|
|
click
to enlarge
|
|
|
|
|
Duchamp
as the Black
King in Hans Richter's 8x8, 1957
|
Duchamp
in 1957, wearing a crown made for his 70th birthday (photography
by Denise Hare)
|
|
|
|
|
Illustration
1.
Salvador Dalí,
Apotheosis of the Dollar,
1965
|
Illustration
2.
First known image
of Clovis I and the miracle of the 'Holy Ampule,' ca. 9th Century
|
In January 1968, Salvador
Dalí wrote the preface for the English translation of Pierre Cabanne's
Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, stating that "Marcel Duchamp
could have been a king if, instead of making the Chocolate Grinder,
he made the Holy Ampulla, the unique, divine readymade,
to anoint himself as king. Duchamp then could have been crowned at Rheims."
(1)
Duchamp and Dalí,
"treat[ing] each other with great respect,"
(2)
had spent several summers
together since the late 1950s, in the small fishing village and surrealist
haven of Cadaqués, on the northern tip of Spain's Mediterranean
coast.
Dalí had likened
Duchamp to a king once before, in a painting of 1965 with the rather gargantuan
title Salvador Dalí in the Act of Painting Gala in the Apotheosis
of the Dollar, in which One may also Perceive
to the Left Marcel Duchamp Disguised as Louis XIV, behind a Curtain in
the Style of Vermeer, which is but the Invisible Monument Face of the
Hermes of Praxiteles. (3)
(Illustration 1).
While the painting establishes
Duchamp as France's sun king and grand monarch, Dalí, with his
introductory remarks for the publication of Dialogues, had yet
another ruler in mind: Clovis I, pagan founder of the Frankish kingdom
in the early Middle Ages who converted to Christianity only after the
combined efforts of his wife and the bishop inspired him to do so. He
was finally baptized at Rheims around 500 A.D. with 'le Sainte Ampoule'
or 'Holy Ampule' (4)
(Illustration 2).
Ever since Clovis,
a 'holy ampulla' has been used to consecrate the kings of France. Usually
in the shape of a small vial with a large paunch and an elongated neck,
its form became diversified in the 16th century.
(5)
The Museum of Antiquities
in Rouen, Duchamp's birthplace, holds two such ampules designated for
holy water, possibly from the middle of the 18th century (Illustration
3). (6)
It should not come as
a surprise that these bulging flasks more closely resemble Duchamp's Air
de Paris of 1919 (Illustration 4) than
any pharmaceutical instruments of the early 20th century (Illustration
5). In fact, experts testify that the shape presented by Duchamp as
a readymade ampule looks nothing like a standard medical ampule of his
time. (Listen
to a message left on ASRL's answering machine by Professor Gregory
Higby, School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin, Summer 1998.) The
apparent oddity of a medical ampule containing a hook within its design
adds to the argument that Duchamp's ampule stems from an earlier period.
(7)
|
click
to enlarge
|
|
|
|
|
|
Illustration
3.
Two Holy Ampules, ca. 1750s, height: 35 mm (photograph by Yohann
Deslandes, Musees Departementaux de la Seine-Maritime
|
Illustration
4.
© 1999 Succession
Marcel Duchamp, ARS, NY/ADAGP, Paris. Marcel Duchamp, Air de
Paris, 1919 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
|
Illustration
5.
Late 19th and 20th
century pharmaceutical glass ampules (Collection Rhonda Roland Shearer,
New York)
|
|
click
to enlarge
|
|
|
|
Illustration
6.
© 1999 Succession
Marcel Duchamp, ARS, NY/ADAGP, Paris. Marcel Duchamp, Comb,
1916 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
|
|
|
|
Illustration
7.
Set of Surrealist
Postcards, Paris, 1937
|
|
|
|
Illustration
8.
Marcel Duchamp,
Letter to Henri Pierre Roché, 9 May 1949 (Carlton Lake Collection,
The University of Texas at Austin)
|
The ampule is not his
only readymade linked to coronation ceremonies. In Duchamp's inscribed
Comb of 1916 (Illustration 6), we
note another object commonly used for this grand occasion. Those combs
were often made of "precious metals, carved and adorned with Scriptural
and other subjects." (8)
Paris Air was
brought to New York by Duchamp as a present from Paris for Louise and
Walter Arensberg. (9)
Duchamp claimed that
he bought the ampule from a Parisian pharmacist. Presumably containing
"Sérum Physiologique," the pharmacist was asked to empty
the glass bottle, let it fill up with air and then reseal it. Paris
Air, first published as a postcard in 1937, was titled ampoule
contenant 50 cc d'air de Paris (Ampule Containing 50 cc air of
Paris) (Illustration 7). (10)
While visiting the Arensbergs
in Hollywood during the spring of 1949, he discovered that his present
to them had beeen broken. (It was later restored).
