Posted by Thomas Girst on November 14, 19102 at 02:18:03:
: Dear Mark,
: I'm sure you'll find the quote somewhere in the interviews of Marcel Duchamp with Pierre Cabanne (New York: Da Capo, 1987).
: Here's a quote by Duchamp from 1949 coming close to yours:
: "Again, by retinal I mean that the esthetic emotion does not go further than the retina, and this, I feel is one of the characteristic qualities common to all the works of 'modern art.'"
: (see: Bonnie Clearwater, "West Coast Duchamp," Miami Beach: Grassfield, 1991, p. 108)
: During the discussion from which I quote Duchamp he was arguing - as he had been doing for at least two decades - against the merely retinal, the olfactory 'high' of the painter painting in oil. Instead he promoted the region of the 'grey matter' granting the Surrealists to have gone beyond the despised category of the 'retinal.'
: Best,
: Thomas