1. “Be your own university”— An introduction

It was last June when I decided to go for an interview in the Kunstmuseum (Museum of Art) in Vaduz in Liechtenstein. In my letter of application I mentioned the barriers between different arts as well as the resulting ‘pigeonholing’–to stress the fact that in my mind it is essential to see those barriers not in the sense of limits but rather as challenges. After all I applied for a position which is not exactly tailored to a future high school teacher of History and English. One could interpret this short ‘philosophical interval’ in my letter as a kind of justification–though this was definitely not my aim. Instead I refuse to be labelled as a Historian or English linguist when my interests are distributed among different areas.

“Art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it.”⁽¹⁾
-John Cage

In my short introductory remark I already mentioned barriers as a central term. I am interested in barriers between different arts and disciplines not in the sense of respecting them but in the sense of blurring. Both, Duchamp and Cage offered me a lot of input through their art, music, philosophy and their blurring of the distinction between art and life. They were in search for a way to escape from traditional painting respectively music. Cage was particularly interested in Zen Buddhism and accordingly invented a new notion of music by using chance as a compositional tool. He was trying to break the traditional barriers between not only theatre, music, dance and fine arts: “I am out to blur the distinctions between art and life, as I think Duchamp was. And between teacher and student. And between performer and audience, etcetera.”⁽²⁾

Both Cage and Duchamp revolutionized the common understanding of modern art. They withdrew themselves from commitments to what I call ‘entertaining’ artists who were interested in pleasing a large audience. Duchamp, during his whole lifetime refused to be labelled an artist. “My attitude towards art is that of an atheist towards religion. I’d rather be gunned, kill myself or somebody else than creating art again.”⁽³⁾ Duchamp was certainly doing art while provocatively refusing it, but here the central message was that he did not want to be categorised in any way. In an interview, he similarly remarked that “a human is a human, as an artist is an artist; only if he is categorised under a certain ‘- Ism’ he can’t be human nor artist.”⁽⁴⁾As I continue my lines of thought at this point it only indicates the beginning of a long walk along these (sometimes invisible) barriers. My ‘philosophical walk’ will be that of an amateur wanderer, someone who got deeply inspired by three outstanding, challenging and at the same time, enigmatic characters.

John Cage first attracted my interest at a lecture in college where our English professor acquainted us with an apparently bright and free mind. When I learned about Cage’s ideals in education I realized that this was the opposite of what we mostly experienced as college students. Reproduction of knowledge is the most common and also most uncomplicated form of assessment, while the written and oral creative output of a student, even when studying languages, lies at a minimum. However, university, as I experienced it, greatly encouraged the meeting with others. It is a place where social exchange can usually take place on a spontaneous basis.

An appealing aspect while working with Cage was the fact that his influence was not just felt in music, but also in visual arts, dance and aesthetic thought in general. He believed that art was intimately connected with our lives and thus not to the museums. Cage stressed the concepts of diversification for unification, of multiversity for university–to express the idea of bringing joy and liveliness into education. He brought into question the term ‘university’ which, he believed, was not encouraging the meeting with oneself.⁽⁵⁾ The first rethinking process has to take place in our own minds, thus my title ‘Be your own university.’
My walk will sometimes take place on thin ground, but this interest in border areas would be also in the sense of Cage and Duchamp. Both artists were in search for means to escape tradition. Cage, by inventing compositional tools other than harmony, Duchamp by “unlearning to draw.”⁽⁶⁾In the course of examining those two characters I found many common elements in relation to the mentioned blurring that my final interest focused on this topic. The fact that they shared a lifetime friendship as well as their likewise, but also contrasting ideas and artistic tools represented other interesting elements when studying both characters. Duchamp, more than Cage, created a real challenge for me as his often paradoxical and ironic statements made it hard to ‘complete the puzzle.’ I decided to partly leave the puzzle unfinished–with the slight intention to let my readers finish it.
During the last 50 years, there have been numerous publications on both Duchamp and Cage. I must admit that, for some reasons I intentionally have not read many of them. One reason is that, if I would have, this paper would have ended in a life-time project. Moreover, if the information load is too heavy, one would support unconscious reproduction of different information sources. And I wanted my mind to keep a sense of freedom and space. I gained a great understanding through primary sources as interviews, lectures, texts and letters. Now and then I grabbed books which had only indirectly to do with my topic, such as Rodin’s Art or Gertrude Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography….in order to keep my mind a bit detached. Thanks to technology it is not much of a problem to get a lively impression of Cage fooling around with the interviewer in a live discussion about his Roaratorio. Those conversations transported the sense of humour and lightness in Cage. I also tried to get familiar with his music–with the rhythms I have heard so much about and still could not guess how they sounded in reality. Sometimes it was indeed an adventurous listening practice and I literally had to keep in mind Cage’s quotation that “disharmony is simply harmony we are unaccustomed to.”⁽⁷⁾
It is worth stating at this point that this project is not intended to be a scientific text in the common sense (as some may have noticed already) Many art historians, at least in German, tend to write in a manner which is apparently designated for a minority target group. It is not the fact that it is impossible for someone interested to understand such a text but that it seems to be an interminable play with words. It appears that they often claim a sense of totality if not universality and thus maintain a clear distinction between art specialists and public. Both Cage and Duchamp have not left behind the impression that their ideas are not accessible to the interested public. After having read some of Cage’s interviews and quotations I almost feel that it is needless to add anything. Many quotations I will cite in the course of this paper could indeed speak for themselves. I guess I just did not have the nerve to leave the space blank in between. Now honestly – I believe that one should first of all enjoy both artists without much scholarship. Cage, in particular, strived to make his work accessible and useful.
This project is best described as an attempt to find my personal way of approaching two artists. I doubt that Duchamp or Cage can be ‘understood’ in the common sense. Duchamp rather left the door open by saying that observers complete works of art themselves. In the end it is up to the audience if a sculpture or a painting is worth surviving. And still, there is something hermetic and mysterious about his work. I must admit that I feel no need to completely uncover its mystery as this would be in contrast to his intentions. The following text will not be scientific in the sense that I do not exclusively intend to give answers but rather challenge new questions. Cage once mentioned in an interview on Duchamp: “‘What did you have in mind when you did such and such?’ is not an interesting question, because then I have his mind rather than my own to deal with.”⁽⁸⁾ The paper does not claim comprehensiveness as it, among other things reflects my own experience with both artists.
In order to give hints about what my chapters will be about, I used various quotations which I thought would quite well convey the central topic of the respective essay. However, I refrained from giving too much away and also deliberately missed writing summaries of my ‘essay results.’ The topic is too complex to be packed in a few words and I wanted to allow a space where some doors remain open.
The idea to partly use translucent paper originates from a quotation by John Cage. In his interview with Moira Roth he was asked if his idea of silence had anything in common with Duchamp’s. He answered:

“Looking at the Large Glass (*which is considered to be Marcel Duchamp’s masterpiece), the thing that I like so much is that I can focus my attention wherever I wish. It helps me to blur the distinction between art and life and produces a kind of silence in the work itself. There is nothing in it that requires me to look in one place or another or, in fact, requires me to look at all.”⁽⁹⁾

A glass indeed does not require the spectator to observe the artwork itself, but encourages him to see the environment behind it. In my mind the notion of ‘looking beyond’, that is not being dictated to focus on the work of art itself is a wonderful idea. Through the symbolic use of translucent paper for the initial chapter pages the environment becomes visibly through the pages. As the pages are closed, one can see traces of the next page’s writing. The paper’s contents are blurring in view of the next page’s font. In case my readers believe they are not learning anything new, I invite them to skip parts of the paper.
In History seminars we were taught about the crucial objectivity of a historian. Objectivity is certainly a necessity or at least something to accomplish in this particular area, while at the same time it is almost impossible. Our personal background will, at least subconsciously, make it difficult to maintain objectivity. In view to Cage’s and Duchamp’s overwhelming philosophical input I found it hard to perpetually keep scientific objectivity. I must admit that I did not manage to repress some creative outbreaks. Regarding objectivity, Cage’s introduction to his Autobiographical Statement seems to be quite apt to end my introduction:

“I once asked Arragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, ‘you have to invent it.’ When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons and events that have influenced my life and work the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me.”⁽¹⁰⁾

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2. “There is only one-ism and that is idiotism”⁽¹¹⁾
attempt to de-categorise marcel

Paul Cézanne, frequently referred to as the father of Modern Art, once mentioned the line “The great artist is defined by the character he imparts everything he touches.”⁽¹²⁾ These words almost ascribe a certain sacredness to the artist. Duchamp’s early oil paintings, in particular the Portrait of the artist’s father or The chess game were apparently influenced by Cézanne. However, as he later self-confidently recalled, those “were only the first attempts at swimming.”⁽¹³⁾ At the age of about 25, Duchamp found his own way of self-expression. He more and more distanced himself from what he called “retinal painting” where colour and form of an artwork were overvalued. Oil painting, to his mind, could no longer claim perpetuity. Duchamp believed that true art could only be found in the conceptual space of human mind rather than on the surface of the canvas. This idea reminded me of Kandinsky, who, in his famous Essays on Art and Artists⁽¹⁴⁾, similarly wrote that it is not so much the form of a work of art which is of significance, but the spirit behind it. Duchamp was one of the first artists who made every effort to desacrifice the common notion of art.

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp

Who is this Marcel Duchamp?
“He neither talks nor looks, nor acts like an artist. It may be in the accepted sense of the word he is not an artist.”⁽¹⁵⁾
I think of Duchamp (Fig. 1) primarily as an intelligent deceiver. Most of the time he led us believe he was not doing art, as when he was playing chess. Cage commented on him: “All he did was go underground. He didn’t wish to be disturbed when he was working.”⁽¹⁶⁾ In his ‘professional life’ Duchamp wanted to make his own way, accepting a certain isolation. It seems that he often enclosed himself in the solitude of his studio, not telling anybody of his artistic activities. In this way he made a real distinction between his life as artist and his social life. Duchamp wished to be an ‘invisible’ artist as he constantly pretended art did not play a crucial role in his life. He gave up art for chess, experimented with language, eluded us and well kept his mystery. Duchamp’s enigmatic silence led us to questioning and next to the analysis. His silence, among other things, caused curiosity and made him such an interesting character for the public. Joseph Beuys, however, interpreted his silence as ‘silence is absent’⁽¹⁷⁾ and thus criticised Duchamp’s anti-art concept. He believed that Duchamp’s silence was overrated. Beuys’ statement probably also adverts to his giving up art for chess and writing. On the other hand, Beuys’ artistic goal had much in common with Duchamp’s–he also felt that the action of the artist was more important than the final product. Beuys, by using everyday materials such as fat and felt, also pivotally contributed to the blurring of the distinctions between art and life.
“It’s very important for me not to be engaged with any group. I want to be free, I want to be free from myself, almost.”⁽¹⁸⁾-Marcel Duchamp

Figure 2
Marcel
Duchamp, Note of 1913

A note, written in 1913, (Fig. 2) reveals an interesting thought, which, in my mind turned out to be central in Duchamp’s artistic life: “Can one make works of art which are not works of art?”⁽¹⁹⁾ As is known, he did make works of art which were up to that point not considered as such–however, he revolutionized the art concept at least for himself. Duchamp wanted art to be intelligent instead of aesthetic. It seems as if he wanted to escape art as practiced in his environment. Duchamp always distanced himself from mainstream artists or what he called “society painters.”⁽²⁰⁾ However, as we well know, his small, but controversial output exerted a strong influence on the development of the 20th century avant-garde art.
Duchamp was not only interested in art–but in many different areas such as literature, music, mathematics and physics which he tried to incorporate in his art. The fact that he was worrying about problems aside from art, in my mind made him a philosopher. And sometimes history teaches us that a philosopher is more successful than an artist who concentrates too much on art itself. Paradoxical as it may seem, Duchamp did not give up life for art but instead made his life a work of art by living and practicing anti-art. He was probably the first anti- respectively non-artist in history. In an interview he once remarked: “I am anti-artistic. I am anti-nothing. I am against making formulas.”⁽²¹⁾ He denied himself as an artist. Some years later he interestingly revised his thoughts by saying that he

“became a non-artist, not an anti-artist…The anti-artist is like an atheist–he believes negatively. I don’t believe in art. Science is the important thing today. There are rockets to the moon, so naturally you go to the moon. You don’t sit home and dream about it. Art was a dream that became unnecessary.”⁽²²⁾

Anti- or non-artist–in view of Duchamp’s often contradicting statements this question is beside the point. He questioned art as an institution. As Cage mentioned in his 26 Statements Re Duchamp, he “collected dust”⁽²³⁾ while other artists concentrated on being artists. Duchamp refused to lead a painter’s life as he refused to exhibit his works of art. In a letter to an artist fellow, he ironically responded (on the question if he wanted to take part in a public exhibition): “I have nothing to exhibit and, in any case the verb exposer (French word for exhibit) sounds too much like the verb épouser (to marry).”⁽²⁴⁾ Paradoxically, he did take part in numerous exhibitions of his time…duchamp the intelligent deceiver…Duchamp could obviously live comfor without creating artworks, but never ceased to be an artist of the mind.
Duchamp’s characteristic anti-position was not only expressed in art. Cage, in relation to this, commented: “Marcel was opposed to politics. He was opposed to private property. He was opposed to religion as is Zen. However, he was for sex and for humour.”⁽²⁵⁾ It seems that what Duchamp refused to do often carried as much significance as what he actually did.

“I am a réspirateur (breather). I enjoy it tremendously.”⁽²⁶⁾ -Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp had an ironic way of referring to himself in terms as lazy–as a réspirateur or breather–but in fact he was very efficient. In the interview with Cabanne he noted that he preferred breathing to working. When asked how artists manage to make their living, he answered “they don’t have to live. They simply breathe.”⁽²⁷⁾ According to Duchamp, every breath is itself an artwork without being visually recognizable. He did nothing against the rumour that he had stopped being an artist since the forties–while he was secretly working on Etant Donnés, his last masterpiece, for two decades. Apparently, Duchamp did not even induct his friends into his artistic secrets. Cage commented: “Of course, he was referring to the Etant Donnés, without my knowing that the work existed. He had two studios in New York, the one people knew about, and one next door to it, where he did his work, which no one knew about. That’s why people were able to visit his studio and see nothing going on.”⁽²⁸⁾ Duchamp managed well to deceive us.
At first sight, Duchamp seemed to be a confirmed anti-materialist. He rarely took a job as he viewed the bourgeois business of having a job and making money as a waste of time. In Paris he worked as a librarian for about two years only to escape from the artistic life there. When he came to America, he gave French lessons in order to bring in enough money to live on. Among his friends, Duchamp was well known for his economy regarding his garments. Cage, in this respect mentioned that Duchamp “was opposed to private property” and recalled the following story:

“Before he married Teeny, he went to visit her on Long Island. Bernard Monnier, her future son-in-law, went to meet Marcel at the station. He said. ‘Where is your luggage?’ Marcel reached into his overcoat pocket and took out his toothbrush and said. ‘This is my robe de chambre.’Then he showed Bernard that he was wearing three shirts, one on top of the other. He had come for a long weekend.”⁽²⁹⁾

Art should not be mixed up with commerce⁽³⁰⁾, he said–although he could have easily made a fortune from Cubistic paintings. This attitude, however, did not prevent him from buying and selling works of art as a means to earn a living. After having read some of Duchamp’s letters in Affectionately Marcel, I got the impression that he was much more than just an art dealer because of existential reasons. His often dry diplomatic letters to Katherine Dreier and the Arensberg family do not sound much like Duchamp, the réspirateur and anti-materialist. “Budget. Enclose the figures on separate sheet: On one side what I received, on the other side the expenses (I have already paid many things or deposited advances). You will see that on account of the new price of the port-folios, I will be lacking 1221 francs in the end.”⁽³¹⁾ Cage, in relation to this said that Duchamp was actually

“extremely interested in money. At the same time he never really used his art to make money. And yet he lived in a period when artists were making enormous amounts of money. He couldn’t understand how they did it. I think he thought of himself as a poor businessman (…) He couldn’t understand why, for instance Rauschenberg and Johns should make so much money and why he should not. But then he took an entirely different life role, so to speak. He never took a job.”⁽³²⁾

Cage’s statement reveals interesting insights in view to Duchamp’s anti-materialistic attitude (which was of course not truly anti-materialistic) in view to art. Cage indirectly suggested Duchamp’s jealousy of other artists of his time. Without my aiming to give a pseudo-psychological comment, Duchamp apparently resigned making money from art as it did not work out for him. This (well pretended) notion of the anti-materialist fits perfectly into his role as the anti-artist and his withdrawal from painting and the art-world in general, and …it seems as if he once again managed well to deceive us. Duchamp’s self-contradiction must not confuse us, for it is as much one of his trademarks as deception.
Duchamp tried to break with the traditional aesthetic predominance through provocation and irony. He thought that painting as a manual activity increasingly covered the true nature of art by overvaluing retinal aspects. With the invention of his readymades, Duchamp completely changed the direction of modern art. By declaring banal, everyday objects as works of art, he did not only desacrifice art in general, but also the artist himself. “Good taste is repetitive and means nothing else than the rumination of traditional forms of taste.”⁽³³⁾This certainly meant a provocation for artists who felt related to an art movement such as the Cubists or Abstract Expressionists. Duchamp chose his readymades “on the basis of a visual indifference, and at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste.”⁽³⁴⁾ They were no longer created by the artistic skill, but by the mind and decision of the artist.
Duchamp wanted to break with art as a movement or constitution by turning away from naturalistic modes of expression and inventing his own symbols. Duchamp did not yearn to reach a large audience. Moreover, Marcel was prepared to be misunderstood by the public. He wished to make his own way, accepting a certain isolation: “In 1912 it was a decision for being alone and not knowing where I was going. The artist should be alone…Everyone for himself, as in a shipwreck.”⁽³⁵⁾ Duchamp, much in contrast to Cage, was never fond of working in a team. He preferred to be an outsider. This outsider role in view to his ‘job’ as an artist, however, must not be confused with the role he took in social life. Duchamp was often described as sociable by his artist fellows, and interviewers “marvelled at how easy it was to talk with Duchamp.”⁽³⁶⁾
After a three-months stay in Munich in 1912, Duchamp noted:

“I was finished with Cubism and with movement–at least movement mixed up with oil paint. The whole trend of painting was something I didn’t care to continue. After ten years of painting I was bored with it–in fact I was always bored with it when I did paint, except at the very beginning when there was that feeling of opening the eyes to something new. There was no essential satisfaction for me in painting ever…anyway, from 1912 on I decided to stop being a painter in the professional sense. I tried to look for another, personal way, and of course I couldn’t expect anyone to be interested in what I was doing.”⁽³⁷⁾

Apparently, Duchamp tried somehow to escape the traditional notion of being an artist. When Duchamp speaks of trend in relation to art, it sounds unusual as it is frequently associated with fashion. The public art world must have become too superficial and materialistic for him. He was not interested in art in the social sense. Duchamp felt more attracted to the individual mind as such, as he believed most artists were simply repeating themselves. He worked conceptually, putting art “in the service of the mind”⁽³⁸⁾, as he would say.
Cabanne:
“You were a man predestined for America.”
Duchamp: “So to speak, yes.”⁽³⁹⁾
Things had to change. Duchamp, in a letter to his American friend Walter Pach expressed his dislike for the Parisian art milieu. “I absolutely wanted to leave. Where to? New York was my only choice, because I hope to be able to avoid an artistic life there, possibly with a job that would keep me very busy (…) I am afraid to end up being in need to sell canvases, in other words, to be a society painter.”⁽⁴⁰⁾ These lines express crucial reasons for his giving up life as an artist in the professional sense. Duchamp felt incompatible with the French art milieu and wished to escape the prison of tradition where the artist ended up in ‘producing’ paintings in order to earn his living. He felt a strong disapproval of meeting up with other artists. Paris bored him and represented everything he associated with tradition. Duchamp, at this point did not only break with the artistic ties but also with those of his home country. He fled to a country where “they didn’t give a damn about Shakespeare.”⁽⁴¹⁾ His arrival in New York in 1915–Duchamp was 28 at that time–would prove the beginning of a new Duchampian era. By that time, he was already known in America, as his painting Nude descending a staircase caused a scandal at the famous New York Armory Show, an international exhibition of Modern art two years earlier. New York, in contrast to Paris, offered him a “feeling of freedom” and as he said he “loved the rhythm of this town.”⁽⁴²⁾Duchamp and America turned out to be the perfect couple.
Duchamp obviously never felt part of an artistic group such as the Dadaists. Moreover, he constantly expressed his dislike for categorisation. From the very outset, he never aimed to describe objects or comment on painting. The more paradox I found the fact that, in most encyclopaedias, Duchamp is either associated with the Cubists or Dadaists. We must rethink the common notion of art in order to get involved with Duchamp. We must free ourselves from convention, categorisation and from -Isms. The following mesostic written by Cage expresses very well Duchamp’s ultimate artistic intention. He wrote it shortly after he had died.

The iMpossibility of TrAdition the loss of memoRy: To reaCh ThEse Two’s a goaL ⁽⁴³⁾

For those of you who nevertheless feel they have to look up Duchamp’s encyclopaedic biography–(I
am not keeping the secret) See next page.

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3. Silent biography Introduction to John Cage

I thought that the best introduction to John Cage would be an ‘incomplete’ or ‘imperfect’ mestostic. ‘Incomplete’ as I would like to leave enough space for thoughts. Cage described his mesostic technique as follows:

“Like acrostics, mesostics are written in the conventional way horizontally, but at the same time they follow a vertical rule, down the middle not down the edge as in an acrostic, a string spells a word or name, not necessarily connected with what is being written, though it may be. This vertical rule is lettristic and in my practice the letters are capitalized. Between two capitals in a perfect or 100% mesostic neither letter may appear in the lower case. In the writing of the wing words, the horizontal text, the letters of the vertical string help me out of sentimentality. I have something to do, a puzzle to solve. This way of responding makes me feel in this respect one with the Japanese people, who formerly, I once learned, turned their letter writing into the writing of poems (…)”⁽⁴⁵⁾

My mesostics follow a vertical line while the horizontal words consist of different quotations by Cage. Quotations which, in the case of Cage, contain a stronger message than an encyclopaedic biography. Respecting Cage’s ideas such as experience, silence and non-teaching, I would like to leave the reader with the following mesostic. In order to make it easier to identify Cage’s thoughts, I used different type faces. To my astonishment, I found out later that Cage, as a consequence of dealing more and more with the media, also used various font types in various chapters of his book A Year from Monday. In the first chapter,Diary: How to improve the world (you will only make matters worse) 1965, Cage made use of twelve different type faces, letting chance operations determine which face would be used for which statement.

“As far as COnsistency Of I aM here and ThERe is iS NothING To say L SPACE FOR YOUR THOUGHTS SIMPLY GOES HARMONY WEARE PREFER EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED INCONSISTENCY UNCUSTOMED ZERO IS THE BASIC THOUGHT WE NEED NOT FEAR THESE SILENCES.”

To refer back to Cézanne’s quotation at the beginning of this chapter–Duchamp proposes the work of art as an independent creation, brought into being a joint effort by the artist, the spectator, and the unpredic actions of chance–a freer creation that its very nature, may be more complex, more interesting, more original, and truer to life than a work that is subject to the limitations of the artist’s personal control.

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4. Passionate encounters Johnand Marcel

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Photograph
of
Duchamp and Cage

John Cage’s and Marcel Duchamp’s (Fig. 3) ways first crossed in 1942. Duchamp, as many European artists, spent the war years in New York. They met in famous Hale House, home of Peggy Guggenheim and Max Ernst which was then well known as the meeting place for European artists in exile. 30 year-old Cage, originally from Los Angeles was invited by his artist-friend Max Ernst to stay in Hale House. When, after a short period, Peggy informed Cage and his wife Xenia who were penniless at the time, to move out of Hale House, Cage “retreated through the usual crowd of revellers until he came to a room that he thought was empty, where he broke down in tears. Someone else was there, though, sitting in a rocker and smoking a cigar. It was Duchamp.” Cage mentioned that “he was by himself, and somehow his presence made me feel calmer. Although I could not recall what Duchamp said to me, I thought it had something to do with not depending on the Peggy Guggenheims of this world.”⁽⁴⁷⁾
Their first encounter reveals interesting aspects of their prospective friendship. Duchamp, the cool smoking type, sitting in a room all by himself, mumbling something amusingly at a desperate stranger. “He had calmness in the face of disaster”⁽⁴⁸⁾, Cage said later. Duchamp could not so easily be disconcerted. The odd encounter scene between Duchamp and Cage somehow conveys Duchamp’s inclination to indifference. Years after they had first met each other, Cage noted in his 26 Statements Re Duchamp: “There he is, rocking away in that chair, smoking his pipe, waiting for me to stop weeping.”⁽⁴⁹⁾ Cage obviously experienced Duchamp’s cool indifference first-hand.
Cage, in many interviews, mentioned his friend’s sense for wittiness. As he told Moira Roth, Duchamp was paradoxically “very serious about being amused and the atmosphere around him was always one of entertainment.” He further remarked that “we get to know Marcel not by asking him questions but by being with him.”⁽⁵⁰⁾ The reason why Cage did not want to disturb him with questions was that he then would have had Duchamp’s answer instead of his personal experience. Indeed, the concept of experience, deriving from Zen Buddhism, is central in Cage’s philosophy and should not merely be considered in context of his music. He believed that experience, in most respects, was more significant than understanding. It seems that Cage rather wanted to let things happen when spending time with Duchamp. This philosophy has much in common with Cage’s notion of ideal education, but also with his idea of silence and chance in music. Cage was amazed “at the liveliness of Duchamp’s mind, at the connections he made that others hadn’t (…).”⁽⁵¹⁾ These words undoubtedly give evidence of a unbroken Duchamp admirer. When asked what artist had most profoundly influenced his own work, Cage regularly cited Marcel Duchamp.
Duchamp, on the other hand, fondly spoke of Cage as someone full of lightness. “He has a cheerful way of thinking. Not ingeniously (…) He is not acting like a professor or schoolmaster.”⁽⁵²⁾ I believe that Duchamp did not either want to appear like a schoolmaster, but the respect many people showed towards him, naturally made him less affable. Duchamp, as a consequence of his voluntary artistic isolation, stroke others as aloof.

“Had Marcel Duchamp not lived, it would have been necessary for someone exactly like him to live, to bring about, that is, the world as we begin to know and experience it.”⁽⁵³⁾ -John Cage

Cage’s respect for Duchamp had blossomed into a sporadic, yet close friendship. In his introduction to 26 Statements Re Duchamp, Cage noted that due to his view “he felt obliged to keep a worshipful distance.”⁽⁵⁴⁾ Duchamp’s often mentioned aloof character must have initially had an impact on their friendship. Following Cage’s remarks preceding his 26 Statements, his admiration must have led to dubitation concerning Duchamp. It seems as if he was inapproachable to Cage:

“Then, fortunately, during the winter holidays of ’65-’66, the Duchamps and I were often invited to the same parties. At one of these I marched up to Teeny Duchamp and asked her whether she thought Marcel would consider teaching me chess. She said she thought he would. Circumstances permitting, we have been together once or twice a week ever since, except for two weeks in Cadaqués when we were every day together.”⁽⁵⁵⁾

Cage’s memories leave the impression as though he had long waited for an occasion to ask Duchamp teaching him chess. He later told Calvin Tomkins that Marcel’s quiet way often gave him the feeling that he did not want attention, “so I stayed away from him, out of admiration.”⁽⁵⁶⁾ In contrast, it is hard to imagine Duchamp in the role of the passionate admirer. Duchamp rarely spoke about artists that he thought influenced or inspired him. He soon disengaged himself from a model once he grasped it. However, in the case of Raymond Roussel, a writer whose piece Impressions d’Afrique “greatly helped him on one side of his expression”, Duchamp made an exception: “I felt that as a painter it was much better to be influenced by a writer than by another painter. And Roussel showed me the way.”⁽⁵⁷⁾Duchamp found his models less in art than in literature. He was on the way to erase the borders between different arts.
Duchamp, more than Cage, was the type of artist who, due to his mixture of charm and extravagant aloofness, seduced his admirers into an uncritical adulation of his art. He had more of the cool, indifferent type of character who sometimes preferred not to be understood. Though Cage and Duchamp are often discussed in terms of the same artistic circle–along with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, their characters appeared to be quite different. Duchamp’s indifference among other things served to keep others from getting to close. I can only to some extent agree with Tomkins who wrote in this respect that “his lack of passionate attachments seemed rather to make him more lighthearted, more alert to everything, and less competitive than others.”⁽⁵⁸⁾ Someone who is equally passionate about gathering mushrooms and writing ambitious philosophical texts is in my mind more lighthearted than a professional chess player.
 

