Those in central California may find food for thought at a UC-Davis lecture on “Marcel Duchamp’s Comet Haircut and Astronomy” coming up next month. Design professor James Housefield will address the suggestive linkages between Duchamp’s starry haircut, the artist’s lifelong interest in optics, and other uses of astronomical material in art and popular imagery. By inscribing the celestial onto the personal, one might argue, Duchamp bridged the abyss between the invisible and the visible, artist and dandy.

(April 21. The Davis Humanities Institute has details.)