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| 'Paris Air' or 'Holy Ampule'? | |||||
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Girst, Thomas and Shearer, Rhonda Roland (with audio and video) | |||||
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In January 1968, Salvador Dalí wrote the preface for the English translation of Pierre Cabanne's Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, stating that "Marcel Duchamp could have been a king if, instead of making the Chocolate Grinder, he made the Holy Ampulla, the unique, divine readymade, to anoint himself as king. Duchamp then could have been crowned at Rheims." (1) Duchamp and Dalí, "treat[ing] each other with great respect," (2) had spent several summers together since the late 1950s, in the small fishing village and surrealist haven of Cadaqués, on the northern tip of Spain's Mediterranean coast. Dalí had likened Duchamp to a king once before, in a painting of 1965 with the rather gargantuan title Salvador Dalí in the Act of Painting Gala in the Apotheosis of the Dollar, in which One may also Perceive to the Left Marcel Duchamp Disguised as Louis XIV, behind a Curtain in the Style of Vermeer, which is but the Invisible Monument Face of the Hermes of Praxiteles. (3) (Figure 1). While the painting establishes Duchamp as France's sun king and grand monarch, Dalí, with his introductory remarks for the publication of Dialogues, had yet another ruler in mind: Clovis I, pagan founder of the Frankish kingdom in the early Middle Ages who converted to Christianity only after the combined efforts of his wife and the bishop inspired him to do so. He was finally baptized at Rheims around 500 A.D. with 'le Sainte Ampoule' or 'Holy Ampule' (4) (Figure 2). Ever since Clovis, a 'holy ampulla' has been used to consecrate the kings of France. Usually in the shape of a small vial with a large paunch and an elongated neck, its form became diversified in the 16th century. (5) The Museum of Antiquities in Rouen, Duchamp's birthplace, holds two such ampules designated for holy water, possibly from the middle of the 18th century (Figure 3). (6) It should not come as a surprise that these bulging flasks more closely resemble Duchamp's Air de Paris of 1919 (Figure 4) than any pharmaceutical instruments of the early 20th century (Figure 5). In fact, experts testify that the shape presented by Duchamp as a readymade ampule looks nothing like a standard medical ampule of his time. (Listen to a message left on ASRL's answering machine by Professor Gregory Higby, School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin, Summer 1998.) The apparent oddity of a medical ampule containing a hook within its design adds to the argument that Duchamp's ampule stems from an earlier period. (7)
The ampule is not his only readymade linked to coronation ceremonies. In Duchamp's inscribed Comb of 1916 (Figure 6), we note another object commonly used for this grand occasion. Those combs were often made of "precious metals, carved and adorned with Scriptural and other subjects." (8) Paris Air was brought to New York by Duchamp as a present from Paris for Louise and Walter Arensberg. (9) Duchamp claimed that he bought the ampule from a Parisian pharmacist. Presumably containing "Sérum Physiologique," the pharmacist was asked to empty the glass bottle, let it fill up with air and then reseal it. Paris Air, first published as a postcard in 1937, was titled ampoule contenant 50 cc d'air de Paris (Ampule Containing 50 cc air of Paris) (Figure 7). (10) While visiting the Arensbergs in Hollywood during the spring of 1949, he discovered that his present to them had beeen broken. (It was later restored). He immediately wrote to his close friend Henri Pierre Roché, asking him to find a similar one in Paris. In a letter dated 9 May 1949, Duchamp explained: May I ask you for the following service: / Walter Arensberg broke his ampule / 'Air de Paris' - I've promised him to / replace it - / Could you go to that pharmacy on the corner of rue Blomet and rue / de Vaugirard (if it's still there) and buy / [this is where I have bought the first ampule /] an ampule like this: 125 cc and of the same / dimensions as the drawing; ask the pharmacist / to empty it and reseal the / glass with a lamp - wrap it and / send it to me here - if not on rue Blomet / than elsewhere / but as much as possible the same form thank you (Figure 8). (11)
About three weeks later, in a letter written 29 May 1949, Duchamp tells his friend (Roché seems to have suggested to present the Arensbergs with a miniature version of the ampule from the Boîte instead) "that the ampule must be the size I gave you, because that's the size of the (broken) original.Those in the valises are scaled down, like all reproductions (generally speaking). (12) This second version for the 'life-size' ampule (titled and signed on a label: 50cc air de Paris réplique type / 1949 R.S.), now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is generally assumed to be a selected readymade by Henri-Pierre Roché. It seems odd that after an apparently unsuccessful search for the "real thing," Duchamp's friend "found" - almost twenty years after Duchamp's initial Paris Air - an object closely resembling but strangely different from the version of 1919. (Figure 9) Most likely, Roché was aware that the small-scale replicas of the ampule which had been made in the 1940's (for Duchamp's Boîte) had been created by the firm of Obled, laboratory glass blowers, located close to Duchamp's studio in Paris at that time. (13) Furthermore, glass experts tell us that pharmacists would have easily had the ability to alter or make glass objects. (14) We suggest that the probable scenario was that Roché eventually asked a pharmacist to duplicate the odd shape of Paris Air - just as Duchamp had done when he conceived of the work in 1919. In an interview of 1959, Duchamp confirms George Heard Hamilton's suggestion that the 1919 version of Paris Air was the last of his actual readymades. (15) Let us consider four versions of Duchamp's ampule, including the 1964 Schwarz edition. All of these versions are obviously four different sizes. Puzzled by Duchamp's consistent '50 cc' title, we measured the volumes of the 1964 Schwarz edition and the Boîte miniature version. The Schwarz version measures approximately 123 cc; the original and the Roché versions appear to be slightly larger in volume and would therefore measure more. Even the 300 miniatures of the Boîte failed to match their shared name of 50 cc of Paris Air, for their volume measures approx. 35 cc (for documentation of our measurements, see Video 1 and Video 2). (Figure 10) But why then do we trust the original ampule to be a readymade when it holds more than double the amount stated by Duchamp, when its second full-size version is signed on a label with the initials of Duchamp's pseudonym Rrose Sélavy (resembling the lettering of the Rouen ampules)? Moreover, the 'Sérum Physiologique' on the label of the first version of Air de Paris is preceded by a small star (*), an asterisk, commonly used to distinguish words of obscure character or wrong usage. (16) Where is the 50 cc of Paris Air?
Notes
Fig. 4, 6, 9, 10 © 1999 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, NY/ADAGP, Paris. |
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