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Figure 4
John Cage

Cage’s sometimes amusing humbleness expressed in his interviews give evidence of his joyful character and his sense of humour (Fig. 4). As Anne d’Harnoncourt, one of Cage’s favourite scholars wrote, he was indeed a delight to observe observing. “Surveying the ground as he walked in a wet field, he found mushrooms; listening to a roomful of silence, he heard his blood circulate in his veins; concentrating on a game of chess, he enjoyed a nearby waterful.”⁽⁵⁹⁾ Cage’s interviews, I am thinking in particular of Musicage with Joan Retallack, are interspersed with laughter. Listening to Laughtears–a conversation on Roaratorio, it is not unduly to assert that both the interviewer and Cage laughed their heads off.⁽⁶⁰⁾ Though both Cage and Duchamp are frequently described as humorous, Cage’s optimistic and sometimes self-ironic personality probably made him more approachable:

“In connection with my current studies with Duchamp, it turns out I’m a poor chess player. My mind seems in some respect lacking, so that I make obviously stupid moves. I do not for a moment doubt that this lack of intelligence affects my music and thinking generally. However, I have a redeeming quality: I was gifted with a sunny disposition.”⁽⁶¹⁾

Isn’t it wonderfully amusing to find someone as Cage philosophising about his ‘lack of intelligence’? Duchamp appeared to be more amusing than humorous as a contemporary described him “(…) His blunders are laughable, but he laughs long before you do; as a matter of fact, you laugh at his amusement, not at him.”⁽⁶²⁾After having read parts of Duchamp’s letters and interviews, I must add that I found him very amusing. However I would cagely say that his nature of humour was more subtle and black than Cage’s. Duchamp enshrouded himself in a cloud of mystery. After having finished this chapter you will understand what Cage wanted to express by the following mesostic in memory of Duchamp:

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.⁽⁶³⁾

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Figure 5
Marcel
Duchamp, Rrose
Sélavy by Man Ray,
1921

As already mentioned in the last chapter, Duchamp was a convinced anti-artist. This attitude was expressed by the adoption of various ‘roles’ such as ‘Duchamp, the dandy’ or ‘Duchamp, the chess player.’ As Roth already wrote in her essay Duchamp in America, Duchamp could be described as a dandy who, as Baudelaire once put it, was obsessed with a “cult of self who used elegance and aloofness of appearance and mind as a way of separating himself from both an inferior external world, and from overt pessimistic self-knowledge.“⁽⁶⁴⁾His dandy appearance also found expression in his ‘roles’ …duchamp the intelligent deceiver… such as Rrose Sélavy (Fig. 5), a self-made, female image inhabiting the idea of an artist-substitute for Duchamp. There is nothing particular in taking on another name – many artists still do. However, he could not so easily take on another sex. Duchamp’s enacted deception was meant as a word play: “(…) Much better than to change religion would be to change sex …Rose was the corniest name for a girl at that time, in French anyway. And Sélavy was a pun on c’est la vie.⁽⁶⁵⁾ Duchamp, wearing a seductive fur dressed up as a female and posed for Man Ray’s camera. Rrose Sélavy clearly is the product of an artist who managed to deceive us more than once. After all, he left no indication he was a homo or transsexual.
The most famous role Duchamp however adopted was that of the chess player which again showed himself as the anti-artist. Both Cage and Duchamp devoted much of their energy to playing chess. Duchamp, however, was the more obsessive player. How addicted to chess must one be to neglect one’s bride by spending day and night playing chess during honeymoon? For Duchamp, chess apparently also served as a way to distract himself. Duchamp’s first wife, Lydie, was said to become such annoyed by her groom solving chess problems one night that she got up and glued the pieces to the board.⁽⁶⁶⁾ During his 9-months stay in Buenos Aires, Duchamp wrote to a friend: “I feel I am quite ready to become a chess maniac (…) Everything around me takes the shape of the Knight or the Queen and the exterior world has no other interest for me other than in its transformation to winning or losing positions”⁽⁶⁷⁾
For Cage, the goal of winning was clearly beside the point. His motto could be compared to that of the Olympic athletes, “taking part means everything”, under the premise of Duchamp as the antagonist. He was interested in the Buddhist notion of letting things happen, especially when spending time with Duchamp. Cage could apparently confirm Duchamp’s chess addiction – in his interview with Roth he remembered one game of chess where Duchamp got quite angry with him and ‘accused’ him of not wanting to win:

“The only time he disturbed me was once when he got cross with me for not winning a game of chess. It was a game I might have won; then I made a foolish move and he was furious. Really angry. He said ‘Don’t you ever want to win?’ He was so cross that he walked out of the room, and I felt as though I had made a mistake in deciding to be with him–we were in a small Spanish town–if he was going to get so angry with me.”⁽⁶⁸⁾

Duchamp was an excellent chess player, who, in the role of the tireless thinker even made it to the French national team. After his immigration to the United States, Duchamp was ranked among the top twenty-five chess players in the twenties and thirties. In 1932, he published a chess book titled Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled which was devoted “to a very rare situation in the end game, when all the pieces have been captured except for the opposing kings and one or two pawns on each side.”⁽⁶⁹⁾ The book gives evidence of Duchamp’s mathematical gift. Cage, on the other hand, used his mathematical ambitions for chance operations in music.
Duchamp and Cage spent more and more evenings together playing chess. “I saw him every night, four nights in a row,“⁽⁷⁰⁾ Cage recalled. What did they do when they were not indulged in their passion? It is certain that they were not talking about each other’s work, according to Cage’s interview with Moira Roth.⁽⁷¹⁾ Meanwhile, they were rather ‘experiencing’ each other simply by spending time together. Cage, rather humble in his statements, often admired his friends’ genius for chess:

“I rarely did (play chess), because he played so well and I played so poorly. So I played with Teeny, who also played much better than I. Marcel would glance at our game every now and then, and in between take a nap. He would say how stupid we both were. Every now and then he would get very impatient with me. He complained that I didn’t seem to want to win. Actually, I was so delighted to be with him that the notion of winning was beside the point. When we played, he would give me a knight in advance. He was extremely intelligent and he almost always won. None of the people around us was as good a player as he, though there was one man who, once in a blue moon would win. In trying to teach me how to play, Marcel said something which again is very oriental, ‘Don’t just play your side of the game, play both sides.’ I tried to, but I was more impressed with what he said than I was able to follow it.”⁽⁷²⁾

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Figure 6Photograph
of Reunion
performance, 1968

For Cage, chess apparently served as a pretext to spend time with Duchamp. In 1968, the year of Duchamp’s death, Marcel and his wife were invited to take part in a musical event entitled Réunion by John Cage (Fig. 6). Cage’s idea behind thishappening was that, in his mind, chess contained a finality in itself, as its goal was to win. Cage thus wanted to alienate the game from its ‘purpose’ by distributing sound sources each time movements took place on the chess board. He noted that “the chess board acted as a gate, open or closed to these sources, these streams of music (…). The game is used to distribute sound sources, to define a global sound system, it has no goal. It is a paradox, purposeful purposelessness.”⁽⁷³⁾ The event consisted of Cage and Duchamp (and later Cage and Teeny) playing chess on stage on a board that had been equipped with contact microphones. Whenever a piece was moved, it set off electronic noises and images on television screens visible to the audience. Cage’s alienation of the chess game from its original purpose is an interesting concept in view to both Duchamp’s and Cage’s understanding of art. Alienation indeed played a crucial role in both artists’ lives. I am thinking now in particular of Duchamp’s readymades and of Cage’s Prepared Piano. Duchamp later amusingly recounted the chess event: “It went very well, very well, it began about eight-thirty. John played against me first, then against Teeny. It was very amusing.” Asked whether there was any music, he replied “Oh yes, there was a tremendous noise.”⁽⁷⁴⁾
Chess brought in no money for Duchamp, but provided richer satisfaction. After all, he was aréspirateur. But why chess? When I learned how to play chess at about 14, I was fascinated about it and eagerly taught it some of my friends. However, I never aimed to perfect it, to rack my brain endlessly about possible combinations. A friend of mine is a passionate chess player and I was quite curious what he found so fascinating about it. He spontaneously answered: “Chess is completely different from other games–it has nothing to do with chance or luck.” I found this statement quite interesting in respect to Duchamp’s use of artistic tools–chance was not only typically Cagean, but in fact used by Duchamp in his music pieceErratum Musical already in 1912, the year Cage was born.⁽⁷⁵⁾ For both artists, chance functioned as a means to escape from tradition, taste and conscious intentions. Thus it appears that chess stood in strong contrast to various methods and ideas both Cage and Duchamp used in art. An instinctive compensation? Cage, according to an interview, was interested in mushrooms and chess as a compensation for his concern with chance.⁽⁷⁶⁾ This was apparently also true for Duchamp–after all he was well aware of the contradiction between chess and art: “The beautiful combinations that chess players invent–you don’t see them coming, but afterward there is no mystery–it’s a pure logical conclusion. The attitude in art is completely different, of course; probably it pleased me to oppose one attitude to the other, as a form of completeness.”⁽⁷⁷⁾On the other hand, Duchamp believed that art and chess were in fact closer to each other than they seemed. He thought that the game had a visual and imaginative beauty that was similar to the beauty of poetry. Duchamp ended his remarks by saying that “from my close contact with artists and chess players, I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”⁽⁷⁸⁾ When Cage asked Duchamp to write something in his book on the end game, he wrote: “Dear John, Look out! Another poisonous mushroom.”⁽⁷⁹⁾ Chess and mushrooms were obviously opposed to the chance operations both Cage and Duchamp used in their art.
What immediately came to my mind when I heard about luck in the course of the chess conversation with my friend, were some thoughts Duchamp wrote to his sister’s husband Jean–on the enquiry, what Duchamp thought about one of his works of art:

“Artists throughout the ages are like Monte Carlo gamblers and the blind lottery pulls some of them through and ruins others (…) It all takes place at the level of our old friend luck. Artists who, in their own lifetime, have managed to get people to value their junk are excellent salesmen, but there is no guarantee as to the immortality of their work. And even posterity is a terrible bitch who cheats some and reinstates others, and reserves the right to change her mind again every 50 years.”⁽⁸⁰⁾

This statement carries a touch of resignation. Duchamp believed that artistic luck had nothing to do with real genius. According to him, “a good artist is just a lucky guy, that’s all.” It seems that Duchamp refused to take part in the ‘artistic lottery’, in the useless competition between artists. Chess, in contrast, justly rewarded those who had a real talent. His passion required him to ‘work hard’ in order to win. Duchamp apparently forgot about his self-made image of the réspirateur when sitting in front of a chess board.
I found it interesting to observe that both Cage and Duchamp had obsessions which cannot immediately be connected to art. Duchamp did not exclusively devote his life to art, as did Cage not concentrate merely on music. The former had a passion for chess, the latter for mushrooms and cooking. Cage was aware of the fact that many people criticised him for not devoting his life to music utterly. When he began his studies with Schönberg, he told his teacher that could not afford the price. Schönberg then asked him if he would devote his life to music and Cage’s answer was “yes.”⁽⁸¹⁾ But–why devoting one’s life to art respectively music if all areas are interrelated? Cage, in this respect said that “I still think I’ve remained faithful. You can stay with music while you’re hunting mushrooms(…)”⁽⁸²⁾ Both Duchamp and Cage expanded the notion of art into areas which were up to that time clearly separated from art itself. Chess cannot be simply regarded as a pastime for Duchamp, as Cage’s mushrooms and cooking passion were not merely an amusement. They did not only function as a counterbalance to their work as artists. Instead, they were integrated within their thinking and philosophy. Both artists transposed the idea of blurring the distinctions between art and life simply by their way of life. A female friend of Cage interestingly reflected on him:

“The months that followed, which extended into years, afforded me close proximity to both the man and his work. What I came to see was that there was very little difference between the two. That is Cage cooking was Cage composing was Cage playing chess was Cage shopping was…You get the picture. All of his daily activities, from the most sublime to the most mundane, were equally infused with a kind of mindful detachment.”⁽⁸³⁾

The way Cage devoted himself to an ‘ordinary business’ such as mushrooms and cooking, is certainly remarkable. Much of his experimental writing and also music was dedicated to his mushroom passion. It seems that whatever Cage experienced in his daily life became raw material for his art. Many of his elaborate remarks in A Year from Monday rather reminded me of an affectionate cook. As in the second part of his Diary: How to Improve the World, where he wrote: “After getting the information from a small French manual, I was glad to discover that Lactarius piperatus and L. vellereus, large white mushrooms growing plentifully wherever I hunt, are indeed excellent when grilled. Raw, these have a milk that burns the tongue and throat. Cooked, they’re delicious. Indigestion.”⁽⁸⁴⁾
Similar to Beuys, who worked with felt, fat and cloth after these materials saved his life after an aircrash, Cage’s interest in mushrooms originated from necessity during the World Depression. He then solely lived on mushrooms for one week and after this experience decided to occupy with them intensely. According to Cage, much could be learnt from music by devoting oneself to the mushroom. “It’s a curious idea perhaps, but a mushroom grows for such a short time and if you happen to come across it when it’s fresh it’s like coming upon a sound which also lives a short time.”⁽⁸⁵⁾Cage found many parallels between mushrooms and music. However, he was well aware of the fact that his mushroom passion, like chess, was in fact in conflict to his idea of chance in music. To leave it to chance whether to eat a mushroom or not could after all end fatal. Mushroom growth is not even determined by chance. They are rather choosy–grow on wet grounds only. Like Duchamp, Cage published a book on his passion in cooperation with two other mycologists. And – surprisingly, he did make money with his mushroom passion. Cage once appeared on an Italian show as mushroom expert and won 6000 US dollars by answering ‘mushroom questions’ correctly ⁽⁸⁶⁾
Mushrooms fired Cage’s imagination. His idea was that everything on earth should be audible because of vibration–including mushrooms. “I’ve had a long time the desire to hear the mushroom itself, and that would be done with a very fine technology, because they are dropping spores and those spores are hitting surfaces. There certainly is sound taking place.”⁽⁸⁷⁾Proceeding on this assumption, he made explorations on which sounds further the growth of which mushrooms. Besides being one of the founders of the Mycological Societyin New York, Cage taught a course called ‘Mushroom Identification’ at the NY School for Social Research. One lecture he held dealt with the ‘sexuality’ of mushrooms:

“We had invited a specialist from Connecticut, who had cultivated a certain species of mushroom, a Coprinus, in very large quantities to study their sex. In his lecture, he taught us that the sexual nature of mushrooms wasn’t so very different from that of human beings, but that it was easier to study. He explained that there are around eighty types of female mushrooms and around one hundred and eighty types of males in one species alone. Some combinations result in reproduction, while others do not. Female type 42, let’s say, will never reproduce with male type 111, but will with certain others. That led me to the idea that our notion of male and female is an oversimplification of an actually complex human state.”⁽⁸⁸⁾

Would you have thought of mushrooms in terms of female and male? I would not and besides enjoying myself immensely, I am continually amazed at Cage’s affectation of details. He had an extraordinary ability to exploit these new insights and incorporate them into his artistic thinking. And yet at the same I am asking myself how one can possibly have such a playful mind in order to connect sounds with mushrooms…I wonder if Cage was aware of his mushroom passion as something which many people would simply consider absurd if they did not study him thoroughly. To my astonishment I found the answer on the very last page of Cage’s first book Silence. Cage’s thoughts prove that he was hardly someone worldly innocent.

“In the space that remains, I would like to emphasize that I am not interested in the relationships between sounds and mushrooms any more than I am in those between sounds and other sounds. These would involve an introduction of logic that is not only out of place in the world, but time-consuming. We exist in a situation demanding greater earnestness, as I can testify, since recently I was hospitalised after having cooked and eaten experimentally some Spathyema foetida, commonly known as skunk cabbage. My blood pressure went down to fifty, stomach was pumped, etc. It behoves us therefore to see each thing directly as it is, be it the sound of a tin whistle or the elegant Lepiota procera.”⁽⁸⁹⁾

“Isn’t cooking all about mixture and letting individual flavours hold our attention?”
-Anne d’ Harnoncourt
In the late 70s, Cage, after serious health problems, began a macrobiotic diet on the advice of John Lennon and Yoko Ono⁽⁹⁰⁾. The idea of the macrobiotic diet is to make a shift from animal fats to vege oils. What fundamentally distinguishes the macrobiotic diet from other health programs is that, rather than consisting of a fixed list of foods to be consumed or avoided, it provides a structure which applies to the whole range of available choices, an orientation which many adherents of the diet extend to a whole cosmology. For Cage, macrobiotics undoubtedly meant more than just cooking or eating. However, he did not take the diet too seriously–he used herbs and spices which he enjoyed. In the short introduction to his macrobiotic recipe collection in his Rolywholyover – A Circus Box, Cage wrote: “The macrobiotic diet has a great deal to do with yin and yang and from finding a balance between them. I have not studied this carefully. All I do is try to observe whether something suits me or not.”⁽⁹¹⁾ Strictly following a recipe would not sound much like Cage–reading his recipes for chicken or beans indeed sound a bit like his notations in music–they allow enough room for the performer’s interpretation.
Cage’s discovery of macrobiotics is no coincidence–with its oriental origin and its application of yin and yang, the macrobiotic diet fits in very well with both Zen and with the temperament of Cage. He believed he had already been affected by the ideas of the diet before he actually started it: “I accepted the diet you might say aesthetically before I accepted it nutritionally.”⁽⁹²⁾ As Harnoncourt’s interesting quotation (“Isn’t cooking all about mixture and letting individual flavours hold our attention?”) suggests, cooking has a great deal to do with music where individual sounds hold our attention. After studying Cage, I cannot suppress the impression that he could have utilized all daily activities in his art. Cage’s kitchen probably was one big sound studio:

“In all the many years which followed up to the war, I never stopped touching things, making them sound and resound, to discover what sounds they could produce. Wherever I went, I always listened to objects. So I gathered together a group of friends, and we began to play some pieces I had written without instrumental indications, simply to explore instrumental possibilities not yet catalogued, the infinite number of sound sources from a trash heap or a junk yard, a living room or a kitchen…we tried all furniture we could think of.”⁽⁹³⁾

Cage was astonished by the positive results of the macrobiotic diet. “Your energy asserts itself the moment you wake up at the beginning of the day. It remains constant. It doesn’t go up and down, it stays level, and I can work much more extensively. I always had a great deal of energy, but now it is extraordinary. At the same time,” he added, “I’m much more equable in feeling; I’m less agitated.”⁽⁹⁴⁾ His improvement so amazed him that he kept up the diet from that time onwards and frequently recommended it in interviews:

“Now, however, after, say, four years of following the macrobiotic diet, my health has so greatly improved that I would seriously advise almost anyone who would lend me an ear to make a shift in diet from animal fats to vege oils, to exclude dairy products and sugar, to ‘choose’ chicken only if it actually is a chicken, that is, free from injected hormones, agribusiness, etc., to eat fish, beans and whole grains, nuts and seeds, and vege s with the exception of theSolanaceae (potatoes, tomatoes, egg-plant, and peppers)”⁽⁹⁵⁾

Macrobiotics also inspired Cage to a growing concern with nature and ecological matter. Big business and agribusiness, he stressed, damage our meat, vege and water supplies. Food which he mostly advised in special books of recipes include proper preparations for brown rice, zucchini, beans and chicken. In connection with the museum project calledRolywholyover Circus⁽⁹⁶⁾, John Cage published various macrobiotic recipes. Four of them I will include at the end of this chapter.
“I try to discover what one needs to do in art by observations from my daily life. I think daily life is excellent and that art introduces us to it and to its excellences the more it begins to be like it.”⁽⁹⁷⁾ –John Cage
Cage’s devotion to macrobiotics and mushrooms are interesting insofar, as they once again witness his contribution to the blurring of the distinction between art and life. As already suggested, Cage’s passions cannot be simply regarded as pastimes or, as in the case of cooking, in the context of a human necessity–though Cage began his macrobiotic diet on medical grounds, thus out of a necessity. We certainly do not get past spending time to prepare our daily food–nevertheless it is a question of how we deal with those daily routines. Cooking was as much a part of Cage’s life as composing music and poetry. Once Cage managed the shift from ordinary cooking to macrobiotics, he consciously devoted more time to what can be called the ‘act of cooking.’ This is at least the impression he left behind in his elaborate recipe descriptions. As Kuhn wrote in her essay, it was hard to distinguish Cage from his work: “Cage cooking was Cage composing was Cage playing chess was Cage shopping was…”
Cage, in contrast to Duchamp, frequently made his friend the theme in his writings as well as music. Cage’s ‘homages to Duchamp’ give evidence of the importance of this friendship for him. In his book, A Year from Monday he dedicated 26 Statements on Re Duchamp to his artist friend. The Statements are among other things Cage’s reflections on Duchamp’s artistic methods: “The check. The string he dropped. The Mona Lisa. The musical notes taken out of a hat. The glass. The toy shot-gun painting. The things he found. Therefore, everything seen–every object, that is, plus the process of looking at it–is a Duchamp.”⁽⁹⁸⁾Cage continued his reflections on Duchamp in the second and third part of his Diary: How to Improve the World. In the late 40s, Cage wrote the music for a Duchamp sequence in Hans Richter’s famous avant-garde film Dreams that Money Can Buy. The song is called Music for Marcel Duchamp. In his M–writings ’67-’72, Cage composed several mesostics in memory of Marcel. The following mesostic was written shortly after Duchamp’s unexpected death in 1968. Cage remarked, “it was a loss I didn’t want to have.”⁽⁹⁹⁾

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Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp,
The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even,
1915-23

Undoubtedly, Duchamp’s work and philosophy lived on in the work of John Cage – as in the case of his visual work titled Not Wanting to Say Anything about Marcel (1969). The work consists of a Plexiglas field on which one may find letters and fragments of words. Anne d’Harnoncourt wrote about it that “Cage characteristically sought to maintain both multiplicity and transparency by setting eight sheets of clear plastic printed with words in stands so that the viewer peered through them; and if he wasn’t careful, his gaze passed beyond them.”⁽¹⁰¹⁾ The work is indeed very reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’sLarge Glass (Fig. 7). As the title suggests, Cage did not want to say anything about his artist friend and thus subjected words to chance operations. He possibly wanted to leave the spectator with language fragments in order not to take him in completely. There is no point in attempting to ‘resolve’ Not Wanting to Say Anything about Marcel. I believe it is a homage to a very good friend.

Another interesting work which Duchamp apparently inspired him to, was the box which I already mentioned in connection with his macrobiotic recipes. Duchamp, in his artwork called Boite, gathered together small reproductions of his artworks unbound in boxed form rather than in an album or a book. So did Cage: Rolywholyover – A Circus is a reflecting box which was designed in consultation with Cage himself. The publication accompanied with a major exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles conceived of by Cage as a “composition for museum.” The box is an artwork fully in keeping with his philosophy. It contains a wide range of materials, printed in different formats–such as reprints of texts that Cage found useful and inspiring. The texts can be read in any order. The box also includes reproductions of works by Cage, musical scores, recipes, advice on healthy eating and photography. As Cage said in discussing the box,

“The world is vast, give the impression that the materials are endless.”⁽¹⁰²⁾ -John Cage

Despite Cage’s intense occupation with Duchamp, he always remained a somehow mysterious mind. In the foreword to his alphabet in X-writings ’79-’82, Cage reflected on Satie, Joyce and Duchamp–three artists who greatly inspired him. Cage is quite explicit about his ‘goals’ in respect to those three artists–namely that he is not interested in ‘understanding’ in the sense of giving ultimate answers. His humbleness nevertheless gives evidence of an exceptional bright and free mind. In relation to Joyce’s masterpieceFinnegan’s Wake he wrote:

“When I was in Ireland for a month last summer (…) many Irishmen told me they couldn’t understand Finnegan’s Wake and so didn’t read it. I asked them if they understood their own dreams. They confessed they didn’t. I have the feeling some of them may now be reading Joyce or at least dreaming they’re reading Joyce. Adaline Glasheen says: ‘I hold to my old opinion. Finnegan’s Wake is a model of a mysterious universe made mysterious by Joyce for the purpose of striking with polished irony at the hot vanity of divine and human wishes.’ And she says: “Joyce himself told Arthur Power, ‘What is clear and concise can’t deal with reality, for to be real is to be surrounded with mystery.’ Human kind, it is clear, can’t stand much reality. We so fiercely hate and fear our cloud of unknowing that we can’t believe sincere and unaffected, Joyce’s love of the clear dark–it has got to be a paradox….an eccentricity of genius.”⁽¹⁰³⁾

I was impressed by Joyce’s quotation–for reality is indeed often mysterious and inexplicable. In Cage’s interview on his Roaratorio–An Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake, Cage remarked that “Joyce didn’t mean Finnegan’s Wake to be understood, he meant it to be a piece of music.”⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ We tend to question everything which is unfamiliar with. Asking questions is one thing but expecting precise answers is another. In relation to Duchamp, Cage thought that asking him questions was the wrong tactic. He had no special intentions when spending time with him. I believe that we can learn a lot from Cage when trying to study Duchamp. Asked on how Cage would circumscribe his friendship with Duchamp, he answered:

“If, for instance, you go to Paris and spend your time as a tourist going to the famous places, I’ve always had a feeling you would learn nothing about Paris. The best way to learn about Paris would be to have no intention of learning anything and simply to live there as though you were a Frenchman. And no Frenchman would dream of going to, say, Notre Dame.”⁽¹⁰⁵⁾

Nevertheless, there remained a hermetic aspect of Duchamp’s work. Cage once spoke to Marcel’s wife, Teeny Duchamp about this: “I said, ‘You know I understand very little about Marcel’s work. Much of it remains very mysterious to me.’ She answered “It does to me, too.”⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ We must be satisfied with what we are offered by Duchamp–otherwise we will end in a never ending helix. John and Marcel simply enjoyed each other’s presence, without much talking about their work. In order to contribute something to your enjoyment – my suggestion is that you try Cage’s Roast chicken before you continue with the next chapter. In case you are not hungry you will enjoy reading them.
‘Passionate encounters’, this chapter’s motto, is dedicated to the personalities of both Cage and Duchamp as well as their friendship – a friendship which was very much formed by their passions. Though chess initially functioned as a pretext for Cage to spend time with Duchamp, it became an important and enjoyable common amity experience. While writing about chess, I found many parallels in Cage’s passions repertoire and thus tried to examine it also in view to the central notion of the essay–the blurring of the distinction between art and life. Moira Roth’s interview with John Cage has helped me a lot to get an insight into their nature of friendship. However, this only gives a one-side impression and as Duchamp’s documented statements on Cage were comparatively rather rare, it is far from completing the puzzle. I am writing this with the humble precaution of a historian who was taught to take all possible historical resources into account.
As I am writing these lines, my thoughts lead me to Duchamp, the perpetual intelligent deceiver. I am thinking of the Duchamp who was never willing to give away too much. While listening to the last beats of Cage’s Music for Marcel Duchamp I am constantly reminded of the Duchamp who managed well to surround himself with mystery. One should be a clairvoyant rather than a historian.

Recipes À LA JOHN CAGE

“Cage’s scores for music, scores for prints, recipes for chicken, all exist for realization by the artist in real time, and he invited his audience (or his dinner guests) to realize that listening, cooking, and eating are also creative acts.”⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ -Anne d’Harnoncourt
John Cage’s recipes are an interesting experience in view to his whole philosophy. His cooking advices are precise and clear, but far from elitist. They give evidence of his pedagogical gift not to impose his ideas on anybody. Cage, for example did not use the imperative form of “you do …(such and such)”, but instead used the self-referential “I” when explaining the cooking procedures. Interesting also, that his recipes are be inspired by various cultures. The following recipes should offer a possibility to ‘experience’ John Cage. I found it quite interesting what Cage said about experience:

“I think that there is a distinct difference between…. I think that the most pointed way to put this distinction is by using the word “understanding” as opposed to “experience.” Many people think that if they are able to understand something that they will be able to experience it, but I don’t think that that is true. I don’t think that understanding something leads to experience. I think, in fact, that it leads only to a certain use of the critical faculties. Because…say you understand how to boil an egg. How will that help you in cooking zucchini? I’m not sure. One could make the point more dramatically by saying, “How will that help you to ride horseback?” But that probably goes too far. I think that we must be prepared for experience not by understanding anything, but rather by becoming open-minded.”

Roast Chicken

Get a good chicken not spoiled by agribusiness. Place in Rohmertopf (clay baking dish with cover) with giblets. Put a smashed clove of garlic & a slice of fresh ginger between legs and wings and breasts. Squeeze the juice of two & three lemons over the bird. Then an equal amount of tamari. Cover, place in cold oven turned up to 220°. Leave for 1 hour. Then uncover for 15 minutes, heat on, to brown. Now I cook at 170°, 30 minutes to the pound. Or use hot mustard and cumin seeds instead of ginger. Keep lemon, tamari or Braggs and garlic. Instead of squeezing the lemon, it may be quartered then chopped fine in a Cuisinart with the garlic & ginger (or garlic, cumin & mustard). Add tamari. The chicken & sauce can be placed on a bed of carrots (or sliced 3/4-inch thick bitter melon obtainable in Chinatown)

Brown Rice

Twice as much water as rice. If you wish, substitute a very little wild rice for some of the brown rice. Wash or soak overnights then drain. Add a small amount of hijiki (seaweed) and some Braggs. Very often I add a small amount of wild rice. Bring to good boil. Cover with cloth and heavy lid and cook for twenty minutes over medium flame, reduce flame to very low and cook thirty minutes more. Uncover. If it is not sticking, cook it some more. If it is sticking to the bottom of the pan, stir it a little and then cover again and let it rest with the fire off. When you look at it again after ten minutes or so it will have loosened itself from the bottom of the pan. Another way to cook rice: using the same proportion of rice, bring to a boil and then simply cover with lid without the cloth, reducing the fire to low. After forty-five minutes, remove from fire but leave lid on for at least 20 minutes.

BEANS

Soak beans overnight after having washed them. In the morning change the water and add Kombu (seaweed). Also, if you wish, rosemary or cumin. Watch them so that they don’t cook too long, just until tender. Then pour off most of the liquid, saving it, and replace it with tamari (or Braggs). But taste first: you may prefer it without tamari or with very little. Taste to see if it’s too salty. If it is, add more bean liquid. Then, if you have the juice from a roasted chicken, put several teaspoons of this with the beans. If not, add some lemon juice. And the next time you have roast chicken, add some of the juice to the beans. Black turtle beans or small white beans can be cooked without soaking overnight. But large kidney beans or pinto beans can be cooked without soaking overnight. But large kidney beans or pinto beans, etc. are best soaked (So are the others.) Another way to cook beans which has become my favourite is with bay leaves, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper. You can cook it with some kombu from the beginning. I now use the “shocking method.” See Avelines Kushi’s book. And now I’ve changed again. A Guatemalan idea: Bury an entire plant of garlic in the beans without bothering to take the paper off. Cook for at least 3 hours.

Chick-Peas (Garbanzos)

Soak several hours. Then boil in new water. Until tender. They can then be used in many ways. 1. Salad. Make a dressing of lemon or lime with olive oil (a little more oil than lemon), sea salt and black pepper, fresh dill-parsley, and a generous amount of fine French mustard (e.g., Pommery). 2. Or use with couscous having cooked them with fresh ginger and a little saffron. 3. Or make hummous. Place, say, two cups of chick-peas with one cup of their liquid in Cuisinart. Add a teaspoon salt, lots of black pepper, a little oil and lemon juice to taste. Add garlic and tahini. Now I no longer add salt, but instead a prepared gazpacho.

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5.
“If that’s art, I’m a Hottentott”

“Everyone is doing something, and those who make things in a framed canvas, are called artists.” ⁽¹⁰⁹⁾–Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp was apparently interested in a general conception of art. What do we call art? Or better what is not considered as art? Can we define works of art which are not works of art–as Duchamp already questioned. Moira Roth, in relation to this wrote that “if one is Duchamp the answer is probably no, although he did ‘make’ works which were not immediately works of art.”⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Otherwise, these questions are not easy ones to answer–on the contrary, they provoke a number of new question marks. Where is the border between art and non-art? And then–how do we define non-art?

As a historian, I was first of all interested in a definition of art. And as it turned out I had to dig a bit into philosophy. Art originally derived from Sanskrit and meant ‘making’ or ‘creating something’. Plato took up the definition and went one step further by distinguishing artists into two categories: those who are productively creating objects such as architects or carpenters and those who are restricted to the already existing or imitation (what he calledMímesis)⁽¹¹¹⁾. Plato honoured the craftsman more than the artist as he believed that the former was oriented at the ideas of the mind, while the latter was simply creating an imitation of the already existing. According to Plato, the painter distanced himself from the truth–in order to attain it, one has to leave all appearances behind and should not duplicate it by a sort of reflection. In the Middle Ages, art (Ars) was generally interpreted as a production and design of everyday objects. It was a skilled trade which was thus never valued under just aesthetic aspects.⁽¹¹²⁾ If we strictly stick to this definition, an artist is nothing else than a workman. And as Duchamp said in an interview, everyone of us is somehow a workman⁽¹¹³⁾–in different areas of course. Artworks have not always been valued under just aesthetic characteristics–as this short historical outline teaches us.

