Duchampian News & Views
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An Invitation to the 1913 Armory Show
March 3, 2010 An intimate exhibition of artists' lists at the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture in Washington, DC captures a moment of poignant trivia for Duchamp scholars. One of the lists is by Picasso and contains his hand-scribbled list of artists worthy of inclusion in the 1913 Armory Show. Much has been made of the fact that Duchamp's name is misspelled, but the context is somewhat less risible: At the time, Ducham(p) was a somewhat promising but insular and most of al.. read more... -
Satie-Duchamp-Cage: Anarchic Happenings
March 2, 2010 The reverberations of Erik Satie's 1917 ballet Parade continued to sound well into the 1950s and beyond, thanks to John Cage's efforts to keep the anarchic experimentation of Satie and his collaborators vibrant. Whether such musical circuses are "modern," postmodern or hark as Duchamp in Willem de Kooning's estimation "back to Mesopotamia" is perhaps a question of relative perspective -- a conceptual illusion of sorts.A recent essay by Sheila Christofides celebrates the elega.. read more... -
Living out of the Suitcase in Miami
March 1, 2010 The Miami Art Museum will be highlighting works from its permanent collection, including a hard-won edition of Marcel Duchamp's Box in a Suitcase (Boite-en-valise), in its main gallery until it relocates to its new facilities in 2013. By doing so, the museum frees up institutional resources to prepare for the move while reinforcing its reputation as a premier artistic center for Florida and beyond.The otherwise low-profile inclusion of the Duchamp suitcase -- itself a portabl.. read more... -
Peter Liversidge’s Duchampian Propositions
February 26, 2010 Artist Peter Liversidge works by composing a series of "proposals" to create objects (facsimile dice, neon signage, mobile sculpture) and document situations (visits, encounters, meals); his current exhibition, at Edinburgh's Ingleby Gallery, collects 160 such proposals and their realizations to commemorate "the thrill of it all."While Liversidge's conceptual methodology is obviously in the tradition of Duchamp, Richard Ingleby, who's hosting the current show, is equally int.. read more... -
Warhol, from Dylan to Duchamp
February 25, 2010The Eric Firestone Gallery in Tucson will be exhibiting photographs by Nat Finkelstein, Carl Fischer, Michael Tighe, Santi Visalli and others associated with Andy Warhol. Some of the images have never been shown before in a public venue.
(Through April 11. ericfirestonegallery.com has details.)
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The Maori Readymade
February 24, 2010 New Zealand artist Michael Parekowhai has been invited to exhibit his work at next year's Venice Biennale. Much of his work has explored the New Zealand cultural identity (simultaneously imported and traditional) through the recontextualization of images and objects; an early breakthrough was After Dunlop (1989), which reproduced Duchamp's iconic bicycle wheel -- itself either a found object or a painstaking imitation -- in hand-carved wood. Another early work recast a lat.. read more... -
Readymade Tools for Rebuilding Haiti
February 23, 2010Curators from top museums, galleries and art spaces are banding together to raise money for Haiti through auctioning off readymade objects from nearly a hundred artists, including Jeff Koons, Terence Koh and musician Michael Stipe. Working in the Duchampian mode and organized in a grassroots style by Diana Campbell and Julie Ragolia, the “Tools for Thought” sale will take place on March 15.
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Duchamp, Game Theory and the Frame of Being
February 22, 2010 Glosses on Duchamp have become popular in game design circles, but the multi-dimensional relationship between the Duchampian career and game theory itself has not enjoyed such high-profile scrutiny. Nonetheless, a recent brief but insightful essay by blogger Stanley Wrzyszczynski pulls together some of the salient questions of how Duchamp conflates the creation of art with the act of framing an aspect of the world -- questions that reflect the inner rules of engagement betwee.. read more... -
Dorothea Tanning: Beyond “Birthday and Beyond”
February 19, 2010August will mark the centenary of Dorothea Tanning’s birth. Max Ernst knew early on that she was a deep dreamer, a heterodox surrealist and a chess player; she became his fourth and last wife. Barry Schwabsky at The Nation has anticipated the looming 100-year milestone to muse thoughtfully on her long career (she still writes) and sometimes puzzling reticence around the spotlight.