04. A Tale of two Cities - New York
New York DaDa and Marcel Duchamp
In this blog we explore the incredible phenomenon of Marcel Duchamp.
My favourite collection of Books that I loved to read and gave me a wonderful foundation for forming the nucleus of a History of Art course I was putting together, was the "Time Life library" called "The World of . . . " series
The books have long disappeared and I thought perhaps they can be found on-line. In my search I re-discovered the author of "the World of Duchamp" A writer and Scholar called Calvin Tomkins’s, who has subsequently written a revised Biography of Marcel Duchamp.
It states:
"A Biography arrives fifty-five years after the author’s first meeting with Marcel Duchamp. The encounter took place in October 1959 at the King Cole Bar in New York’s St. Regis Hotel. Tomkins, a thirty- three-year-old writer and editor of international news at Newsweek, had been assigned to interview the eminent seventy-two-year-old artist despite the fact that the former knew little about art and the latter was known to be exceedingly reticent. Newsweek’s pages rarely featured art topics, yet in this case the magazine’s timing was impeccable: Duchamp’s career, largely unnoticed or dismissed for decades, was just being discovered by a new generation of artists who would make his work a touchstone for the art of their time."
So this book together with The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes is my main "go to" for information on this essay, together with some other recourses I will paste in below.
Introduction:
When Marcel Duchamp arrived in New York in June 1915, he had do idea what an enormous impression he had made with the works he submitted to the Armory show of 1912.He was approached by eager reporters who were keen to interview the notorious and famous painter of "nude descending a staircase". Wealthy Patrons were just as keen to meet him and draw him into their influential circles.
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| Louis and Walter Arnesberg with friend Marcel Duchamp |
Walter Arensberg arranged a studio for him in his own home and he soon found himself in the centre of a lively intellectual avant-garde New York circle. He met local artists and gallery owners such as Alfred Stieglitz who were keen for him collections. But strangely enough he did not get to work and take advantage of this ripe market, instead he was content to distribute his words and studies free among his friends or to sell them for intentionally small amounts. Arensberg wanted his original Armory show works, so together they went about buying back as many as could be found, including the Nude. They became a feature of the Arensberg Collection, which was later left to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
But Duchamp was already finished with "retinal art" by this stage. He had basically explored all the modern movements of the day and felt they had already exhausted their possibilities. He was not really interested in cashing in on the modern Art scene and making repetitions and facsimiles of his paintings.
In this sense he was a 'purist' and was only interested in pursuing pastimes that challenged and engaged his (considerable) intellect. In New York he had already begun working on his "pièce de résistance" Known among other names as "The large glass" which he finally completed in 1923,This piece was to occupy his mind on and off for about 10 years. It was not a work of art in the conventional but rather an ant-art statement full of irony and visual puns that lead to no specific conclusion and is frustratingly incomplete.
But in the meantime there was something else that engaged the mind of Marcel Duchamp which had nothing to do with the concerns of modern Art. He had always been an avid chess player but at about the time he took a trip to Buenos Aires in 1918 he became totally dedicated to developing his skills and was, eventually able to become a world class player. He still made provocative Art statements from time to time but these were made at his leisure without any attempt at self promotion or financial gain.
He didn't really seem to care about his notoriety and fame was totally unimportant to him. But in spite of . . . or because of that, he became one of the most sought after contributors to the modern New York Art Scene. Collectors and gallery curators regularly consulted him in evaluating and assessing work for their growing collections.
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| Portrait of Marcel Duchamp by Edward Steichen, 1917. |
Unexpected fame
It came as a great surprise to Marcel Duchamp that in New York, when he arrived here for the first time, in 1915, he was already famous. That his fame derived from a single painting, his 'nude descending a staircase exhibited 2 years earlier at the Armoury Show, must have made it seem all the more astonishing.
He was feted by New York Elites, fascinated by his 'notoriety' and could have had his choice of heiresses, but he preferred to play chess and to live on the proceeds of the exclusive French lessons he gave for two dollars an hour..."
