Dear Rhonda,

Who said, he hated repetition? Exactly — that was the crucial point in staring at Marcel Duchamp’s work for almost one century. The solution does not lie in an agreement of the scholars, but in the deconstruction of this vain palace of interpretations. You are doing the main job. Just looking at the phenomena and describing the context — the context not of the original work, but of our own knowledge. It does not matter what his intentions were, but what we can understand. We all know that Marcel Duchamp will be of importance still in the next decades, much more than all the Picassos. But to realize this, someone had to come and tell us: He did not do the thing as he was declaring and explaining to them. We have to think on our own (Oh, gosh) — that’s the difficult thing. For this reason you are discovering seemingly simple things, such as the “Green Box” surprises and the 3 Stoppages (which really tell us “Stop the pages of art history”). Is it all so obvious, but not for blind men. Our beloved Marcel Duchamp is falling apart — that makes him hateable, but interesting again and again.

Regards,

Prof. Dr. Thomas Zaunschirm
Department of Art History, Essen University, Germany

p.s.- Many congratulations for your online-magazine. One could not wish for more.

Some Duchamp-related postcards from Thomas Zaunschirm:

• 
• 
• 

• Figure 1
• Figure 2
• Figure 3

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• 
• 

• Figure 4
• Figure 5
• Figure 6

click to enlarge

Illustration 1
Marcel Duchamp,
signed version of
Draft Pistons, 1914
© 2000 Succession Marcel
Duchamp ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris.
Illustration 2
Marcel Duchamp,
unsigned version of
Draft Pistons, 1914
© 2000 Succession Marcel
Duchamp ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris.

Rhonda Roland Shearer responds:

Your interesting and correct observation of the difference between the Draft Pistons in the Large Glass and his two photographs leads to other evidence of Marcel’s mischievous methods! Duchamp claims to have taken three photographs of fabric blown by air currents through a window (of the three photographs only two remain, as Duchamp claims to have lost the third).(See Illustration #1 and #2.) Richard Hamilton writes that the size of the actual cloth that Duchamp used was 1 meter square. ⁽¹⁾By opaque projector,

click to enlarge

Illustration 3
Enlarged drawing of
the Draft Piston

I enlarged the Draft Piston photographs to 1 meter square. The impossibility of this large 1 meter square size quickly became apparent, as the dots on the lace would then be more than 1 inch in diameter. (See Illustration #3.)Sewn dots depicted in Illustration #4occurring in antique lace are only, approximately, the size of a pencil eraser. Moreover, antique lace of similar type, when scaled to match the lace depicted in Duchamp’s photos, would measure approximately 3¾ x 4¾ inches. Therefore, the lace was not 1 meter square and could not have been in a window curtain (as scholars have assumed). Illustrations #5A, B and Ccompare old lace to one Draft Piston photo scaled to match the size and ratio of actual antique lace. #4C shows an approximation to the actual size of lace that Duchamp used for creating his Draft Piston photography. By further logic, one must also challenge whether the open “window” in the Draft Piston photograph is an actual window or the opening of a miniature box with the 3¾ x 4¾ inch lace hanging in front.

click to enlarge

Illustration 4
Phototgraph showing a
woman veiled in antique lace

As an additional point of interest, I discovered that if one puts the two Draft Piston images side by side into a stereoviewer, an impressive 3-D stereo effect is generated. In light of Duchamp’s interest and his history in creating many original stereoworks, (including stereo-pair images to be seen in stereoviewers included is his 1941 Boîte en Valise miniature museum of his life’s work), the two Draft Pistons photos, working as a stereo pair, is not likely to be accidental. Perhaps the resulting stereo image that one sees from the fusion of the two Draft Piston photos in a stereoviewer is the third Draft Piston image that Duchamp said he “lost” and has now been refound!