An important milestone in so-called ‘aesthetic’ art was the beginning of the 19^th century. The Impressionists’ usual subjects were landscapes or social scenes like streets and cafés. While Impressionist paintings are commonly regarded as ‘beautiful’, it is also undeniable that they helped to create and to preserve–in their depiction of the pleasures of café life, the comfor ladies at bath–a class divided from the world in its comforts and signs of sophistication. Beauty, here, was a means of escaping from the issues and obligations of the day. Beauty separated those who appreciated it and wished to reside within its frontiers. Expressionism, on the other hand represented a move away from the Impressionist trends and was concerned with conveying the artist’s emotions as aroused by his subjects. Any painting technique that helped to express these feelings was considered a valid medium.⁽¹¹⁴⁾

I found it quite interesting to observe that all art movements or -Isms were somehow a response or artistic counteraction to the preceding movement. The Impressionists strongly rejected the Romantic idea that a painting should convey strong emotions. Expressionism, on the other hand, aimed at stressing the artist’s emotions, which was again in contrast to Impressionism. Duchamp lived in a time where he could choose from Abstract Expressionism, Cubism or Surrealism. However, none of the -Isms pleased him enough to get involved with it. He invented his own -Ism and it turned out to be a counteraction to all the previous art movements.
I was quite amazed by the fact that the common notion of ‘beautiful’ art had not always honoured. However, there was a long way to go between Plato and Duchamp. Duchamp’s idea of taste may be interpreted as a response to the governing taste concept since the 18^thcentury where

“taste was centrally connected with the concept of pleasure, and pleasure itself was understood as a sensation subject to degrees of refinement. There were standards of taste, and a curriculum, in effect, of aesthetic education. Taste was not merely what this or that person preferred, all things being equal, but what any person whatever ought to prefer.”⁽¹¹⁵⁾

Duchamp’s taste revolution, however, cannot only be interpreted as a denial of all -Isms and taste concepts at the time, but also as a very personal decision in search for his own expression. Defining art as a concept seems like an endless enterprise–not only because every point in history offers us its own definition, but because every single artist provides us with hints of his own world.
“For us, art is that which we find under this name: something which simply is, and which doesn’t need to conform to laws in order to exist; a complicated social product.”⁽¹¹⁶⁾ -Robert Musil
Let us imagine a scene in a Museum of Modern Art. A rather perplexed visitor and his child critically observe a Pollock. He turns to his son and whispers, “you could have done this with your left hand, don’t you?” A scene which is so familiar to us that it almost seems like a déjà-vu. Now, fine: “Every human being is an artist”, an impressive line Beuys once mentioned. In a broad sense–if we take together all definitions art history provided us–this statement can retain validity for we all ‘make’ or produce something. The father demonstrated with his statement that in his view art must have something to do with artistic skill. And–skill usually creates an aesthetic product, however the term aesthetic is defined. Van Gogh or Monet would be generally considered as ‘beautiful’ by the majority. Yet History has taught us that every masterpiece of modern art, whether Picasso, Cage or Duchamp, was first met with an outcry of indignation: “this is not art!” (or, maybe “If that’s art I’m a Hottentott”) Art is what we or what critics call art–as different the result may be. Robert Musil’s quotation on art hits the bull’s eye. Art is too complicated to be defined – as it is the product of human beings. It is impossible to find an objective explanation for something that is the most subjective expression of a human-being. The borders between art and non-art are blurring. In my view, art could be compared to a handmade mirror made by a reflecting individual at a particular point of history–whether we find it beautiful or not is beside the point.
It may be hard to understand why Duchamp invented his readymades or why Cage first rejected harmony and welcomed noise as an artistic tool. Both, Duchamp and Cage were interested in conceptual art which means that the idea behind a work of art, in the end, was more important than the finished work itself.
Duchamp believed that there was nothing inherently sacred about an art-object. This concept is realized in Duchamp’s readymades. He believed he could elevate common, store-bought items to the status of artworks by declaring them so. Cage wished to free himself from his likes and dislikes–by asking questions instead of making choices, by using chance as a compositional tool. Both artists rejected terms like tradition and categorization and were in constant search for an individual form of expression. There is no recipe for what is beautiful or musical–after all it is up to the audience if a work of art is worth preserving or not.

click to enlarge

Figure 8
Marcel Duchamp, Nude
Descending a Staircase ,No. 2,
1912

Duchamp’s taste revolution started rather turbulently. After some years of Cézanne’s and Matisse’s influence, Duchamp soon found his own path. His famous painting Nude descending a staircase (Fig. 8)scandalised the New York art world in 1913. When he first submitted his picture for exhibition in Paris, it was rejected on the grounds that it had “too much of a literary title, in the bad sense–in a caricatural way. A nude never descends stairs–a nude reclines….”⁽¹¹⁷⁾ Duchamp, at this point, apparently broke with all artistic conventions. He attempted to capture a figure in motion – a concept that apparently proved difficult for the audience of that time to understand. One critic wrote that this landmark painting resembled an explosion in a shingle factory.⁽¹¹⁸⁾When observing the Duchamp’s Nude, I was immediately struck by the cubistic elements–because of the darkish brown and grey colours as well as the characteristic angular forms. However, the painting was far from depicting the ideas of any -Ism. The Nude was rather made by a Duchamp who once again proved to be an intelligent deceiver. As Calvin Tomkins wrote, “nudes weren’t supposed to come down stairs and paintings weren’t supposed to have their titles written on the canvas, and any artist who broke the rules in such an irreverent manner must be kidding, right?”⁽¹¹⁹⁾ I would not say that his intention was to make fun of the Cubists–Duchamp was too much the indifferent type as to make fun of an art movement by such direct means. He did not even make efforts to explain his works of art–and if he did, he did so by making some remarks years later–as in the case of his Nude:

My aim was a static representation of movement, a static composition of indications of various positions taken by a form in movement–with no attempt to give cinema effects through painting. The reduction of a head in movement to a bare line seemed to me defensible. A form passing through space would traverse a line; and as the form moved the line it traversed would be replaced by another line–and another and another. Therefore I felt justified in reducing a figure in movement to a line rather than to a skeleton. Reduce, reduce, reduce was my thought–but at the same time my aim was turning inward, rather than toward externals. And later, following this view, I came to feel that an artist might use anything–a dot, a line, the most conventional or unconventional symbol–to say what he wanted to say.”⁽¹²⁰⁾

Interesting what Duchamp says about abstraction in terms of his painting. I do not believe, however, that the abstraction he mentioned carried much significance in his future career. Duchamp gave up painting altogether–as he said he tried to “unlearn to draw” in order to escape the prison of tradition.⁽¹²¹⁾ Cage did not have to make efforts to forget music, as he admitted he never had a feeling for harmony. “I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schönberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, ‘You’ll come to a wall you won’t be able to get through.’ So I said, ‘I’ll beat my head against that wall.’”⁽¹²²⁾ Cage indeed disposed of a strong ability to assert himself. Although Duchamp and Cage apparently had different initial positions, they both landed on a similar artistic track.
“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” -John Cage

click to enlarge

Figure 9
Robert
Rauschenberg, White Paintings

Let us begin from zero–silence, emptiness, nonsense. Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (Fig. 9). Empty space–no message, no dictatorship–we are free to bring in ourselves. Empty canvas–no need for interpretation; we need not say anything about it if we don’t feel like it. The blankness of the white paintings strongly reminded me of Cage’s silence. Rauschenberg, like Duchamp and Cage, was also interested in breaking down the barriers between art and life by using everyday artistic tools. Cage was indeed mesmerized by Rauschenberg’s empty walls. ”I responded immediately,” he said, “not as objects, but as ways of seeing. I’ve said before that they were airports for shadows and for dust, but you could also say that they were mirrors of the air.” What fascinated Cage about the White Paintings was Rauschenberg’s idea of emptiness: “A canvas is never empty”⁽¹²³⁾, Rauschenberg said; it acts as a landing-ground for dust, shadows, reflections. The White Paintings somehow gave Cage ‘permission’ to proceed with the composition of his silent pieces: “When I saw those, I said, ‘Oh yes, I must; otherwise I’m lagging, otherwise music is lagging.’”⁽¹²⁴⁾ “It’s out of that emptiness, and not being put off by ‘nothing’ happening–and when you see it, it really impresses you–that hearing it, hearing the emptiness becomes a possibility all over again.”⁽¹²⁵⁾ Rauschenberg’s white paintings greatly inspired Cage to silence in music. He was interested in a silence that was “not the absence of sound but the fact of having changed one’s mind to be interested in the sounds that there are, to hear them.”⁽¹²⁶⁾
Silence turned out to be one of Cage’s central concept in his music and philosophy. He defined silence as simply the absence of intended sounds, or the turning off of our awareness. At the same time he made it clear that he believed there was no such thing as silence, defined as a total absence of sound–similar to Rauschenberg, who did not believe in emptiness in terms of an empty canvas. In 1951, he visited a sound-proof chamber at Harvard University in order to ‘hear’ silence. “I literally expected to hear nothing,” he said. Instead, he heard two sounds, one high and one low. He was told that the first was his nervous system and the other his blood circulating. This was a major revelation that was to affect his compositional philosophy from that time on.

“The history of art is simply a history of getting rid of the ugly by entering into it, and using it. After all, the notion of something outside of us being ugly is not outside of us but inside of us. And that’s why I keep reiterating that we’re working with our minds. What we’re trying to do is to get them open so that we don’t see things as being ugly, or beautiful, but we see them just as they are.”⁽¹²⁷⁾-John Cage

Cage’s taste ®evolution started rather loud and clear. In 1940, he made the Prepared Piano. Before Cage left Cornish school, he was invited to compose the music for an African dance. The only instrument available was a piano. “I knew that wouldn’t work for Bacchanale which was rather primitive, almost barbaric,”⁽¹²⁸⁾ Cage recalled. He finally realized that he had to change the piano. Cage tried placing objects between the strings. “The piano was transformed into a percussion orchestra having the loudness, say, of a harpsichord.”⁽¹²⁹⁾ Noise as a compositional tool was born….interpenetration of life and art.
“You have to remember how straight-laced everything had always been in music…Just to change one little thing in music was a life’s work. But John changed everything…John was freer than the rest of us.”⁽¹³⁰⁾ – Morton Feldman
When Cage was writing percussion and prepared piano pieces, he became concerned with a new change. He noticed that although he had been taught that music was a matter of communication, when he wrote a sad piece people laughed, and when he wrote a funny one they started crying. From this he concluded that people did not understand each other’s music, that “music doesn’t really communicate to people. Or if it does, it does it in very, very different ways from one person to the next.”⁽¹³¹⁾ Cage said that “no one was understanding anybody else. It was clearly pointless to continue that way, so I determined to stop writing music until I found a better reason than ‘self expression’ for doing it.”⁽¹³²⁾ Cage’s reaction to ‘common composition’ is very much reminiscent of Duchamp’s rejection of what he called ‘retinal painting’. Strictly speaking, Cage stopped being a composer in the traditional sense, similar to Duchamp who refused to lead an artistic life.

“The reason I am less and less interested in music is not only that I find environmental sounds and noises more useful aesthetically than he sounds produced by the world’s musical cultures, but that, when you get right down to it, a composer is simply someone who tells other people what to do. I find this an unattractive way of getting things done. I’d like our activities to be more social and anarchically so.”⁽¹³³⁾

Cage wanted to create music that was free of melody, harmony and musical theory. In an interview he once gave on his project Roaratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake, Cage said that “he wanted music not to be in the sense of music, but in the sense of Finnegan’s Wake” which means that he wanted to turn away from music itself–just like Joyce turned away from conventional writing. Cage, by writing Roaratorio, actually turned literature into a piece of music. He made a text from the original and catalogued the sounds and locations mentioned in Finnegan’s Wake. All sound effects were inspired from the text and many recorded in Ireland, with traditional instruments such as flutes, pipes, fiddles and bodhrans (a special drum type).
To link up with Cage’s conception of music as an unapt means of self-expression (“when he wrote a sad piece people laughed, and when he wrote a funny one they started crying.”) – Cage had determined that the purpose of music could not be communication or self-expression. What then, was its purpose? The answer came from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian singer and tabla player: “The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.”⁽¹³⁴⁾Cage was tremendously struck by this. For more than a year he immersed himself in the philosophy of East and West, and began studying Zen Buddhism with Daisetz T. Suzuki, a Japanese Zen teacher who taught at Columbia University. “I had the impression that I was changing–you might say growing up. I realized that my previous understanding was that of a child.”⁽¹³⁵⁾ Cage was determined to find out more about the “divine influences”, Gira Sarabhai had told him about. He came to the conclusion that they were the sounds and events that were free to everyone, that is, those of our nature and environment. Buddhism also teaches the transitoriness and fugacity of all creatures and objects. Its ultimate goal is the recovery of a higher purpose which is one independent of likes and dislikes–and thus of everything that is intentional.⁽¹³⁶⁾
As soon as Cage gained those insights from oriental philosophy, he introduced it into his music. A quiet mind, he determined, was one free of dislikes; but, since dislikes require likes, it must be free of both likes and dislikes. “You can become narrow minded, literally, by only liking certain things and disliking others, but you can become open-minded, literally, by giving up your likes and dislikes and becoming interested in things.”⁽¹³⁷⁾ Thus, Cage more and more became interested in sounds and noises. He gave up harmony, which he believed, had nothing to do with noises. “Sounds should be honoured rather than enslaved. Every creature, whether sentient (such as animals) or non-sentient (such as stones and air), is the Buddha. Each being is at the centre of the universe.”⁽¹³⁸⁾ This oriental insight may also express Cage’s passion for mushrooms and his belief to hear the sounds of any plant or object: “I have recently learned that plants respond to the affection you show them! They can almost tell you exactly who cares for them. And they won’t grow if they’re not loved.”⁽¹³⁹⁾
In Cage’s mind, the function of music was not to entertain or communicate, but to be a process of discovery, to become aware and sensitised to the environmental sounds that are all around us, and to be free from personal taste and manipulation. The following statement by Cage summarizes this point of view:

“Art may be practiced in one way or another, so that it reinforces the ego in its likes and dislikes, or so that it opens that mind to the world outside, and outside, inside. Since the forties and through the study with D. T. Suzuki of the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, I’ve thought of music as a means of changing the mind. I saw art not as something that consisted of a communication from the artist to an audience but rather as an activity of sounds in which the artist found a way to let the sounds be themselves. And, in being themselves, to open the minds of people who made them or listened to them to other possibilities than they had previously considered.”⁽¹⁴⁰⁾

Thus, music lost its purpose of communication and expression. In contrast to the Western practice of making hierarchies–of separating, discriminating and dividing–Zen Buddhism suggested the opposite: no single centre (no best or least), only “an endless plurality of centres, each one world honoured.”⁽¹⁴¹⁾
Cage believed that emotions, like tastes and memory were too closely linked with the self and that the ego would not open the minds to noises and sounds. There was a way out–that is, Cage’s notion that art and life should no longer be separate but one and the same: “Art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it.”⁽¹⁴²⁾ This idea led him to the concept of interpenetration. Previously, sounds that were outside the composer’s intentions were considered alien intrusions, unwelcome ‘noises’. Cage, for example, welcomed noises that were unintentionally produced by the audience–such as coughs or whispers. As a result of including sounds outside of the composer’s and performer’s intentions, Cage welcomed interpenetration.
Another important dictum which greatly inspired Cage to his new musical thought were the works of Ananda Coomaraswamy who wrote that “art is to imitate nature in her manner of operation.”⁽¹⁴³⁾ This idea should not be confused with imitating nature’s appearance. But how does nature operate? According to the naturalistic evolution theory and natural phenomena, they are not based upon a mechanical, deterministic model, but based on interdeterminacy and chance, such as in quantum mechanics and chaos theory. In the time of the Big Bang, there was a total chaos (a mixture of gases and other elements), and paradoxical as it may seem, this chaos was from time to time organised by chance.⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ In fact we are all existed by chance. As Cage’s works demonstrate, chaos is not really chaos, but unexpected order. I hope there are not too many critical mathematicians and physicists among you… Cage’s response to the chaos of our world was to welcome both its order and its disorder to the greatest extent possible. “Here we are. Let us say Yes to our presence together in Chaos.”⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ Cage met this chaos by using chance operations which encouraged him to shift his focus of attention away from the making of choices to the asking of questions. Likes and dislikes became irrelevant. Cage used his aesthetic of non-intention for making music, poetry and visual art. However, he assured that he did not use it when crossing the street, playing chess, hunting for mushrooms or making love. ⁽¹⁴⁶⁾

“What his music is ‘about’ is changing the mind–creating musical situations which, being analogous to life, have the effect of returning himself and his listeners to a level of consciousness freed from intrusive preconceptions, desires and intentions, and leading them toward an unfettered experience of what is before them in the present.”⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ – Laura Kuhn

I believe that knowing about Cage’s philosophy is crucial in order to comprehend his musical pieces as serious artworks. Only then we are able to understand that his silent piece or 4’33”was not a deliberate affront or insult to the audience or the act of a fool who made a child’s play. Cage repeatedly stated that he was not interested in shocking or insulting audiences. “I have never gratuitously done anything for shock.”⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ He had no intentions to shock, but the audience did not always perceive it that way. The first performance of John Cage’s 4’33”created a scandal. Written in 1952, it is Cage’s most notorious composition, his so-called “silent piece”. The piece consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds in which the performer plays nothing. At the premiere some listeners were unaware that they had heard anything at all. It was first performed by the young pianist David Tudor in New York, for an audience supporting contemporary art.

“Tudor placed the hand-written score, which was in conventional notation with blank measures, on the piano and sat motionless as he used a stopwatch to measure the time of each movement. The score indicated three silent movements, each of a different length, but when added together totalled four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Tudor signalled its commencement by lowering the keyboard lid of the piano. The sound of the wind in the trees entered the first movement. After thirty seconds of no action, he raised the lid of the first movement. It was then lowered for the second movement, during which raindrops pattered on the roof. The score was in several pages, so he turned the pages as time passed, yet playing nothing at all. The keyboard lid was raised and lowered again for the final movement, during which the audience whispered and muttered.” ⁽¹⁴⁹⁾

Cage said later that “people began whispering to one another, and some people began to walk out. They didn’t laugh–they were just irritated when they realized nothing was going to happen and they haven’t forgotten it 30 years later; they’re still angry.”⁽¹⁵⁰⁾
Maverick Concert Hall, the site of the first performance, was ideal in allowing the sounds of the environment to enter, because the back of the hall was open to the surrounding forest. One could hear raindrops patterning the roof –and Cage welcomed all those unexpected, natural sounds. When Tudor finished, raising the keyboard lid and himself from the piano, the audience burst into an uproar–“infuriated and dismayed”, according to the reports.⁽¹⁵¹⁾ Even in the midst of an avant-garde concert attended by modern artists, 4’33” was considered “going too far.”⁽¹⁵²⁾
As I am so eagerly writing about Cage’s discovery of Oriental philosophy, Zen Buddhism and the impact they had on his music and thinking in general, I am reminded of his mushroom passion, the macrobiotic recipes, his use of chance and I have the impression that I am writing in circles–that is, I am repeating Cage’s ideas which once again witness the unity in his philosophy as well as in all his daily activities. Cage’s interpenetration of art and life is thus also apparent in my writing–I somehow feel that my chapter mottos do not (exclusively) convey the contents of the respective chapters–everything is blurring in view to Cage’s entirety philosophy. Though a bit confusing, I believe that this is an interesting insight in view to the topic of this paper. It seems as if I am ‘experiencing’ what I am writing about.
The fact that Cage was interested in noise and sounds and consequently incorporated it into his music seemed somehow familiar to me. Yesterday I dug out the first compact disc I received from my parents around Christmas 1990. I was 14 years old by that time and a crazy Beatles fan. Up to that time I had listened to earwigs such as Let it be, Yellow submarine, Two of us or Dear Jude and eagerly tried to play them on the guitar. I can vividly remember my disappointment at first listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. The songs seemed strange to me, they sounded completely different from the cheerful songs I had listened before. At least I was compensated with When I’m sixty four and With a Little Help from my Friends, but what about songs like Within you Without you? What was George doing with his voice and with all those weird instruments? Or the church like singing of She’s Leaving Home… The cover featuring the wax figures was so queer, not to mention about the odd costumes they wore. Nevertheless, I could not stop listening to the strangeness of the music. I was listening to the songs again and again and with the time I became fascinated about the Beatles’ different music aspect. I tried hard to figure out the contents of songs like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and was wondering what Lennon wanted to tell us by ‘marmalade skies’ or ‘plasticine porters with looking glass ties’. Those mysterious songs somehow transferred me into another, mysterious world, if only for a few minutes. Maybe one’s ears slowly have to familiarise with good music.

“The Beatles insisted that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different,” says Emerick, “so everything was either distorted, limited, heavily compressed or treated with excessive equalisation. We had microphones right down the bells of the brass instruments and headphones turned into microphones attached to violins. We plastered vast amounts of echo onto vocals, and sent them through the circuitry of the revolving Leslie speaker inside a Hammod organ. We used giant primitive oscillators to vary the speed of instruments and vocals and we had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck together upside down and the wrong way around.” ⁽¹⁵³⁾

The Beatles apparently wanted to turn all musical conventions upside down when recordingSgt. Pepper. The album is seen by many people to be the Beatles’ masterpiece. It is especially denoted by its asymmetrical musical phrases and rhythms and its integrated use of electronic music techniques and Indian sitar sound. The album is very experimental. Around the timeSgt. Pepper was released, all Beatles were more or less occupied with Indian philosophy. They attended a seminar by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and learned about sublime consciousness and inner peace and these insights undoubtedly influenced their music. What struck me when I listened to songs like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was that you heard the orchestra rehearsing before the song actually started. In between you could perceive the audience laughing and applauding (although it was studio recorded). Interesting also, that some songs ‘interpenetrate’, which means that there are no pauses in between the songs. I found these impacts more than interesting after studying Cage’s understanding of music. I was struck….

“The very end of the album typifies the advanced studio trickery applied throughout Sgt. Pepper. After the last droplets of the crashing piano chord of ‘A Day in the Life’ have evaporated, come a few seconds of 15 kilocycle tone, put there –especially to annoy your dog–at the request of John Lennon (it contains a note that is so high-pitched that it is only audible to dogs) Then, as the coup de grace, there is a few seconds of nonsense Beatle chatter, taped, cut into several pieces and stuck back together at random so that, as George Martin says, purchasers of the vinyl album who did not have an auto return on their record player would say “What the hell’s that?” and find the curious noise going on and on ad infinitum in the concentric run-out groove.”⁽¹⁵⁴⁾

The Beatles undoubtedly wanted to include some elements that caused some unexpected reactions by the audience. Besides applying different rhythms in one and the same song, they used everyday life sounds such as alarm ringing and someone gasping. They did not even frank us from chance–some of the recordings were stuck together by chance order. Interesting also, the topics of the songs on Sgt. Pepper which differ a great deal from the lighthearted love songs they wrote before. The Beatles were inspirited by different, daily life sources–Lennon wrote Good Morning Good Morning after he was inspired by a TV-spot on Cornflakes. McCartney sang about ”Fixing a hole where the rain gets in (…).” In A Day in the Life, John Lennon reads a newspaper report on a fatal car accident. Harrison’s Within You Without You was inspired by Indian philosophy and turned out to be a co-project with Indian musicians–it was recorded without Lennon, McCartney and Starr. The borders between the music of Sgt. Pepper and life are blurring.
It would be interesting to find out what Cage thought about this innovative Beatles album–I can imagine he would have loved the illogical barrage of noise at the end of A Day in the Life. However, I doubt that Cage would have wanted to listen Sgt. Pepper in any recorded version. He did not even listen to the radio. “If you’re in a room and a record is playing and the window is open and there’s some breeze and a curtain is blowing, that’s sufficient, it seems to me, to produce a theatrical experience.”⁽¹⁵⁵⁾ I suppose that Cage would have enjoyed experimenting with the Beatles on the different sound effects. Once asked about popular music in general, Cage responded that

“it’s very hard for me to listen to music nowadays with a regular beat; so that I have a hard time to begin with, with most popular music. On the other hand, some of it gets free of it. Rock seems to me to get free of it, because it calls so much attention to loudness that you forget the beat.”⁽¹⁵⁶⁾

Sgt. Pepper is of course far from popular. It is a rather a unique music experience, full of surprising sounds and noises. It allows us to dip into a different world.

“He simply found that object, gave it his name. What then did he do? He found that object, gave it his name. Identification. What then shall we do? Shall we call it by his name or by its name. It’s not a question of names.”⁽¹⁵⁷⁾ -John Cage

The last pages, besides digressing briefly on the Beatles, were dedicated to Cage’s study of Zen Buddhism and accordingly his invention of dichotomies like silence, sounds and noises in music. Although Duchamp had no direct connections with oriental thoughts, he madereadymades to which said to be completely indifferent.⁽¹⁵⁸⁾ This notion has of course a lot to do with the Cage’s idea of freeing oneself from one’s likes and dislikes.

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Figure 10
Marcel Duchamp,
Bicycle Wheel,
1913/1961

Figure 11
Marcel Duchamp, In
Advance of the Broken
Arm, 1915

In 1913, Duchamp took a bicycle wheel, turned it upside down and mounted it on a kitchen stool. The Bicycle Wheel (Fig. 10) was originally not intended to be shown, it was just for Duchamp’s own use. One year later, this wheel was the first of what came to be known as readymades, ordinary objects delocated and decontextualised. According to Duchamp, his first readymadecan also be seen as a “homage to the useless aspect of something generally used to other ends”, as well as an “antidote to the habitual movement of the individual around the contemplated object.”⁽¹⁵⁹⁾ These lines clearly witness Duchamp’s anti-artistic attitude, his revolt against the tradition where museum visitors admire works of art. He stressed that his readymades were chosen on visual indifference–while, on the other hand he said that looking at the Bicycle Wheel gave him the same kind of pleasure than watching a log fire. Calvin Tomkins’ statement on Duchamp’s first readymade reveals the erotic aspect of his work: “He found it wonderfully restful to turn the wheel and watch the spokes blur, become invisible, then slowly reappear as it slowed down; something in him responded, as he said, to the image of a circle that turns on its own axis, endlessly onanistically.”⁽¹⁶⁰⁾

If Duchamp now found pleasure in observing his Wheel, he is clearly contradicting himself in terms of his idea of indifference. But – is it possible to completely ignore taste when choosing objects? Human-beings are subjective characters and I believe it is basically impossible to separate oneself from likes or dislikes. Our subconsciousness will not play along. However, Duchamp got quite close to the artistic realization of visual indifference. An ordinary object could after all attain the status of areadymade merely by giving it a title and signature. Duchamp’s goal of desacrificing an artwork was attained – other people could buy it and it could easily be replaced. After buying his second readymade, a snow shovel which became known as In advance of the broken arm (Fig. 11), he wrote the following lines to his sister Suzanne in Paris. In this letter he first mentioned the term readymade.

“Now, if you went up to my place you saw in my studio a bicycle wheel and a bottle rack. I had purchased this as a sculpture already made. And I have an idea concerning this bottle rack: Listen. Here in N.Y., I bought some objects in the same vein and I treat them as ‘readymade.’ You know English well enough to understand the sense of ‘ready made’ that I give these objects. I sign them and give them an English inscription. I’ll give you some examples: I have for example a large snow shovel upon which I wrote at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, translation in French, En avance du bras cassé. Don’t try too hard to understand it in the Romantic or Impressionist or Cubist sense–that has nothing to do with it. Another ‘readymade’ is called: Emergency in favour of twice, possible translation in French: Danger (Crise) en faveur de 2 fois. This whole preamble in order to actually say: You take for yourself this bottle rack. I will make it a ‘Readymade’ from a distance. You will have to write at the base and on the inside of the bottom ring in small letters painted with an oil-painting brush, in silver and white colour, the inscription that I will give you after this, and you will sign it in the same hand as follows: (from) Marcel Duchamp.”⁽¹⁶¹⁾

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Figure 12
Marcel Duchamp, Bottle
Dryer, 1914

Duchamp had a clear notion about his readymades. Those objects he chose for readymades were easily to replace, under the premise that Duchamp signed them. Duchamp could make contracts with art dealers, authorizing them to make editions of his readymades: “10 $ for myBottle Dryer. If you’ve lost it, maybe buy another one at the Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville.”⁽¹⁶²⁾ Almost all original pieces actually got lost–among them the famous Bottle Rack (Fig. 12) and the Bicycle Wheel, which had been both thrown out by Duchamp’s sister. She must have decided they were useless junk.⁽¹⁶³⁾ A similar fate befell Joseph Beuys’ Fat Wedgewhich was conscientiously scrubbed by the cleaning ladies. The fusion of art and life became more and more visible.
Duchamp’s readymades were actually a denial of aesthetics and taste and had nothing to do with the artist, his consciousness or his autobiography. It was not anymore a question of visualization, but the simple fact that existed: “You don’t have to look at the readymade in order to respond to it. The readymade is practically invisible. It is a completely grey substance, anti-retinal, so to speak.”⁽¹⁶⁴⁾ Freeing oneself from likes and dislikes required an objective mind which was free from the ego. And yet, Duchamp emphasised his ego, by, for example saying that “everything in life is art. If I call it art, it’s art, or if I hang it in a museum, it’s art.”⁽¹⁶⁵⁾ It seems rather clear that Beuys, with his dictum that “Everyone is an artist” did not much sympathise with Duchamp. John Cage got closer to freeing himself from the ego by using chance operations. Moira Roth, in her essay “Marcel Duchamp in America” wrote in this respect that

“The readymades are acts of a dandy’s arrogance. He, and he alone, can point to an object and make it art. He can do what he likes. He makes his own rules. Some critics, and even some artists, might like to imagine it, but the message from Duchamp’s readymades is clear: anything and everything does not constitute art, not is anyone and everyone an artist. Duchamp makes readymades. Other people do not.” ⁽¹⁶⁶⁾

Roth’s interpretation of Duchamp’s readymades as products of a dandy’s arrogance seems to fit quite well into the whole context of Duchamp. Let us take the famous Fountain, for example. Duchamp took a porcelain urinal, turned it upside down and signed with the pseudonym – R. Mutt. The most banal of objects was made holy by a decision to place it in a museum–because HE chose it and HE signed it. Duchamp’s idea behind it was that “whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view–created a new thought for that object.”⁽¹⁶⁷⁾ Duchamp’sreadymades were not an expression of artistic skill but the result of the artist’s choice. TheFountain was rejected on the grounds that it was immoral. Consequently, Arensberg, one of Duchamp’s collectors and friends, responded to the sponsors by saying that “this is what the whole exhibit is about; an opportunity to allow the artist to send in anything he chooses, for the artist is to decide what is art, not someone else.”⁽¹⁶⁸⁾

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Figure 13
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain
, 1917

Duchamp’s reaction on the Fountain’s (Fig. 13) rejection was expectedly one of amusement. His urinal was out of question a deliberate provocation perfectly enacted. Duchamp attained the goal of desacrificing his works of art–however, he was far from desacrificing himself as an artist. Whereas the Fountainplayed a supporting role, Duchamp was the main actor. “Some contended it was immoral, vulgar. Others it was plagiarism, a piece of plumbing. Now Mr. Mutt’s fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, not more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ show windows.”⁽¹⁶⁹⁾ Strictly speaking, Duchamp’s statement was indeed justified, for he had simply taken an everyday object, decontexualised it and thus gave it a new meaning. What was vulgar about a common urinal? After all, it could even suggest something aesthetic–as one of Duchamp’s art collectors and friends had proved: “Arensberg had referred to a ‘lovely form’ and it does not take much stretching of the imagination to see in the upside-down urinal’s gently flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance Madonna or a seated Buddha (…).”⁽¹⁷⁰⁾ As a matter of fact, the Fountain as a symbol of sexuality that underlay most of Duchamp’s later work has been subject of endless speculations. The taste revolution undoubtedly reached its climax–and no one had been prepared to it already in 1917.
I am slowly trying to get back to the starting point of this chapter where I philosophised about questions like “where is the border between art and non-art?” In the course of a historical analysis concerning the definition of art as well as my personal approach, I came to the (possibly possible) conclusion that the borders between art and ‘non-art’ are blurring. Both Duchamp’s and Cage’s artworks can be regarded as mirrors of a time where radical changes in all possible areas took place. This more or less universal explanation, however, is only one side of the coin. It would be rather paradoxical to find one generally valid interpretation of Duchamp’s and Cage’s highly complex as well as personal taste revolution.
“I have never been able to do anything that was accepted straight off.” ¾Marcel Duchamp
I believe that Duchamp’s taste revolution was primarily the result of his very personal protest against almost everything connected with art as an institution. He wanted to revolutionize the common understanding of art by turning all possible artistic conventions upside down. The following interview extract is only one of Duchamp’s bitterly sarcastic statements about the (then) current state of art:

“The entire art scene is on so low a level, is so commercialised–art or anything to do with it is the lowest form of activity in this period. This century is one of the lowest points in the history of art, even lower than the 18^th Century, when there was no great art, just frivolity. Twentieth century art is a mere light pastime, as though we were living in a merry period, despite all the wars we’ve had as part of the decoration. All artists since the time of Courbet had been ‘beasts’ and should be put in institutions for exaggerated egos. Why should artists’ egos be allowed to overflow and poison the atmosphere? Can’t you just smell the stench in the air?”⁽¹⁷¹⁾

These words speak volumes about Duchamp, the confirmed anti-artist. His cynical expression is of such intensity that the outcome is simply Duchampian–in other words, bitterly sarcastic and amusing. In order to fight the war against all retinal artists he used weapons such as sarcasm and provocation. He refused to establish any art school as he refused tradition as a doctrine. Duchamp wished to break the aesthetic predominance of the past as he believed that the distinction between beautiful and ugly simply had been acquired. For Duchamp it was important not to be stereotyped in any way. He wanted to be free of tradition and of categorisation. Duchamp’s taste revolution was the product of a thoroughly convinced protest artist. I will keep in memory Duchamp, the artistic nihilist who could not yet live without creating works of art.

Cage’s taste revolution, in contrast, was much more the product of an artist in constant search for self-expression. His life is an example of a multiplicity of interests. As a result of studying Zen Buddhism and Oriental philosophy, Cage’s work became an adventurous experience of dichotomies such as silence and sounds. Not only Zen inspired Cage to create artworks free from intention but an endless kaleidoscopic mixture of interior and exterior influences such as
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DAILYLIFE Mushrooms Marcel
Duchamp……. Cage’s sense of humour and openness………….Arnold Schönberg DadaismMacrobiotics, Language, Jasper Johns, chance, Zen, Merce Cunningham, Visual Arts, Eric Satie, James Joyce………………………
Cage’s convictionoriginalityflexibilitydevotionhonestyintegrityaffability⁽¹⁷²⁾……………………..Robert Rauschenberg, Buckminster Fuller, Chess, Anarchy, Theatre, Henry David Thoreau, Dance, Pedagogy, Literature, Ludwig Wittgenstein…………………..Oscar Wilde, Andy Warhol, White paintings, HIS Audience, Avant-garde, Bauhaus, The Large Glass…………………. Architecture, the Eastern comedic view of Life, Emptiness, Emotions, I-Ching or The Book of Changes, the Magic Square, Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake, Henry David, Chaos Theory, Cornish School, Meister Eckhart, Etant Donnés…………………….. Finnegan’s Wake, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Haikus, Hermann Hesse, Japanese culture, Marshall McLuhan, Mathematics, Number Systems, Realism, Nam June Paik, Ezra Pound, Pythagoras, Kurt Schwitters…………………………….. Spirituality, Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, Mark Tobey, Media, Utopianism, Surrealism, Walt Whitman, Zukofsky Paul, to name but a few
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I guess this list could be stretched to …..an infinite number of pages but I do Not Intend to Waste your time any Longer.
IN case you still have some time left ………….you are warmly welcome to philosophise about this Cage quotation……………….
“Which is more musical: A truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?”⁽¹⁷³⁾

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6. A visit in the Virtual DuCage Museum An imaginative meeting with Works of Ducage

I am sitting somewhere in a stuffy room in a Museum of Modern Art. Tired of all the impressions, of the numerous paintings and sculptures I have already observed. The cosy bench in the middle of the exhibition room is apparently there for people who want to observe some paintings in elaborate detail. I guess I am not one of the pseudo art connoisseurs who sit on this bench to discuss with their partner about the revealing colour ‘distribution’ of Jackson Pollock’s Number 4. I find it more interesting to hear the wooden floor cracking as a middle-aged couple enters the room. My head feels in a dubious state; I feel like leaving the museum and yet wish to stay to watch people watching. The couple is walking through the room as soon as they have entered. The artworks apparently did not appeal to them. Which artworks? I have not yet paid attention to the objects that are all around me. Too tired to focus my attention on any painting or one of those small printed plates which contain loads of information on the artist and the work itself. I am turning my head a little so that I get an elusive overview of the works of art surrounding me.

