Posted by Glenn Harvey on June 21, 19101 at 13:35:30:
The Large Glass is the result of Duchamp attempting a kind of pataphysical proof. He is looking to demonstrate that it is possible to isolate the ‘sign of
accordance'(quite specifically). That is ultimately his aim and the test of whether his experiment has been successful or not.
What are the factors at work in this attempt? What are the conceptual tools at his disposal? The ‘sign of
accordance’ between what elements? A succession of a group of 'various facts' that seem to depend on each other under 'certain laws'.
He wants to determine the conditions which bring about the ‘instantaneous State of Rest’(extra-rapid; perhaps a photographic exposure; an indexical mark or trace) - that which brings a sudden halt to this succession of interdependent ‘various facts’.
This accord (agreement/conformity) is between then, ‘this State of Rest’ (a particular) and a ‘choice of possibilities’ (authorised and determined
by ‘certain laws’). Here, as elsewhere, the thinly veiled language of photography and other physical-indexical processes is apparent in Duchamp’s notes -
This much has already been noted by Duchamp scholars.
Another re-framing of the problem by Duchamp takes an algebraic turn:
a
-
b
Here ‘a’ is the instantaneous state of rest or extra-rapid exposition (or exposure), Whilst ‘b’ is the (or a) ‘choice of possibilities’. Duchamp makes a
point in his notes here to the effect that this ratio of ‘a’ over ‘b’ is not given by a resultant (say) ‘c’, but by the sign (the horizontal bar) that separates ‘a’ and ‘b’.
Some speculations - hopefully not too idle. Duchamp seems to be searching for some process that is not a million miles away from the concerns of classical semiotics. For where can we find an almost identical set of problems set out (and at about the same time - just before the first world war)? Look at Ferdinand de Saussure’s ‘Course in General Linguistics’. Some of the
parallels with Duchamp’s writings from The Green Box - to accompany The Large Glass are quite uncanny. The interesting thing here is that - despite being at the beginning of a new ‘Science of Signs’, Saussure’s research was tinged with a kind of madness - and, in that sense, it makes a comparative study all the more compelling.
Saussure truly struggled with the relationship between the signifier and the signified within the structure of the sign - the sign of accordance in other
words between these two terms - because, although he wanted to demonstrate their distinctiveness, he was also at pains to demonstrate their conventional (or arbitary) ‘connectedness’.
Not only that, all the signs in the system (subject to 'certain laws') only derive their meaning by their relation to each other. In other words the meaning of a
sign is on significant in relation to what it is not.
‘The ultimate law of language is, dare we say, that nothing can ever reside in a single term. This is a direct consequence of the fact that linguistic signs are unrelated to what they designate, and that therefore a cannot designate anything without the aid
of b and vice versa, or in other words that both have value only by the differences between them, or that neither has value, in any of its constituents, except through his same network of forever negative differences.’
Like the cleavage between The Bride and her Batchelors, the relationship between the signifier and the signified is, coincidentally, a separation and a
pulling together. Saussure indicates that the two elements of the linguistic sign ‘are intimately linked’. Elsewhere in The Course, Saussure describes the relation between signifier and signified as ‘mysterious’ and accompanies his discussion with a diagram not unlike Duchamp’s ‘painterly’ Milky Way.
We could, perhaps go further and say that Saussure’s construction of the sign held within itself its own deconstruction and further, it could be argued
that Duchamp was more aware of this than Saussure - as, of course, within The Large Glass the relationship between the The Bride and Her Bachelors is represented by three (not one) glass ‘bars’ which are subject to feeble and faltering breaches - both electrical and mechanical...