French newspapers had carried only brief and sketchy reports on that groundbreaking exhibition, and Duchamp, who was naturally delighted that all four of the paintings he had sent to it were sold, did not fully comprehend the extent of the American reaction to his work.
Duchamp's reasons for coming to New York in 1915, at any rate, had nothing to do with art.
In January, he had been judged medically unfit for military service in the First World War, because of a slight rheumatic-heart condition, and his life in Paris had subsequently become increasingly unpleasant.
Marcel found himself a very comfortable niche in New York city soon realised his controversial notoriety was a very sought after commodity for the New York elitists who were interested in transporting the cultural capital of the world from Paris to the USA.
They needed him
He was a drawcard, the American socialites all wanted to meet him, their daughters wanted to date this notorious frenchman. But it was his knowledge and expertise in fine Art that was in big demand and this was for a specific need. His insight and first hand experience with the more cerebral matters and criteria that was being established for the Art of the future. The actual language and technique of the new Art, he was totally familiar with, and so he became a key figure in the selection process for some grand new Art galleries that were earmarked for future development.Duchamp had developed an air of detachment and indifference, this could simply have been as a personality trait, the aloofness of an intellectual who is stimulated and satisfied with the inner world of his own inner consciousness. Perhaps it too was a method of survival, the world seemed to have gone mad in the first world war and even though Duchamp spent the war years in New York he must have felt an enormous sense of horror and grief that Europe and his own home country, France, had descended into this pit of hell.
But if this sense of indifference could have been consciously calculated, it was also very useful in his hobnobbing with the wealthy elitists in New York. His behaviour was quite unusual and surprising, he was not particularly interested in partying with rich socialites and seducing their all too willing heiresses, nor was he seduced by the trappings of wealth. He could easily have taken full advantage of the many invites and offers he received, and lived in wealth and luxury at the expense of his hosts. But instead, he insisted on supporting himself on a relatively meagre income he earned giving french lessons which only made his notoriety even more mysterious and attractive.
Back in Europe, the sense of horror and disgust was far more dramatic and shocking than we could ever understand it from our perspective a century later. But it was also completely outside the experience of the average America. At that time such a chaotic and disruptive environment and the subsequent breakdown in trust and disillusionment brought a very powerful and spontaneous desire for a totally new system of government.
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The Spartacist Revolt was a left-wing uprising designed to establish a communist state in Germany and destroy the Weimar Republic. It was led by the Spartacist League - a group within the Communist Party led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
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The experiments of the DaDa movement and the various artists and writers who supported a radical shift away from all conventions and beliefs that we have known for all recorded History, were not exactly embraced by the general public in America. It was quite obvious to Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Man Ray that in New York DaDa was to have a totally different form of expression to the political charged atmosphere of post war Europe.
The terrible consequences of the Great War was not experienced by the Americans, the participation of the USA may have been significant in tipping the scales in Europe. But the folks at home never heard a shot fired in anger or any kind of threat of invasion. So politically speaking the American public were not interested in radical shifts in their system of government or reconstituting civilisation from scratch.
In Germany and France ,however, there were riots and bloodshed as the disillusioned people fought in the streets for a total renewal in their system of government, and for many Europeans the communist system was under serious consideration. There were, of course, a contingent of these Communist idealists who imported these ideas to the US. But in America they were never going to be a serious threat but for a time there was a flurry of consternation that was later to be dubbed the 'first red scare' (there was another one after the second world war which we will get to later).
The ideas of reconstituting the world as expressed in the Artistic endeavours of writers and artists were also attractive to the modern elitists of America. But they were fixated about an American expression of modernism that was radically different to European concerns. Their focus was all about an attempt to establish a very different kind of "new world" in which the catch phrase was "modernism". Perhaps Duchamp knew full well the reasons for his expediency in this endeavour and was careful and pragmatic about just how closely he bonded with his new Friends.
