lose it.
G. But there is what you call an “assisted” ready-made.
M. Okay, with the “assisted ready-made,” it’s just an object in the same genre to which the artist adds something like a moustache to the Mona Lisa, (Fig. 4) wwhich is a thing added and which gives a special character [laughs] to the Mona Lisa, let’s say.
G. Had you thought of adding a title to this work?
M. Oh that, I don’t dare give you a translation of it, even in English.[laughter]
G. And now what is a “reverse ready-made”?
M. A “reverse ready-made”…that was the case of…that wasn’t made, but it would have been able to have been made. That would be to take a Rembrandt and to use it like an ironing board, you see, that would be the reverse by the fact that the tableau [or painting] became the ready-made of a true tableau [or table] made by Rembrandt, which becomes a ready-made for ironing shirts, you understand?[laughter]
G. I think that you have always been…an intransigent spirit, your work was rare, this rare act, but you reunited it in the space of a portable museum…

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Figure 5
Marcel Duchamp,
Boite Series
F, 1941

M. Yes, I made a big box, la Boîte en valise, (Fig. 5 which is to say a box which was a carton more or less where all the reproductions of the things I’ve made, almost all, everything I have been able to find in any case, and besides this only represented 90 or 95…articles and I had reproductions of them made and I had…in color, in black and there are even three small ready-mades which are reduced in dimension from the originals, which are the typewriter, the ampoule of Paris air that I brought to my friend Arensberg as a souvenir. I had filled an ampoule, of Paris air, which is to say I simply opened an ampoule and let the air enter it by itself and closed the ampoule and brought it to New York as a gift of friendship, in any case. And there was also the play on words.
G. I think that that is one of your specialties.
M. Yes, I don’t know if you recall them…I don’t recall all of them by heart, but anyway I’m going to read you one or two: “Avez-vous déjà mis la moelle de l’épée dans le poil de l’aimée?” [“Have you already put the marrow of the sword into the mane of the adored?”] One must read very slowly, because it’s like a play on words, one must…

G. [laughs]
M. “Nous estimons les ecchymoses des esquimaux aux mots exquis.’ [“We dodge the bruises of the Eskimos in exquisite words]. And one more: “Inceste ou passion de famille à coups trop tirés.” [“Incest or family passion, on very bad terms.”]
G. [laughs]
M. And how about: “Moustiques domestiques demi-stock pour la cure d’azote sur la Côte d’Azur.” [“Domestic mosquitoes (half-stock) for the nitrogen cure on the Côte d’Azur.”]
G.[laughs]
M. There’s still another of them: “Le système métrite par un temps blenorrhagieux.” [” Inflamed uterine system due to a gonorrheal condition.”]
G. [laughs]
M. What’s one more? “Parmi nos articles de quincaillerie paresseuse, Rrose Sélavy et moi recommandons le robinet qui s’arrête de couler quand on ne l’écoute pas.” [“Among our articles of lazy hardware, Rrose Sélavy and I recommend the faucet which stops dripping when nobody is listening to it.”]
G. What kindness! And, tell me, does the name Rrose Sélavy come up often in your works? What does “Rrose Sélavy” mean?
M. In 1920, I decided that it didn’t suffice me to be a lone individual with a masculine name, I wanted to change my name in order to change, for the ready-mades above all, to make another personality from myself, you understand, to change names, simply. And this was a…
G. You speak of the negation of Dadaism. What was the surrealist affirmation? What was that…
M. There were a lot of points of affirmation. One of the important points was the importance of dream. The importance of dreamlike poems and the Freudian side also, the self-analytical interpretation side. Although they didn’t completely feel like students of Freud or disciples of Freud at all, they used Freud. They used Freud as a component in analyzing their subconscious, in any case.
G. And all these surrealist works of which we speak right now, did they have, then, an importance of prefiguration of…
M. Yes, I believe. All written work is a hint of a little surrealism and all work, even a visual work of paint. One feels that the painter who made it saw the surrealism before, even if he refused it, you understand.
G. One has the impression that surrealism gave us a new orientation entirely…very distinct in the imagination of the contemporary man.
M. Very distinct, and I said…it was an absolute split and as always, given by literature and by painting and by the arts, this split will have repercussions in the political or interplanetary or some other actual world, just about.
G. The fact is that your activity, Marcel Duchamp, took place in the United States…did this used to give this activity a particular urgency, being in contrast or in…
M. No, the contrast was for me personal. Life in the United States was a lot more simple than in France, or than in Europe. Because…there is a respect for the individual here that isn’t found in Europe. The individual isn’t respected in Europe. One forces the individual to enter into a category, either political or social, or educational or something else. Here you are completely alone if you want to be. And there is a respect for the individual that is remarkable, in my opinion.
G. And you believe that this generous liberty…isn’t compromised here, that it is without danger for the moment?
M. A lot less than elsewhere, in any case. Here, a free man is a man almost free, whereas in Europe there isn’t a free man.
G. And you believe that he can, that he will be able to remain that for a long time, almost free?
M. Probably. We will go back there, to the free man, because…we wouldn’t, we won’t become ants for the pleasure of becoming ants.

Figs. 1-5
©2002 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All
rights reserved.