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• Illustration 5A
• Illustration 5B
• Illustration 5C

• Marcel Duchamp, unsigned
  version of Draft Piston
  s, 1914 © 2000 Succession
  Marcel Duchamp ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris.
• An old lace, shown
  here in red (originally in black)
  to better illustrate the contrast
• Comparison by overlaying
  the old lace with the
  lace in the Draft Pistons

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Notes

1. In a telephone conversation of March 10, 1999 between Thomas Girst / Art Science Research Laboratory, Inc. and Richard Hamilton, Mr. Hamilton stated that he only “made the assumption” that the “Draft Pistons” were fabricated by hanging a one-meter-square Net (net curtain or veiling) above a radiator (text in italics quoted from: Richard Hamilton. Collected Words. London: Thames & Hudson, 1982. p. 229). In addition, he mentioned that he “definitely did not get this information from Duchamp” and that he derived his guess regarding the size from the length of the “Standard Stoppages” and by looking at the 1914 photograph.

Hello Tout-Fait,

What a find! I’m an “anartist” and post-grad art history and theory student at the University of Essex in the UK (Dawn Ades and Margaret Iversen are my tutors).

This first issue was tremendous. More please!

Apropos of Rhonda and Stephen’s article on the “Standard Stoppages,” I’m probably not the only Duchampian to notice, also, that the two extant photographs of gauze (hanging over a radiator/in front of a window) bear little relation to the morphology of the “draft pistons” in the Milky Way of the Large Glass. Is this yet another case of Marcel’s methodological mischievousness?

Glenn Harvey B.A.(Hons) M.A.
Dept. of Art History and Theory
University of Essex, UK

William Anastasi responds:

I was pleased to learn that Katherine Dreier has been the subject of a doctoral dissertation. If there is evidence showing that the Tomkins and Marquis accounts of her relationship with Duchamp are off base, adjustments would be welcome. Dr. Angeline states that “correspondence between Dreier and Duchamp does reveal that the Large Glass was indeed accidentally broken, unbeknownst to both Duchamp and Dreier…” This is the explanation given by Duchamp to J.J. Sweeney and Pierre Cabanne. But Duchamp’s marvelous all-weather disclaimers proclaim that Each word I tell you is stupid and false and All in all I’m a pseudo, that’s my characteristic. He was begging posterity to question everything about him, and particularly his statements. I have not succeeded in reaching Dr. Angeline to learn of his sources, but if he is citing letters from the artist, these disclaimers may apply. In any case, (and especially in view of these famous remarks) letters cannot reveal that the Large Glass was accidentally broken, they can only say so.

Marcel Duchamp was clearly creating his own myth. A telling attestation of this can be found in the opening paragraph of William A. Camfield’s Marcel Duchamp: Fountain(Houston: The Menil Collection, 1989). Before embarking on a 180-page dissertation about this enormously influential work from 1917, Mr. Camfield cautions, “We do not even know with absolute certainty that Duchamp was the artist — he himself once attributed it to a female friend…” For all we can tell, Duchamp may have been in collaboration with female friends even at this early date.

William Anastasi
New York, NY

 

Dear Tout-Fait, Congratulations on an exciting and generally brilliant issue! As a co-editor of an online arts journal (PART, http://web.gsuc.cuny.edu/dsc/part.html) I am impressed with what you have done. One quibble — the Anastasi article about the Large Glass, while intriguing, unfortunately falls into the same wrongheaded cliches about Katherine Dreier and her relationship to Duchamp that the general literature has perpetuated for far too long. My doctoral dissertation on Dreier tries to present a more even-handed version of their relationship and it is a shame that an otherwise adventurous article would rely on as flippant a source as Tomkin’s biography and simply repeat its glib assertions. Moreover, the correspondence between Dreier and Duchamp does reveal that the Glass was indeed accidentally broken, unbeknownst to both Duchamp and Dreier, while in storage/transit. Duchamp was in Europe at the time and in fact had to travel to the States expressly to repair the Glass. The relationship to Jarry still intrigues. I just think it is time that art historians remembered to not sacrifice fact in the make of a theory. Best Regards, Dr. John Angeline The Graduate Center at City University of New York

click to enlarge


Figure 1
Sir Roger’s Infusion Apparatus,
A Catalogue of Surgical
Instruments and Medical
Appliances,Allen &
Hanburys Ltd., London, 1938, p. 186

