By Arnold Rosenberg

Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess opened yesterday at Francis Naumann Fine Art Gallery, it is the first exhibition to explore Duchamp's interest in chess and its effect on his artistic production. It has traveled from St. Louis University Museum of Art and includes unique additions of artists represented by Naumann. 

<i>Also included in the show will be works by a number of Duchamp’s contemporaries—Man Ray, Georges de Zayas, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Leon Kelly, Beatrice Wood, Arman and Sarah Austin—that relate to Duchamp’s involvement with the game of chess, as well as a selection of works by contemporary artists—Charles Juhàsz Alvardo, Mike Bidlo, Donald Bradford, Russell Connor, Ingrid Evans, Mark Kostabi, Sophie Matisse, Daniel Meirom, James Meyer, Trong Gia Nguyen, Yoko Ono, Jennifer Shahade, Diana Thater, Douglas Vogel—some of whom have made works specially for inclusion in this show.  </i>

The exhibition will run through October 31, 2009. The gallery is located at 24 W. 57th street.

Antoine Pevsner, “Portrait of Marcel Duchamp,” 1926, cellulose nitrate on copper with iron.

Yale University Art Gallery recently closed an exhibition offering a rare opportunity to explore the process of fine-art conservation. "Time Will Tell: Ethics and Choices in Conservation" exhibits the techniques used and dilemmas faced by conservators and their process of preserving and restoring historic works of art.

The artwork ranges from ancient Roman statues to instruments to twentieth century portraiture. The collection includes a portrait of Marcel Duchamp made of highly perishable cellulose nitrate plastic. These objects and artworks are all tied together by similar conservation questions and problems introducing museum goers to a new way of looking at art.

Man Ray, Revolving Doors, 1926

Man Ray (1890 Philadelphia – 1976 Paris) created Revolving Doors between 1916 and 1917 as a series of collages made from brightly colored translucent paper, which became the major exhibit in his third one-person show at the Daniel Gallery, New York (1919). In 1926 these images were published as pochoirs (true to the original) in a portfolio, and in 1942, noticing that the early collages began to fade, Ray reproduced them in oil on canvas. These paintings appear in several photographs taken in his studio.

Revolving Doors is not the only instance in Ray's oeuvre—which is typified by self-references and quotes—where images are re-executed in different techniques. At least one image in the collage version of Revolving Doors (no. 5, Legend) was formulated earlier (albeit in a different structure) in an oil painting (Legend, 1916). The need for freedom and ingenuity which guided Ray's work in all media, and his awareness of the significance of the context in which the works are viewed, were tied with the license to (frequently) revisit a former invention. Thus, in printing the collage images, Ray relinquished the uniqueness and singularity of the "original" for the ability to disseminate these images in the context of the Surrealist avant-garde, whereas 25 years later—in an entirely different cultural era—he revisited the images originally created as an innovative, avant-garde collage, fixing them in a durable, traditional painterly medium.

This oscillation among media was a pivotal element in Ray's artistic practice. His definition of himself as someone living a double life as a painter-photographer indeed echoed the professional "categorizations" prevalent in his era; at the same time, however, in rejecting his ascription to a specific medium, as well as in the inventiveness which characterized his practice, and the underlying principle of his work—whereby the practice serves the image, and the medium selected for its execution (painting, photography, cinema, object) is the one deemed most suitable for articulation of the idea—Ray emphasized art's conceptual aspect. The explicit pleasure with freedom and the joy of playfulness only enhanced Ray's attentiveness to the possibilities introduced by the contingency or chance inherent in the creative process. Let us remember that play and amusement, as modes of inhibition-liberating stimuli, were considered a serious matter in the Dada and Surrealist circles, a fact which did not prevent Marcel Duchamp—Ray's patron, friend, and chess partner—from describing the latter somewhat critically: "Man Ray—synonym of the masculine gender … pleasure playing and pleasuring."

In 1916-17, when he initially formulated the transparency games in Revolving Doors, Ray was in the midst of his discovery of photography—which theretofore served him mainly to document his works—as a relevant artistic medium. The photographic thought and its means are clearly discernible in these papers alongside painterly thought, whereby I refer mainly to the applications of light, which will later become central to Ray's photographic work. His interest in light resulted in an engagement with glass plate negatives (cliché-verre) and solarization, leading to the invention of the Rayographs (photograms with an aspect of depth). In his staged photographs, Ray thus structured juxtapositions between shadows and objects, bright and dark areas, flatness and depth, charging a surprising dramatic effect with familiar motifs (such as portraits or still life).

The images featured in Revolving Doors are not abstract. The forms originated in objects which Ray found engaging, kept in his immediate vicinity, and even presented in many paintings and photographs. The flat images of the given object appear as the silhouettes of a colorful light projection, yet their coloration is based on the primary colors of matter—red, blue, and yellow, and the hues created by their overlapping. The intersection also generates the appearance of a third dimension, which is enhanced against the whiteness of the paper—as if the layers of paint, the contour outlines, and mainly the scratched silvery overcoat on the last print in the set (Dragonfly) are not fixed on the same surface. Ray's use of primary colors is not aimed at the scientific or the "essential," but rather accentuates the choice of readymade. Much like his objects, which served as a source for forms, the red-blue-yellow are indeed given—albeit under the specific, random circumstances of their formalizations, combinations, and superimpositions, they spawn an unexpected formal and colorful wealth, and are perceived as frames of the "decisive moment" extracted from a sequence of occurrences in progress. Aptly, the pochoir technique used for the images' reproduction is likewise based on concealment and exposure.

Image Source

Silence Sea and Marcel Duchamp(2000, USA/FRA 16mm, colour/b&w, 23 min.) was created from found 16mm footage of Marcel Duchamp and his wife Teeny playing a game of chess. He is pretending that he is winning but he is losing.

Follow to view excerpt or download entire film.

Film Still from L'age d'or

Vanderbilt University’s film series, International Lens, will begin Sept. 2. This series, which is free and open to the public, will feature 29 different films from September through December. Each screening includes an introduction as well as facilitated post-screening discussion.

In conjunction with "Surreal to Reel: Paris on Film" festival, International Lens will screen a 35mm print of Luis Bunuel's surrealist masterpiece L’âge d’or. This film was written in collaboration with Salvador Dali and includes such Surrealist cast members as Max Ernst. 

For complete schedule of films visit International Lens Website.