Malibu Discusses the Gesture Duchampian Fountains Can Make

March 1, 2011 In celebration of Malibu City, CA's March 28th anniversary, local councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich recalled Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a simple white porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt, when she nominated a community art project in which 20 recycled urinals, toilet seats, and sinks from the Malibu library would be transformed into art worthy of display in City Hall. However, proposal's reception thus far has been less than enthusiastic. The city council hopes that an ar.. read more...

Progenitor of cinema and Duchampian innovation at SFMOMA

February 28, 2011 Ever enjoyed a photo flip-book? You were on territory pioneered by the great proto-cinematographer Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge made his mark on the late 1800's by using photographic series to analyze motion. He's most famous perhaps for resolving the question of whether horses raise all four hooves off the ground while galloping (they do). Lesser known is his considerable influence on the avant-garde art of the last century, from the Futurists' kinesthetic ambitions t.. read more...

How many moves can you last against Duchamp?

February 27, 2011   Marcel Duchamp's unparalled innovation in avant garde art is paralleled by his equally impressive accomplishments in chess. Duchamp, a self-described "chess maniac," even sought to win the French Chess Championship, and although that dream never came to fruition, Duchamp represented France in numerous tournaments and competed avidly throughout the country. He placed first at the 1924 Chess Championship of Haute Normandie, and was duly awarded the title .. read more...

L.H.O.O.Q.: In Bronze and Magnified

February 26, 2011 Often appropriating traditional household objects and using them as the base ingredient for large-scale sculpture projects, Subodh Gupta has garnered a significant amount of attention both within his native India and abroad. Gupta’s final installations--even when amassed from hundreds of simple water utensils, as seen in Spill (2007)--are always glistening and grandiose. This juxtaposition between the ordinary and the, somehow, extraordinary is ever at the forefront o.. read more...

Recreating Etant Donnes at Francis Naumann

February 25, 2011 Jasper Johns called Duchamp's Etant Donnes, a sculptural installation of a naked, lifelike female limply sprawled against a lush woodland landscape,  "the strangest work of art shown in any museum." Visible only through a peephole in a brick-rimmed wooden door, it  has been variously understood as a send-up of nude-in-landscape voyeurism, a reference to the Black Dahlia murder (generally discredited), and a tribute to Duchamp's mistress of the time, t.. read more...

Duchamp down the catwalk?

February 24, 2011 Finally, Duchamp’s readymade bares itself down the catwalk at the just concluded London Fashion Week in the form of the urinal dress, a signature piece in Philip Colbert’s AW 2011 Rodnik Band Collection.  Colbert has compared his own Duchamp fascination with the inspiration of Mondrian to YSL; each a testament to the channeling of iconic art into fearless craftsmanship.  For Colbert’s eclectic AW 2011 Rodnik Band, he also referenced, cross ref.. read more...

Freeing Art History with a Ready-Print Urinal?

February 23, 2011 Thanks to the efforts of Rob Myers and cwebber, Duchamp’s infamous ready-made, Fountaine, can now be reproduced by anyone with a 3D printer and used in service of aesthetics, sanitation, or humor as seen fit. Though the updated version has been criticized for its dissemblance to the 1919 original--R. Mutt’s signature is notably absent--Myers doesn’t pretend to have created a replica. Instead, he offers a ready-print with the intentions and potentials of a.. read more...

Noguchi at the Crossroad of the Century

December 20, 2010 The list of artists who collaborated with sculptor Isamu Noguchi is long and impressive: Brancusi, Kahlo, Gorky, Graham, Cunningham, Ernst, Duchamp and many, many more. A new exhibit at New York's Noguchi Museum examines his life and origins as an artist in the context of his relationships with his initially more established colleagues in the world of dance, sculpture, architecture and the plastic and visual arts. Duchamp considered him an interesting thinker in the field of.. read more...

Susan Philipsz and the Non-Hidden Noise

December 7, 2010 The description of Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz as a "sound artist" is raising eyebrows among theoreticians who recall Marcel Duchamp's long shadow at the nexus between the ear and the retina -- which is to say, on the conceptual plane. Like Duchamp, Philipsz is a conceptual artist who works with sound to challenge existing categories and stimulate new experiential connections, but the presence of sound is peripheral to her real concerns. What Philipsz does, .. read more...