To the Editor:

Stimulated by the article “Paris Air” or “Holy Ampule” by Girst and Shearer in the December 1999 issue ofTout-fait, I conducted some research about the history of infusion medicine. The “Paris Air” ampule used by Duchamp for his artwork combines three main functions of an infusion apparatus. First it can be used as a closed vessel to keep sterilized fluids. Second it can be used as an infusion apparatus. (One simply has to break the far glass ends, connect a tube infusion system to the lower one and gravity draws the fluid into the patient’s vein.) Third it is the most convenient apparatus to hang over the patient’s bed because of its glass hook. Most strikingly, the “Paris Air” ampule combines all three functions in one piece made of the same uniform material.

By using a medical infusion ampule for his artwork Duchamp cites, likely without knowing, from a very interesting part of the history of medicine. Blood letting as a medical treatment has been known since ancient times, but its contrary “infusion” was not tried until Harvey discovered the system of blood circulation in the mid 17th century. In 1656 Sir Christopher Wren wrote the first report about experiments of injections into dogs‘ veins. Although he was a successful medical scientist of his time he changed his profession in 1665 to architecture and built fifty churches in London including the famous St. Paul’s Cathedral. (Remember that the ancient Egyptian god of medicine, Imhotep, used to be a physician and architect as well.) The first report of venous injections into humans was published by Johann Sigismund Elsholtz in Berlin in 1665. ⁽¹⁾ Lacking proper materials like small needles and microbiological knowledge like methods of sterilization, the next reports suggesting infusions as a standard medical treatment were not published before the late 19th century. Most of these reports describe different infusion equipment as well as methods of sterilization. Again, it took nearly two to three decades until infusions became a well-established treatment in World War I and World War II.

click to enlarge

Figure 2
Closed Sterile Ampoule,
de l’Asepsie dans la Pratique
Chirurgicale Procedes de Sterilisation,
de Robert & Leseurre, 1930, 141

Closed ampules as a container of pharmaceutical products were first described by Harnack in 1883 ⁽²⁾. Three years later they were brought into mass production by Limousin in Paris⁽³⁾.

Most of the first infusion vessels were open systems like the example of Sir Roger’s infusion apparatus (figure 1)⁽⁴⁾. It resembles the shape of the “Paris Air” ampule, but the top end is open and bears a metal hook. Also some closed sterile ampules existed like the one described by de Robert & Leseurre in 1903 (figure 2), which combined a sterile container and infusion apparatus⁽⁵⁾.

The one report about an infusion apparatus which resembles the “Paris Air” ampule best was published by Maurice Boureau in Paris in 1898 (figure 3) ⁽⁶⁾. Boureau describes a method of sterilization and the use of what he calls an “Infusion Ball” for infusing “Serum Artificial.” In medical terms “Serum Artificial” is synonymous to “Serum Physiologique” which is also printed on the “Paris Air” ampule and describes a 0.7% – 0.9% Sodium Chloride solution.

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Infusion Apparatus, published
by Maurice Boureau in Paris,
1930, seen from
Zur Entwicklung der Infusion
slösungen in der ersten Hälfte
des 20. Jahrhunderts,
Karin Bischof, Diss. Basel,
1995, p. 307

Some questions still remain unanswered. 1. If Boureau’s report is from 1898 but Duchamp didn’t buy his ampule till 1919, could he have bought an actual “Infusion Ball?” 2. What size is an “Infusion Ball”? Trying to answer the first question one has to bear two conditions in mind: Pharmacists have always been very traditional, therefore using old pharmaceutical/medical instruments for decoration of their pharmacies. Moreover, early in the 20th century the production of pharmaceutical products was individual rather than mass production. The first condition leaves the possibility that Duchamp bought an old instrument. However, because of the second condition, it is still possible that Duchamp bought a new ampule because infusion systems and ampules varied a lot in shape and design. The latter may also be the answer to the second question. If the ampule used by Duchamp was an “Infusion Ball” there is no need to argue about the size. Like most medical/pharmaceutical instruments infusion systems were and are available in a great variety of sizes for different medical indications.

