Societe Anonyme

January 23, 2009 In 2007 the Phillips Collection in Washington DC launched its Center for the Study of Moden Art with the exhibit "Societe  Anonyme".  The exhibit is named after an orginization founded by Marcel Duchamp, Katherine Dreier, and Man Ray.  Societe Anoyme's goals were "to break down the prejudice which exists against the new approach to art" and to "stay ahead or abreast of the times...to stimulate the imagination and inventive attitude of A.. read more...

“Surrealism and Beyond” at the Cincinnati Art Museum

January 23, 2009 The Cincinnati Art Museum will be the only venue in the US to show the traveling exhibit  "Surrealism and Beyond: In the Israel Museum, Jerusalem", which showcases Dada and Surrealist art from the collection of the Israel Museum.  The exhibit features 234 pieces, starting from the beginning of the Dada movement and ending with recent  works.  It includes such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Rene Magritte, and runs from Febuary 15 to May 1.. read more...

Vezzoli’s Greed Premieres in Rome

January 21, 2009 "Milan-based artist Francesco Vezzoli officially launches his new faux perfume, Greed, at Gagosian Gallery in Rome, Feb. 6-Mar. 21, 2009. Described as "a signature perfume for the contemporary moment," Greed is specifically modeled on Marcel Duchamp’s 1921 perfume Belle Haleine, and features on its label an image of Vezzoli in drag, photographed by Francesco Scavullo. A special 60-second commercial for the product, directed by Roman Polanski and starring .. read more...

We are Duchampians

January 19, 2009 "Duchamp became influential for bringing this lesson of the chess board to the art world, showing that art, like chess, is a set of rules that functions independently of the positive properties of the pieces -- replacing the art object with a bike tire or a bottle rack, for instance. Asking his friends and contemporaries to trade the traditional chess pieces in for their own inventions at the Julien Levy Gallery was, in a way, the beginning the infiltration of his ironic.. read more...

Art and economics: Duchamp’s postmodern returns
Marcel Duchamp – Post-ing Modernism

January 19, 2009 "Marcel Duchamp's most radical departure from painting is embodied in his discovery and exploration of the ready-mades (1913-1927), works which usurp the notion of reproduction by highlighting the redundancy of a work of art as a commonplace object. According to Octavio Paz, the ready-made defies a dialectical interpretation of value, since it implies neither its negation nor its affirmation. Conceived as the 'plastic equivalent of a pun,' the ready-made is a mechanism t.. read more...

In the Manner of Duchamp, 1942-47:
the years of the “mirrorical return”

January 19, 2009 "In the Manner of Delvaux may seem too slight a work to inaugurate so substantial a reversal in artistic practices and style. After all, the photographic collage did not attract much attention at the time of its creation.  But Duchamp was a magician in the economy of small gestures. One of the delights that drew him to the world of chess was the way in which the simple movement of a pawn by one square could rearrange the dynamics of the entire board. In the Manner o.. read more...

Etant donnes

January 19, 2009 In his article Private Lives, Public Gestures Jörg Heiser  draws a surprising conection between Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés: 1. La chute d’eau, 2. Le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas)(1946-66) and the movie  Rocky (1976).  Heiser argues that the lamp in Étant donnés  is a reference to the Statue of Liberty, a connection farther established by the phrase "Le gaz d&rs.. read more...

Rrose Selavy, Man Ray 1921

January 19, 2009

"In choosing Man Ray to take a portrait of Rrose Sélavy, Duchamp co-opted the most adept photographer of glamour on behalf of the 20th century’s most celebrated conceptual art. Man Ray gives Rrose the lighting, the sultry look, that made him so in demand in magazines such as Vogue. In a series of photographs in 1921 and later in the mid-1920s, his camera searches for Rrose in Marcel Duchamp, and eventually finds her."

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Marcel Duchamp

January 19, 2009 "Embodying the intellect of his literary contemporaries Marcel Proust and James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) has been aptly described by the painter Willem de Kooning as a one-man movement. Jasper Johns has written of his work as the 'field where language, thought and vision act on one another.' Duchamp has had a huge impact on twentieth-century art. By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists as 'retinal' art, intended only to pleas.. read more...