Duchamp philosophically did not espouse any particular world view or any kind of idealistic or religious ideal. He stated that he was a 'Fatalist' and he was 'indifferent'. This excludes any ideas of a supernatural realm and the whole idea of 'chance' so central to the DaDa experiments and later, the surrealists automatically assumes the committed adoption of the still relatively new concept of Darwinism.
The elitists may have made a tacit nod to Darwinism but there was another Historical system of philosophy that most elitists were very intimately tied to. Most of the wealthy and powerful industrialists and wealthy elites were deeply involved in the philosophical ideals of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. They were deeply familiar with the ideas of Francis Bacon and the Jacobins from the French revolution and believed in the hope of the USA becoming the New Atlantis.
Did Duchamp become part of this establishment? The answer to that seems to be that he did not buy into the ideals of the Elitists and even though they would have tried to absorb him into the fold his life style choices seem to indicate his determination to remain fiercely independent.
Duchamp was pretty much a nihilist with similar philosophical ideals similar to the anarchists. Whilst he was still in France he had read a Philosophical treatise by Max Stirner called "The Ego and Its Own", the study of which he considered an important influence in his artistic and intellectual development. He called it "a remarkable book ... which advances no formal theories, but just keeps saying that the ego is always there in everything."
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Instead he advocated an amoral (although importantly not inherently immoral or antisocial) egoism. It is considered a major influence on the development of anarchism, existentialism, nihilism, and postmodernism.
This egoism is not concerned with moral absolutes because they are connected to this idea of the existence of a higher absolute which we strive to in a sense please or pacify and in return achieve mitigation for the punishment for our failures. This is the big whip that Religion at least I imagine, in Duchamp's understanding, has over mankind, which he saw as totally unacceptable and probably just a means to an end for the Church, which was in reality a political organisation bent on wealth for itself through a total exploitation and control of the masses.
But since in Duchamp's mind, there exists no deity and by extension no absolutes, our existence, according to Darwin's theory, is a random chance event So Duchamp reasoned, religion is a fraud, that its failure to bring peace to mankind had been exposed clearly in the great war. It was clear to him, that this was proof of man's alienation from others and consciousness being totally existential, then enlightened self interest was the only practical way forward. Duchamp had no message of unity or even hope and was rather cynical of idealist utopias and was certainly no bleeding heart activist. One of his main reasons for staying in New York he stated, was the fact that people left him alone.
His rejection of absolutes, moral or otherwise played a central role in all his work from this time on, since there was absolutely no point in creating a new kind of convention for Art, since the very idea of conventions had already been destroyed by DaDa.
Art was a reflection on irony and relativity in a game of setting up one value against another and watching detached from the sidelines as it self-destructs. and in the end it became for Marcel a game of ideas, he was no idealist and his These art statements have no political message and even though they make references to the world of ideas and innovations, the art pieces art focussed inwards towards themselves.
Oh! the Irony - but that's just the point!
And yet this pessimistic observation was seized upon time and again by fellow Artists, indeed as early as 1923 Duchamp's DaDa colleague, Man Ray made a piece of Art name "Object to be destroyed". The work consists of a metronome with a photograph of an eye attached to its swinging arm. It lasted quite a long time ironically and then, was indeed eventually destroyed in 1957, which in itself is totally ironic.
But that was not the end, it's notoriety increased its value and longevity, the piece was made again, reborn, exactly as Duchamp predicted it would. Like the holy relics of the middle ages this particular artefact achieved religious status in the minds of its audience and thus Like the Hydra of Greek mythology, it simply multiplied into a whole spawn of progeny, the copies were then subsequently each renamed Indestructible Object. And they are all still around to this very day.
But the progenitor of the whole movement could not exactly be left out right?
During the 1950s and 1960s, as "Fountain" and other "readymades" were rediscovered, Duchamp became a cultural icon in the world of art,
exemplified by a "deluge of publications", as William Camfield noted, "an unparalleled example of timing in which the burgeoning interest in Duchamp coincided with exhilarating developments in avant-garde art, virtually all of which exhibited links of some sort to Duchamp." His art was transformed from "a minor, aberrant phenomenon in the history of modern art to the most dynamic force in contemporary art."