In summary, especially with the knowledge of the Boureau report, it becomes more likely that Duchamp bought an infusion ampule made after Boureau’s description for his “Paris Air” artwork rather than having had one produced by a skilled pharmacist. Why would a pharmacist produce a unique “Paris Air” ampule resembling the “Holy Ampule” when there already existed a pharmaceutical/medical apparatus like Boureau’s “Infusion Ball” which resembled the shape of the “Paris Air” ampule even better?

Yours,

Cand. Med. Tobias Else, Innsbruck, Austria

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1. Elsholtz, Johann Sigismund. Neue Clystier Kunst wodurch eine Arzney durch eine eroffnete Ader beyzubringen. Berlin 1665

2. Harnack, Erich. Lehrbuch der Azneimittellehre und Arzneiverordnungslehre. Auf Grund der dritten Auflage des Lehrbuchs der Arzneimittellehre von R. Buchheim und der Pharmacopoea Germanica. ed. II. Hamburg/Leipzig 1883.

3. Limousin, S. “Ampules hypodermiques, nouveau mode de preparation des solutions pour les injections hypodermiques” in Archives de Pharmacie I, 1886.

4. Figure taken from Allen & Hanburys Ltd. A Catalogue of Surgical Instruments and Medical Appliances. London 1938.

5. de Robert & Leseurre. “de l’Asepsie dans la Pratique Chirurgicale Procedes de Sterilisation.”

6. Boureau, Maurice. “La technique des injections de serum artificial,” Diss. Med. Paris 1898. Figure taken from Bischof , Karin. “Zur Entwicklung der Infusionslösungen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts,” Diss. Basel 1995

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Rhonda Roland Shearer responds:

click to enlarge

Figure A
Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain, 1917

Figure B
Marcel Duchamp, Trébuche
t (Trap), 1917

Figure C
Marcel Duchamp,
Hat Rack, 1917

We truly appreciate the effort that you made to research the historical context for Duchamp’s alleged “Paris Air Medical Ampule.”

Despite Duchamp’s contention that his objects were mass-produced readymades, the fact remains that no exact duplicate exists for any of his productions in the historical record. No scholar has ever found — in any museum catalogue or collection, or dealers’ storerooms — any exact object (urinal, coatrack, hatrack, etc.) that, according to Duchamp’s claims, was mass produced, store bought and readymade. Is this not strange? If an object is mass produced, by definition and logic, the attempt to find a duplicate design should not be analogous to searching for a needle in a haystack or scraping the bottom of a barrel, as has been the case.

So little evidence exists for the art historical othodoxy’s assumption — namely, that readymades are mass produced, and were therefore readily found in stores. Therefore, a reversal of the typical question of evidence about the status of Duchamp’s objects must be proposed. We should be persuaded by, and judge only by, direct evidence any claim that Duchamp objects are, in fact, readymade.

Using three illustrations of infusion devises, your letter lists three criteria met by Duchamp’s ampule in your judgement.

1. A closed vessel for sterilization
2.It can be used as an infusion system (with a bottom to break for connection to a tube)
3.”Convenient apparatus to hang over the patient’s bed because of the glass hook”

Yet when I look at your three illustrations, I fail to follow your conclusion that the Paris Air ampule “combines all three functions in one piece made of the same uniform material.”