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Figure 14

Something unidentifiable has focused my attention and overthrown my tiredness. Looks like a huge window divided in two that has been deliberately cracked and then fixed again. (Fig. 14) On the glass there are weird technical drafts. Big question mark……My eyes are slowly wandering to the window behind and the life outside. The church bell is already ringing a loud and clear 5^th time. I can perceive a young mother eagerly trying to catch her son who is running away from her. She is wearing high heels which make it almost impossible to catch up with the runaway. The boy and his mother disappear. My eyes are wandering back to the strange object. The second time I watch it, it seems already familiar. The upper half of the glass is somehow more artistic than the lower one which reminds me of a technical draft of whatever. I like the three ‘windows’ on the very top of the upper half. A frame on a frame….it is like featuring a TV on TV…have you seen the movie Pleasantville? The three ‘windows’ tempt me to watch beyond the glass a second time. This time, however, I am focusing my attention on the mysterious glass. Do not misunderstand me – I do not ‘like’ this art-object – after all I would not say it’s beautiful, though it’s not ugly either. It’s simply there. One could object now that everything in this museum is ‘there’. That’s right. But the other paintings hanging on the white walls are not sui for tired museum visitors like me. They call for attention. The glass is different. I am walking around a little and observe the glass from a different angle. It looks different from behind – I can see through it the painting on the opposite wall. Now I know – it’s the unobtrusiveness that makes the glass somehow special for me. The fact that it’s there and yet seems to dissolve in the background….it can be looked at and looked through at the same time….the glass encourages me to see the world behind. And the world somehow looks different through it. I have never had such an experience in a museum.

“Use ‘delay’ instead of picture or painting…It’s merely a way of succeeding in no longer thinking that the thing in question is a picture … to make a delay of it in the most general way possible, not so much in the different meanings in which delay can be taken, but rather in their indecisive reunion.”⁽¹⁷⁴⁾
—Marcel Duchamp

This is how Duchamp referred to The Large Glass or better The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even in one of his working notes that he collected in The Green Box. He meant it to be a “delay” instead of a picture. Delay…does this make any sense? Delay: make or be slow or late (be delayed by traffic); put off until later (delay a journey)⁽¹⁷⁵⁾. Maybe Duchamp simply opened his dictionary and chose first term his eyes spotted – or delay was meant as one of Duchamp’s numerous wordplays: “One Duchampian has suggested that it be read as an anagram for ‘lad(e)y,’ so that “delay in glass” becomes glass lady.”⁽¹⁷⁶⁾ Whatever the case, he managed well to keep the secret. The Large Glass is probably Duchamp’s most complex and mysterious artwork and has been subjected to endless analysis. As with Duchamp’s most statements on his artworks, his notes published in The Green Box are very hard if not impossible to decode and leave much space for speculation. Duchamp wanted to leave the door open, for in his mind, the spectator ultimately finished the artwork by observing and interpreting it. Or he did not want us to understand The Glass at all. Duchamp would have probably commented on the numerous speculations on his masterpiece “there is no solution as there is no problem.”⁽¹⁷⁷⁾ I am sure that he would have been quite amused at the endless number of interpretation attempts.
“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone. The spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”⁽¹⁷⁸⁾ Marcel Duchamp
Unfortunately I have not yet seen the Large Glass in the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art – unless in my imagination. When observing pictures of The Glass, I do not focus my attention on any of the objects resembling the bride or the bachelor – nor am I tempted to find out about the meanings of the individual elements…The central message for me is the medium of the artwork itself – that is the glass. The glass as a strong contrast to the traditional paintings drawn on canvasses. I like the idea of an artwork that can be looked at and looked through at the same time. The experience of looking at or beyond the glass is an endless one. Whatever is beyond the painting – it looks different when seen through the cracked glass. In fact, it is not only the environment which is in constant change, but also the artwork itself. The life outside the museum window becomes art – interpenetration of art and life. Thus, the experience of observing an artwork is an unexpected and unique one.
Cage, in his interview with Joan Retallack commented on the Large Glass: “The experience of being able to look through the glass and see the rest of the world is the experience of not knowing where the work ends. It doesn’t end. In fact it goes into life.”⁽¹⁷⁹⁾ The elements depicted on the glass are not beautiful nor ugly – but rather indifferent and thus do not much focus the viewer’s attention. Duchamp remarked that “every image in the glass is there for a purpose and nothing is put in to fill a blank space or to please the eye.”⁽¹⁸⁰⁾ His message is clear: Duchamp, as a consequence of ‘unlearning to draw’, wanted to create an artwork which was completely anti-retinal and free of artistic tradition. Besides using glass instead of a canvas, he worked with unconventional materials such as lead foil and wires. I found it quite interesting that Duchamp never actually ‘finished’ his masterpiece. He remarked that “it may be subconsciously I never intended to finish it because the word ‘finish’ implies an acceptance of traditional methods and all the paraphernalia that accompany them.”⁽¹⁸¹⁾ It is up to us to ultimately ‘finish’ his Large Glass. Duchamp’s wish to escape the prison of tradition is not something we are unfamiliar with. He wanted to find a way of expressing himself without being a painter or a writer, without taking one of these labels and yet producing something that would be a product of himself.
As Duchamp meant it to be, The Glass is far from retinal as it represents a complex subject which cannot possibly be decoded by simply looking at the artwork. The process of thinking, according to Duchamp, is more significant than the artistic result. If that was the case – why wouldn’t he have wanted to make his ideas as clear as possible? We must at least read Duchamp’s notes or statements and even then we are confronted with the cryptic nature of this artwork. Who would guess an act of love behind the weird mechanical elements of theBride? One could never suspect the subject of sexual desire from simply looking at TheGlass. Duchamp left us behind some more or less abstruse indications in his Green Boxnotes:

“The Bride is basically a motor. This bride runs on love gasoline which is ignited in a two-stroke cycle. The first stroke, or explosion, is generated by the bachelors through an electrical stripping whose action Duchamp compares to the image of a motor car climbing a slope in low gear…while slowly accelerating, as if exhausted by hope, the motor of the car turns faster and faster, until it roars triumphantly.”⁽¹⁸²⁾

It is not hard to guess from Duchamp’s formulation that the subject of the Bride is nothing else than the sexual intercourse. However, I do not intend to analyse Duchamp’s notes or statements nor am I interested in reflecting on the numerous interpretations written on Duchamp’s complex masterpiece. I have already commented on my personal interpretation of the artwork and thus believe that I cannot contribute anything more to the endless number of interpretation attempts. My readers, however, can…as every person responds in his own way. Listen to Duchamp’s ‘theory’ how in his mind works of art become works of art:

“A work of art exists only when the spectator has looked at it. Until then it is only something that has been done, that might disappear and nobody would know about it, but the spectator consecrates it by saying this is good, we will keep it, and the spectator in that case becomes posterity, and posterity keeps museums full of paintings today. My impression is that these museums – call it the Prado, call it the National Gallery, call it the Louvre – are only receptacles of things that have survived, probably mediocrity. Because they happen to have survived is no reason to make them so important and big and beautiful, and there is no justification for that label of beautiful. They have survived. Why have they survived? It is not because they are beautiful. It is because they have survived by the law of chance. We probably have lot many, many other artists of those same periods who are as beautiful or even more beautiful…”⁽¹⁸³⁾

It is our responsibility if an artwork is worth preserving or not. According to Duchamp, a work of art is incomplete until it has been seen and thought about by one or more spectators.⁽¹⁸⁴⁾ We are no longer passive observers but part of the creative process – as the artist himself.
Cage’s idea of blurring the distinction between audience and performer was a different one than Duchamp’s. Cage, more than Duchamp was interested in actively incorporating the audience into his art – I am thinking now I particular of Cage’s Silent piece. Cage said that “the performance should make clear to the listener that the hearing of the piece is his own action – that the music, so to speak is his, rather than the composer’s.”⁽¹⁸⁵⁾The performer’s responsibility thus shifted from self-expression to opening a window for the sounds of the environment. Cage wished to create a music that was performed by everyone. In Cage’s performance of 4’33”, it was actually the audience that was ‘performing’ by contributing sounds such as whispers and coughs. He wanted his music to be free of his own likes and dislikes and let the audience feel that ‘silent music’ was more interesting than the music they would hear if they went into a concert hall.⁽¹⁸⁶⁾ Cage, as a result of welcoming everything that was non-intentional and natural, aimed at creating a music that was a mixture of all sounds the environment and audience offered him.
Cage’s ideas of incorporating the audience into his live performances are vividly expressed in numerous interviews. I believe his statements do not need any further explanation – instead, they rather speak for themselves. His interviews are a real pleasure to read.

“I think perhaps my own best piece, at least the one I like the most, is the silent piece – 4’33”, 1952. It has three movements and in all of the movements there are no sounds. I wanted my work to be free of my own likes and dislikes, because I think music should be free of the feelings and ideas of the composer. I have felt and hoped to have led other people to feel that the sounds of their environment constitute a music which is more interesting than the music which they would hear if they went into a concert hall.”⁽¹⁸⁷⁾
“More and more in my performances, I try to bring about a situation in which there is no difference between the audience and the performers. And I’m not speaking of audience participation in something designed by the composer, but rather I am speaking of the music that arises through the activity of both performers and the so-called audience.”⁽¹⁸⁸⁾

“Well, music is not just composition, but it is performance, and it is listening. The Amplification of those cards, though it was high, almost at the level of Feedback – which we heard now and then – produced sounds that were still so Quiet that one could hear the audience as performers too. And I’m sure that they noticed that themselves. You noticed, for Instance, the man in The Back who was having trouble with his digestion. And I would hear many different kinds of coughing and I’m sure that people heard those themselves as sounds, rather than as interruptions. I hope, and I’ve hoped this now for thirty years, when I make music that it won’t interrupt the silence which already exists. And that silence includes coughs. I thought the Audience behaved/Performed beautifully, because they didn’t intend to cough – they were obliged to cough; the Cough had its own thought, interpenetrated – nothing obstructing anything Else.”⁽¹⁸⁹⁾
“I just performed Muoyce which is a whispered version of my Writing for the Fifth Time Through Finnegan’s Wake, and it was done in Frankfurt. It lasts for two and a half hours. Klaus Schöning of Hörspiel WDR told the audience which was large, about four or five hundred Joyce scholars, that the doors were open; that once the performance began, they could leave as they wish, and that they could also come back if they wanted. After twenty minutes, they began to leave, and he told me later that only about half of the audience was there at the end. So I think that the work is still irritating. People think, perhaps, that they are no longer irritated, but they still have great difficulty paying attention to something they don’t understand. I think that the division is between understanding and experiencing, and many people think that art has to do with understanding, but it doesn’t. It has to do with experience; and if you understand something, then you walk out once you get the point because you don’t want the experience. You don’t want to be irritated. So they leave, and they say the avant-garde doesn’t exist. But the avant-garde continues, and it is experience.”⁽¹⁹⁰⁾

…I am feeling a bit dizzy of all the writing right now and decide to turn on my CD-player. My friend has recently recorded some John Cage pieces for me. Among them Music for Marcel Duchamp, 4’33” and Imaginary Landscape I do not really know what to expect – yet I have some vague ideas what Cage could sound like. A frenzy huggermugger of sounds and noises is what first comes to my mind….I won’t speculate any longer, I’ll press the play button….The first piece sounds a bit silent; must be 4’33”… I am curious if I can perceive any background noises, but I don’t. At least I have been waiting in expectation for exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Cage well managed to keep me curious for this period of time ;)…..The next piece reminds me a bit of a dramatic scene in a horror film. The music gets faster and faster….. My heart feels like bumping in the same rhythm as the music. It makes me feel nervous. At the point it reaches its climax, the piece unexpectedly ends…….The following track sounds, I would say, totally un-cagean…..harmony pure. This is what the beginnings of electronic music must have sounded like. The music permits me to slowly familiarise with it….Cage was apparently working with compositional tools such as repetition….and, believe it or not, the result sounds harmonious. Probably unintentional harmony. I would say that this is the first piece which permits me to think of something else than the music I am listening to. It does not completely take me in……Cage’s pieces are rather short in length…think I need a short break now in order to ‘digest’ this cagean music experience…..The next track starts with a sound I can hardly endure. Reminds me of an extremely boisterous aeroplane departure…. that suddenly turns into a vacuum cleaner noise. If we were able to receive all frequencies surrounding us, it would assumedly sound like this. The music is increasing in loudness and intensity that I have to skip to the following track………Relief…….The piece I am now listening to sounds like a conversation between two instruments. The one is a dominant cello, the other a timid bell. As different as they may be, they seem to be fond of each other. I begin to like the constant changes in rhythm…they bring about a sense of dramatic tension and yet a touch of playfulness. …I think I will now leave the Cagean music experience in order to reflect…

I would very much like to place myself in the position of being a spectator in Cage’s performance of 4’33”, but I think that it is impossible at least at the time. I have ‘listened’ to it on tape and unfortunately could not perceive any of the background noises. I don’t think, however, that the actual experience of having been ‘real’ part of the audience is what truly matters here. It is rather the idea behind the work which becomes part of our awareness once we have been acquainted with Cage’s philosophy. That is of course also the case with Duchamp.

Listening to Cage has been an exciting adventure. He offered me everything ranging from….complete silence, quiet harmony, refreshing sound……to unbearable noise. You never know what to expect when listening to Cage. My mind is wandering back to my virtual experience of Duchamp’s Large Glass……it permitted me to see the world beyond the artwork. Total blurring of the distinction between art and life.
Cage’s music left a different impression on me. Most of his music pieces, except of course his Silent piece, completely absorbed me. When listening to Cage’s pieces I was too involved in the musical experience in order to immerse in a different world. Too much intensity of sounds…..and thus little transparency. Cage wanted to incorporate environmental sounds into his music. The sounds we hear every day on the street do not have a distracting effect on us as we are used to them. However, we are not used to Cage’s intensification of these sounds. In my view, the blurring of the distinction between art and life did not work out in all of Cage’s music pieces – at least when listening to the recorded version. I can, of course, only speak about my subjective music experience – I suppose that it would be an entirely different experience if I were able to listen and watch his music in a concert hall. After all it should be considered that his pieces were originally not intended to be listened on CD or tape.

Duchamp, however, did not either constantly manage to realise his conception of breaking down the barriers between art and life. His last masterpiece, Etant donnés, is the exact reverse of the Large Glass. This disturbing and provocative work presents a startingly realistic nude made of leather and reclining on a bed of leaves in front of a mechanical waterfall. She is only visible through two peepholes in a massive wooden door.

“In 1943 Duchamp rented a studio on the top floor of a building in New York City. While everyone believed that Duchamp had given up “art,” he was secretly constructing this au, begun in 1946, which was not completed until 1966. The full title of the piece is:Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas. It consists of an old wooden door, bricks, velvet, twigs gathered by Duchamp on his walks in the park, leather stretched over a metal armature of a female form, glass, linoleum, an electric motor, etc. Duchamp prepared a “Manual of Instructions” in a 4-ring binder which explains and illustrates the process of assembling/disassembling the piece. It was not revealed to the public until July of 1969, (several months after Duchamp’s death), when it was permanently installed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. No photographs of the interior of the piece or of the notebook of instructions were allowed to be published by the museum for at least 15 years. The viewer of the piece first steps onto a mat in front of the door, which activates the lights, motor, etc., and then peers through two “peepholes” to view the construction behind the door. The voyeurstrains, unsuccessfully, to see the “face” of the eerily realistic nude female form which lies supine on a bed of twigs, illuminated gas lamp in hand. In the distance, a sparkling waterfall shimmers, backlit by a flickering light, part of a realistically rendered landscape painting on glass.”⁽¹⁹¹⁾

It seems rather hard for me to imagine what feelings a real encounter with Etant Donnéswould evoke in me. After looking at the black and white reproductions, I had the impression that this artwork represented everything Duchamp so vehemently refused: it is far from anti-retinal – the nude lies there, fully exposed and opened by the position of her legs. In contrast to the Large Glass where the viewer can look at and through it from any angle, he is restricted to a particular position – we can only see the artwork through the peephole in the wooden door; the way Duchamp prescribed it. Duchamp’s Manual of Instructions for Etant Donnés again prescribes step for step how to take the artwork apart and put it back together. No room for interpretation for those who install it.
When I think of Etant Donnés, I see a big question mark. To me it seems that Duchamp, the confirmed anti-artist tried in vain to keep up his anti-(quite everything) attitude throughout his life. Etant Donnés is after all the best example for a very retinal artwork. His numerous self-contradicting statements give evidence of a character who was not thoroughly convinced of himself as an anti-artist. The following statement made by Duchamp reveals quite a lot in this respect: “I have forced to contradict myself in order to avoid confirmation to my own tastes.”⁽¹⁹²⁾This line may also express Duchamp’s ‘gap’ in maintaining the blurring of the distinction between art and life. Who knows, maybe Etant Donnés was Duchamp’s only ‘honest’ artwork.

I believe, however that there is not only one possibility of realizing the blurring of art and life. Maybe Etant Donnés contributed as much to the blurring as the Large Glass. Duchamp probably wanted the spectator not immediately to see the ‘retinal’ aspects of his artwork, but rather what is ‘behind’ it. The ‘behind’ I am thinking of in particular, is the artists’ life, his biography. In Etant Donnés, Duchamp undoubtedly expressed suppressed emotions for a woman he had been in love with before he got married to his second wife. Maria Martins was a woman who would not give up her marriage for Duchamp. Maybe, in Etant Donnés he saw her in a figurative sense raped by her husband. In my view, the lamp she holds in her hand symbolizes a mute cry for help. She cries in vain, for she is locked up behind the heavy wooden door. There is no right or wrong when it comes to interpreting artworks – in the end there are only speculations. Cage quite interestingly commented on his friends’ last masterwork:

“I can only see what Duchamp permits me to see. The Large Glass changes with the light and he was aware of this. So does any painting. But Etant Donnés doesn’t change because it is all prescribed. So he’s telling us something that we perhaps haven’t yet learned, when we speak as we do so glibly of the blurring of the distinction between art and life. Or perhaps he’s bringing us back to Thoreau: yes and no are lies. Or keeping the distinction, he may be saying neither one is true. The only true answer is that which will let us have both of these.”⁽¹⁹³⁾

Cage’s quotation once again brings us back to the title of this project – the blurring of the distinction between art and life. Both Duchamp and Cage pivotally contributed to this blurring by realizing unique ideas in this direction – however, it also turned out to be an endless enterprise. It is now up to us to continue their project……….

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7.“That is a very good question. I do not want to spoil it with an answer” ⁽¹⁹⁴⁾
Some Final Remarks

This quotation is taken from Cage’s afternote to his Lecture on Nothing which is part of his book Silence. After delivering his Lecture on Nothing, “he prepared six answers for the first six questions asked, regardless of what they were.”⁽¹⁹⁵⁾“That is a very good question. I do not want to spoil it with an answer” is one of them. Cage’s amusing idea originated from the belief that a discussion is nothing more than an entertainment. Cage, as a result of using chance operations in his music, made his responsibility that of asking questions instead of giving answers and making choices. He was not much interested in giving answers as well as in receiving definite answers – as the nature of Cage’s friendship with Duchamp well demonstrated. Experience, in Cage’s mind, was much more important than understanding. Duchamp, on the other hand, made every effort to make his art mysterious. He was not either interested in giving ultimate answers as he believed that the creative act was a joint effort by the artist and the spectator.
I am introducing the final paragraphs of my paper with the analysis of a quotation that I believe is quite apt to ‘finish’ the never ending circle of the DuCage experience. Both Duchamp and Cage demonstrated with their artworks that there is much space for the spectator’s experience and curiosity. They do not offer ultimate answers but leave much space for our own imagination. Like Duchamp and Cage, I am not concerned here with an ultimate answer or ‘summary’ of my project. I see no point in writing a ‘summary’ after having studied those two artists. It would at least seem rather paradoxical to me. Instead, I would like to leave you with the voices of Duchamp and Cage as a ‘stepping stone’ for your own imagination:

“People took modern art very seriously when it first reached America because they believed we took ourselves very seriously (…) A great deal of modern art is meant to be amusing. If Americans would simply remember their own sense of humour instead of listening to the critics, modern art will come into its own.”⁽¹⁹⁶⁾ —Marcel Duchamp

“This is also for me the effect of modern painting on my eyes, so when I go around the city I look, I look at the walls….and I look at the pavement and so forth as though I’m in a museum or in a gallery. In other words, I don’t turn my aesthetic faculties off when I’m outside a museum or gallery.”⁽¹⁹⁷⁾ —John Cage
……………………………………………Why did I choose these two quotations?………………………
I believe that many people associate with modern art something that is worldly innocent, something that has nothing to do with their reality. After having had the possibility to immerse in the world of DuCage, I am not so sure if there is a difference between art and the life around us. Art, for them, was normality – it was a part of their life as was the street they were living in. Museums then, would symbolize nothing else than life – or we may also change this expression like a parable – namely that life is one big museum… Isn’t every single artwork simply an emotional expression of an individual? If that is so, isn’t then art all about the capability of interpreting the things that are going on around us? I believe it is enough if we try to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. This is what being a glass wanderer is all about.

Bibliography⁽¹⁹⁸⁾

Baruchello, Gianfran co and Martin Henry. Warum Weshalb Wozu Duchamp. Klagenfurt: Ritter,1993.

Bischof, Ulrike et al. Kunst als Grenzbeschreitung – John Cage und die Moderne. Düsseldorf: Richter-Verlag, 1992.

Bianco, Paolo und Doswald Christoph. Andy Warhol – Joseph Beuys. Gegenspieler. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000.

Cabanne, Pierre. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. London: Paperback, 1988.

Cabanne, Pierre. Duchamp & Co. Paris: Terrail, 1997.

Cage, John. Silence. Middletown/Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1967.

Cage, John. M-Writings ’67-’72. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.

Cage, John. A Year from Monday. Lectures and Writings. London: Marion Boyars, 1985.

Cage, John. X-Writings ’79-’82. Middletown: Wesleyan Paperback, 1986.

Cage, John. Composition in Retrospect. Cambridge/MA: Exact Change, 1993.

Cage, John. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures. Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Charles Daniel. For the Birds – John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles. London : Marion Boyars, 1995.

Charles Daniel. John Cage oder Die Musik ist los. Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1979.

Daniels, Dieter. Duchamp und die Anderen. Köln : DuMont Buchverlag, 1992.

De Duve, Thierry. Kant after Duchamp. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 1996.

D’Harnoncourt, Anne and McShine Kynaston. Marcel Duchamp. New York : Prestel, 1989.

D’Harnoncourt, Anne et al. Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp…in Resonance. Houston: Cantz, 1998.

Duchamp, Marcel. A l’Infinitif. The Typosophic Society. Over Wallop/UK: BAS printers, 1999.

Fetz, Wolfgang, Hrsg. Sommerprojekte Bregenz 1998. Kunst in der Stadt 2. Bregenz: Teutsch, 1998.

Fetz, Wolfgang, Hrsg. L’Art est Inutile. Avantgardekunst/Arte D’Avanguardia 1960 – 1980. Bregenz : Hecht Druck, 1993.

Geddes & Grosset. Dictionary of Art. New Lanark/Scotland: Brockhampton Press, 1995.

Gena, Peter and Brent Jonathan. A John Cage Reader. New York: C.F. Peters Higgins, 1998.

Glasmeier, Michael und Hartel, Gaby, Hrsg. Beckett, Samuel. Das Gleiche noch mal Anders. Texte zur Bildenden Kunst. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2000.

Gough-Cooper, Jennifer et al. Marcel Duchamp. London : Thames and Hudson, 1993.

Hauskeller, Michael. Was ist Kunst? Positionen der Ästhetik von Platon bis Danto. München: C.H. Beck, 1998.

Kandinsky, Wassily. Essays über Kunst und Künstler. Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1973.

Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Conversing with Cage. New York: Limelight Editions, 1988.

Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. John Cage. London: Penguin, 1971.

Klotz, Heinrich. Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert. Moderne – Postmoderne – Zweite Moderne. München: C.H. Beck, 1999.

Kotte, Wouter. Marcel Duchamp als Zeitmaschine. Köln: Walther König, 1987.

Naumann, Francis and Obalk Hector, ed. Affectionately Marcel: The Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp. Ghent: Ludion Press, 2000.
Perloff, Majorie et al. John Cage. Composed in America. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1994.

Retallack, Joan, ed. Musicage – Cage muses on Words, Art, Music. John Cage in Conversation with Joan Retallack. Hanover/NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996.

Revill, David. The Roaring Silence. John Cage: A Life. London: Bloomsbury, 1992.

Rodin, Auguste. Die Kunst. Gespräche des Meisters. Zürich: Diogenes, 1979.

Roth, Moira and Katz D. Jonathan. Difference/Indifference. Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. Amsterdam: G + B Arts International, 1998.

Rotzler, Willi. Objektkunst. Von Duchamp bis zur Gegenwart. Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, 1981.

Ruhrberg, Karl. Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Malerei, Skulpturen und Objekt, Neue Medien, Fotografie. Köln: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 2000.

Stauffer, Serge, Hrsg. Marcel Duchamp. Interviews und Statements. Stuttgart : Cantz, 1991.

Stauffer, Serge, Hrsg. Marcel Duchamp. Die Schriften. Zürich: Regenbogen-Verlag, 1981.

Stein, Gertrude. Everybody’s Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1964.

Stein, Gertrude. Was sind Meisterwerke? Zürich: Die Arche, 1962.

Tomkins, Calvin. Duchamp. A Biography. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

Tomkins, Calvin. The Bride & the Bachelors. New York: Penguin/Viking, 1965.

Wellershoff, Dieter. Die Auflösung des Kunstbegriffs. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1981.

More Resources

• Tout-fait – The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal #3 www.toutfait.com

• The Museum of Contemporary Art. Rolywholyover – A Circus. Los Angeles: 1993.

• Microsoft Encarta ’95. The Complete Interactive Multimedia Encyclopedia. 1995 Edition.

• Leo Truchlar – Lecture Script

• Special thanks to ….Sweet Surprise Postcards © John Gavin Gillard

• Websit  

   

  https://www.freshwidow.com/etant-donnes2.html

  https://www.english.upenn.edu/??afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html

  https://www.freshwidow.com/duchampsources.html

  https://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/cage/

……….and finally……Thanks…… for more inspiration to:
my best friend Markus for not losing patience in endless discussions and his inspiring piano music my parents for distracting me now and then; Mr. Truchlar for granting me so much freedom and space; Christoph; Dido, Sinéad O’Connor, Era and The Beautiful South for their inspiring music.

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More Resources

1. Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage (New York: Limelight Editions, 1988) 211.

2. Moira Roth & William Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp”, in Difference/Indifference-Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 1998) 72.

3. Serge Stauffer, Marcel Duchamp (Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1992) 29.

4. Ibid. 14.

5. I am referring here to a lecture held by Prof. Truchlar, teaching Americanliterature at the University of Salzburg–however, Cage’s ideas concerning education can be read in Richard Kostelanetz’s Conversing with Cage.

6. Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp, A biography (New York: Henry Holt, 1996) 127.

7. Kostelanetz 91.

8. Roth, Difference/Indifference 73.

9. Roth 80.

10. John Cage, “An Autobiographical Statement”–first appeared in the Southwest Review, 1991. I found it reprinted in the Web: https://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html

11. SEE NOTE AT THE END OF THE ESSAY

12. I read Cézanne’s quotation on this year’s Harenberg tear-off calender (8^th September). I found his thoughts quite interesting in contrast to Duchamp’s idea of desacrificing art.

13. Tomkins 42.

14. Original title: Wassily Kandinsky, Essays über Kunst und Künstler (Zürich: Benteli, 1955). Kandinsky’s book inspired me a great deal before I started my readings on Cage and Duchamp. He expressed many ideas which strongly reminded me of Cage’s and Duchamp’s philosophy. I can imagine that in view to the books’ popularity (it first appeared in 1911) both artists must have sooner or later come across it.

15. Roth, “Marcel Duchamp in America,” in Difference/Indifference 22.

16. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp” 76.

17. Wouter Kotte, Marcel Duchamp als Zeitmaschine (Köln: Walther König, 1987) 36/37.

18. Wolfgang Fetz, Kunst in der Stadt 2 (Bregenz: Teutsch, 1998) x -no page reference.

19. Tomkins 116.

20. Ibid. 142.

21. Stauffer, Marcel Duchamp 45/46.

22. Tomkins 408.

23. Cage, A year from Monday 70. Cage obviously referred to a joint work by Duchamp and Man Ray calledDust Breeding–“A glass panel which had been lying flat on sawhorses collecting dust. The resulting image was like a lunar landscape (…) Duchamp later fixed the dust with varnish on the sieves.” (Tomkins p. 229) –another, probably even more relevant explanation could be Duchamp’s “story of his 2 studios.” Cage recalled, “He had 2 studios. One was the one he was working in and the other was the one where he had stopped working. So that if anyone came to visit him they went into the studio where he wasn’t working, and there everything was covered with dust. So the idea was spread around that he was no longer working. And you had proof of it! –dust collected where he worked (laughs).” (Joan Retallack, Musicage p. 111)

24. Tomkins 236.

25. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp” 82.

26. Stauffer 85.

27. Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (London: Paperback, 1988) 8.

28. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp” 76.

29. Roth 82.

30. Tomkins 270.

31. Francis N. Naumann ed., Affectionately Marcel: The selected correspondence of Marcel Duchamp (Ghent: Ludion Press, 2000) 212.

32. Roth 77.

33. Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp 67.

34. Tomkins 157.

35. Ibid. 93.

36. Ibid. 15.

37. Tomkins 113.

38. Roth 23.

39. Ibid. 17.

40. Tomkins 141/142.

41. Tomkins 143.

42. Ibid. 152.

43. This ‘mesostic’ about Duchamp was published in Cage’s M–writings ’67-’72 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973) 34.

44. “Duchamp, Marcel,” Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall’s Corporation.

45. John Cage, Quotations found in the Web: https://www.english.upenn.edu/??afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html

46. “Cage, John Milton, Jr.,” Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall’s Corporation.

47. Tomkins 330/331.

48. Kostelanetz, 11.

49. John Cage, A Year from Monday-Lectures and Writings (London: Calder & Boyars Ltd, 1968) 71.

50. Roth 74.

51. Ibid. 73.

52. Stauffer 201.

53. John Cage, A year from Monday 70.

54. Ibid. 31.

55. Ibid.

56. Tomkins 411.

57. Ibid. 91.

58. Tomkins 176.

59. Anne d’Harnoncourt, “Paying attention” in Rolywholyover-A Circus (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1993).

60. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in enjoying a live interview with Cage. I found it in the Internet: https://www.2street.com/joyce/gallery/roaratorio.html

61. Cage, A year from Monday x (Foreword).

62. Tomkins, 151.

63. John Cage, M-Writings ’67-’72 (Middletown: Wesleyan, 1973) 27.

64. Roth, “Marcel Duchamp in America“ 19.

65. Tomkins 231.

66. Ibid. 282.

67. Ibid. 214.

68. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp“ 78.

69. Tomkins 290.

70. David Revill, The Roaring Silence. John Cage: A Life (London: Bloomsbury, 1992) 214.

71. Roth 74.

72. Ibid.

73. Cage, For the birds 168.

74. Jennifer Gough-Cooper & Jaques Caumont, Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy 1887-1968 (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1993) no page references!

75. Erratum Musical is a musical composition which was Duchamp’s first implementation of chance–Duchamp jotted down the notes as he drew them out of a hat; he was supposed to sing the resulting score with his two sisters, Yvonne and Magdeleine.