The Prophet of Nihilism
Just to demonstrate the prophetic nature of Duchamp's prognostications about the future of Art - about 40 years later in 1960 a pop artist, Jean Tinguely made a Heath Robinson looking device with moving parts made up of bicycle wheels, motors, a piano, an , a go-cart, a bathtub, and other cast-off objects and called it "Homage to New York"
It's short lived career was witnessed by a small group of Art Collectors and writers in the garden of The Museum for Modern Art. A meteorological trial balloon inflated and burst, coloured smoke was discharged, paintings were made and destroyed, and bottles crashed to the ground. A player piano, metal drums, a radio broadcast, a recording of the artist explaining his work, and a competing shrill voice correcting him provided the cacophonic sound track to the machine’s self-destruction—until it was stopped short by the fire department, declared itself successful in its intention to self destruct.
In 2004, a poll of 500 art experts voted Duchamp’s Fountain the most influential modern artwork of the 20th century.
According to an article in Cabinet magazine here are 17 known copies of Marcel Duchamp's "fountain" the original was lost or destroyed and existed only in photographs.
In 1950, Duchamp was asked by art dealer Sidney Janis if he would sign a urinal for an exhibition at his New York gallery. Duchamp agreed, and signed a urinal that the gallerist bought at a Parisian flea market
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| Version: 1964 Milan Reproduction 2/8 Current Location: Tate Modern, London Notes: Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery, 1999. |
The Supreme Joke
Under a glass case no less, protection for the priceless art work - and its not even an original!!!! (more about that later) How Duchamp must have laughed at this, and there are still 16 others dotted around the world for us to go and visit and marvel at just as if we were observing a sculpture by Michelangelo or Brancusi. This is the point of the urinal a supreme joke if ever there was one. Marcel claimed a work of art exists only as an idea! It doesn't matter if its a sculpture by Michelangelo or a porcelain urinal made in a factory - we give it meaning and value. In order to illustrate this point he chose something not only random and mass produced but something deliberately offensive in the light of standards of aesthetics and beauty.
Point made and touché Marcel Duchamp
But the story doesn't end there!
How would we 'complete the work'? I ask and yes a loaded question upon a moment of reflection someone would exclaim yes we have to piss in it!
And so it came to be so as several "performance Artists" have attempted a 'contribution to the piece or 'one of them. Our very own South African born artist Kendell Geers otherwise unknown attempted immortality and fame by pissing into the fountain at an exhibition in Venice. Musician Brian Eno attempted to do it again at MoMa in 1993. In spring 2000, Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi, two performance artists, who in 1999 had jumped on Tracey Emin's installation-sculpture My Bed in the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain, went to the newly opened Tate Modern and tried to urinate on the Fountain which was on display. However, they were prevented by its perspex case (which is why I pasted that one above). They were banned from the Tate after being accused of attacking the works of Art in the museum which is not really accurate, since they only wanted to piss on one, which was in fact made for that very purpose!
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And just when you think its all over
in 2016 Artist Maurizio Cattelan made this toilet with 18 karats pure gold, which was installed at the Guggenheim museum and placed in the public restroom where visitors were invited to 'try it out'. The gold toilet—a cipher for the excesses of affluence—was available for all to use in the privacy of one of the Guggenheim’s single-stall, gender-neutral(of course) bathrooms. More than one hundred thousand people waited patiently in line for the opportunity to commune with art and with nature.Duchamp does not reveal any kind of emotion since he is consciously chosen to remain unaffected and unattached. This does show in his personal lifestyle, he had no need for fame or wealth and was perfectly happy to live a simple life in a modest apartment with the elements required for survival and nothing more. His relationships with elitists and wealthy art patrons of New York were much more to do with finding intellectual connections that could amuse him long enough not to become bored and had nothing to do with social standing or status.