Figure 1 does not have a glass hook and, like Figure 2, is safely and securely held by a metal clasp. Therefore the hook and the ampule are separate, not uniform materials as in Duchamp’s ampules. Indeed, Figure 3 is very suggestive — but unlike Figure 1 and 2, which appear to be accurate technical drawings from medical catalogues, Figure 3 with its inclusion of a hanging curtain and rough, hand-drawn quality is unclear. Considering Figure 3’s earlier 19th century date, this device was replaced by more practical and safe designs shown in Figure 1 and 2. The cylinder form of Figure 2 shares, with the mass-produced ampules developed in France during the first years of the 20th century, a shape that can be safely packed into boxed rows (see my illustration A of an early 20th century ampule mass-production factory).

click to enlarge

Illustration A
Photograph showing a factory
mass-producing ampules,
France, early 20th century

I have handled many European and American ampules and have “opened” them (see video). It would have been very tricky to attach a hose to the jagged end of an ampule. If indeed a glass hook was ever incorporated (as Figuer 3 is unclear), the motion of a patient’s arm would have led to stress on a glass hook that would likely cause it to break or become dislodged. Logic and practicality would lead to the further development of a metal, not a glass hook — as shown by the historical chronology held within your illustrations, beginning with Figure 3, then Figure 1, and 2 as the most historically recent in the series.

But let’s say that you are correct and that Figure 3 was among the early experiments in hand-made infusion devises that Duchamp saw hanging in a pharmacy as an “old pharmaceutical/medical instrument for decoration” (as you write). Is this one-of-a kind and obsolete hand-made infusion ampule to be accepted by us as evidence of Duchamp’s use of a mass produced, easily found, store-bought readymade object?

As to size, I believe that the facts about sizes of infusion balls actually used and made would be extremely important to know. For example, what if infusion ampules — even early custom-made ones — were only more than 125 cc in volume? This fact would further indicate that Duchamp had his own ampule made. Or on the contrary, if you discovered that infusion ball ampules were only made in 35 cc and 125 cc in volume, this would suggest that Duchamp exploited the two standard sizes for his original 1919 and 1941 Boite en Valiseversions, etc. Furthermore, we have testimony by experts that a pharmacist would not have needed unusual skills to convert a mass-produced ampule into a custom-made version similar to Duchamp’s larger 1919 and smaller 1941 Paris Air objects. In fact, Duchamp tells us that he had his 1941 ampules version custom made.

• Click image for video (QT 2.6MB)
• Click image for video (QT 2.6MB)
• Click image for video (QT 2.0MB)

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• Demonstration of the
  breaking of two antique
  ampules at the Art Science
  Research Laboratory, NY
• More contemporary
  ampule(with thicker glass)
• Display of various
  antique ampules at ASRL, NY

I believe that the question of Duchamp’s readymade ampule is very much aided by your research, but must still continue! I would love to find out more about infusion devices. If, in fact, infusion balls were “available in a great variety of sizes for different medical indications,” evidence and images of mass-produced infusion balls matching Duchamp’s Paris Air (1919) should readily be found, and should now be in the historical record in a duplicate form, not just as resemblances. A duplicate of Paris Air (1919) (alas, for people who want to believe in readymades) has not yet been found. We may be facing another Loch Ness monster or Big Foot. People will believe that Duchamp’s Paris Air (1919) ampule was a mass-produced readymade even in the face of little or no evidence.

Figs. A, B and C
© 2005 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

Cliquez pour agrandir

La brochure. Voyage à travers le Grand Verre
par Jean Suquet,Centre Georges Pompidou, 24 octobre 1995 – 12
février 1996.
Cliquez ici pour le Grand Verre, un film de Dominique Lambert

Une diapositive du Grand Verre est projetée sur le mur blanc d’une chambre sous les toits. A droite, un porte se devine. Fermée. Le narrateur entre dans le cône de projection et, devenu la proie des ombres portées, il leur transfuse son souffle. Duchamp a laissé le Grand Verre aux trois quarts transparent pour qu’en filigrane de la machinerie extravagante qui bat la parade au premier plan on puisse lire un poëme. Sans les mots, pas de moteur. Crépite avec le titre le premier allumage : La Mariée mis à nu par ses célibataires, même. Au ciel, la Mariée. A terre, les célibataires. Entre eux, la ligne d’horizon. Elle est, dit Duchamp, le vêtement de la Mariée. Malheureux célibataires qui rêvent de mise à nu! Ils portent dans leur propre regard le voile qu’ils brûlent de dégrafer.