76. Kostelanetz, 18.

77. Tomkins 253

78. Ibid. 211.

79. Roth 81.

80. Francis N. Naumann , Affectionately Marcel 321.

81. Kostelanetz 5.

82 Ibid.

83. Laura Kuhn, “John Cage in the Social Realm“ in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

84. Cage, A year from Monday 61.

85. Kostelanetz 5.

86. Cage, Biography in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

87. Kostelanetz 89.

88. Cage, For the Birds 226.

89. John Cage, Silence (Middletown/Connecticut: Wesleyan, 1967) 276.

90. I must smile at this point–a good friend repeatedly told me in high school that no matter what I write about, I always include John Lennon. It seems as if I hold up to this tradition ;)) John Lennon and Yoko Ono were friends of Cage and sent him six cookbooks on macrobiotics.

91. John Cage, Macrobiotics Recipes , in Rolywholyover – A Circus (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1993).

92. Revill 259.

93. Daniel Charles, For the Birds-John Cage in conversation with Daniel Charles (London: Marion Boyars, 1995) 74.

94. Kostelanetz 30.

95. Daniel Charles, For the Birds 233.

96. Cage, Macrobiotic Recipes in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

97. Anne d’Harnoncourt, “Paying Attention” in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

98 Cage, A year from Monday 70.

99. Revill 230.

100. Cage, M – Writings ’67 – ’72 34.

101. Anne d’Harnoncourt, “Paying Attention“ in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

102. Cage, Introductory Notes in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

103. Cage, X-writings ’79 – ’82 54.

104. Interview Roaratorio.

105. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp” 74.

106. Roth 73.

107. D’Harnoncourt, “Paying Attention“ in Rolywholyover-A Circus

108. Quotation by Harry S. Truman

109. Cabanne 11.

110. Roth, “Marcel Duchamp in America“ 27

111. Michael Hauskeller, Was ist Kunst? Positionen der Ästhetik von Platon bis Danto (München: C.H. Beck, 1998) 11.

112. Ibid. 22.

113. Fetz, Kunst in der Stadt 2 x.

114. Those insights are a derived from a mixture of sources such as Brockhampton’s Reference Dictionary of Art (London: Brockhampton Press, 1995) and Microsoft Encarta ’95.

115. Arthur C. Danto, “Marcel Duchamp and the end of taste: A defence of contemporary art” (Tout-fait The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal #3) https://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_3/News/Danto/danto.html

116. Thierry De Duve, Kant after Duchamp (London: MIT Press, 1996) 3.

117. Gough-Cooper, Ephemerides (reference to be found under 18^th March 1912).

118. Tomkins 117.

119. Tomkins 117.

120. Ibid. 79.

121. Ibid. 127.

122. Cage, Quotations

123. David Revill, The Roaring Silence (London: Bloomsbury, 1992) 164.

124. John Cage, The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990) 26.

125. Joan Retallack, Musicage (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1996) 91.

126. Cage, A conversation on Roaratorio (1976/79): https://www.2street.com/joyce/gallery/roaratorio.html

127. Julie Lazar, “Nothingtoseeness“ in Rolywholyover – A Circus.

128. Revill 69.

129. Ibid. 70.

130. Roth 2.

131. Kostelanetz, 120.

132. Ibid. 215.

133. Cage, A Year from Monday ix.

134. Cage, An Autobiographical Statement 3.

135. Calvin Tomkins, The Bride & the Bachelors (New York: Penguin/Viking 1965) 100.

136. Ulrike Bischoff (Hrsg.), Kunst als Grenzbeschreitung John Cage und die Moderne (München: Richter Verlag, 1991) 89.

137. Kostelanetz 231.

138. Ibid. 232.

139. Charles, For the birds 227.

140. Charles 42.

141. Ibid. 91.

142. Kostelanetz 211.

143. Cage, A Year from Monday 31

144. Thanks to my friend who is very much into Stephen Hawking and physics. If you are interested in finding out more about the Chaos Theory, I would recommend Hawking’s well known The Illustrated Brief History of Time.

145. Cage, Silence 195.

146. Charles, For the Birds 43.

147. Laura Kuhn, “John Cage in the Social Realm“ part of Rolywholyover

148. Richard Kostelanetz ed. John Cage (London: Penguin 1971) 117.

149. Tomkins 1965, 119.

150. Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage 66.

151. Revill 166.

152. Tomkins 1965, 119.

153. Quotation from page 1 of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Clubs Band’s cover

154. Ibid.

155. Kostelanetz 1988 101.

156. Kostelanetz 1988 225.

157. Cage, A Year from Monday 71.

158. Tomkins, Duchamp, A Biography 157.

159. Naumann, Affectionately Marcel 346.

160. Tomkins 135.

161. Naumann 44.

162. Ibid. 359.

163. Tomkins 158.

164. Stauffer 230.

165. Tomkins 401.

166. Roth 27.

167. Tomkins 185.

168. Ibid. 182.

169. Ibid. 185.

170. Ibid. 185/186.

171. Tomkins 418/419.

172. Don’t pay attention to the anarchic writing

173. Cage, “Quotations”: https://www.english.upenn.edu/??afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html

174. Tomkins 1.

175. The Oxford English Reader’s Dictionary.

176. Tomkins 1.

177. Ibid. 464.

178. Ibid. 397.

179. Retallack, 110.

180. Tomkins 124.

181. Tomkins 250.

182. Tomkins 5.

183. Fetz, Kunst in der Stadt 2 x.

184. Tomkins 397.

185. Peter Gena and Jonathan Brent, A John Cage Reader (New York: C.F. Peters Higgins, 1998) 22.

186. Kostelanetz 65.

187. Ibid. 65.

188. Ibid. 111.

189. Ibid. 129.

190. Ibid. 115.

191. Info about Etant donnés found in the Internet: https://www.freshwidow.com/etant-donnes2.html

192. Tomkins 419.

193. Roth 80.

194. Cage, Silence (Afternote to his “Lecture on Nothing“) 126.

195. Ibid.

196. Tomkins 226.

197. Fetz, Kunst in der Stadt 2 x.

198. The bibliography contains some books I have not cited in the paper itself – it is a mixed collection of books that have been piling up in my shelves in the course of writing…most of whom were quite helpful

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel
Duchamp,Fresh Widow, 1920

Nel 1920 Marcel Duchamp si duplicò scegliendo sembianze femminili: quelle di Rose Sélavy. Con questo nome è indicato il copyright di Fresh Widow (Fig. 1), ready made derivante dal montaggio artigianale di una finestra verde in stile francese con pannelli di cuoio nero. Quei pannelli, per insistenza di Duchamp, dovevano essere lucidati ogni giorno; e forse per questa ragione, per il quotidiano e lubrico strofinamento di quella pelle, la French Window diventò, nella trasformazione di Duchamp, una Fresh Widow, vale a dire una Vedova impudica.

Da quel momento le opere di Rose si moltiplicano. Al suo nome è legato, sempre nel 1920, l’apparecchio ottico a motore detto Rotative plaques verre (optique de précision) (Fig. 2). Il ready made del 1921 costituito da una gabbietta con cubetti di marmo e osso di seppia è battezzato Why not sneeze Rose Sélavy? (Fig. 3). Frasi sensuali della donna sono scritte a spirali di lettere bianche su nove dischi neri nel cortometraggio Anémic Cinéma (Fig. 4) girato presso Man Ray e proiettato il 30 agosto 1926 in una sala cinematografica di Parigi: mentre girano, i dischi creano sensazioni pulsanti ed erotiche. Nel settembre 1934 la donna lancia anche le sue edizioni con un libro di perfetta—per quanto tardiva—espressione dadaista: una scatola detta La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (Fig. 5) contenente note e riproduzioni in facsimile, meglio conosciuta come la Boîte verte. Ma ancora: nell’aprile 1939 uscì a Parigi in 515 copie un opuscolo di scritti di Marcel Duchamp intitolato Rrose Sélavy, collezione di “poils et coups de pied en tous genres”.

Nel frattempo il nome di Rose si era trasformato in Rrose. L’evento è del 1921: un gioco di parole pubblicato a pagina 6 di “Le Pilhaou-Thibaou” (quindicesimo numero della rivista “391”) è firmato Rrose Sélavy. Picabia aveva estratto la frase da una lettera che Duchamp gli aveva inviato da New York a gennaio. Era la prima volta che a quel nome floreale veniva aggiunta una “r” e ciò non faceva che duplicare il personaggio appena nato. Fu sufficiente la semplice aggiunta di una consonante per delineare ancor meglio il mistero del doppio: una creatura appena nata cominciava subito a trasformarsi, a possedere una propria “biografia”.

Esiste anche documentazione fotografica di Rrose. Nel 1921 Man Ray collaborò al numero unico della rivista “New York Dada” pubblicando una fotografia che aveva scattato a Duchamp nelle vesti femminili di Rrose Sélavy: un cappellino con fascia a motivi geometrici e un elegante collare di volpe sorretto dalle mani che ne palpano il calore. La fotografia ritrae un viso dall’espressione inafferrabile: labbra atteggiate in un sorriso misterioso, occhi di sottile indifferenza. L’attraente cappellino era stato prestato a Marcel-Rrose da Germaine Everling, la compagna di Picabia: l’antiromantico Duchamp aveva scelto come segno più vistoso della sua trasformazione un copricapo che apparteneva a una donna il cui nome—Germaine—alludeva al nucleo rovente dell’illusione romantica: il germanesimo. Il sorriso indifferente di Rrose ricorda quello della Gioconda (Fig. 6): nel ready made L.H.O.O.Q. (Fig. 7) del 1919 Duchamp aveva già deformato la Gioconda disegnando a matita un paio di sottili baffetti su una riproduzione del celebre quadro di Leonardo.⁽¹⁾

Cosa rappresenti Rrose può essere chiarificato grazie alla dedica che appare sulla fotografia e che svela l’identità: «Lovingly, Rrose Sélavy alias Marcel Duchamp». Fu dunque un altro io, da aggiungere a quello già esistente senza nulla nascondere. Tuttavia Rrose ambì a una personalità legale e presto si armò di un biglietto da visita:
Ottica di precisioneRose Sélavy New York – Parigi Assortimento completo di baffi e trucchetti

baffi e trucchetti

Non serve sapere che (etc.)

Figure 8
Francis Picabia,
L’Oeil cacodylate,
1921

Non serve sapere che nell’emporio di Marcel-Rrose si vendono baffi a volontà per capire che lo pseudonimo puntava foneticamente in una direzione erotica: Rrose Sélavy suona infatti come “Eros c’est la vie” (“Eros: così è la vita”). Ma non solo di questo si trattava. In un colloquio con Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp espresse alcune illuminanti considerazioni: «Volevo cambiare la mia identità e dapprima ebbi l’idea di prendere un nome ebraico. Io ero cattolico e questo passaggio di religione significava già un cambiamento. Ma non trovai nessun nome ebraico che mi piacesse, o che colpisse la mia immaginazione, e improvvisamente ebbi l’idea: perché non cambiare di sesso? Da qui viene il nome di Rrose Sélavy. Oggi suona abbastanza bene, perché anche i nomi cambiano col tempo, ma nel 1920 era un nome sciocco. La doppia “R” ha a che fare con il quadro di Picabia Oeil Cacodylate (Fig. 8), esposto nel cabaret “Le Boeuf sur le Toit”—non so se è stato venduto—e che Picabia chiedeva a tutti gli amici di firmare. Non mi ricordo cosa scrissi, ma il quadro è stato fotografato e perciò qualcuno lo sa. Credo di aver scritto “Pi Qu’habilla Rrose Sélavy”». La frase che Duchamp scrisse sul quadro di Picabia suona foneticamente come “Picabia l’arrose c’est la vie”. E ciò allarga il senso da “Eros c’est la vie” alla frase “Arroser la vie”, cioè “berci sopra, fare un brindisi alla vita”.⁽²⁾

Ambedue i significati del nome rinviano alla visione della vita nutrita da Duchamp: se a una prima considerazione superficiale la trasformazione di Duchamp in Rrose Sélavy sembra innescare un vivace gioco di interpretazione, un’osservazione più precisa dimostra che la trasformazione coagula invece un’erotica duratura: quella derivante dalla gioia di vivere e di vagare liberamente col pensiero. Infatti, oltre a firmare alcuni ready made, Rrose scrive dei bon-mots, dei giochi di parole intenzionalmente senza senso, ma che a volte suonano altamente espliciti.

Rrose possiede dunque una personalità “linguistica” che nasce da un’idea precisa di linguaggio. In un’intervista apparsa su “L’Express” del 23 luglio 1964, Duchamp affermò: «Il linguaggio è un errore dell’umanità. Tra due esseri che si amano la parola non esprime quanto di più profondo essi provano. La parola è un sassolino usurato che si applica a trentasei sfumature di affettività. Il linguaggio è comodo per semplificare ma è un mezzo di locomozione che detesto». «E tuttavia—ribatte l’intervistatore—con lo pseudonimo di Rrose Sélavy, lei si è interessato al linguaggio». «Era per divertirmi. Nutro un grande rispetto per l’umorismo, costituisce una sorta di salvaguardia che consente di passare attraverso tutti gli specchi».⁽³⁾

click to enlarge

Figure 9
Marcel Duchamp, Young
Man and Girl in Spring,
1911

Cosa si realizza alla lettura dei detti di Rrose? Semplicemente la gioia di leggere qualcosa di sempre nuovo, un’esperienza che potrebbe ricordare quella di raccogliere frutti in un eden. Duchamp lo aveva preannunciato nel 1911 con la tela Jeune homme et jeune fille dans le printemps (Fig. 9): una scena di gioia pagana in cui due giovani nudi colgono liberamente frutti da una pianta che cresce in una natura lussureggiante. La questione di fondo è che solo la donna può farsi capire senza ricorrere al significato, come succede negli aforismi di Rrose. In altre parole, solo la donna è imprendibile. Come l’ironia.

[2]

Duchamp persegue una forma primitiva di eros: ciò è evidente dalla sua idea di matrimonio, inteso come vicolo cieco, come tomba dell’amore. La caricatura Dimanches del 1909 è a tal riguardo impietosa: la coppia matrimoniale, con il bambino appena nato, si riduce la domenica alla noiosa passeggiata in cui è l’uomo a spingere la carrozzina, mentre la moglie, di nuovo gravida, cammina stancamente al fianco. Sulla propria scelta di scapolo, attratto dalle donne ma respinto dal matrimonio, Duchamp dichiarò una volta a Pierre Cabanne: «Io mi resi conto fin da giovane che non ci si dovrebbe appesantire con troppa zavorra, con troppi lavori, con una moglie, con dei figli, una casa di campagna, un’automobile; per fortuna me ne convinsi subito. È per questo che ho potuto vivere con molta maggior semplicità, come scapolo, di quanto avrei fatto se avessi dovuto vedermela con tutti i problemi abituali della vita». Duchamp difese sempre questo senso di libertà, e scrivendo una volta ad Arturo Schwarz sul senso del matrimonio affermò: «L’ho evitato accuratamente fino all’età di 67 anni. Ho sposato una donna che, a causa della sua età, non poteva avere figli». Anche se in realtà si era già sposato nel 1927, rimanendo coniugato per l’irrisorio periodo di tre mesi. L’eros è per Duchamp una cosa seria; è ciò che sostituisce l’ironia assente. In un’intervista dell’8 dicembre 1961 Alain Jouffroy chiese a Duchamp se credeva che l’umorismo fosse indispensabile per la creazione dell’opera d’arte, e lui rispose: «In modo assoluto. Ci tengo particolarmente perché la serietà è cosa molto pericolosa. Per evitarla è necessario l’intervento dell’umorismo. L’unica cosa seria che potrei prendere in considerazione è l’erotismo. Quello sì che è serio!».⁽⁴⁾

Questa idea è alla base della filosofia di Rrose Sélavy, autrice che converte il pathos dell’aforisma in un piacere e l’emozione della scrittura in un pensiero. Al fondo della sua procedura c’è erotismo, perché l’eros scaturisce dalla situazione della continua novità: il pensiero diventa erotico quando si manifesta come pensiero in perenne formazione, e come tale emerge dai lavori di Duchamp del 1911 e 1912: Dulcinée; Jeune homme triste dans un train; Nu descendant un escalier. Per ambire alla novità erotica si deve utilizzare la lingua nei suoi componenti elementari. La lingua è per Rrose quel cioccolato che Duchamp macina nella Broyeuse de chocolat (1914) per ottenere una polvere di cacao che, con l’aggiunta dello zucchero umoristico, diventa una polvere dolce utilizzabile in molte miscele, cosa non praticabile col cioccolato solido.

click to enlarge

Figure 10
Marcel Duchamp, Bottle Dryer,
1914/1964

C’è inoltre un ready made di Duchamp che può essere letto in senso antifrastico: l’Egouttoir del 1914, lo scolabottiglie circolare (Fig. 10) che sta in piedi senza appoggi, oggetto molto comune nella Francia dei vini. Esso sembra rappresentare ciò che non deve succedere nel linguaggio: gli aforismi di Rrose non devono prosciugarsi come le bottiglie infilzate a testa in giù nello scolabottiglie. Egouttoir si riferisce ovviamente al verbo égoutter, sgocciolare, che a sua volta richiama molto da vicino égoûter, togliere gusto: se una cosa viene prosciugata perde tutto il gusto. La procedura erotica implica la conservazione del gusto: erotica è la differenza, non la ripetitività. Uno dei punti fermi della biografia di Duchamp è la ragione del suo abbandono della pittura: interrogato in merito, rispondeva sempre in maniera simile. Nell’intervista apparsa il 23 ottobre 1965 sul giornale spagnolo “Siglo XX” rispose che era «per via della ripetizione: si possono fare tre o quattro cose eccezionali, ma tutto il resto è ripetizione». Nell’intervista al “Paris-Normandie” del 12 aprile 1967 disse che «non c’è nulla di più noioso della ripetizione. Tutto ciò che non è inusuale o insolito cade nell’oblio». Ma l’erotica implica anche la necessità di sfuggire al gusto fermo creato da una tradizione statica. Nel cortometraggio A conversation with Marcel Duchamp mandato in onda dalla NBC il 15 gennaio 1956, Marcel affermò a un certo punto che esisteva il pericolo di giungere a una specie di gusto: «Se si ripete un certo numero di volte, la cosa diviene gusto».⁽⁵⁾

Se c’è un rischio che Duchamp ha sistematicamente evitato è quello di ripetersi: tentò di continuo strade nuove di espressione, fino al silenzio volontario. Duchamp ci prende per mano e ci conduce a una lussuosa visione del Nulla: nonostante questo, la sua opera scatena concitazione. Succede per il corpo del Jeune homme triste dans un train, e per quello nudo che scende le scale: entrambi assumono una forma sempre diversa, come le idee, per loro natura liquide ed eternamente mobili. Duchamp non ha scelto di ritrarre forme ferme, istantanee di un tempo preciso, così come gli aforismi di Rrose non sono forme linguistiche correlate alla logica comune.

Duchamp elimina ogni riferimento di autorità: lo fa sciogliendo il significato in una pasta molle ad uso libero. Un uomo (l’artista) traccia il segno e lascia che l’altro uomo (il fruitore) ne tragga il significato che vuole. C’è dunque l’Uomo, carnoso e tondo; c’è il Segno, geometrico e scricchiolante come il pennino che lo traccia; ci sono infine i Significati, mare del Nulla. Col Segno si può creare autorità: si possono creare le utopie e le teologie. Assegnare un Significato al Segno è come stabilire un rapporto di autorità. Ma si può anche liberare il Segno dall’autorità: ecco l’azione erotica, il compito dell’indifferenza, la nullificazione del senso. Se si toglie al Segno il Significato, appare la purezza. Duchamp è giunto a liberare—con gesto d’arte—il Segno dai Significati, e a lasciare al Segno la libertà di intridersi del Significato che arbitrariamente il fruitore gli assegna. E libertà del Significato è gesto d’arte, gesto “politico” nella sua essenza.

[3]

Nel Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme Éluard e Breton inserirono la definizione di Duchamp sul ready made: «Oggetto usuale promosso alla dignità di oggetto d’arte per la semplice scelta dell’artista». Ma Duchamp ricorre in altri punti del dizionario, e forse le iniziali M. D. che siglano la voce “Hasard” sono le sue: «Hasard en conserve». La definizione significa “Il caso in conserva”; potrebbe essere deformata in “Marmellata del caso” e vi si potrebbe trovare già un senso, certamente non voluto da Duchamp. Si potrebbe cioè pensare al fatto che il caso si mescola molto bene col restante caso a formare la marmellata di ogni singola esistenza. La conserva del caso di Duchamp è da lui raggiunta mediante un atto di puro arbitrio. Nella sua opera, egli induce l’osservatore a un’interpretazione, a fare un commento, ad aggiungere al dato (semmai il semplice dato del ready made) altri dati.

Tutto comunque è arbitrario, inutile, sterilmente inefficace. La produzione di Rrose (e di Duchamp) provoca uno stupore arcano, refrattario a ogni speculazione razionale. L’erotica di Rrose sfocia in una sterilità di sapore gnostico: c’è infatti una forma di celibato sterile nei detti di Rrose Sélavy. Sono frasi arbitrarie che scatenano un’idea, un’immagine, una reazione di commento, una serie di interpretazioni a loro volta sterili, inutilmente reiterate all’infinito. E ciò rinvia alla grande intuizione religiosa di Giordano Bruno: quell’universo infinito che contrasta con la necessità di universo finito su cui il Tomismo si reggeva. Bruno tuttavia investe la materia di divinità (panteismo), Duchamp dimostra invece che la materia è infinito Nulla. Bruno reclama un gesto di coscienza: farsi consapevoli che l’infinito è immagine del Dio presente in ogni granello di universo; Duchamp reclama invece un gesto di incoscienza: «L’incosciente è orfano, ateo, celibe».⁽⁶⁾ Solo mediante incoscienza si conserva il celibato e l’ateismo. Il celibe è figura dell’incredulo, come l’orfano è figura dell’abbandono al nulla. In ambito religioso Duchamp coltiva un puro ateismo, quello che lievita dal caso messo in conserva.

Ma se l’arbitrio domina l’agire di Duchamp, la sua scelta di sterilità è libera. Egli potrebbe scegliere di essere fertile; sceglie invece di essere sterile, e lascia che la moltiplicazione del nulla sia attuata da chi è fertile, cioè dagli “altri”. Egli lascia in eredità un castello: che sterilmente si moltiplichino le interpretazioni delle sue opere d’arte o—nel caso di Rrose—dei suoi aforismi. In tal modo stabilisce un rapporto a doppia direzione: lo sterile fa in modo che il fertile possa perpetuare la sua inutile fertilità; il fertile concede al celibe–sterile di restare tale: gli concede il piacere dell’onanismo (il celibe è onanista per definizione).

Non va considerato di secondaria importanza il fatto che nel biglietto da visita di Rrose il primo titolo sia quello aziendale di “Ottica di precisione”: è un chiaro invito ad assumere, nel commercio con Rrose, uno sguardo preciso che nulla tralasci, o che almeno non metta in seconda linea alcune osservazioni per le quali è necessario armarsi di un’ottica speciale.

Si tratta dell’ottica gnostica.

Idea gnostica è che l’uomo sia un grumo di luce acceso nella tenebrosa prigione del mondo, intriso di dolore e di male. L’uscita dal mondo è possibile solo con una purificazione, perseguibile anche mediante la trasformazione in una creatura diversa. Rrose è una creatura erotica e al contempo pura: con la sua nascita, come quella della Primavera di Botticelli dalle onde del mare, Duchamp approdò a una conquista inaudita di conoscenza e di visione. La sua trasformazione in un personaggio femminile non fu un sacrificio in nome della Grande Madre Mediterranea, ma la definizione gnostica dell’essere puro (cataro) come creatura che vive al di fuori del mondo.

Amante di tutte le forme moderne di espressione, anche Breton si soffermò più volte sulla figura di Duchamp. In Testimony 45, articolo apparso nel marzo 1945 sul numero speciale dedicato a Duchamp dalla rivista statunitense “View”, Breton si pose un quesito radicale: in quale misura, dopo l’apparizione della maggiore opera di Duchamp, La Marié mise à nu, sia legittimo continuare a dipingere come se essa non esistesse. L’apparizione di Duchamp diventa secondo Breton qualcosa di sempre più imperativo: «Essa tende a denunciare come obsoleta e vana la maggior parte della produzione artistica recente».⁽⁷⁾

Ecco l’azione purificatrice di Duchamp, il suo catarismo evangelico: fare tabula rasa di tutto, imporre la necessità del Radicalmente Nuovo. Lo fece incarnandosi in Rrose Sélavy e realizzando una Gnosi Erotica o, se si preferisce, una Erotica Gnostica: in ogni caso giungendo alla posizione più alta per capire cosa nel mondo—e nella vita—valga la pena sia tentato.

Notes

1. L’androginia della Gioconda coi baffetti è solo l’aspetto più vistoso di un fenomeno che ha sviluppi ben più profondi. Si veda il lungo articolo di Lanier Graham, Duchamp & Androgyny: The Concept and its Context inTout–Fait. The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 2, n. 4, gennaio 2002. <https://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham1.html>

In questo ambito potrebbe anche rientrare l’alterazione sessuale di Etant donnés (del 1946–1966): i genitali femminili osservati attraverso i buchi del portone appaiono decentrati, come se la realtà artistica sia diversa da quella della natura. Ma tornando a Man Ray va notato che egli era il fotografo sia della nudità femminile sia di quel priapo fermacarte che esiste in versioni di marmo e di metallo. Fotografando Rrose, Man Ray attuava un mescolamento del femminile e del priapico, fino a ritrarre una creatura sessualmente ambigua e infertile. Se infatti il priapo fissa l’erezione in una gelida inettitudine così anche la donna eternamente nuda di Man Ray non solleva più tensioni fisiologiche e l’osservatore si trasforma in un gelido inetto.

2. M. Duchamp, Ingénieur du temps perdu. Entretiens avec Pierre Cabanne, Parigi, Belfond, 1967, p. 118. La frase precisa scritta sul quadro di Picabia era “en 6 qu’habilla rrose Sélavy”; si può osservare una buona riproduzione del quadro in Arturo Shwarz, Almanacco Dada, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1976, p. 340. Ma si veda anche Jennifer Gough–Cooper e Jacques Caumont, “Effemeridi su e intorno a Marcel Duchamp e Rrose Sélavy 1887–1968,” nel volume Marcel Duchamp, Milano, Bompiani, 1993, alla data del 1 novembre 1921.

3. L’intervista del 23 luglio 1964 è pubblicata nelle citate Effemeridi, alla data. La produzione aforistica di Rrose Sélavy è raccolta in Marcel Duchamp, Marchand du sel. Ecrits de Marcel Duchamp, a cura di M. Sanouillet, Parigi, Le Terrain Vague, 1958 (traduzione italiana: Cava dei Tirreni, Rumma Editore, 1969) e in Duchamp du signe. Ecrits, a cura di M. Sanouillet, Parigi, Flammarion, 1994. Michel Sanouillet e Elmer Peterson hanno dedicato a queste frasi un intero capitolo del loro libro Salt Seller. The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, New York, Oxford University Press, 1973.

4. Per l’intervista di Cabanne cfr. Ingénieur du temps perdu, cit., p. 23. L’idea espressa a Schwarz è riportata in Le macchine celibi, a cura di Harald Szeeman, Milano, Electa, 1989, p. 189 nota 4. L’intervista dell’8 dicembre 1961 è pubblicata nelle citate Effemeridi, alla data. Sul valore dell’umorismo si leggano anche le prime battute dell’intervista rilasciata da Duchamp a Guy Viau della Radio–Televisione canadese il 17 luglio 1960, ora pubblicata col titolo Changer de Nom, Simplement in Tout–Fait. The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 2, n. 4, gennaio 2002. <https://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/interviews/md_guy/md_guy.html>

L’erotica perseguita da Duchamp sembra calarsi nella teoria che Susan Sontag esprime nel saggio Contro l’interpretazione; la scrittrice statunitense vi afferma che la vitalità di un’interpretazione si salva fondandosi su una procedura “erotica”, non “ermeneutica”.

5. Per tutte queste affermazioni si vedano le citate Effemeridi, alle rispettive date.

6. Gilles Deleuze, in Le macchine celibi, cit., p. 15.

7. L’articolo è ora raccolto in André Breton, Oeuvres complètes, vol. III, Parigi, Gallimard, 1999, pp. 144–145.

Figs. 1-5, 7, 9-10 ©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel
Duchamp,Fresh Widow, 1920

In 1920 Marcel Duchamp duplicated choosing feminine features: those of Rose Sélavy. With this name indicates the copyright of Fresh Widow (Fig. 1), ready made resulting from the crafted assembly of a green window with French-style black leather panels. Those panels, for Duchamp’s insistence, had to be polished every day; and perhaps for this reason, for the newspaper and lewd rubbing of the skin, the French Window became, in the transformation of Duchamp, a Fresh Widow, namely a widow immodest.

Since that time the works of Rose multiply. His name is linked, again in 1920, the motor optical apparatus said Rotative plaques verre (optique de précision) (Fig. 2). The readymade of 1921 consists of a cage with cubes of marble and cuttlefish bone is christened Why not sneeze Rose Sélavy? (Fig. 3). woman sensual phrases are written in white letters spirals out of nine blacks discs in the short film Anemic Cinema (Fig. 4) shot by Man Ray and screened August 30, 1926 in a movie theater in Paris: while running, discs create buttons and sensations Sex. In September 1934 she also launches its editions with a book of perfect-as Dadaist late-expression: a box called La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (Fig. 5) containing facsimile notes and reproductions, better known as the Boîte verte. But still: in April 1939 went to Paris in 515 copies of a booklet written by Marcel Duchamp entitled Rrose Sélavy, collection of “poils et coups de pied en tous genres”.

Meanwhile the name of Rose had become Rrose. The event of 1921: a word game published on page 6 of “The Pilhaou-Thibaou” (fifteenth issue of the magazine “391”) is signed Rrose Sélavy. Picabia had taken the phrase from a letter that Duchamp had sent him from New York in January. It was the first time in the floral name was added “r” and this did nothing to duplicate the character newborn. It was just the simple addition of a consonant to delineate better the mystery of the double: a newborn creature immediately began to transform itself, to own their own “biography.”

There is also Rrose photographic documentation. In 1921 Man Ray worked the single issue of the magazine “New York Dada” by publishing a photograph he had taken to Duchamp in women’s clothes Rrose Sélavy: a hat with patterned band and an elegant fox collar supported by the hands that palpate the heat. The photograph shows a facial expression elusive: atteggiate lips into a smile mysterious, subtle indifference eyes. The attractive hat had been lent to Marcel-Rrose by Germaine Everling, the Picabia companion: the anti-romantic Duchamp had chosen as the most visible sign of its transformation a headdress that belonged to a woman whose name-Germaine-alluded to the red-hot core romantic illusion: Germanism. The indifferent smile Rrose reminiscent of the Mona Lisa (Fig. 6): in ready made l.h.o.o.q. (Fig. 7) of 1919 Duchamp had already deformed the Gioconda by drawing in pencil a few thin mustache on a reproduction of the famous painting by Leonardo. ⁽¹⁾

What Rrose represents it can be clarified thanks to the dedication that appear in the image and reveals the identity: “Lovingly, Rrose Sélavy aka Marcel Duchamp.” It was therefore another me, to be added to the existing one with nothing to hide. However Rrose aspired to a legal personality and quickly armed himself with a business card:
Precision optics Rose Sélavy New York – Paris Complete assortment of mustaches and tricks

mustache and tricks
It does not need to know that (etc.)

Figure 8
Francis Picabia,
L’Oeil cacodylate,
1921

It does not need to know that nell’emporio Marcel-Rrose you sell at will mustache to understand that the pseudonym pointed phonetically in an erotic direction: Rrose Sélavy sounds in fact like “Eros c’est la vie” ( “Eros: such is life” ). But not only that it was. In an interview with Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp expressed some illuminating remarks: “I wanted to change my identity and at first I had the idea to take a Hebrew name. I was a Catholic and this step of religion already meant a change. But I found no Hebrew name that I liked, or it hit my imagination, and suddenly I had an idea: why not change sex? From here comes the name of Rrose Sélavy. Today it sounds good enough, because even the names change over time, but in 1920 it was a silly name. The Double “R” has to do with the picture of Picabia Oeil Cacodylate (Fig. 8), exposed in the cabaret “Le Boeuf sur le Toit” -not know if it was sold-and Picabia asked all the friends to sign . I do not remember what I wrote, but the picture was photographed and therefore anyone knows. I think I wrote “Pi Qu’habilla Rrose Sélavy” ». The phrase that Duchamp wrote on Picabia framework sounds phonetically as “Picabia the arrose c’est la vie.” And it broadens the meaning to “Eros c’est la vie” to the phrase “arroser la vie,” meaning “have a drink over, make a toast to life.” ⁽²⁾

Both meanings of the name refer to the vision of life nourished by Duchamp: if a first superficial consideration the transformation of Duchamp in Rrose Sélavy seems to trigger a lively game of interpretation, more accurate observation shows that coagulates transformation instead lasting erotics : one arising from the joy to live and roam free in thought. In fact, in addition to signing some ready made, Rrose writes of bon-mots, of puns intentionally senseless, but that at times sound highly explicit.