These traits are certainly admirable but one wonders just how close could anybody get to Marcel? He seems to have been very pragmatic about his privacy.
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| Henri Pierre Roché, Marcel Duchamp’s Studio, c. 1916-18. Courtesy Jean-Jacques Lebel. |
Just How much Francis Picabia influenced Duchamp's Large glass is hard to ascertain. But when one observes the figures of the Bachelor's it draws a distinct parallel to Picabia's machine metaphor he had created as a response to the painterly expressions of the Europeans and his desire to use a more technical depiction that demonstrated his attempt to depict human consciousness as a randomly programmed mechanical machine.
Of course when one adds to this the figures of the pieces on a Chess board the picture becomes quite obvious.
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| Duchamp's chess set he made in Buenos Aires in 1918 |
Picabia was a gifted intellectual and talented artist, he was of independent means and thereby not dependant on sales of his art or having to find a income. The freedom he had to travel back and forth over the Atlantic certainly contributed an important aspect to paving the way for Marcel Duchamp in New York. Duchamp became lifelong friends with Picabia after meeting him at the 1911 Salon d'Automne.
Picabia was present at the Armory show where he connected with the famous Photographer Alfred Stieglitz and spearheaded the establishment of new york DaDa which Duchamp was shortly to join. So just how close they were is uncertain since it seems to my mind, they were of very different temperaments. Picabia was a rich and perhaps spoiled, who loved woman and parties, quite different temperamentally to the quiet cerebral Duchamp. But having said that, Picabia was a highly intelligent man and in touch with what was happening. It would appear they were close and shared radical concepts and thoughts. Perhaps Duchamp enjoyed the high living with Picabia, it's not all that clear from the information.
Picabia was present at the Armory show where he connected with the famous Photographer Alfred Stieglitz and spearheaded the establishment of new york DaDa which Duchamp was shortly to join. So just how close they were is uncertain since it seems to my mind, they were of very different temperaments. Picabia was a rich and perhaps spoiled, who loved woman and parties, quite different temperamentally to the quiet cerebral Duchamp. But having said that, Picabia was a highly intelligent man and in touch with what was happening. It would appear they were close and shared radical concepts and thoughts. Perhaps Duchamp enjoyed the high living with Picabia, it's not all that clear from the information.
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| Picabia Loved life in the fast lane, fast cars and fast women, extrovert vain. . . |
Toward the end of 1912, they went on holiday together
Duchamp went on a holiday in Switzerland with Picabia, his wife Gabrielle and the french poet Apollinaire. Picabia described the trip as one of their "forays of demoralisation which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... the disintegration of the concept of art". Duchamp wrote a journal of the trip in which he deliberately avoids logical conclusions and deliberately obscures connections based on ironic word associations. It seems upon his return he was finished with "retinal" art and began putting together an idea inspired by a play he saw. It was a stage performance of an adaptation of Raymond Roussel's 1910 novel, Impressions d'Afrique, which featured plots that turned in on themselves, word play, surrealistic sets and humanoid machines.
Duchamp went on a holiday in Switzerland with Picabia, his wife Gabrielle and the french poet Apollinaire. Picabia described the trip as one of their "forays of demoralisation which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... the disintegration of the concept of art". Duchamp wrote a journal of the trip in which he deliberately avoids logical conclusions and deliberately obscures connections based on ironic word associations. It seems upon his return he was finished with "retinal" art and began putting together an idea inspired by a play he saw. It was a stage performance of an adaptation of Raymond Roussel's 1910 novel, Impressions d'Afrique, which featured plots that turned in on themselves, word play, surrealistic sets and humanoid machines.
Duchamp was quite capable of creating his ironic intellectual fantasies without the help of Picabia. But the visual connection in the figures is clearly visible
Picabia's game was to remove all personality from his depictions and man's thoughts and emotions are simply repetitive and mechanical He tried deliberately to remove all expressive notions from his work and make it appear as clinical as possible.