La ligne d’horizon est une limite imaginaire qui recule à mesure qu’on avance vers elle. Fatale dérobade dont les célibataires vont devoir se désensorceler. Rejoignons les neuf bonshommes rouges qui nous ressemblent comme des frères. Ficelés dans des uniformes étriqués, cloués au sol par leurs semelles de plomb, ils n’en sont pas moins mis en émoi par une échappée de gaz d’éclairage qui, en 1912, était le sang des lumières de la ville. Cet esprit s’élance dans un voyage qui le fait passer par tous les états de la matière. Solidifié, liquéfié en une flaque, il erre jusqu’à ce qu’un poids tombé on ne sait d’où le fasse rejaillir en éclaboussures. Il explose. Il déclare sa flamme. Il s’éblouit de sa propre lumière qu’un jeu de miroirs projette vers le ciel. Au ciel, la Mariée est nue dans tous les sens du mot. Elle-même dénoue son vêtement qui tombe à ses pieds et s’arrondit autour du monde. Elle échappe à tout contour, récuse toute représentation. Sur le Grand Verre on ne voit d’elle qu’un hiéroglyphe difficile à déchiffrer tant qu’on n’y reconnaît pas la chrysalide déchiquetée d’une reine des abeilles que le vol nuptial a évaporée dans les nuages.

Cette reine est vivante. Son pouls bat. De beaux temps en tempêtes elle s’épanouit en une voie lactée chair. Et la chair se fait verbe. Des lettres emportées par le vent portent aux célibataires ordres et autorisations. Et oui! dans le Grand Verre, c’est la feme qui dicte la loi. Comment fait-elle descendre jusqu’à terre son bon vouloir? Grâce à un deus ex machina qui noue le lien entre le haut et le bas. Duchamp l’a personnifié par un guéridon. Le dieu frappe à la porte sous les haillons du vagabond. La déesse s’habille en putain et en fait croustiller à lèvres chaudes le vocabulaire. Ce dernier invité à la noce se nomme : Le Soigneur de gravité. Médecin dissipé dans la transparence non seulement il s’active pour que la pesante heure soit délivrée de la pesanteur mais il donne à qui sait l’entendre son remède: guéris donc! Et si tu es gai, ris donc! Guérir la gravité, c’est rire. Voilà, résumé à grandes enjambées, le conte de fée des temps modernes qui raconte comment le voyage de gaz d’éclairage se termine dans l’éblouissement. Comment l’envolée de la Mariée la conduit à l’épanouissement. Avec pour moteur, la jouissance.

Au cœur de ces trois mots, à condition de n’avoir pas perdu l’innocence de chercher l’or dans l’oreille, il y a le mot de la fin: OUI. Le narrateur retraverse les ombres portées, pousse la porte, et sort. C’est à dire qu’il ENTRE dans le Grand Verre. Dans le rectangle noir où DANSE le Soigneur de gravité, à hauteur de l’horizon, un bras nu de femme brandit un bec Auer. Allumé.

Animation – Copyright 1999 Dennis Summers

This is an animation based on the artwork created by Marcel Duchamp titled The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. I have recreated it as a 3D model and animated its motion loosely-based on his “book” the Green Box, which explained how the piece “works.” Furthermore, I have explained why and how the glass came to be cracked.

This animation was created using 3D StudioMAX and Sound Forge and Acid Music.

Entire Length: 2:00 minutes

Comments by Francis M. Naumann:

In a masterful and amusing animation, Dennis Summers has made one of the key monuments of twentieth-century art — Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (better known by its abbreviated title: the Large Glass) — come alive. In a careful analysis of Duchamp’s notes for this elaborate mechanical construction, it is clear that he designed every detail to “function,” that is so that each part would move in tandem and sequentially, like an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. Summer’s animation makes the heretofore only imagined visible, as we watch the desires of nine sexually-aroused Bachelors progress through a hazardous and circuitous route as they strive to attain union with their ever elusive and unattainable Bride.