Rrose thus possesses a “language” personality born of a precise idea of ​​language. In an interview published in “L’Express” of July 23, 1964, Duchamp said, “Language is a human error. Between two beings who love the word it does not express how much deeper they feel. The word is a pebble worn that applies to thirty-six shades of emotions. The language is easy to simplify it is a means of locomotion that I detest. ” “And yet-he says the interviewer-under the pseudonym Rrose Sélavy, she is interested in the language.” “It was for the fun. I have great respect for humor, it is a kind of protection that allows you to go through all the mirrors. ” ^{( 3)}

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Figure 9
Marcel Duchamp, Young
Man and Girl in Spring,
1911

What is accomplished reading of those Rrose? Simply the joy of reading something always new, an experience that might remind you to pick fruit in an eden. Duchamp had announced in 1911 with the painting Jeune homme et jeune fille dans le printemps (Fig. 9): a pagan joy scene when two naked young men freely capture fruit from a plant growing in a lush natural environment. The bottom line is that only women can make themselves understood without recourse to meaning, as happens in the aphorisms Rrose. In other words, only the woman is impregnable. As irony.

[2]
Duchamp pursues a primitive form of eros: this is evident from his idea of ​​marriage, she understood as a dead end, as a tomb. The Dimanches caricature of 1909 is merciless in this regard: the double couple with newborn baby, is reduced on Sundays to the boring walk where is the man to push the wheelchair, while his wife, pregnant again, walking wearily side. On your choice of bachelor, attracted to women but rejected by marriage, Duchamp once said to Pierre Cabanne: “I realized from an early age that we should not weigh you down with too much weight, with too many jobs, with a wife, with children, a country house, a car; fortunately I was convinced right away. That’s why I could live with much greater ease, as a bachelor, what I would do if I had to deal with all the usual problems of life. ” Duchamp always defended this sense of freedom, and writing once to Arturo Schwarz on the meaning of marriage said: “I’ve carefully avoided until the age of 67 years. I married a woman who, because of his age, could not have children. ” Although in fact he had already married in 1927, remaining married for the paltry three-month period. Eros is for Duchamp a serious matter; It is what replaces the irony absent. In an interview on 8 December 1961 Alain Jouffroy he asked Duchamp if he believed that humor was essential to the creation of the artwork, and he answered, “absolutely. I care particularly because seriousness is very dangerous thing. To avoid it is necessary the intervention of humor. The only serious thing I could consider is eroticism. Now that’s serious. ” ⁽⁴⁾

This idea is the basis of Rrose Sélavy philosophy, author of the aphorism that converts the pathos into a pleasure and excitement of writing in a thought. At the bottom of his procedure is eroticism, because Eros comes from the continuous news situation: the thought becomes erotic when it manifests itself as a thought in constant training, and as such is apparent from Duchamp’s works in 1911 and 1912 Dulcinée; Jeune homme dans un train sad; Nu descendant un escalier. To aspire to the erotic novelties you have to use the language into its elementary components. The language is Rrose for that chocolate that Duchamp grinding in Broyeuse de chocolat (1914) to obtain a cocoa powder which, with the addition of humorous sugar, becomes a sweet powder usable in many mixtures, something not viable with solid chocolate.

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Figure 10
Marcel Duchamp, Bottle Dryer,
1914/1964

There is also a ready made of Duchamp that can be read in antiphrastic sense: Egouttoir 1914, the circular bottle rack (Fig. 10) standing without support, very common object in the wine France. It seems to represent what should not happen in the language: the aphorisms Rrose should not dry up like bottles stuck upside down in the bottle rack. Egouttoir obviously refers to the verb égoutter, drip, which in turn very closely recalls égoûter, remove taste: if something is drained loses all taste. The erotic procedure involves the preservation of taste: Sex is the difference, not the repetition. One of the strong points of Duchamp’s biography is the reason for its abandonment of painting: questioned about, always answered similarly. In the interview she appeared October 23, 1965 on the Spanish newspaper “Siglo XX” replied that it was “because of repetition: you can do three or four exceptional things, but everything else is repetition.” In the interview to “Paris-Normandie” of April 12, 1967 said that “there is nothing more boring than repetition. All that is not unusual or uncommon falls into oblivion. ” But the erotic also implies the need to escape the latch taste created by a static tradition. In the short film A conversation with Marcel Duchamp aired on NBC January 15, 1956, Marcel said at one point that there was a danger of reaching a kind of taste: “If you repeat a number of times, it becomes taste” . ⁽⁵⁾

If there is a risk that Duchamp has systematically avoided it is to be repeated: tried constantly new ways of expression, up to the voluntary silence. Duchamp takes us by the hand and leads us to a luxurious vision of Nothing: despite this, his work triggers excitement. It happens to the body of the Jeune homme dans un train sad, and what the naked running down the stairs: both assume ever different form, such as ideas, to their liquid nature and eternally moving. Duchamp did not choose to portray firm forms, snapshots of a precise time, as well as the aphorisms Rrose are unrelated linguistic forms to common logic.

Duchamp eliminates any reference of authority: it does dissolving the meaning in a soft dough for free use. A man (the artist) makes the sign and let the other man (the user) should draw the meaning he wants. So there is the man, fleshy and round; there is the sign, geometric and creaky as the stylus that track; Finally there are the Meanings, Sea of ​​Nothingness. With the sign you can create authority: you can create utopias and theologies. Meaning to assign a sign is how to establish a relationship of authority. But you can also rid the authority sign here is the erotic action, indifference task, the nullification of the way. If you remove the sign the Meaning, it appears purity. Duchamp came to free-movement with art-the Sign of the meanings, and to leave to sign the freedom to absorb the mixture of arbitrarily Meaning that the user specifies. And freedom is the Meaning of gesture art, gesture “political” in its very essence.

[3]
In the Dictionnaire du abrégé surréalisme Eluard and Breton they inserted the definition of Duchamp on ready made “normal Subject promoted to the rank of art object for the simple choice of the artist.” But Duchamp recurs elsewhere in the dictionary, and perhaps the initials M. D. initials that the “Hasard” are his “Hasard en conserve.” The definition means “The event preserves”; It may be deformed in “Jam of the case” and there you could find already a sense, certainly not wanted by Duchamp. You might think that the fact that the case is mixed very well with the rest of the case to form the jam every single existence. Preserve the case of Duchamp has he achieved by an act of pure caprice. In his work, he entices the viewer to interpret, to comment, to add to the data (if anything, the simple fact of the readymade) other data.

However, everything is arbitrary, useless, sterile ineffective. The production of Rrose (and Duchamp) causes an arcane stupor, refractory to any rational speculation. The erotic Rrose results in sterility of Gnostic flavor: there is in fact a form of sterile celibacy in those Rrose Sélavy. Are arbitrary sentences that trigger an idea, an image, a comment of reaction, a number of interpretations, in turn, sterile, unnecessarily repeated endlessly. And this refers to the great religious intuition of Giordano Bruno: the infinite universe that contrasts with the need for finite universe on which the Thomism was holding. Bruno, however, involves the field of divinity (pantheism), Duchamp, however, shows that matter is infinite Nothing. Bruno claims a gesture of consciousness: be aware that the infinite is the image of God present in every particle of the universe; Duchamp claim instead an act of irresponsibility: “The unconscious is an orphan, atheist, unmarried.” ⁽⁶⁾ Only through recklessness it is preserved celibacy and atheism. The single figure is an infidel, as the orphan’s abandonment figure of nowhere. In the religious sphere Duchamp cultivates a pure atheism, what leavens the case put canned.

But if the arbitrariness dominates the actions of Duchamp, his choice of infertility is free. He could choose to be fertile; choose instead of being sterile, and let the multiplication of nowhere is implemented by those who are fertile, ie the “other.” He bequeaths a castle that sterile multiply interpretations of his works of art or-in the case of Rrose-of his aphorisms. Thereby establishes a two-way relationship: the barren makes sure that the fertile may perpetuate his futile fertility; fertile grants the bachelor-sterile remain so: grant him the pleasure of onanism (bachelor’s onanist by definition).

It should not be considered of secondary importance that the business card Rrose the first title is the business of “Precision Optics” is a clear invitation to take, in trade with Rrose, a precise look that omit nothing, or at least do not put into the background some observations for which you need special perspective arm themselves.

It is gnostic optics.

Gnostic idea is that man is a lump of light lit in the dark prison of the world, full of pain and hurt. The world output is only possible with a purification, also punishable by transformation into a different creature. Rrose is an erotic and at the same time pure creature with his birth, like that of Botticelli’s Primavera by the waves, Duchamp landed at an unprecedented conquest of knowledge and vision. Its transformation into a female character was not a sacrifice in the name of the Great Mediterranean Mother, but the definition of pure being Gnostic (Cathar) as a creature who lives outside of the world.

Lover of all modern forms of expression, even Breton paused several times on the figure of Duchamp. In Testimony 45, article published in March 1945 in the special issue devoted to Duchamp by the American magazine “View”, Breton poses a radical question: to what extent, after the appearance of the major work of Duchamp, The Marié mise à nu, both legitimate to continue painting as if it did not exist. The appearance of Duchamp becomes second Breton something increasingly imperative: “It tends to denounce as obsolete and useless most of the recent artistic production.” ⁽⁷⁾

Here is the purifying action of Duchamp, his evangelical Cathars: make a clean sweep of all, the need to impose the New Radically. He did it by becoming incarnate in Rrose Sélavy and making a Erotica Gnosis or, if you prefer, a Gnostic Erotica: in any case coming to the highest position to understand what in the world-and in life-worth is attempted.

Notes

1. The androgyny of the Mona Lisa with a mustache is just the most visible aspect of a phenomenon that has much more profound developments. See the long article by Lanier Graham, Duchamp & amp; Androgyny: The Concept and its Context Tout-Fait. The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 2, n. 4, January 2002. & lt; http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham1.html

In this area could also fall sexual alteration of Étant donnés (the 1946-1966): the female genitalia observed through the holes of the door appear off-center, as if the artistic reality is different from that of nature . But back to Man Ray should be noted that he was the photographer of both the female nudity is of that priapo paperweight that exists in marble and metal versions. Photographing Rrose, Man Ray operated a blending of the feminine and priapic, up to portray a sexually ambiguous creature and infertile. If in fact the priapo fixed erection on a cold ineptitude so the eternally naked woman Man Ray does not raise physiological tension and the viewer turns into an icy inept.

2. M. Duchamp, Ingénieur du temps perdu. Entretiens avec Pierre Cabanne , Paris, Belfond, 1967, p. 118. The exact phrase written on the painting by Picabia was “en 6 qu’habilla rrose Sélavy”; you can see a good reproduction of the picture in Arturo Shwarz, Almanac Dada , Cambridge: Polity Press, 1976, p. 340. But see also Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, “Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy 1887-1968,” in volume Marcel Duchamp , Milan, Bompiani, 1993, the date of November 1, 1921.

3. The interview of 23 July 1964 published in the aforementioned Ephemeris , to date. The production aphoristic Rrose Sélavy is collected in Marcel Duchamp, Marchand du sel. Ecrits de Marcel Duchamp , edited by M. Sanouillet, Paris, Le Terrain Vague, 1958 (Italian translation: Cava dei Tirreni, Rumma Publisher, 1969) and in Duchamp du signe. Ecrits , edited by M. Sanouillet, Paris, Flammarion, 1994. Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson have dedicated to these phrases a whole chapter of their book Salt Seller . The Writings of Marcel Duchamp , New York, Oxford University Press, 1973.

4. To see the interview of Cabanne. Ingénieur du temps perdu , cit., P. 23. The idea expressed in Schwarz is reported in The machines celibate, curated by Harald Szeemann, Milan, Electa, 1989, p. 189 note 4. The interview of 8 December 1961 was published in the aforementioned Ephemeris , to date. The humor value it also reads the first lines of the interview released by Duchamp to Guy Viau of the Canadian Radio-Television July 17, 1960, now published under the title changer de nom, Simplement Tout-Fait. The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 2, n. 4, January 2002.lt; http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/interviews/md_guy/md_guy.html

The erotic pursued by Duchamp seems to dive into the theory that Susan Sontag expresses the Against Interpretation ; the American writer there says that the vitality of interpretation is saved by the application of an “erotic” procedure, “hermeneutics.”

5. For all these statements, see the aforementioned Ephemeris , the respective dates.

6. Gilles Deleuze, in The Bachelor Machines , cit., P. 15.

7. The article is now collected in André Breton, Oeuvres completes , vol. III, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, pp. 144-145.

Figs. 1-5, 7, 9-10 © 2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

click images to enlarge

• 
  Figure 1A
  Man Ray, Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1920
• 
  Figure 1B
  Marcel Duchamp, Cover of “The Blindman No. 1, ” April 1917
  (detail of the drawing by Alfred J. Frueh)
• 
  Figure 2A
  Man Ray, Portrait of James Joyce, 1922
• 
  Figure 2B
  Drawing by James Joyce for Finnegans Wake (1939), p. 308.

Is Marcel Duchamp the model for a character in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake?
Yes.
Is this character attractive? No.
Does this character have an equally unattractive twin brother based on Joyce? Yes.

Finnegans Wake ^[1]is unique in our history: never has a work of literature been so widely known by name yet so rarely read cover to cover. Its fame rests in part on the fact that its author was already world famous from earlier works when it was first published. And the reason for its relative neglect by readers can be explained by even a cursory glance at any one of its 626 pages: Joyce, it would seem, had practically invented a new language, roughly based on English. Offsetting the neglect of the novel by the public at large is the humming worldwide industry of Joyce scholars who are busily earning Ph.D’s trying to decipher it.

There are many parallels between Marcel Duchamp (Fig. 1A)(who earned necessary money teaching French to Americans) and James Joyce (Fig. 2A)(who earned necessary money teaching English to Europeans). If Finnegans Wake was unprecedented in literary history, Duchamp’sLarge Glass was no less so in the history of art. Like Joyce, Duchamp was already world famous from earlier work by the time the world saw the mold-shattering new work. In the case of both the artist and the writer, that earlier work was considered extremely difficult by the general public, and was embraced only by a very small number of sympathetic artists; with the Glass and the Wake, Duchamp and Joyce respectively reached a point in their odysseys where their sympathy for the ease of their audience was very close to nil. ^[2] (Fig. 1B and 2B)

Duchamp, though the younger by five years, was considerably earlier than Joyce in reaching this iconoclastic stage. For all its difficulties, Ulysses, written between 1914 and 1921, contains many passages that readers of the time could relatively easily accept as viable literature. Duchamp’s 3 Standard Stoppages, 1913–1914 (Fig. 3), and Bottle Dryer, 1914 (Fig. 4), on the other hand, were decidedly not considered viable by art lovers when they appeared on the scene.

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• 
  Figure 3
  Marcel Duchamp, Three Standard
  Stoppages, 1913-14.
• 
  Figure 4
  Marcel Duchamp, Bottle Dryer,
  1914/1964.

click to enlarge

Figure 5
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, 1915-23

Duchamp made his first drawings for parts of The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (a.k.a. The Large Glass) (Fig. 5) in 1912, began the piece itself in 1915, and stopped working on it in 1923. ^[3] He made his last additions to it in New York before mid-February of that year, when he left for Europe. ^[4] Joyce started Finnegans Wake on March 10, 1923. It seems a marvelous coincidence that Duchamp ended work on his unprecedented artwork only a few weeks before Joyce started work on his unprecedented book; a person of a metaphysical bent, believing in some sort of transmigrating artistic energy, might posit a scenario out of the coincidence. The writer Calvin Tomkins pointedly connects the most ambitious and notable work of the artist with that of the writer: “The Large Glass stands in relation to painting as Finnegans Wake does to literature, isolated and inimitable; it has been called everything from a masterpiece to a hoax, and to this day there are no standards by which it can be judged.” ^[5]“Masterpiece” and “hoax,” of course, are the two labels most often attached to Finnegans Wake as well.

*

We maintain that beginning with Jarry . . . the differentiation long considered necessary between art and life has been challenged, to wind up annihilated as a principle.
—André Breton^[6]

Alfred Jarry:There is great wisdom in modeling one’s soul on that of one’s janitor. 1902

James Joyce: I have a grocer’s assistant’s mind. 1925.

Marcel Duchamp: I live the life of a waiter.1968.

A snow shovel? A bottle rack? A bicycle wheel? A focus on the ordinary was a significant feature of Duchamp’s contribution to the visual arts. With his Readymades he sought to elevate mass-produced objects into art’s realm. And he made clear that he considered the idea behind this gesture the most important of any that had come to him.

There is a parallel in Joyce’s transparent insistence that the ordinary is extraordinary. This interest was apparent to other writers: Richard Ellmann, his biographer, tells us that “to [William Butler] Yeats, Joyce was too concerned with the commonplace.” ^[7] Ellmann himself states, “The initial and determining act of judgment in [Joyce’s] work is the justification of the commonplace.” ^[8] This tendency can be seen in Joyce’s day-to-day proceedings as well as in his writing. To his friend the bookstore proprietor Sylvia Beach, for example, he said, “I never met a bore.” ^[9] (Nicely parallel is Duchamp saying that he never saw a painting from which he was unable to get something of interest.) Like Duchamp, too, Joyce was capable of de-emphasizing the inventive genius of the originating author in favor of some more generic principle of creativity: speaking of Finnegans Wake to Eugene Jolas, founder of the literary review transition, he said, “This book is being written by the people I have met or known.” ^[10] To a substantial degree this statement could apply even to Joyce’s early novel Stephen Hero and the collection of stories Dubliners, but it rings ever truer as we travel through Ulysses and then Finnegans Wake, with its “hero” H. C. Earwicker, also referred to as “Here Comes Everybody.”

In harmony with this, we find that Ulysses, notwithstanding its structural debt to the Homeric epic, lays out a single day in the life of middle-class citizens of Dublin. AndFinnegans Wake, for all its complex structure and portmanteau words, tells of a tavern keeper, his wife and his three children, yet again in Dublin, Joyce’s native town.

One of Duchamp’s many contributions to modern art, of course, was the willful use of the principle of chance, seen most vividly in the early Three Standard Stoppages, 1913-14. A few years later he ordered the title of the magazine he launched in 1917 to be Wrongwrong, but a printing mistake transformed it into Rongwrong. The error appealed to him and he accepted the title. ^[11] Joyce too, according to Ellmann, “was quite willing to accept coincidence as his collaborator.”^[12]

Once or twice he dictated a bit of Finnegans Wake to Beckett . . . in the middle of one such session there was a knock on the door which Beckett did not hear. Joyce said, “Come in,” and Beckett wrote it down. Afterwards, he read back what he had written and Joyce said, “What’s that ‘Come in’?” “Yes, you said that,” said Beckett. Joyce thought for a moment, then said, “Let it stand.”
^[13]

Authors and critics have found tonal similarities in the work of Duchamp and of Joyce. Ellmann, for example, remarks of Finnegans Wake that its “mixture of childish nonsense and ancient wisdom had been prepared for by the Dadaists and Surrealists.” ^[14] This complements Michel Sanouillet’s statement that “perhaps no one was . . . more spiritually dada than Marcel Duchamp. In [him] are joined the essential elements of the dada revolt.”^[15]

Duchamp, who said that his notes for The Large Glass were part of the piece, often repeated that all of his work was based on literature. In the 1910s he said, “I felt that as a painter it was much better to be influenced by a writer than by another painter.” ^[16] In 1922, meanwhile, the year after the publication of Ulysses and a year before he began Finnegans Wake, Joyce said that his writing owed much to painting. ^[17] He can actually be seen as striving toward an end result more typical of painting than of writing: after suggesting to a friend that he could compare much of his work in Ulysses to a page of intricate illuminations in the Irish monastic volume The Book of Kells, he continued, “I would like it to be possible to pick up any page of my book and know at once what book it was.” ^[18] And he wrote to Lucia, his daughter, “Lord knows what my prose means. In a word, it’s pleasing to the ear. And your drawings are pleasing to the eye. That is enough, it seems to me.” ^[19]

Both Duchamp and Joyce would have been at a loss without female patronage. In Duchamp’s case, Katherine Dreier was sufficiently devoted to have sometimes followed the artist in his travels—whether invited or not—and named him the executor of her will; she bought the Large Glass from Duchamp’s early supporter Walter Arensberg, and held on to it. In Joyce’s case we find Beach and Harriet Weaver, among others. Both men, however, were known to treat women unfeelingly, and Joyce at times could sound sexist: granting that some women “have attained eminence in the field of scientific research,” he could add, “But you have never heard of a woman who was the author of a complete philosophical system, and I don’t think you ever will.” Yet he admitted in a letter: “throughout my life women have been my most active helpers.” ^[20]

The Readymades and The Large Glass have been lauded or vilified as the end of art as we used to know it, and critics made similar comments on the publication of Finnegans Wake. Joyce himself remarked of his book, “I’m at the end of English.” ^[21] Yet, despite these and a slew of other connections and parallels, no essay to my knowledge has appeared discussing the possibility of a significant personal connection between these two uniquely influential geniuses. My explorations tell me that a single essay can only serve as introduction to the subject.

Joyce and Duchamp, both international figures by the 1920s, moved in the same social circles, yet no biography of either man mentions a meeting of the two. This writer, who was on friendly terms with the artist’s late widow, Teeny Duchamp, once asked her whether she was aware of any meeting or contact between Joyce and Duchamp. She answered that she was not. The only evidence I’ve found that strongly suggests they may have met is in a short biography of the American bookbinder and art patron Mary Reynolds, who “held an open house almost nightly at her home at 14 rue Halle [in Paris], with her quiet garden the favored spot after dinner for the likes of Duchamp, Brancusi, Man Ray, [André] Breton, [Djuna] Barnes, [Peggy] Guggenheim, [Paul] Eluard, Mina Loy, James Joyce, Cocteau, Samuel Beckett, and others.” ^[22] Since Duchamp was all but living with Reynolds at the time, the likelihood that he and Joyce did not meet diminishes as a possibility.

click to enlarge

Figure 6
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending
a Staircase, No. 2, 1912

Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp, Photograph of Fountain
by Alfred Stieglitz, 1917

Whether they met or not, however, I believe that Duchamp was the model for a character in Finnegans Wake, and by no means a sympathetic one. But this is consistent with Joyce’s world outlook; it is probably true of most of the hundreds of characters from past and current history with whom he filled his book. Duchamp’s fictional re-creation, I believe, had to do not only with his presence and reputation in Paris but with more particular considerations having to do with his personality and his relationships. In the years we are focusing on he enjoyed as wide a celebrity in the visual arts as Joyce did in the literary world. And their respective positions dovetailed extraordinarily: both known to the cognoscenti as possessing enormous abilities, both considered bad boys by the larger public. Largely responsible for Duchamp’s bad reputation was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1913 (Fig. 6), andFountain, 1917(Fig. 7), the notorious upended urinal exhibited as art; for Joyce it was the four-letter words in Ulysses, never before seen or permitted in legitimately published English novels. Duchamp’s “scandal” had been widely publicized in 1917 when New York’s protectors of public morals refused to exhibit the urinal on the grounds that it was “immoral” or “vulgar.” ^[23] In Joyce’s case the refusal to allow Ulysses entry into various countries on identical grounds was important news. Duchamp lived to seeFountain attain status as one of the most important artworks of the twentieth century; Joyce lived to see a similar destiny for Ulysses.

A few details about Duchamp’s relationship with American art patron Mary Reynolds and with the American collector John Quinn may help to explain why Joyce painted the character I find he based on Duchamp in such colors as he did. If this interpretation is correct, the surprise is compounded by the fact that neither Duchamp nor Reynolds is mentioned at all in Ellmann’s massive and highly detailed biography of the writer.

Duchamp and Joyce actually lived within blocks of each other at various times in Paris in the ’teens and 1920s. They were also close to many of the same people. Both Constantin Brancusi and Man Ray, for example, probably the two artists closest to Duchamp, made celebrated portraits of Joyce: Brancusi executed two true-to-life drawings of him followed by a totally abstract one that became famous and was eventually the frontispiece for Ellmann’s biography; Man Ray’s 1922 photograph of Joyce may be the most haunting portrait of a writer or artist ever made by Ray. Samuel Beckett, who met Joyce in 1928, was quite close to both the writer and the artist, as was Reynolds, although in a different way.^[24] Yet although Joyce must have seen a great deal about Duchamp in the Paris press, and no doubt heard intimate stories about him from excellent personal sources, there is only sparse documented evidence that Joyce and Duchamp even knew of each other’s existence.

click to enlarge

Figure 8
Marcel Duchamp, Cover of
transition, no. 26, 1936

One has to search to find them acknowledging each other. In 1937, when a reproduction of Duchamp’s 1916 Combreadymade was chosen as the cover of an issue of transition(no. 26) (Fig. 8)—the same issue that featured an installment of Joyce’s Work in Progress (the working title of Finnegans Wake)—Joyce intriguingly told Beach, “The comb with thick teeth shown on this cover was the one used to comb out Work in Progress.” ^[25] The comment, I would argue, suggests some kind of connection between Joyce and Duchamp that no biographer to my knowledge has yet explored. In Duchamp’s case I know of two references to the writer. Once, telling Dore Ashton in a 1966 interview how some authors were famous in the way of an expensive Swiss chocolate while others were famous more in the way of Pepsi-Cola, Duchamp remarked that Joyce was in the latter category. And in 1956, in a book introduction, he wrote of Reynolds’s “close friendship with André Breton, Raymond Queneau, Jean Cocteau, Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, Alexander Calder, Miro, Jacques Villon, and many other important figures of the epoch.” ^[26]

click to enlarge

Figure 9
Marcel Duchamp, Opposition
and Sister Squares Are Reconciled, 1932

Reynolds, one of Joyce’s inner circle, ^[27] was also a “lifelong friend” of Joyce’s perennial intimate Beckett; the two writers would sometimes meet at her house. ^[28] Joyce’s son Giorgio likewise stayed there at the same time as Beckett. ^[28A] It was in Reynolds’s house that Beckett started his relationship with Peggy Guggenheim, and they lived there for a short while after. ^[28B] Beckett and Reynolds were kindred spirits who would eventually both work bravely for the French Resistance. (Joyce, meanwhile, made a point of saying that he was not physically brave; Duchamp similarly once remarked that his response to an invasion would be to stand with folded arms.) Beckett’sEndgame, was to an extent inspired by a chess book Duchamp had co-written, Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled (Fig. 9). ^[29]

This same Mary Reynolds loved Duchamp with an undying fervor. Their sexual relationship survived hell and high water, including Duchamp’s strange, short-lived marriage to a plump, not overly attractive, well-to-do woman. His liaison with Reynolds began in 1924, and “in spite of his refusal to let it impinge on his freedom, it lasted for the better part of two decades.” ^[30] Duchamp’s friend Henri-Pierre Roché who introduced them, would later write in his journal,

She suffers. Marcel is debauched. Has loved, perhaps still loves, very vulgar women. He holds her at arm’s length at the edge of his mind. He fears for his freedom. She wants to attach herself to him as he
says. (Mary’s eyes moisten with offended sweet pride.) . . . He comes to see her every day. Hides their relationship from everybody. Doesn’t want her to speak to him at the Café du Dome when they see each other each evening. Hides her. Gets out of their taxi a hundred yards before arriving at the home of friends. She loves him, believes him incapable of loving. . . . Just as a butterfly goes for certain flowers, Marcel goes straight for beauty. He could not go for Mary, but he protects against her his life, his calm, his solitude, his chess game, his amorous fantasies. ^[31]

If Joyce objected to Duchamp’s treatment of Reynolds, it was not due to middle-class prudishness: one of his closest intimates was the Irish tenor John Sullivan, whose “family life was deeply entangled between a wife and a mistress.” ^[33] Joyce himself may have remained with Nora Barnacle, the woman who loved him, until the end of his life, but a letter of 1904 to an aunt in Dublin suggests inner cravings for an independent existence; with his and Nora’s first child, Giorgio, not yet five months old, he wrote that as soon as he earned some money from his writing he intended to change his life: “I imagine the present relations between Nora and myself are about to suffer some alteration. . . . I am not a very domestic animal—after all, I suppose I am an artist—and sometimes when I think of the free and happy life which I have (or had) every talent to live I am in a fit of despair.” ^[34] He did stay with Nora, marrying her in 1931, when he was forty-nine, after twenty-seven years of cohabitation. Yet around that time he told Jolas, “When I hear the word ‘love’ I feel like puking.” ^[35] Nora for her part, after being cajoled by friends, not for the first time, into returning home to her penitent husband after she had fled his drunken behavior, said in 1936, “I wish I had never met anyone of the name James Joyce.” ^[36] Yet Joyce, when not under the influence, obviously felt a powerful attachment to Nora. In 1928–29, when she was sent into the hospital for operations twice within a four-month period, he refused to be separated from her, and “had a bed set up in her room so that he could stay there too.” ^[37]

As far as women were concerned, then, Duchamp seemed callous and acted accordingly; Joyce could speak callously and behave boorishly, but proceeded loyally. Oddly, each artist got into an inverse relationship with the same male associate, the American lawyer and collector John Quinn. In 1919, when an antiques dealer offered to sell the definitive version of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, Quinn decided that $1,000 was “much too steep.” But in July of that year he and Duchamp met and apparently hit it off. Quinn, a fellow bachelor and, like Duchamp, a “well-known connoisseur of pretty women,” ^[38]would eventually buy Brancusi sculptures through Duchamp, find a job for the artist when he needed one, and take French lessons from him for a fee. Once, “deciding that Duchamp looked tired and thin, Quinn sent him a railroad ticket and a paid hotel reservation for a few days’ vacation . . . in an . . . ocean resort on the New Jersey shore. Duchamp showed his gratitude by dashing off a pen and ink sketch of the collector and presenting it to him ‘en souvenir d’un Bontemps a Spring Lake.’” ^[39]

Joyce was a less comfortable beneficiary of Quinn’s patronage. In March 1917 Quinn sent Joyce money, but only in return for the manuscript of Exiles. He also wrote a laudatory review of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in Vanity Fair, ^[40] and later he would buy the manuscript of Ulysses. But Joyce never agreed with Quinn on the value of his manuscripts, ^[41] and he told Ezra Pound that he did not consider Quinn generous. ^[42]When Quinn tried and failed to defend Ulysses against obscenity charges in an American court, Joyce was critical of his legal strategy, clearly believing that a different approach would have brought more chance of success. ^[43] And he cannot have been pleased to learn that Quinn had told the publisher whom he had unsuccessfully represented, “Don’t publish any more obscene literature.” The only friendly thing Ellmann reports Joyce saying about Quinn came after the collector’s death, in 1924.

All the evidence shows that Joyce expected help from everyone in reach. He firmly believed in his own greatness and was not shy of trading on it. Duchamp may have had as solid a core of self-confidence, but while he took help where he could get it, he did not behave as though it were his birthright. Much more adept at navigating life’s breakers than Joyce, he seems to have been widely admired and even loved. Despite his clear refusal to make a commitment to Reynolds, for example, she remained devoted to him until her death. I met Duchamp once, engaging in a twenty-minute conversation with him the year before his death; the strong impression I was left with of his personality could best be described as “natural Zen aplomb.” Others who were very close to him agree with this evaluation with hardly a qualification. The vivid contrast with Joyce is everywhere evident. A somewhat related illustration appears in Ellmann: “Beckett was addicted to silences, and so was Joyce; they engaged in conversations which consisted often of silences directed toward each other, both suffused with sadness, Beckett mostly for the world, Joyce mostly for himself.” ^[44]

* * *

On June 8, 1927, in Paris, Duchamp married Lydie Sarazin-Levassor, the granddaughter of a successful manufacturer. (They would divorce in about half a year.) “The unavoidable conclusion seems to be,” writes Tomkins, “that Duchamp had made a cold-blooded decision to marry for money. . . . When [he] learned at the formal signing of the marriage contract, in the presence of lawyers representing both parties, that the sum Lydie’s father was prepared to settle on her came to only 2,500 francs a month (slightly more than $1,000 in today’s terms of exchange), Duchamp did not immediately back out. He turned pale, according to Lydie, but he signed the contract.” ^[45] That same summer Joyce composed a connective episode in his ‘Work in Progress’ (later titled Finnegans Wake)—an insert between two previously completed segments, “The Hen” and “Shem the Penman”—including several pages that seem to me rife with uncomplimentary allusions to Duchamp. ^[46] Since the content of these aspersions typically involves avarice, the timing of the writing supports the suspicion of a connection between this insertion and Duchamp’s newsworthy marriage. The section of Finnegans Wake that we’re about to explore was written three years after Quinn’s death and the start of Duchamp’s relationship with Reynolds, and only weeks after the marriage that some of Duchamp’s friends saw as a Dadaist joke.

