SMS Listening Party

February 1, 2009

Dissonent Plane, an experimental music store in Seattle, is partenering with Davidson Galleries to present an SMS listening party.  SMS is a "series of six portfolios of multiples released in 1968 by the surrealist William Copley" and "six of the works in the SMS portfolios are sound pieces", including a phonograph record by Marcel Duchamp.  The party will be tonight at 7 pm and will last three hours.

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Canada’s Only Stop: Prized Surrealist Art at the AGO this Summer

January 28, 2009 "This summer, reality will be suspended at the Art Gallery of Ontario as it welcomes Surreal Things, an innovative exhibition organized by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. A Canadian exclusive which runs May 9 to August 30, 2009, this is the first exhibition to examine the influence of Surrealism on the world of design as expressed in, theatre, interiors, fashion, film, architecture, and advertising. The show explores how some of the greatest artists of the 20t.. read more...

The National Portrait Galley to exhibit
“Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture”

January 27, 2009 The National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C will exhibit "Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture" from March 27, 2009 to August 2, 2009.  The exhibit features portraits and self-portraits of Duchamp, many of which have never been exhibited before, in order to "demonstrate that Duchamp harnessed the power of portraiture and self-portraiture both to secure his reputation as an iconoclast and to establish himself as a major figure in the ar.. read more...

MoMA Deifies Dada’s Top Dog, But Husband, Wife Steal Show

January 23, 2009 In a review of the Museum of Modern Art's Dada exhibition, Mario Naves contends that Duchamp's readymades have wrongly "become 20th century classics", while Duchamp himself has been "set...up as a deity".  Naves believes that Duchamp himself, who once said "I threw the bottlerack and urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty",  would have viewed this "with amused contempt". .. read more...

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...