[VHS tapes are available by contacting dennis@quantumdanceworks.com]

click to enlarge

Brochure for Jean Suquet,
Voyage through the Large
Glass,Centre Georges
Pompidou, 24 October,
1995-12 February, 1996

 
A note on the translation:
Some French words from the original have been included in this translation to show the wordplay that takes place in Jean Suquet’s text which cannot be translated exactly into English. Also, in the original, several words were italicized for emphasis. Those words have been underlined in the translation since the added French has been set off in italics, as is customary. These minor adjustments have been made in order for the reader to appreciate as much of the intentioned subtlety as possible.

Click images for Jean Suquet’s animation of the Large Glass

• 
• 
• 

  

• A slide of the Large Glass is projected onto the white wall of a room in a garret. On the right, a door, it’s obvious. Closed. The narrator enters into the projection cone and, having become prey to the cast shadows he transfuses his breath into them. Duchamp left three-fourths of the Large Glass transparent so that in the filigree of the extravagant machinery parading in the foreground we could read a poem. Without words [mots], with no motor [moteur].

  The initial lighting crackles with the title: The Bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even. In the sky, the Bride. On the ground, the bachelors. Between them, the horizon line. This line, Duchamp says, is the Bride’s clothing. Poor bachelors dreaming of stripping her bare! They carry before them in their own gaze the veil they can’t wait to unfasten. The horizon line is an imaginary boundary that recedes as one moves towards it. An inevitable escape from which the bachelors will have to disenchant themselves. Let’s join the nine red fellows who look like our brothers. Dressed in tight uniforms, nailed to the ground by their lead soles, they’re nevertheless in a flutter by a leak of illuminating gas, which in 1912 was the blood of the city lights. This spirit rushes into a journey through which must pass all states of matter. Solidified and liquefied into a puddle, it wanders around until some weight, falling down from who knows where, makes it splash out. It explodes. It declares its flame. It is dazzled by its own light that is projected into the sky by a playful configuration of mirrors. In the sky, the Bride is nude in every sense of the word. She unfastens her clothing, which falls to her feet and covers the world around. She escapes all outline, denies all representation. On the Large Glass we can only make out a hieroglyph too difficult to decode until we recognize, within it, the jagged chrysalis of a queen bee that the nuptial flight has dissolved into the clouds.

• This queen is alive. Her pulse beats. From fair weather to tempests, she blossoms into a milky way flesh color. And the flesh is made word. Some letters, carried by the wind, bring orders and authorizations to the bachelors. Oh yes! In the Large Glass, the woman dictates law. How does she have her will come down to the ground? Thanks to a deus ex machina which links the top and the bottom. Duchamp personified it with a pedestal table. The god knocks at the door dressed up like a vagabond. The goddess dresses up like a whore and cracks the vocabulary with her hot lips. This last guest to the wedding is announced: the Tender of Gravity. A doctor, undisciplined in the transparency, not only takes action so that the weighty time [le pesante heure] gets rid of gravity [la pesanteur], but he also gives his remedy to anyone who cares to hear it: so heal! [guéris donc!] And if you’re cheerful, then laugh! [Et si tu es gai, ris donc!] To heal gravity is to laugh. And so, resumed in long strides, is the fairy tale of modern times, which tells us how the journey of the illuminating gas ends in l’éblouissement [the dazzling]. How the flight of the Bride drives it towards l’épanouissement [the blossoming]. Powered by la jouissance [sensual pleasure].

