In Reply to: Re: Interpretation of works by Duchamp posted by Glenn Harvey on January 26, 19100 at 07:47:18:
Yes, that was meant as a bit of a jab. I hardly think that determining whether Duchamp sewed or dropped his threads can make any real claim to substantially advancing the great issues of our day. However, whether collectivism or egoism gains ascendancy in our nominally individualistic culture is another matter. Does this provocation by Glenn Harvey mean that he has actually read Stirner? You are no doubt an erudite and fascinating man. I dunno, Duchamp apparently found him to be of overriding importance, surely you are familiar with Francis Naumann's discovery of the Artist File in the Museum of Modern Art on the subject. Duchamp considered him to be the most important influence in philosophy on his work. This is really not an arguable point any more. Duchamp considered himself a 'pictorial Nominalist'; the might seemingly be construed as a philosphical preoccupation. Stirner was the endpoint in philosophical Nominalism, on a par with Roscelin, who denied the reality of the universal, and, therefore, of language itself, a viewpoint that Duchamp also deemed valuable, in my opinion. Stirner did tend to ramble, didn't he. But in his ramblings he managed to undercut the philosophical underpinnings of State, God and Man, and the world hasn't been the same since. Duchamp's approach to the Object in art, existing as an Ideal, was to burlesque it, and Stirner also predicted this as the task of the defrocked artist of the future. Does this give you enough material to make another heavy-handed attempt at provocation?
No doubt philosophy cannot begin to exhaust the "enquiry into Duchamp". Here again Stirner is pertinent, since his project is meant to happen beyond philosophy.