Duchampian News & Views
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The Duchampian Rebus
August 12, 2010Letter and word play is omnipresent in the Duchampian universe. From Rose Selavy and her noteworthy failure to sneeze to L.H.O.O.Q. and the Fresh Widow, Duchamp’s titles occupy absurd, almost self-canceling linguistic spaces of their own. In the company of images and objects, they take on an even less scrutable dimension. And the more the audience opens itself to the free play of language, the deeper the puns and puzzles go.
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Another Look at VVV
August 11, 2010The 1943 "VVV" portfolio of surrealist art and ideas, co-edited by Marcel Duchamp, is rightfully considered one of the highlights of the movement’s New York period. An exhibition of images from that era — currently at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art — opens up the extremely limited edition (20 copies were printed and personalized) to perhaps its biggest public ever. Duchamp. Breton. Ernst. Tanguy. Carrington. Masson. Calder. Chagall. Matta and more….
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Uncomfortably Reverential?
August 9, 2010 The Boston-area DeCordova Sculpture Park has created an iPhone app that allows visitors to eavesdrop on pre-recorded auto-commentary on the pieces on display. Notably, the recorded critics found Ilan Averbuch's "Skirt and Pants (after Duchamp)" to be "uncomfortably reverential," although there appears to be some cryptic debate in the database about the work. Such auto-commentary may resemble the silent discourse between the artist as mediator of the w.. read more... -
The Patron Saint of Readymades Strikes Again
August 5, 2010 Duchamp is invoked in reviews of Paris artist Claire Fontaine's new show in Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art. Like Duchamp, Fontaine enjoys the juxtaposition (and subtle manipulation) of everyday objects to create unique assemblies: stuffed tennis balls, bricks concealed in book jackets, coins with hidden blades. The secret violence lurking the mundane is an omnipresent theme for Fontaine. By contrast, Duchamp's premonition of a broken arm in the form of a snow shovel seem.. read more... -
Francesca Woodman and Marcel Duchamp
August 2, 2010The Duchampian ghost hangs heavy over the work of photographer Francesca Woodman, who is often described as the visual arts’ answer to Sylvia Plath. But if Plath needed an answer, then the persistence of mystery — the infrathin sense that resolution is on the tip of the tongue or eye — in Woodman’s heavily conceptual images may only open up new questions.
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More from Christian Marclay
July 30, 2010The New Republic notes that the work of "dilettante of near genius" Christian Marclay (currently at the Whitney Museum) is characterized by lightness deriving from the artist’s admiration for Marcel Duchamp as both conceptual thinker and gamesman.
Video demonstrates the similarities better than still photographs.
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The Bride Strips Bare
July 29, 2010 Despite lackluster notices, a current video retrospective at the Whitney Museum offers at least one highlight -- Hannah Wilkes' 1976 performance piece, "Through the Large Glass." The short video both literalizes Duchamp's seminal assemblage as Wilkes plays the role of the "Bride" stripping bare in front of the malic molds and subverts its masculine point of view. What does the Large Glass entail from the bride's perspective? Can we see the "Bachelors&.. read more... -
‘Another World’ Show Not Different Enough?
July 27, 2010 The Surrealists appear to have lost their power to shock the Scottish press. Reviews of the ongoing retrospective at the Edinburgh Dean Gallery have wavered between bewilderment and boredom, with a few dutiful explanations of how the Dalis, Magrittes and Duchamps on display fit into modern art history. Perhaps the trappings of the surreal -- the melting watches, headless hats and especially the museum-grade toiletries -- have simply become more retinal art for art patrons to.. read more... -
Active Art, Passive Entertainment?
July 26, 2010 Duchamp looms large over debates about the role of the observer in art. Is the observer a passive non-participant willing to sit back and be entertained by the work, or is he or she an active partner in the experience? Naturally Duchamp would opt for the latter approach -- even though it renders the artist less central to the process. And of course if both the artist and the observer are actively present, as Maria Abramovic is in her current MOMA show, then the encounter can .. read more...