I suspect that Joyce’s Professor Ciondolone is based in the main on Duchamp. My caution stems from the knowledge that few characters in the Wake are based on a single person, evidence of the universality of certain human traits as Joyce saw them. The brothers Burrus and Caseous, for example, are temporary stand-ins for the twin brothers Shem and Shaun, two of the book’s five main characters; for Ellmann the twins in Finnegans Wake were “every possible pair of brothers or opponents.” ^[47] One such opponent among Joyce’s contemporaries was the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis, whom Joyce sometimes seems to pair up with himself in Finnegans Wake—Lewis was a sometime friend who had heavily attacked Ulysses in his book Time and Western Man. But when Burrus and Caseous become stand-ins for Shem and Shaun for about five pages, I believe they are largely based on Duchamp and Joyce. If this analysis is accurate, Quinn would be their commonly shared source of milk. Consistent with the idea of twins, they seem at times to exchange personality traits, just as Shem and Shaun periodically do. In the commentary that follows, it is important to keep in mind that almost all of Joyce’s descriptions in the Wake make multiple allusions to a dizzying variety of reference points. In focusing on Duchamp, I am effectively forcing into the background the other references that I’m confident are also present. I fully expect other Sherlocks, perhaps without even arguing with my basic analysis, to have different interpretations. For all we’ll ever know, all may have some kernel of truth.

* * *

My heeders will recoil with a great leisure how at the outbreak before trespassing on the space question^[48]

where even michelangelines have fooled to dread I proved to mindself as to your sotisfiction how his abject

all through (the quickquidQuick buck.of Professor Ciondolone’s

too frequently hypothecated Mortgaged, i.e., borrowed.Bettlermensch)Bettler(German): beggar, so “beggarman.”is nothing so much more than a mere cashdime however genteel he may want ours, if we please (I am speaking to us in the second person),
The phrase suggests the idea of twins on which Joyce will elaborate below. for to this graded intellecktuals dime is cash and the cash system.

you must not be allowed to forget that this is all contained, I mean the system, in the dogmarks of origen on spurios) Darwin’Origin of Species, i.e., the survival of the fittest. think of Duchamp’s statement, “In a shipwreck it’s every man fohimself.means that I cannot now have or nothave a piece of cheeps Cheese.in your pocket at the same time and with the same manners as you can now nothalf or half the cheek apiece I’ve in mind

and Caseous

have not or not have seemaultaneously sysentangled themselves, selldear to soldthere, once in the dairy days of buy and buy. Both Duchamp and Joyce sold to Quinn, exchanging their wares—art or manuscripts—for “milk” to free them from the needs of normal labor. Burrus,let us like to imagine, is a genuine prime, the real choice Cheese. full of natural greace, Grease, grace.the mildest of milkstoffs yet unbeaten as a risicide

and, of course, obsoletely unadulterous

whereat Caseous is obversely the revise. Rival, reverse. of him and in fact not an ideal choose by any meals, though the betterman of the two is meltingly addicted to the more casual side of the arrivaliste case Arriviste—perhaps Joyce’s view of Duchamp (second definition: an unscrupulous, vulgar social climber; a bounder).and, let me say it at once, as zealous Jealous.over him as is passably he.

Probably the “art question,” as opposed to the “literature question.” The reverse, the “time” question, brings to mind Lewis’s Time and Western Man, with its attack on Ulysses.
Great artists
Feared to tread.
His object, but conceivably a reference to what I believe Joyce must have considered abject behavior on Duchamp’s part: marrying someone he thought wealthy, and in church (both Duchamp and Joyce were outspoken atheists), while deserting Reynolds, a woman of real value in the estimation of Joyce and his circle
Quick buck.
ciondolone (Italian): idler, lounger. Breton had famously accused Duchamp, the chess bum, of being an idler, wasting his great intellegence.
Bettler(German): beggar, so “beggarman.”
The phrase suggests the idea of twins on which Joyce will elaborate below.

In 1924 Duchamp had spent a month on the Riviera, “experimenting with roulette and trente-et-quarante at the Casino, trying out various systems. In a letter to [Francis] Picabia, Duchamp described in . . . detail his attempts to work out a ‘martingale,’ or system, for winning at roulette. He had been winning regularly, he said, and he thought he had found a successful pattern. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I have ceased to be a painter, I am drawing on chance.”^[49]

Darwin’Origin of Species, i.e., the survival of the fittest. think of Duchamp’s statement, “In a shipwreck it’s every man fohimself.means that I cannot now have or nothave a piece of cheeps Cheese.

Possibly a reference to the wealthy Quinn: both Joyce and Duchamp wanted their bread buttered by the same knife, and the question was whether there would be enough butter for both of them.

Cassius, but also caseous: cheesy.
^[50]

demarcation line) with a cheese dealer’s pass.” ^[51] Did he have such a pass going back to the mid-twenties?

Both Duchamp and Joyce sold to Quinn, exchanging their wares—art or manuscripts—for “milk” to free them from the needs of normal labor.

Cheese.

Grease, grace.

Regicide—Brutus and Cassius conspired to kill Caesar. Also risus (Latin): laugh—so perhaps killer of laughter?
If Burrus is Joyce in this passage (Joyce also appears as Caseous, but Caseous and Burrus at times seem to switch personalities), he may be describing himself here as a faithful husband, and therefore obsolete—especially in the face of Duchamp’s recent behavior, interrupting a three-year-old affair with Joyce’s friend Reynolds in order to marry – to all appearances – for money (a marriage that Duchamp’s circle unanimously, and accurately, believed would be short-lived).
Rival, reverse.

Arriviste—perhaps Joyce’s view of Duchamp (second definition: an unscrupulous, vulgar social climber; a bounder).

Jealous.

Can possibly be. Perhaps Joyce is saying that each twin is jealous of the other.

We’ll leave Burrus and Caseous for awhile. My reading has Caseous and Burrus as temporary stand-ins for Shem and Shaun. They mainly represent Duchamp and Joyce. They’re the twins – butter and cheese- in competition for the milk from Quinn; and they are both close to many Reynolds, although in very different ways. I believe there is a strong likelihood that Duchamp’s abrupt discarding of Reynolds in favor of what was widely perceived as a marriage of convenience was a significant motivating factor in his rewriting the passage. It appears on pages 160 and 161 of the Viking edition. This is section I.vi, first published in transition, No.6, Sept. 1927, a few months after Duchamp’s very public marriage in Paris. The timing could not be better if this interpretation is on the mark.

The year of 1927, and particularly its first half, contains much of interest to one delving into a connection between Joyce and Duchamp. “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” from a section of Finnegans Wake that Joyce revised for publication in June 1927, contains many references that seem likely connections to Duchamp. ^[52] Here are lines leading up to “The Ballad”:

Afterword
You know he’s peculiar, that eggschicker, with the smell of old woman off him, to suck nothing of his switchedupes. M.D. made his ante mortem for him.

—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake^[69]

The section of Finnegans Wake containing these two sentences was revised for publication in transition no. 11, issued in February 1928. “M.D.” may refer in part to Marcel Duchamp. (It may also refer to Jonathan Swift, a frequent presence in the Wake: “M.D.”—“My dear”—was Swift’s abbreviation in letters to Stella, a major love of his life.) “Eggschicker,” from “chicker, to chirp as a cricket” (OED), is a word consistent with my reading of various sections of the Wake in which Joyce seems to be poking fun at Duchamp’s writing efforts. The idea of stuttering recurs (a cricket repeats its chirp), being repeatedly associated with Vico and others; here it may refer to Duchamp’s magazine rongwrong, and to the numerous repetitions in his notes.

“The smell of old woman off him…”: Here I recall Duchamp’s description of Rrose Sélavy as “an old whore.” “. . . to suck nothing of his switchedupes.” Duchamp in drag as Rrose. M.D. made his ante mortem for him. “L. ante mortem: before death.”^[70] This may be an inversion, a device beloved by Jarry, Joyce, and Duchamp. The “his” here may refer to Jarry, since the section contains many allusions to Jarry, according to my reading; if so, the inversion would translate “M.D. made Jarry’s ‘after death’ for him” into “M.D. made Jarry’s ‘afterlife’ for him,” a comment on Duchamp’s repeated trips to the well of Jarry-esque imagery—as if Duchamp had made Jarry immortal.

Admittedly, this is only one of numerous interpretations that come to mind. It brings to mind Joyce’s famous comment that his Finnegans Wake would keep the scholars busy for a thousand years.

There are sections of Finnegans Wake in which Duchamp does not seem on the scene as a character, yet in which multiple isolated allusions correspond to words and imagery from his works. Jarry imagery often lurks nearby. Between page 526, line 24, and page 527, line 25, for example, we find:

526.24: it was larking in the trefoll of the furry glans with two stripping baremaids, StillaUnderwood and Moth Mac Garry. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even is the formal title of Duchamp’s Large Glass; his Traveller’s Folding Item, 1916, is an Underwood typewriter cover. Regarding “Moth McGarry,” a famous, highly poetic section in Jarry’s book The Supermale offers a graphic symbolist version of sexual intercourse by picturing a large death’s head moth that took no notice of a lamp but “went seeking . . . its own shadow . . . , banging it again and again with all the battering rams of its hairy body: whack, whack, whack.”^[71]

527.03: Listenest, meme mearest! The French version of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even is La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même.

527.07 even under the dark flush of night. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.

527.09: Strip Teasy up the stairs. The Bride Stripped Bare. . . . The best-known work of Duchamp’s early years as a painter is surely Nude Descending a Staircase, made in two versions of 1911 and 1912 respectively. “…upthe stairs.” could be another simple inversion.

527.18: under nue charmeen. Nue, the French for “naked,” again recalls The Bride Stripped Bare . . . / La Mariée mise à nu. . . .

527.21: Blanchemain, idler. . . . Listen, meme sweety. MD See 160.3. The name “Professor Ciondolone,” we have seen, derived from the Italian for “idler,” according to our reading refers to Duchamp. “Meme” again refers to The Large Glass.

527.24: It’s meemly us two, meme idoll. The Large Glass.

527.25: meeting me disguised, Bortolo mio. In Beaumarchais’s play The Marriage of Figaro, and in the related operas by Mozart, Paisiello, and Rossini, Dr. Bortolo is a bachelorwho wants a bride.

Duchamp said, “Eroticism is a subject very dear to me. . . . In fact, I thought the only excuse for doing anything was to introduce eroticism into life. Eroticism is close to life, closer than philosophy or anything like it; it’s an animal thing that has many facets and is pleasing to use, as you would use a tube of paint.” ^[72]

Duchamp’s notes from 1912–14 for The Large Glass center on love play and sexual intercourse between humanlike machines, and reveal just how dear eroticism was to the artist. The artist writes, for example,

The Bride is basically a motor. . . . The motor with quite feeble cylinders is a superficial organ of the Bride; it is activated by the love gasoline, a secretion of the Bride’s sexual glands and by the electric sparks of the stripping. (to show that the Bride does not refuse this stripping by the bachelors, even accepts it since she furnishes the love gasoline and goes so far as to help toward complete nudity by developing in a sparkling fashion her intense desire for the orgasm.^[73]

Published literature of the period did not talk this way, and unfettered pornography would have used an entirely different vocabulary. These notes were pioneering in more ways than one.

click to enlarge

Figure 14
Marcel Duchamp, Given: 1. The Waterfall / 2. The Illuminating Gas, 1946-66

Before its abrupt transformation into an art object, Duchamp’s upended urinal, Fountain, had been a gracefully curvy receptacle for male effusions. The title L.H.O.O.Q., we have seen, which he gave his Mona Lisa with added mustache and goatee, corresponds to the French for “She has a hot ass,” a loose translation of “There is fire down below.” The name of Duchamp’s famous female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, who made her debut in 1921, is based on the phraseEros c’est la vie (Eros is life). Her pronouncements include, “Have you already put the hilt of the foil in the quilt of the goil” and “An incesticide must sleep with his mother before killing her.” The medium of Paysage fautif, 1946, is semen on Astralon. In theUntitled Original for Matta’s Box in a Valise, 1946, pubic hair is taped to paper. Female Fig Leaf, 1950, Wedge of Chastity, 1954, and the posthumously revealed Etant donnés . . . (Fig. 14) all feature casts supposedly made from a vagina, while Objet D’art, 1951, is decidedly phallic.

Joyce’s writing too was famously erotic, to the point where Ulysses was restricted in its distribution. Erotic and scatological passages can be found without too much effort on every page of Finnegans Wake.^[74] Molly’s erotic soliloquy, the unpunctuated tour de force with which Ulysses ends, was on its own to a large extent responsible for his early fame among the general public; and in the “Bloom in Nighttown” section (Sirens) of Ulysses, creative abandon reaches an erotic pitch reminiscent of Jarry, Rabelais, and The Thousand and One Nights.

Other parallels: Ellmann writes: ‘Joyce had been preparing himself to write Ulysses since 1907. It grew steadily more ambitious in scope and method, and represented a sudden outflinging of all he had learned as a writer up to 1914.’^[75] By way of coincidence, Alfred Jarry, who I argue was a strong unacknowledged source for Joyce, died in 1907 (at the age of 34). And in 1914, Duchamp wrote his famous ‘formula’ for Art: Arrhe est ‘a art que merdre est a merde:

An English translation might read: ‘Deposit is to art as shitte is to shit.’ Jarry’s ‘merdre’ is the only word not found in any dictionary. Given Duchamp’s extreme interest in the erotic, a likely interpretation would be, ‘My way of saying fucking corresponds to everyone else’s way of saying art as Jarry’s way of saying shit corresponds to everyone else’s way of saying shit’ – or more succinctly, ‘My fucking is to your art as Jarry’s shit is to your shit’.
We have seen in Joyce’s 1909 letters to Nora that Joyce was avidly coprophilic. Joyce scholar Clive Hart states, ‘There can be no denying that Joyce found everything associated with evacuation unusually pleasurable…’^[76] In Finnegans Wake Kate’s monologue ends with this passage: ‘And whowasit youwasit propped the pot in the yard and whatinthe nameofsen lukeareyou rubbinthe sideofthe flureofthe lobbywith. Shite! will you have a plateful? Tak.’^[77] Later in the same work we find Joyce’s verbal version of his own thumb-nosing drawing that we have reproduced at the top of this essay: ‘…kissists my exits’.^[78]

Duchamp’s urinal-as-art, Fountain, 1917, recalls Joyce’s earlier distillations of the erotic and scatological scrawls found on ‘the oozing wall of a urinal’.^[79] In Ulysses, there is this famous exchange: ‘-When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water.’
‘-By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.’
‘Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling’:
‘-So I do, Mrs. Cahill, says she. Begob, ma’am, says Mrs. Cahill, God send you don’t make them in the one pot. (Joyce’s italics.)^[80]
And lastly, in Finnegans Wake, Earwicker and Shaun complete an act of communion with the transubstantiated urine of the goddess Anna – daughter of the former, sister of the latter –:‘…when oft as the souffsouff blows her peaties up and a claypot wet for thee, my Sitys, and talkatalka tell Tibbs has eve…’^[81]

Notes

[1] James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, New York: Penguin, 1976 (1939).

[2] In this—but not solely in this—there is a common precedent in the eccentric turn-of-the-century French symbolist poet/playwright Alfred Jarry (1873–1907). Jarry’s strong effect on both James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp is the subject of six earlier essays by this writer, two for this journal: “Duchamp on the Jarry Road,” Artforum, September 1992; Jarry, Joyce, Duchamp and Cage, Catalogue for the Venice Biennale, 1993; William Anastasi with Michael Seidel, “Jarry in Joyce: A Conversation,” Joyce Studies Annual, 1995; “Jarry in Duchamp,” New Art Examiner, October 1997; “Jarry and l’Accident of Duchamp” in: Tout Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 1, nr. 1 (December 1999); and “Jarry, Joyce, Duchamp and Cage” (rev. ed., in English, of the Italian 1993 Venice Biennale essay, with additions), in: Tout Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, vol. 1, nr. 2 (May 2000).

[3] See Anne D’Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, eds., Marcel Duchamp (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1973), p. 18.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors (New York: Penguin, 1965), p. 28.

[6] André Breton, quoted in Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p. 217.

[7] Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (New York: Oxford UP, 1959), p. 608.

[8] Ibid., p. 3.

[9] Ibid., p. 5.

[10] Joyce, quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 5.

[11] Irene E. Hofmann. Mary Reynolds and the Spirit of Surrealism (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), p. 139.

[12] Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 662.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., p. 559.

[15] Michel Sanouillet (ed.), introduction, in The Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Oxford UP, 1973), p. 6.

[16] Ibid., p. 19.

[17] Joyce, quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 559

[18] Ibid.

[19] Joyce, quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 702.

[20] Joyce, quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 648.

[21] Ibid., p. 559.

[22] Susan Glover Godlewski, “Warm Ashes: The Life and Career of Mary Reynolds,” in: Mary Reynolds and the Spirit of Surrealism (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), p. 108.

[23] See Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Delano Greenidge, 2002), p. 467.

[24] For Samuel Beckett, Joyce was a revered father figure while Duchamp was a friend closer to his own age, as well as a constant chess partner. Beckett “enjoyed Marcel Duchamp, who lived near him. [Mel Gussow] commented on Duchamp’s found objects, such as the urinal he exhibited as a work of art. Beckett laughed: ‘A writer could not do that.’” Mel Gussow, Conversations with and about Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1996), p. 47. In 1981 Beckett “spoke [to a new young friend, Arnold Bernold] of the days before . . . recognition had descended on him, of Joyce with undiminished reverence, of Marcel Duchamp, of his early days in Paris.” Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (New York: Da Capo, 1997), p. 573.

[25] Joyce, quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce., p. 744.

[26] Marcel Duchamp, in Surrealism and Its Affinities: The Mary Reynolds Collection, a bibliography compiled by Hugh Edwards, (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1956), p. 6.

[27] The only other female, as mentioned by Gussow as being in Joyce’s “own circle,” is Nancy Cunard; in Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, p. 573. Only one other close female friend of Joyce’s, Nancy Cunard, is described as “close” in this collection of conversations; see p. 47.

[28] Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett (London: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1978), p. 68.

[28A] Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett (New York, Da Capo, 1977), p. 311.

[28B] Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 276.

[29] Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett, pp. 465-467.

[30] Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), p. 257.

[31] Henri-Pierre Roché, quoted in ibid., p. 258.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 633.

[34] Joyce, quoted in Brenda Maddox, Nora (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), p. 66.

[35] Joyce, quoted in p. 631

[36] Nora Joyce, quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce (rev. ed., 1982), p. 700.

[37] Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 619.

[38] Tomkins, Duchamp, p. 148.

[39] Ibid, p. 149.

[40] Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 427.

[41] Ibid., p. 569.

[42] Ibid., p. 494.

[43] Ibid., p. 569.

[44] Ibid., p. 661.

[45] Tomkins, Duchamp, p. 278.

[46] Joyce, Finnegans Wake, pp. 126–216.

[47] Ellmann, James Joyce, (rev. ed., 1982), p. 545.

[48] Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 160.

[49] Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp, p. 259.

[50] I have explored Jarry’s influence on both Joyce and Duchamp in earlier articles; see Anastasi, Jarry, Joyce, Duchamp and Cage, and Anastasi and Seidel, “Jarry in Joyce: A Conversation.” Throughout the Wake I find Jarry referred to with near reverence. Joyce was an intimate friend of Léon Paul Fargue, who in his youth had been Jarry’s closest friend and probably his lover. (Some believe him to have been Jarry’s only lover.) Joyce would likely have heard all about Jarry from Fargue. A photograph of the “Déjeuner Ulysse” banquet, given by Adrienne Monnier in June 1929, shows Fargue sitting next to Joyce near the center of twenty-six guests. See Richard Ellmann, ed.,Letters of James Joyce Letters vol. III (NY: Viking, 1966), p. 193. Jarry’s Faustroll, with its intermittently incomprehensible narrative and numerous made-up words, is an obvious forerunner of the Wake. Jarry’s biographer Keith Beaumont, writing of Faustroll and other works of Jarry’s that followed the lead of Stéphane Mallarmé, says, “The result is at times something in the nature of a verbal delirium which, at one end of the literary spectrum, recalls the delight in words of Jarry’s other great mentor, Rabelais, and, at the other, looks forward to the Joyce ofFinnegans Wake and beyond.” Beaumont, Alfred Jarry: A Critical and Biographical Study (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p. 303. Jarry published his Caesar Antichrist in 1895. Passages in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar are likely to have informed the Burrus and Caseous sections of Finnegans Wake. Shakespeare has Cassius say of Caesar, for example, “Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus; and we petty men / Walk under his huge legs, and peep about / To find ourselves dishonourable graves.” Julius Caesar I, ii, 134. Jarry in life was very short, but since Joyce loved inversion (as did Jarry and Duchamp), he could have seen the Colossus image as a humorous inversion once he had set on the idea of Brutus (Burrus) and Cassius (Caseous) as stand-ins for himself and Duchamp. Actually, for Joyce to picture Jarry as a powerful father (a colossus), with himself and Duchamp as underlings, is consistent with images of Jarry found elsewhere in the book. Again, Shakespeare has Caesar say of Cassius, “He reads too much; / He is a great observer, and he looks / Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays, / As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music; Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort / As if he mock’d himself, and scorn’d his spirit, / That could be mov’d to smile at anything. / Such men as he be never at heart’s ease, / Whiles they behold a greater than themselves, / And therefore are they very dangerous.”( I, ii, 197) It was known that Duchamp – in contrast to Joyce – did not enjoy music. And just as Joyce was confident that no living writer could compare with himself, Duchamp behaved in a way that suggested a similar confidence in relation to other artists.

[51] Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (New York: Viking, 1971), p. 79.

[52] Joyce, Finnegans Wake, pp. 44–47. “By end of 1923 notebook containing rough drafts of all the episodes in Part I except i and vi (pp. 30–125, 169–216) was probably filled.” Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 801. “In 1927 Joyce was revising Part I (pp. 3–216) for publication in transition.” Ibid., p. 802.

[52A] Ellmann, 1975, The Viking Press, NY, Selected Letters of James Joyce, p.181

[52B] Ibid, p.184

[53] Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (rev. ed. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 44.

[54] See David Hayman, ed., A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake (Austin, TX: Texas UP, 1963), p. 66.

[55] “The crate containing The Large Glass—in storage since the closing of the Brooklyn Museum exhibition in early 1927—had been shipped from the Lincoln Warehouse to “The Haven,” [Katherine] Dreier’s country house . . . where she planned to have it permanently reinstalled. On opening the crate, however, the workmen had discovered that the two heavy glass panels . . . were shattered from top to bottom. Tomkins, Duchamp, p. 288.

[56] Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, p. 44.

[57] Breton, quoted in Tomkins, Duchamp, p. 261.

[58] Alfred Jarry, “The Virgin and the Mannekin-Pis,” in: Selected Works of Alfred Jarry (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 127.

[59] Ibid.

[60] McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, p. 45.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Tomkins, Duchamp, p. 280.

[63] McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, p. 46.

[64] Tomkins, Duchamp, p. 281.

[65] McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, p. 46.

[66] Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, pp. 703–4.

[67] Breton, quoted in Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I, p. 217.

[68] McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, p. 47.

[69] Joyce, Finnegans Wake, p. 423.

[70] McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, p. 423.

[71] Jarry, The Supermale, trans. Ralph Gladstone and Barbara Wright (New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 39.

[72] Duchamp, in an interview with George H. Hamilton and Richard Hamilton, in “Art and Anti-Art,” BBC radio broadcast, London 1959. Quoted in Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969), p. 80.

[73] Michel Sanouillet (ed.), Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, p. 42.

[74] This observation is backed up by years of highly pleasurable research by the present writer and the resultant book on the subject, Up Erogenously, copyright January 2003 (unpublished).

[75] Richard Ellmann : James Joyce, new revised edition, 1982, Oxford University Press NY, Oxford, Toronto. p. 357

[76] Clive Hart, Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake, 1962, Faber and Faber, London.

[77] Finnegans Wake, p.142

[78] Finnegans Wake, p.280

[79] Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, p. 113

[80] Ulysses, p.17

[81] Finnegans Wake, p. 117

Figs. 1B, 3-14

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

SinceCourbet, it’s been believed that painting is addressed to the retina.That was everyone’s error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral. If I had a chance to take an antiretinal attitude, it unfortunately hasn’t changed much; our whole century [the twentieth] is completely retinal,except for the Surrealists, and still they didn’t go so far!⁽¹⁾

click to enlarge

Figure. 1
Marcel Duchamp, The Green
Box, 1934

Marcel Duchamp’s comment is very strange when one considers the number of his works that involve the distinctly retinal phenomena of optical illusions; these works, produced mainly in the 1920’s, he termed “precision optics.” Optical illusions are an important part of his work because of their unusual characteristics: they present multiple ‘interpretations’ which cannot all be ‘true’ at the same time, but which are nevertheless ‘correct’ ways to see the work. They allow him to incorporate a systematic destabilizing of vision in the system which he attempted to create in the 1910s, and which was presented inThe Green Box (Fig. 1). The systems Duchamp constructed are inconsistent. They produce contradictions which are incorporated into their meaning. In the case of “precision optics,” this inconsistency is a physical component of the work due to the action of the illusions themselves:

But let us now say exactly what is meant by consistency of a formal system… that every theorem, when interpreted becomes a true statement. And we will say that inconsistency occurs when there is at least one false statement among the interpreted theorems.⁽²⁾

Optical illusions present images which are “true” but inconsistent. The lines which form the pulsating illusion in Duchamp’s “precision optics” gain their meaning only from the relationship we choose for them; our internal decision that one orientation is more probable than another results in its apparent shift between these mutually-exclusive spatial positions, and understanding it requires the acceptance of these potentials as being a “probability set.” This is why these images are technically inconsistent–they present incompatible versions of themselves. Visual forms of this ‘class’ offer a liminal experience–one where the process of seeing becomes visible in/through that process itself. The optical illusion is a liminal experience; it allows a visualization of the process of interpretation which is normally unconscious. Vision is rendered regressive by optical illusions.

The name ‘rotoreliefs’ refers to optical illusions which appear as three-dimensional forms when displayed on a rotating surface(Fig. 2)such as a phonograph turntable. Superficially, they present an apparent contradiction to this prohibition against “retinal art.”‘ Once in motion they display a pulsating “relief” that oscillates between positive and negative space. Duchamp used these illusions in Anémic Cinéma (1926)(Fig. 3) alternating them with a series of French puns, each arranged into a spinning spiral:

Something else happens when we begin to allow the puns to have their play. The figurative meaning of “la moelle de l’épée” and “la poele de l’aimée” over powers the literal (non)sense.The reference to sexual intercourse could hardly be more evident.Furthermore, once we recognize its figurative character, our readingof the other disks begins to reveal sexual allusions. …Suddenly the abstract gyrating shapes which rise from and sink into the plane of the screen come to resemble the igloos, breasts, welts and genitalia evoked by the words. The sexuality is neither in the literal meaning
of the words, nor represented in the optical illusions, seen by themselves.⁽³⁾

 
click images to enlarge

• Figure 2
  Marcel Duchamp, Rotoreliefs, 1935
  (machine modeled after 1964 version
  created by Vittorio Marchi and
  Robert Slawinski)
• Figure3
  Marcel Duchamp, Disk Inscribed with Pun
  for Anemic Cinema, 1926.

P. Adams Sitney recognized that sexuality is the subtext to this film, but it is a subtext which requires the interpretation of the viewer looking at the juxtaposition of rotorelief and the text. The meaning produced is an overlay onto the image; this overlay does not resolve the issue of the (potential) retinal nature of these images. The sexuality which Sitney notes is a result of the punning character of the statements; these “word plays” act through a double meaning which becomes apparent when they are read aloud. The doubling of the puns parallels the doubling of the ‘rotoreliefs.’ The gyrating shapes Sitney describes are theretinal aspect of the ‘rotoreliefs.’ This effect originates in the inconsistency of human perception which optical illusions exploit. It is the interpretative shift of the “precision optics” which moves the experience of looking from the purely visual into the mental realm:

“Painting should not be exclusively visual or retinal. It must interest the gray matter; our appetite for intellectualization.”⁽⁴⁾

click to enlarge

Figure. 4
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even [ The
Large Glass], 1915-1923

“Retinal art” does not promote an intellectual response; that is only the initial effect / impression which this art produces. Duchamp’s conversion of this retinal impression in Anémic Cinéma into sexuality is connected to the system of construction he presented in The Green Box (1934). Inconsistency also enters into “precision optics” becauseThe Large Glass (Fig. 4)is an attempt at a complete formalized system of sexual congress; this is what the notes in The Green Boxdescribe.’The “mathematical” bias to the construction notes demonstrates Duchamp’s concern with formal systems. His system creates a linguistic formalism, derived from the abstract system of mathematics. It allows his introduction of a ‘formal’ component into the work provided that the viewer is aware of the system he employs:

Conditions of a language:

The search for “prime words” (“divisible” only by themselves and by unity).

Take a Larousse dict. and copy all the so-called “abstract” words. i.e., those which have no concrete reference Compose a schematic sign designating each of these words. (this sign can be composed with the standard stops) These signs must be thought of as the letters of the new alphabet.⁽⁵⁾

The invention of new “signs” for an abstract language corresponding to terms in a dictionary without concrete reference divests language of its meaning, allowing its manipulation in purely technical terms. His proposal parallels what Hilbert attempted to do for mathematics.The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even Duchamp claims is the result of the system which The Green Box documents. The meaning of “abstract” words appears only through their contextual usage. Duchamp suggests what he means by this in his text called *the. While the search for “prime words” and all that entails may be an unrealizable proposal, the new “signs” which become the letters of a “new alphabet” would logically be used to produce a new, formal and abstract language in the same sense that Hilbert’s formal system transforms the ordinary language of geometry into a new language. Kurt Gödel demonstrated in 1932 that formal systems such as Hilbert’s produce inconsistencies which are inherent to logic:

Gödel showed (i) how to construct an arithmeticalformula G that represents the meta-mathematical statement: ‘The formula G is not demonstrable.’ This formula G thus ostensibly says
of itself that it is not demonstrable. … But (ii) Gödel also showed that G is demonstrable if, and only if, its formal negation ~ G is demonstrable.⁽⁶⁾

Gödel’s proof is based on a paradox: Theorem G is demonstrable only if it is not demonstrable, but to demonstrate that it is demonstrable is to show that it isn’t. The appearance of this infinite regression of logical consequence arises because G is inconsistent; in the formal system of logic, its construction is both correct and invalid at the same moment. The statement is a true statement of logic that cannot be true. The paradox which G’del produces is one that follows the formal rules for the logical system of symbolic mathematics from which the description above is a translation; that system is thus inconsistent:

Gödel’s paper is proof of the impossibility of demonstrating certain postulates… The traditional belief that the axioms of geometry (or, for that matter, the axioms of any discipline)
can be established by their apparent self-evidence was thus radically undermined. …For it became evident that mathematics is simply the discipline par excellence that draws the conclusions logically implied by any given set of axioms or postulates.⁽⁷⁾

click to enlarge

Figure. 5
Marcel Duchamp, The Standard
Stoppages, 1913-14

In general terms, what G’del demonstrates is that the set of assumptions which provide the foundation for logical certainty have an arbitrary basis because they can be shown to produce inconsistency. In epistemological terms, formalized knowledge derived from logic is in itself an inconsistent proposition; this is Gödel’s Theorem.⁽⁸⁾Duchamp’s work, most obviously in his optical illusions, proceeds from a similar use of paradox to undermine the formal system he proposes. The parameters of that language are suggested by Duchamp’s work–the reference to The Standard Stoppages (1913-14) (Fig. 5) as the unit of measure places the “signs” inside his physical oeuvre.