Picabia's game was to remove all personality from his depictions and man's thoughts and emotions are simply repetitive and mechanical He tried deliberately to remove all expressive notions from his work and make it appear as clinical as possible.
This "blueprint" appearance seems to have been the approach borrowed by Duchamp as well as the interplay between the sexes in which love and romance is reduced to the workings of an internal combustion engine. . . or in Duchamp's case, a chocolate grinder. . .
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| The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) |
So the work is a comment on the mysterious connection between men and woman as well as a 20th Century response to the religious orthodoxy of the Catholic church and their depictions of mother Mary in popular diptychs of the Renaissance
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| The Assumption of the Virgin or Frari Assumption is a large altarpiece panel painting in oils by the Italian Renaissance artist Titian, painted in 1515–18. On the high altar of the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari or Frari church in Venice. |
The same year, Duchamp also attended a performance of a stage adaptation of Raymond Roussel's 1910 novel, Impressions d'Afrique, which featured plots that turned in on themselves, word play, surrealistic sets and humanoid machines. He credited the drama with having radically changed his approach to art, and having inspired him to begin the creation of his The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass. Work on The Large Glass continued into 1913, with his invention of inventing a repertoire of forms. He made notes, sketches and painted studies, and even drew some of his ideas on the wall of his apartment.
Toward the end of 1912, he traveled with Picabia, Apollinaire and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia through the Jura mountains, an adventure that Buffet-Picabia described as one of their "forays of demoralization, which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... the disintegration of the concept of art".[27] Duchamp's notes from the trip avoid logic and sense, and have a surrealistic, mythical connotation.
Duchamp painted few canvases after 1912, and in those he did, he attempted to remove "painterly" effects, and to use a technical drawing approach instead.
His broad interests led him to an exhibition of aviation technology during this period, after which Duchamp said to his friend Constantin Brâncuși, "Painting is washed up. Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? Tell me, can you do that?".[27] Brâncuși later sculpted bird forms. U.S. Customs officials mistook them for aviation parts and attempted to collect import duties on them.
In 1913, Duchamp withdrew from painting circles and began working as a librarian in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève to be able to earn a living wage while concentrating on scholarly realms and working on his Large Glass. He studied math and physics – areas where exciting new discoveries were taking place. The theoretical writings of Henri Poincaré particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and that no theory could be considered "true". "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality", Poincaré wrote in 1902.[28] Reflecting the influence of Poincaré's writings, Duchamp tolerated any interpretation of his art by regarding it as the creation of the person who formulated it, not as truth.
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, or The Large Glass was partly inspired by author Raymond Roussel's use of homophones, words that sound alike but have different meanings. Duchamp frequently resorted to puns and double-meanings in his work.With The Large Glass, he sought to make an artwork that could be both visually experienced and "read" as a text. After attending a performance of Roussel's Impressions d'Afrique, Duchamp envisioned a sculptural assemblage as a stage of sorts. Preliminary studies for this stage, which would have been over nine feet tall, included depictions of an abstracted "bride" being attacked by machine-like figures in chaotic motion. The constructed gadgetry featured between the two glass panels was also likely inspired by Duchamp's study of mathematician Henri Poincare's physics theorems.
Smashed while in transit, the work lay in pieces in a crate from 1926 until Duchamp was able to return to America to repair it in 1936, and thereafter the work remained in a private collection until given to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1952. A turning point in the reception of the Large Glass, however, came with Duchamp’s decision in the early 1930s to publish notes and diagrams relating to the work’s iconography that he had written chiefly in Paris between 1912 and 1915 (he began work on the panes of glass themselves only when he moved to New York in mid 1915).
sources:
Jennifer Mundy, ‘An Unpublished Drawing by Duchamp: Hell in Philadelphia’, in Tate Papers, no.10, Autumn 2008,
Anistoriton Journal, vol. 11 (2008-2009) Essays: Art, Language and Machines
The Interrelationship between Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Raymond Roussel (under Roussel’s spell)
The Interrelationship between Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Raymond Roussel (under Roussel’s spell)
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