He immediately
wrote to his close friend Henri Pierre Roché, asking him to find
a similar one in Paris. In a letter dated 9 May 1949, Duchamp explained:
May I ask you for the following service: / Walter Arensberg broke
his ampule / 'Air de Paris' - I've promised him to / replace it - /
Could you go to that pharmacy on the corner of rue Blomet and rue /
de Vaugirard (if
it's still there) and buy / [this is where I have bought the
first ampule /]
an ampule like this: 125 cc and of the same / dimensions as the drawing;
ask the pharmacist / to empty
it and reseal the / glass with a lamp - wrap it and / send it
to me here - if not on rue Blomet / than elsewhere / but as much as
possible the same form thank
you (Illustration 8). (11)
|
click
to enlarge
|
|
|
|
Illustration
9.
© 1999 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, NY/ADAGP,
Paris. Marcel Duchamp, 50 cc Air de Paris, 1949 (Philadelphia
Museum of Art)
|
About three weeks later,
in a letter written 29 May 1949, Duchamp tells his friend (Roché
seems to have suggested to present the Arensbergs with a miniature version
of the ampule from the Boîte instead) "that the
ampule must be the size I gave you, because that's the size of the (broken)
original.Those
in the valises are scaled down, like all reproductions (generally speaking).
(12)
This second version for
the 'life-size' ampule (titled and signed on a label: 50cc air de Paris
réplique type / 1949 R.S.), now in the collection of
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is generally assumed to be a selected
readymade by Henri-Pierre Roché. It seems odd that after an apparently
unsuccessful search for the "real thing," Duchamp's friend "found"
- almost twenty years after Duchamp's initial Paris Air - an object
closely resembling but strangely different from the version of 1919. (Illustration
9)
Most likely, Roché was aware that the small-scale replicas of
the ampule which had been made in the 1940's (for Duchamp's Boîte)
had been created by the firm of Obled, laboratory glass blowers,
located close to Duchamp's studio in Paris at that time.
(13)
Furthermore, glass experts tell us that pharmacists would have easily
had the ability to alter or make glass objects.
(14)
We suggest that the probable scenario was that Roché eventually
asked a pharmacist to duplicate the odd shape of Paris Air - just
as Duchamp had done when he conceived of the work in 1919.
|
click
to enlarge
|
|
|
|
Illustration
10.
© 1999 Succession
Marcel Duchamp, ARS, NY/ADAGP, Paris. Marcel Duchamp, 50 cc Air
de Paris (small-scale version for the Boíte-en-Valise),
1940
|
 |
| Measuring
the Schwarz-version of Air de Paris, 1964, at the Art Science
Research Laboratory, Inc., New York |
In an interview of 1959, Duchamp confirms George Heard Hamilton's suggestion
that the 1919 version of Paris Air was the last of his actual
readymades. (15)
Let us consider four versions of Duchamp's ampule, including the 1964
Schwarz edition. All of these versions are obviously four different sizes.
Puzzled by Duchamp's consistent '50 cc' title, we measured the volumes
of the 1964 Schwarz edition and the Boîte miniature version.
The Schwarz version measures approximately 123 cc; the original and the
Roché versions appear to be slightly larger in volume and would
therefore measure more. Even the 300 miniatures of the Boîte
failed to match their shared name of 50 cc of Paris Air, for their
volume measures approx. 35 cc (for documentation of our measurements,
see
Video 1 and Video
2). (Illustration 10)
But why then do we trust the original ampule to be a readymade when it
holds more than double the amount stated by Duchamp, when its second full-size
version is signed on a label with the initials of Duchamp's pseudonym
Rrose Sélavy (resembling the lettering of the Rouen ampules)?
Moreover, the 'Sérum Physiologique' on the label of the first version
of Air de Paris is preceded by a small star (*), an asterisk, commonly
used to distinguish words of obscure character or wrong usage.
(16)
Where is the 50 cc of Paris Air?
 1.
"L'Échecs, C'est Moi," in Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues
with Marcel Duchamp, (New York: Da Capo, 1967)13-14. Dalí had
published two articles on Duchamp before -- "The King and Queen Surrounded
by Swift Nudes," Art News 58 (April 1959): 22-25 and "Why
They Attack the 'Mona Lisa,'" Art News 62 (March 1963): 36,
63-64.
2.
Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp. A Biography (New York: Henry Holt, 1996),
402.
3.
For further information on Duchamp's and Dalí's years in Cadaqués
and a brief discussion of the painting, see Tout-Fait's interview
with Timothy Phillips.
4.
The first recorded mention of an ampule with holy attributes was in connection
to Clovis I. In 869, the archbishop of Reims held up a small bottle of
holy water at the coronation of Charles le Chauve and declared that "Glorious
Clovis, King of France, was consecrated with a holy water which came down
from the sky and which we still possess." According to legend, le Saint
Ampoule or "Holy Ampule" which was filled with this holy water had
been brought to the sanctuary of Saint Remi by a dove and then used in
the sacred ceremony which crowned Clovis as King. The story follows the
story of Christ: the spirit of God descended from the sky in the form
of a dove. As a result, beginning with Clovis, the kings of France were
crowned in a fashion which implied that they had been "chosen" and that
God's will would be done. (The Holy Ampule can still be found in Saint
Remi, at Reims.) See Patrick Demouy, "Du Baptême du Sacre," Connaissance
des Arts 92 (1996): 7-9.