Viewed by themselves and not as part of the film, the ‘rotoreliefs’ become optical illusions only when they are in motion. Until that happens, they are circular geometric signs. Understanding them as objects requires considering them as they appear when moving and stationary; in motion, their most evident feature is the illusion of space which they evoke.

To lose the possibility of recognizing (identifying) 2 similar objects — 2 colors, 2 laces, 2 hats, 2 forms whatsoever to reach the Impossibility of sufficient visual memory, to transfer from one like object to another the memoryimprint.
— Same possibility with sounds; with brain facts.⁽⁹⁾

The “loss” Duchamp describes implies a transformation of the retinal into a mental construction of the type which optical illusions typically present: they provide two similar objects contained in a single image which defies our ability to easily visualize it.⁽¹⁰⁾ The experience of optical illusions allows us to look at “seeing.” In apprehending these illusions we do transfer the memory from one image to the next; that is how we recognize the oscillation between the two positions. In a comment published in 1948, Duchamp echoed his note from The Green Box:

Senses:

One can look at seeing. Can one hear hearing, feel breathing, etc. . . . ?⁽¹¹⁾

By “look at seeing” Duchamp describes the particular interpretative effect which accompanies optical illusions. The ‘rotoreliefs” visual oscillation only results from spinning the disks. There is a double contrast here: between static image and the motion image, as well as between the two interpretations of the illusion of positive and negative volumes. It is not possible to “see” both volumes at the same time just as it is not possible to experience the illusion while the disk is stationary. The shift from one volume to the other makes the observer aware of the way biological vision gets interpreted into “seeing.”

The encounter with the “space” which these illusions create is a delayed one–the machine that displays them must first be set in motion. Once that happens, the “space” of the illusion becomes immanent. However, this “space” is unstable as Anémic Cinéma demonstrates and Sitney observes: the illusions pulsate, apparently projecting outwards only to reverse their direction and recede. The volumes which the ‘rotoreliefs’ create are internally inconsistent–they present two mutually incompatible images at the same time. In looking at these objects, it is the process of interpretation which becomes apparent through the oscillation thatAnémic Cinéma connects with sexuality.

The oscillations of these optical illusions may be the “cinematic blossoming” produced by the Bride’s desire. Duchamp makes this condition apparent in his explanation of each component of the Large Glass:

The bride basically is a motor. …The whole graphic significance is for this cinematic blossoming. This cinematic blossoming is by the electrical stripping (see the passage of the
bach. machine to the bride) … The last state of this nude bride before the orgasm which may (might) bring about her fall graphically, the need to express in a completely different way from the rest
of the painting, this blossoming.⁽¹²⁾

The appearance of the ‘rotoreliefs’ in a film called Anémic Cinéma is not coincidental; it is explicitly related to the Large Glass. This note suggests that the “blossoming” cannot be presented in the same manner as the rest of the painting. The action of the pictured machinery will not actually appear within the painting itself. It is suggestive of the ‘rotoreliefs,’ especially due to their appearance in the film. The pulsating movement of the ‘rotoreliefs’ visibly resembles “blossoming.” That the “whole graphic action” of the Large Glass cannot be expressed by the same techniques as the painting is significant. The work may be technically “unfinishable”; part of its being left “incomplete” may be the depictive problem which is solved by optical illusions such as the ‘rotoreliefs.’

As with a record, the ‘rotoreliefs’ have a hole in the center which is registered on a pin centered on the turntable. The mounting of the disk presents a sexual metaphor which is repeated throughout Duchamp’s iconography. “Precision optics” presents’ an illusion of graphic movement which makes the reliefs appear when playing the disk. This activity is a replay of the action of the chocolate grinder. The static nature of the disk is “consumed” by setting it into motion:

Given an object in chocolate.

1^st its appearance = retinal impression (and other sensory consequences)

2^nd its apparition.

The mould of a chocolate object is the negative apparition of the plane with one or several curvatures) generating 1^st (by elementary prllll-ism)the colored form of the object. 2^nd the mass of elements of light (chocolate type elements): in the passage from apparition (mould) to the appearance, the plane, composed of elements of chocolate type light determines the apparent chocolate mass by physical dyeing⁽¹³⁾

Duchamp explicitly explains the transition from retinal to mental here. The senses the concept of “apparition” suggest: (1) the opposite of its retinal effect. This “sense” would mean that “apparition” is a mental state of perception for an object. (2) That the “apparition” appears discursively through a sequence of terms he sets in context. (Continuing the mathematical parallel, these are undefined terms in a Hilbert-type formalism where meaning appears through specific contextual use rather than a direct definition). The “apparition” is a visual effect that appears mentally through the “chocolate type light.” The chocolate object is consumed by the chocolate grinder to produce the illuminating gas for the bride machine.⁽¹⁴⁾ The bride machine then begins moving to produce the “cinematic blossoming”–which is the action of the ‘rotoreliefs.’

Static imagery transforms into (both) mental and physically activity; the playing of a rotorelief on a phonograph thus recreates the action of the bachelor machine which fuels and makes active the bride. By playing the disk the audience takes the place of the bachelors. The bachelors are the force which sets Duchamp’s “mathematics” in motion. Theirs is a specific position in his system, one which repeats in his final work:

[In Etant Donnés…] Marcel Duchamp has determined forever exactly the amount of detail and precisely the fixed perspective that he wants the viewer to perceive. The illusion is complete in itself. Etant Donnés could be described as the alter ego of the Large Glass.⁽¹⁵⁾

click to enlarge

Figure. 6
Marcel Duchamp,
Given: 1. The Waterfall,
2. The Illuminating Gas,
1945-1966

Etant Donnés (1945-1966)(Fig. 6)is a large complex optical illusion. The fixed perspective / view places the audience looking through the door not only in the role of voyeur, but shifts the spectator into the role of the bachelors in the Large Glass. This action is repeated by the ‘rotoreliefs.’ It is important to remember that a phonograph of the type available in the 1920’s requires someone to crank the machine to set the disk into motion. The spectator “grinds” the “chocolate object” producing the “chocolate type light” which is the motion of the disk. Without this active participation nothing happens.

The apparition of the ‘rotoreliefs’ is after-the-fact of retinal stimulation: a “delayed” experience where the transfer from visual comprehension to intellectual comprehension is a change in mental state. That the work is an optical illusion reiterates the relationship as a “false” one. It cannot be both flat and dimensional at the same moment. The knowledge that it is flat and the perception of volume are incompatible. “Precision optics” are therefore inconsistent. Thus, perception of the finished piece is separated from its reality through the interpretation. Duchamp’s approach incorporates the inconsistency of observation that optical illusions exploit:

The figure [of Etant Donnés] is carefully designed to be seen as flattened and foreshortened by the perspective from a fixed eye-level viewpoint; the distant landscape background
and the immediate foreground of the door through which one looks are integral parts of the illusion.⁽¹⁶⁾

The optical component of these works, their “retinalism,” is an illusion: they are not physically as they appear, nor is their effect a result of their physical reality. Where theLarge Glass both excludes the audience (by incorporating them into some of the potential views), the later work replaces the bachelors with the audience. This shift appears specifically in the ‘rotoreliefs.’

Within this framework, the film Anémic Cinéma is rendered almost redundant through its literalization of the “cinematic blossoming” the ‘rotoreliefs’ demonstrate literally through cinema. The “anemia” of the title suggests an awareness of this redundancy by Duchamp and a connection between this awareness and the word “cinema” itself. The title is a near-palindrome, spelled the same forwards as backwards. It presents the problem of “2 similar objects” and allows the function of the puns and word-play of this film as derivable from the system of “prime words.” Each pun replays the action of the ‘rotoreliefs’ linguistically. It is a translation between the everyday language of “undefined terms” and the symbolic order which his formal notational system proposes. The role of “precision optics” is to present these “signs” in the form of new statements. Inconsistency plays a significant role in these works because they base their effect and thus their meaning on the encounter between the audience and the work itself.

At first sight Anémic Cinéma would seem to underline the difference between optical and verbal images. The two modes of representation are held together by the figure of the spiral. Yet we automatically apprehend them differently. The eye grasps the eccentric circles as if they were geometrical wholes. … While the view sees one set of disks as creating depth, he “reads” the other set as flat because of his reflex to the familiar orthography of the Latin alphabet. Thus,the viewer is the victim of an automatic response at odds with the ontological “sameness” of the shots.⁽¹⁷⁾

The translation of one set of terms into a statement within a formalized system is an action of rendering equivalences between one kind of notation and another. However, this action is only apparent to those who are aware of both formal systems; the sexual implication of the combination which Sitney notes, instead of simply being a juxtaposition of “neutral” content, is a logical combination within the system Duchamp calls “precision optics.” He applied that term to the Rotary Demisphere (1925) (Fig. 7a, b, c, d) and the ‘rotoreliefs’ generally. The “precision” of these works lies in the linkage between the retinal (optical illusion) and the formal logical system. This is more than just an iconographic connection; it is the literal relationship between equivalent terms in a mathematical formalism. While the retinal effect of the two kinds of presentation in Anémic Cinéma remains markedly different, it is also fundamentally the same mental sphere. Alternation in the sequence of the film demonstrates their interchangeability. While Sitney is correct that “the sexuality is neither in the literal meaning of the words, nor represented in the optical illusions, seen by themselves,” the formal system Duchamp devised is sexual: his art is representational within that system: thus sexual.

click images to enlarge

• 
  Figure. 7a
• 
  Figure. 7b

• 
  Figure. 7c
• 
  Figure. 7d

Marcel Duchamp, Rotary Demisphere, 1925

 

The appearance of the sexual content is built-in to his conception of “antiretinal.” The only group of artists which he believes also took an antiretinal attitude were the Surrealists. Given the sexual content of the mathematics at work in the ‘rotoreliefs’ and Etant Donnés…it is logical that Duchamp would feel Surrealism was also antiretinal is logical. The function of optical illusions in his later works is predicated on this translation of sexuality into visual forms. This is explicit in his final work. Inconsistency is inherent to this formulation not only because optical illusions exploit inconsistency as their form, but because the initial version of his formalized system presented in the Large Glass places the audience physically outside the system while at the same time including them in it:

The Large Glass and some of its studies are, of all Duchamp’s creations, the most accessible (to the point of being literally transparent) as well as the most abstruse. We see through them more than we see them. The viewer becomes part of the view.⁽¹⁸⁾

Anne d’Harnoncourt’s description of the Large Glass presents its inconsistency clearly through the combination of “accessible” and “abstruse.” This is a paradox. It cannot be both.That Duchamp’s art is paradoxical is self-evident: “we see through them more than we see them.” The transparency of the work is also its opacity. The inconsistency inherent to the optical illusion plays itself out intellectually and literally. “Precision optics”–Anémic Cinéma and the ‘rotoreliefs’–then, are important elements in the elaboration of Duchamp’sinconsistent system of formalized sexuality. There is a component of the rhetorical in Duchamp’s claims; for example, the system he claims produced the Three Standard Stoppages has been shown to be false.⁽¹⁹⁾ The precision of the “precision optics” lies in the way that they translate these rhetorical positions and claims into the physical form of the objects themselves. This is the intellectualization Duchamp mentions being a partial component of Surrealism, but which “stopped short” because it does not completely subsume the work into the intellectual framework in the fashion that “precision optics” does.

Notes

Figs. 1~7

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

Abstract
This paper examines the intersection of symbolic logic, immersive experience [VR] and concept visualization in the interpretation of the oeuvre of Marcel Duchamp. Influenced by the mathematicians Henri Poincaré and Élie Jouffret as well as his own intense practice of chess and logic, Duchamp sought to merge the poetic and visceral nature of the aesthetic experience with the logical and systematic character of science. This convolution of elements as disparate as chance, 3d and 4d space-time, linguistics, logic and authorship does not allow for comfortable definitive explanation but rather one, like his work itself, that engages simultaneous multi-dimensional thinking.

Duchamp questioned the purpose of ‘retinal art’, art which is merely visually beautiful, and examined the limitations of science as a singular method of interpreting and communicating experience. The body of his work stands as a systematic yet playful critique of deterministic reasoning. Using symbolic logic to characterize the most common interpretations of Duchamp’s work, the author suggests that Concept Visualization in 3d immersive experience offers a unique method for exploring and introducing the complex lattices of interpretation, intention and concept in the work of Marcel Duchamp.

Introduction

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp, Rotorelief (Optical Disks), 1935

Marcel Duchamp perhaps more than any other artist in history challenged the definition of art. Throughout his life Duchamp maintained an interest in science, mathematics, optics and art and more than any other eminent artist of the twentieth century understood and researched non-Euclidean geometry and the mathematics of higher dimensionality. Born in 1887 in Blainville (Seine-Infériuere) in Normandy to a notary’s family with a history of art, love of music literature and chess, Marcel as well as his brothers Jacques Villon, Raymond (Duchamp-Villon) and his sister Suzanne became artists. Among his scientific ventures included the development of the illusionistic Rotorelief, (Fig. 1) spinning circular geometric patterns. Although Italian optical scientist discovered and named this optical phenomenon “the stereo-kinetic effect” in 1924, it is clear that Duchamp had discovered the phenomena in early 1920. It is clear that Duchamp understood the mathematics of this method of producing the illusion of volume. He wrote, ” I only had to use two circumferences–eccentric–and make them turn on a third center”.

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Figure 2
Leonardo da Vinci, La Gioconda [Mona Lisa],
1503-05, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919

The history of art is filled with artists whose discoveries and research were labeled or advocated as objet d’ art and whose scientific utility was not discovered until many years often centuries later. However, it is the supposition of this author, that no other artist cloaked his or her intentions in deception as a tactic to subvert conventional interpretation. Noted and controversial Duchamp scholar Rhonda Shearer has garnered attention by a stunning hypothesis about the many realms of Duchamp’s work. In 1919 Duchamp drew a supposed impromptu mustache on a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (Fig. 2) and titled it L.H.O.O.Q.(Fig. 3) When these letters are read aloud they say “Elle a chaud au cul” or “She has a hot ass” in French. Having created this work of art Duchamp stated that it revealed a truth about his noted foregoer.
Duchamp championed the “ready-made”, a manufactured object transformed into art merely by its selection and placement in an aesthetic gallery or museum context. In so doing, Duchamp altered the significance of the objet d’ art as a precious commodity created by the artist. Duchamp often maintained complex documentation of the purchase or discovery of his “found-objects”. In the case of L.H.O.O.Q., Duchamp asserts that it was purchased in a postcard shop on Paris’ rue de Rivoli. This notion that the art object is defined and given value by its context not by an empirical judgement of aesthetic value would transform the art of the twentieth century, greatly influencing Conceptual Art and Postmodern movements. Duchamp’s assertion that art is a matter of selection and context was perhaps a precursor to Baudrillard’s Second Order of Simulacra.
According to Shearer, Duchamp had another more subversive objective. She asserts that Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. was in fact a creation of Duchamp–a composite photograph of himself taken in 1912 and a reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Shearer’s research suggests that not only was L.H.O.O.Q. created by Duchamp or fabricated to his specifications but so was the snow shovel in In Advance of the Broken Arm (Fig. 4), the bird cage in Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy (Fig. 5), the ampoule in Ampoule Contenant 50cc d’air Paris (Ampoule containing 50cc of Paris air) (Fig. 6), and the urinal in Fountain (Fig. 7)signed R. Mutt (the famous object refused exhibition in the Society of Independent Artists show in 1917). This controversial theory is gaining greater attention in recent years, although not without significant turmoil. The notion of the “ready-made”, would remain safe according to Arthur Danto, art critic for the Nation, and Thierry di Duve, author of Kant After Duchamp, as this concept of “art object in context” has been an accepted convention of art making and interpretation for three quarters of a century. However if Shearer proves to be correct in her assertions both Danto and the Immanent Duchamp scholar and author Francis Nauman (Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) would find this a “grand act of deception.”

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• 
  Figure 4
  Marcel Duchamp, In Advance
  of the Broken Arm, 1915/64
• 
  Figure 5
  Marcel Duchamp, Why Not
  Sneeze Rrose Sélvey?,1921

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• 
  Figure 6
  Marcel Duchamp, Paris Air, 1919/49
• 
  Figure 7
  Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917/64

Duchamp’s work, particularly that which displays his keen interest in science and mathematics is also garnering attention outside of the disciplines of art history and art criticism. New York University Physicist Jonathan Williams postulates that Duchamp’s deep play with physics or what Duchamp and the playwright Alfred Jarry referred to as “pataphysics”, was a systematic way of satirizing early 20th century deterministic systems of scientific thinking. Duchamp, according to Williams, began this direction through his investigations of non-Euclidean geometry, fourth dimensional space-time, electromagnetism, and radiation. Duchamp’s playful explorations of these areas seems to be a harbinger, of sorts, for some of the foundations of quantum mechanical theory such as Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Erwin Schrodinger equations.

Duchamp’s systematic critiques were not limited to the scientific thinking of the day but also confronted modes of artistic production. Duchamp’s disinterest in what he referred to as “retinal art” or art which solely engaged the reproduction of visual experience was methodically deconstructed and supplanted by an art which focused on the grey matter or existed in the realm of pure intellect. “All through the nineteenth century the phrase ‘bête comme un peintre’ or ‘as stupid as a painter'”, Duchamp said. “And it was true- that kind of painter who just puts down what he sees is stupid.” For Duchamp, traditional art making merely copied itself in kind of mobius strip of mimesis and self-reflection simply cloning itself over and over again

As the myth goes, Duchamp gave up art in favor of playing chess throughout the world. “All chess players are artists but not all artists are chess players.” Duchamp used chess as a kind of model for much of his work, using it in his explorations of physics, mathematics and logic. This does not mean that he solely engaged in a form of sublime mathematically derived art. He continued his love of semantics, word games and humor throughout his life one sees this in L.H.O.O.Q. as well as his frequent use of the alter ego Rrose Sélavy (Eros is Life). Any complete and singular interpretation of Marcel Duchamp’s work is quite impossible as it is a lattice manifesting complex interweaving of intentions; mathematics, science, logic, art, consumer critique word play and alter ego.

Parsing the Oeuvre

The human propensity for binary oppositional thinking has been studied by psychologists and linguist and is evident in a great portion of western philosophy from Diogenes Laertus 200AD (lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers) to the present. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the discipline of art history, particularly as practiced in the first half of the twentieth century. Often art history has been essentially a historiography of connoisseurship, determining why one body of work by one artist is necessarily better than another body of work by another artist. This reasoning was held together by the supposition of progress, in the inevitable evolution of one mode of artistic production to another. Though not the subject of this study it is notable that when one examines art historiography (or any historiography for that matter) events, intentions and outcomes are often limited to singular reasoning. The academy, when confronted by opposing singular reasoning on any particular individual or subject matter, results in imbroglio. Critical interpretation of Duchamp’s body of work and his intentions is vested in this sort of competition between singular theories.

Duchamp consistently plays with these battles often examining them through his own prism. As Duchamp advocates the value of the “ready-made” he simultaneously describes his intent to define existence “through slightly distending the laws of physics and chemistry.” By using his own form of “absurd mathematics” he simultaneously critiques scientific thinking, logic, the definition of art, the artistic mode of production and aesthetic interpretation. Duchamp writes:

Calcul par l’absurde mathématique algébrique –
SiA=intention 10.
B=Crainte 5
C=Desir-
on a une première équation
C=a-b
et une 2 équation
C=A x B
Math ces 2 éq. Sont absurdes
C=50 / C = 5 / 2C = 55 / 2=27.5
Si A = 10 / B = 5 / c = 27.5
Si A = a = 9 / B=a/ 3 =3/ C +33/ 2=16.5

This formula demonstrates the limits of scientific reasoning by illustrating its inability to explicate immeasurable, highly personalized, data. By inserting variable equivalencies for intention, dread (crainte) and desir (desire) Duchamp demonstrates the limits of deterministic mathematics and hints at his attempts to demonstrate the breakdown of rational models of examining reality. Jonathan Williams in his article Pata or Quantum the End of Deterministic Physics, likens this propensity in Duchamp’s work to the Schrodinger equations which demonstrated that the behaviors, qualities and position of quantum particles needed to be expressed in terms of statistical probabilities thus rendering vacant the possibility of determining that a subatomic particle had any fixed quality at any given point in time. Duchamp’s continued fascination with illustrating this notion also points out his interest in expressing the difficulty that systems of logic have in making distinct calculations of human emotional variables. As one can see when examining the diversity of Duchamp’s work and intentions, traditional art historical and art critical interpreters were and in many cases remain befuddled.

Symbolic Logic and Visualizing Concept in the Work of Marcel Duchamp

The seemingly innate propensity of the human mind to binary, “this not that thinking” may be fruitfully illustrated by using symbolic logic in an interpretation of the intentions of Marcel Duchamp. With symbolic logic as a form of information or concept visualization one can demonstrate the difficulty and visual complexity of examining Duchamp’s work using a deterministic system of equivalencies.
First let us use the most oft sited interpretations of Duchamp’s oeuvre and their corresponding significances and assign to each a variable. The following is by no means an exhaustive codification of the many interpretations of Marcel Duchamp’s works it is essentially a categorization of a few of the major theories.
A. The use of the “ready-made” or “found object” asserts that by altering the context of a commonplace object it can become art.
D. The statement A allows that Duchamp in challenging the definition of the art object by exalting the primacy of the idea over the creative act he subverted the modernist convention of the artist/object and viewer relationships
B. The work was an exploration of the mathematics of uncertainty pioneered by Henri Poincaré and the study of the fourth dimensional space theorized by Élie Jouffret (Traité Élémentaire de Géometrie à Quatre Dimensions 1903).
H. The statement B allows that Duchamp called into question the discipline boundaries between art and science and destroys the notion of the artist as creator of ‘retinal art’ or the aesthetic object.
C. The work was engineered to be reassembled by the patron or viewer, who followed complex, often informed by chance, instructions. This process is evident in Duchamp’s assemblage book works such as La Bôite Verte.
P. The statement C allows that Duchamp transformed the boundaries between producer and consumer in the art market and engaged the artist/manufacturer and viewer in the process of creation.
We will next make a formula that contextualizes more precisely the relationship between the upper level referent variables A, B and C (in this case those variables that refer to the condition of Duchamp’s work rather than his intentions). Supplanting a corresponding lower case Greek letters, A becoming a(alpha), B becoming b(beta), and C becomes g(gamma) the following is the rule, universal quantifier or binding of variables governing their relationships. (Fig. 8)

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Figure 8

The above statement allows that there can only be a single interpretation of the work of Duchamp. In accordance with the current highly polarized arguments about his work the equation illustrates that, of the contemporary hypothesis, only one can be correct. The next equations maintain that there can only be a single derived intention from the overall statement of the condition of Duchamp’s work. In other words the statement: “The work is an exploration of the mathematics of uncertainty pioneered by Henri Poincaré and the study of the fourth dimensional space theorized by Élie Jouffret” may only be linked to the intention, “Duchamp calls into question the discipline boundaries between art and science and destroys the notion of the artist as creator of ‘retinal art’ or the aesthetic object”. We may express this with symbolic logic in the following: (Fig. 9)

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Figure 9

The next section of this exploration of the work of Marcel Duchamp through symbolic logic will determine the consistency of each of the condition/intention hypotheses. First we will examine the consistency of the argument A, if and only if, D:(Fig. 10)

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Figure 10

The statement A if and only if D proves logically consistent. Next we have the hypothesis B, if and only if, H: (Fig. 11)

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Figure 11

Having proved the statement B if and only if H consistent we address the theory C if and only if P:(Fig. 12)

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Figure 12

Having proved the consistency of all three hypotheses given the a priori context that only one of them is correct where are we left in this complex visual analysis of Duchamp’s intentions? His intimate knowledge of Henri Poincaré’s theories and his use of chance in the construction of many of his key works would seem to indicate that Duchamp had been quietly challenging the notion of deterministic reasoning in both the interpretation of art and physical and experiential phenomena. As Poincaré suggests in 1895;

Experiment has revealed a multitude of facts which can be summed up in the following statement: it is impossible to detect the absolute motion of matter, or rather the relative motion of ponderable matter with respect to the ether; all that one can exhibit is the motion of ponderable matter with respect to ponderable matter.

In short, Poincaré asserts that all quantifiable and qualifiable information pertaining to any phenomena can only be measured relative to other qualified and quantified data. As the first to elucidate this “principle of relativity” Poincaré discerned that all explicit information about any physical phenomena in motions is best expressed in the form of a probability. Poincaré’s critique of determinism extends to other disciplines as well as he states, “The science of history is built out of bricks; but an accumulation of historical facts is no more a science than a pile of bricks is a house.” This kind of reasoning is the bedrock of semiotics (meaning in language is ascertain through the relationship between the symbol and its meaning relative to the culture that produced it). It has also been used to critique symbolic logic. The discipline itself relies on abstract patterns, its meaning determined not from the symbols themselves but from the relationship between the marks and other patterns and more significantly cultural meanings.

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Figure 13
Marcel Duchamp, Three Standard
Stoppages, 1913-14

Duchamp’s connection to logic is most clearly noted in two of his most significant areas of concern: chance and chess. As a chess master Duchamp was, on several occasions, a member of the French championship chess team. For Duchamp chess was an organized, integrated and ordered whole, composed of rule based interactions wherein outcomes were as influenced by unquantifiable elements such as guile or desire as by systematic reasoning. This led Duchamp to assert that complexity in any system was inherently non-deterministic. We see this questioning of aggregation, perhaps more clearly, in his use of chance in aesthetic production.

Le Penseur Multi-Dimensionnelle

Duchamp’s work Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) was first displayed at the Cubist Exhibition at the Damau Gallery in Barcelona and later at the Armory Show (New York, 1913). This painting took the observational cubist penchant of displaying an object from multiple spatial vantagepoints and added a temporal element by rendering a nude figure in motion. This work explored the conceptual possibility of 2d painting, which displayed and illustrates a 3 dimensional figure traversing time. The piece arrives at a visceral form of multi-dimensional cognition. Partial inspired by his interest in chronophotography and the mathematics of Henri Poincaré Nude Descending a Staircase is perhaps his last clear attempt to use a traditional modality of retinal art to express a conceptual or gray matter art. It is also his first widely exhibited work to express his interest in the merger of science and art.

His continued interest in multiple dimensions, though I cannot prove this, is probably where we may find the solution or at least a map to a clear understanding of his work. Though we may never have a concise definition of “what his work was about” Duchamp may have left us clues as to how we may begin to “make sense” of his intentions.

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Figure 14
Front view of the postcard in
the White Box, 1967

Rhonda Shearer and Stephen J. Gould In their article Boats and Deckchairs present the most profound example of Duchamp’s trickery and play with the multi-dimensional mathematics of Henri Poincaré and Élie Jouffret. Inside Duchamp’s 1967 piece White Box Francis Nauman discovered a “commercial” postcard (1914) (Fig. 14). The postcard displays on its front three boats floating on a placid lake or river and on the reverse some writing. Nauman categorized this discovery as a “random notation” written on a “found object” citing that “on the verso of a postcard, Duchamp notes ‘a possible means by which the fourth dimension could be visually established through the optical illusion of two deck chairs’.” This note was accompanied by an illustration of parallel lines bisected by a perpendicular. The true nature of this object has never been addressed by art historians as the work could be safely categorized as one of Duchamp’s “ready-mades.”

The piece is in fact, an original painting not a commercial postcard. The curious parallel and perpendicular lines on the back are in fact obscure instructions. Duchamp’s fascination with rotation and relative vantagepoints indicates that a new dimension may be experienced through altering ones position relative to an object. When the postcard is turned 90º to the right the boats become an orthogonal rendering of deckchairs viewed from a bird’s eye vantagepoint. The mysterious “random note” on the verso is a plea to adjust your perspective when viewing the postcard but also, when correlated with the image from the front the piece becomes a profound statement about the relationship between the second, third and fourth dimensions.

Like E. A. Abbot’s famous book Flatland (1885) whose main character, a square, is shockingly introduced to the third dimension, Duchamp has demonstrated for us that one can examine from a three dimensional vantage point all sides of a two dimensional object. In turning the postcard we are taking a clearly two-dimensional image and viewing it from the third dimension wherein the objects in question become something entirely different. Inpostcard he begs the analogy: that when viewed from the fourth dimension a three-dimensional object may be seen from all sides. From years of singular interpretations of Duchamp’s oeuvre art historians have safely ignored Duchamp’s multiple interpretations: one obvious and the others subversive. When the work is proclaimed (by the artist himself) and interpreted as a “ready-made” the hidden intention with all of its possible significance is obscured.

Duchamp disavowed models of reasoning, which relied on singular definitions. This kind of one or two-dimensional interpretation is inherently flawed when attempting to ascertain his intentions. With this in mind, Duchamp’s work requires that any conceptual model of his intentions necessitates three-dimensional thinking and thusly is well suited to three-dimensional visualization.

Immersive Experience and Concept Visualization

As demonstrated, the use of symbolic logic as a means to visualizing concept in the work of Marcel Duchamp is extremely difficult. Though I have not examined the use of more advanced forms of symbolic logic (I am not a logician) it is apparent that the data, as envisaged, is not of the highest utility.

 

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Figure. 15
Screen still from the author’s Immersive
Duchamp Concept World an interactive
virtual reality computer art piece.

Figure. 16
Screen still from the author’s Immersive
Duchamp Concept World an interactive
virtual reality computer art piece.

Clearly, Duchamp had multiple intentions and the existence of seemingly inconsistent hypotheses about his work point more to the human propensity for dualistic thinking rather than to grasping a more pluralistic possibility. Engaging data that is not quantifiable and highly subjective is difficult to manage logically and exceedingly difficult to graph. However if we create a 3d cartographic form of the logic equations introduced earlier in this paper, we make the data more intuitive and thus cognitively manageable. (Figs. 15 & 16)Using interactive virtual reality software[the software we use in this example is the Glass Virtual Reality Engine, created by the author] one can have an immersive experience of the main theories about Duchamp’s work.

The virtual reality computer art piece Immersive Duchamp Concept World, presents the theories concerning the artist’s work. At the center of the virtual space is the entrance point to the world. The immersant or viewer may follow the map which branches off to various nodal points. Each of these nodal points represents a single theory. From the vantagepoint of the theory the immersant sees the other possible theories through a fog and translucent sheets, they are barely visible, as the immersant/viewer has chosen an alternate path (Fig. 15). In Immersive Duchamp Concept World the immersant is also introduced to various interactive media; readings of Duchamp’s Notes as well as to still images and animations of his work and to the writings of Henri Poincaré. If the immersant chooses to fly above the object it is from this vantagepoint the viewer sees all of the theories as a totality (Fig. 16). This totality, is essentially a relativistic rather than a fixed deterministic system as the viewer governs the experience. This model for information visualization does not stand in opposition to symbolic logic, however it does allow a form of concept visualization that merges reason quantification, qualification and the visceral.

Conclusion

The body of work produced by Marcel Duchamp was a programmatic, if playful, undermining of deterministic thinking. He demolished arbitrary discipline boundaries between artist, scientist and mathematician. His clues to altering our perspective were equally pertinent to viewing and understanding his oeuvre as they were to viewing individual works of art. His implicit and explicit call for altering our vantagepoint relative to his intentions inherently calls into question modernist singular interpretations. Yet, through the use of concept visualization, we can create more exploratory modes of information visualization; modes which allow for simultaneous multiple dimensional thinking. In an immersive environment the viewer can experience a panorama of Duchamp’s intentions, one that does not enforce strict rules of consistency, but nonetheless leads us to comprehension of a poly-dynamic yet visceral logic.

Refrences

Boxer, S. “Taking Jokes By Duchamp to Another Level of Art. “The New York Times 20 March 1999.

Clair, J. Sur Marcel Duchamp et la fin de l’art. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2000.

D’Harnoncourt, Anne & McShine, eds. Marcel Duchamp. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1973.

Duchamp, M. Notes. Paris: Champs Flammarion- Centre d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, 1999.

Golding, J. Duchamp: The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors. New York: The Viking Press, 1973.

Gould, S. J. & Shearer, R. “Boats and Deck Chairs.” Tout Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal. 1.1 (Dec. 1000): Articles <http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_1/Articles/boat.html>

Hodges, W. Logic. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

Ifrah, G. The Universal History of Numbers. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2000.

Reichenbach, H. Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: Free Press, 1966.

Scribner, C. “Henri Poincare and the principle of relativity.” American Journal of Physics 32 (1963): 673.

Tomkins, C. The World of Marcel Duchamp 1887-1968. Alexandria, VA: Time Life Book, 1977.

Williams, J. “Pata or Quantum: Duchamp and the end of Deterministic Physics”, Tout Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal. 2.3 (Dec. 2000): Articles <http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_3/Articles/williams/williams.html>

Figs. 1, 3~7, 13, 14
©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.