5.
See Jacqueline Bellanger, Verre. D'Usage et de Prestige. France 1500-1800,
(Paris: Éditions de l'Amateur, 1988); Etienne Michon, "La
Collection d'Ampoules à Eulogies du Musée du Louvre,"
Mélang. Archeol. Hist. 12 (Rome, 1892): 183-201.
We are grateful to Virginia Wright and Rosalind S. Young of the Corning
Museum of Glass, New York, for drawing these sources to our attention.
6.
Laurence Flavigny, conservator of the Musée des Antiquités,
Rouen, could not confirm how long the ampules have been in the museum's
collection.
7.
For the first discussion and questioning of the status of Duchamp's glass
ampule (with a hook) as a readymade, see Rhonda Roland Shearer's "Marcel
Duchamp's Impossible Bed and Other 'Not' Readymade Objects: A Possible
Route of Influence From Art to Science", Part 1, Art & Academe
10, no. 1 (Fall 1997): 26-62. Shearer argues that historical evidence
and analysis of their forms reveal the readymades were not unaltered,
mass-produced objects as Duchamp claimed. Monika Wagner, professor of
Art History at the University of Hamburg, Germany, also discusses the
impossibility of Duchamp's ampule in her forthcoming book "Das Material
der Kunst" (Munich: Beck, 2000).
8.
Henry John Frasey, "The Use of the Comb in Church Ceremonies,"
The Antiquary XXXII (January/December 1896): 312-316.
9.
"I thought of it as a present for Arensberg, who had everything money
could buy. So I brought him an ampule of Paris Air." --Marcel Duchamp
in Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, vol. II,
(New York: Delano, 1997), 676. The quote in Schwarz' book is taken from
Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (London: Thames & Hudson,
1965), 99.
10.
See Ecke Bonk, The Box in a Valise (New York: Rizzoli, 1989) 201-202.
11.
Translation by Julia Koteliansky; letter reproduced in William Camfield,
Marcel Duchamp: Fountain (Houston: Houston Fine Arts Press, 1989)
76.
12.
Bonk, The Box in a Valise, 202.
13.
Ibid., 202.
14.
In a fax of 27 April 1998, Virginia Wright of the Corning Museum of Glass,
New York, writes:
"Pharmacists
in the early 20th century had training in chemistry, and one of the
first things taught in chemistry classes is lamp working (a.k.a. glass-blowing)";
also see: W.A. Shenstone, The Methods of Glass Blowing and of Working
Silica in the Oxy-Gas Flame, London: Longman's, 1916; p. 7 describes
a burner useful in small laboratories (similar books were widely available
in France at the time).
15. The interview was conducted by Richard Hamilton
and George Heard Hamilton for BBC around October 1959. It was published
as an audiocassette by Audio Arts Magazine 2, no. 4 (1976). According
to Dieter Daniels this "last, actual readymade" was actually
the first one to be commented upon in print. See Daniels, Duchamp und
die Anderen, (Köln: DuMont, 1992), 188-189, 330. See also Henry
McBride, "The Walter Arensbergs," The Dial (July 1920).
16. In his postumously published notes (Paul Matisse,
ed., Marcel Duchamp Notes, Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980),
Duchamp twice refers to 'asstricks' (notes 217 and 235), a possible play
on the word "asterisk." [In this context it is worth mentioning
that the verso of note 32 - an important note on the infrathin
- reads 50 cent. cubes d'air de Paris (not reproduced).] In an
e-mail of 6 December 1999, André Gervais wrote:
Yes, of course, "asstricks"
and "asterisks" is a play on words, almost
a pun (because they do not sound exactly alike). You will find in my
book
(La Raie Alitée d'Effects. Apropos of Marcel Duchamp,
Québec: Hurtubise, 1984, p. 242) the following: "asstricks:
tours du cul, arse et attrapes, trucs cul(s) lent(s), etc."
I translate to help
you:
* "tours du cul" = asstricks, and "tours" is the
anagram of "trous" = holes (so "trou du cul" = asshole);
* "arse et attrapes", almost a pun (with French and English
words): arse = cul, and "farces et attrapes" = tricks and
jokes;
* "trucs" = tricks or contraptions, "cul(s) lent(s)"
= slow ass(es), a pun on "truculent" = realistic, tough.
For the asterisks,
also see his manuscript page The of 1915 [Schwarz, 1997, cat.
no. 334, p. 638]. And do not forget that "asstricks" is a
word (probably invented by MD) with a "tr" in it: as you probably
know, Duchamp said to Cabanne that in the title Jeune homme triste
dans un train [Sad Young Man on a Train, (1911), see: Schwarz,
1997, cat. no. 238, p. 559], the young man is "triste" (a
word with a "tr") because - ! - he is in a train (another
word with a "tr"): the "tr", here, he said too,
is very ("tr"ès, in French) impo"rt"ant.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
onMouseOver="document.images['Link9'].src='../images/Bar1_03_09_over.gif';"
onMouseOut="document.images['Link9'].src='../images/Bar1_03_09.gif';">
 |
|