  At the heart of these three words, if one hasn’t lost the innocence of looking for “or” [gold] in “oreille” [ear], here is the word at the end: OUI [YES]. The narrator walks back through the cast shadows, pushes the door, leaves. In other words, he ENTERS the Large Glass. In the black rectangle where the Tender of Gravity DANCES, at the height of the horizon, a naked female arm brandishes a gaslamp. Lit up.

click to enlarge

Charles Henri Ford in
his New York apartment,
age 87 (2 May 2000)

In addition to writing surrealist literature, being a photographer and creating art objects, Charles Henri Ford (b. 1913 in Mississippi) edited such avant-garde magazines as Blues and View. As Alan Jones wrote in Arts Magazine, “Ford opened the pages of his ‘newspaper for poets’ to the swarm of European surrealists (Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp) and the returning native sons and daughters all fleeing Europe for New York. Bridging the worlds of literature and art, View rapidly grew into an art magazine the likes of which the United States had never seen.”

Charles Henri Ford, together with Parker Tyler, authored the omnisexual novel The Young and the Evil, published in Paris in 1933 and banned in the United States and England for fifty years. His ambitions as a writer and editor brought him in contact with authors like William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Jean Cocteau and especially Djuna Barnes, for whom he typed up Nightwood in Morocco while visiting Paul and Jane Bowles. Ford became an early supporter of Pop Art and a crucial influence on Andy Warhol and his circle. Active as ever, he has recently shown his poster designs at the Ubu Gallery, New York and is preparing a publication of his latest collection of haikus.

On May 2, 2000, we met with a lively Ford, and his close friend, performance artist Penny Arcade, in Ford’s New York apartment to discuss, among other topics, a 1945 issue of View magazine devoted to Marcel Duchamp, which contained Ford’s poem about the artist, “Flag of Ecstasy.” We brought our copies of View to ask him about several curiosities.

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1922 – STIEGLITZ – 1972

Marcel Duchamp At
The Age Of 35

Marcel Duchamp At The
Age Of 85

Rhonda Roland Shearer: Do you know who took the photograph Duchamp at the Age of 85 that was published in the back of View’s Duchamp issue of March 1945?

Charles Henri Ford: You see that was an oversight, one never knew. The one to its left, showing Duchamp in 1922 is Stieglitz, isn’t it?

R.S. Yes that’s what it says but it doesn’t say who took the other one.

C.H.F. That’s right.

R.S. Some people said that this was a double, somebody that looked like Duchamp. But I think it’s Duchamp, and you know it is.

C.H.F. Oh yeah, of course it is. Otherwise it wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t …

R.S. …mean anything?

C.H.F. … it wouldn’t work. Duchamp was heavily made up to look old.

R.S. But you don’t remember who took the photograph?

C.H.F. Maybe I never even knew.

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Charles Henri Ford, “Flag of Ecstasy,”
published in:View, vol. 5,
no. 1 (March 1945), p. 4
© 2000 Succession Marcel Duchamp,
ARS/N.Y., ADAGP/Paris

R.S. Page four of View magazine reproduces your poem “Flag of Ecstasy,” an homage to Duchamp, superimposed on a detail of Man Ray’s “Dust Breeding”, showing the lower part of the Large Glass. How did this come about, “Dust Breeding” with your poem on it?

C.H.F. Well, it’s something that the printer superimposed.

R.S. Did you pick it out for your poem or did Parker Tyler who did the typography of your Poets for Painters, published in the same year and also reproducing “Flag of Ecstasy”?

C.H.F. I don’t remember … so much water under the bridge, I can’t remember.

R.S. It’s a fabulous poem.

Thomas Girst: Your poem on Duchamp is a great one.

C.H.F. You like it?

T.G. Yes, I do.

R.S. Could you read it for us? Do you read your poetry still?

Click here for video (QT 3.5MB)

Charles Henri Ford reading
“Flag of Ecstasy”

C.H.F. Why, yes.

Over the towers of autoerotic honey
Over the dungeons of homicidal drives

Over the pleasure of invading sleep
Over the sorrows of invading a woman

Over the voix celeste
Over vomito negro

Over the unendurable sensation of madness
Over the insatiable sense of sin

Over the spirit of uprisings
Over the bodies of tragediennes

Over tarantism: “melancholy stupor and an uncontrollable
desire to dance” Over all

Over ambivalent virginity
Over unfathomable succubi

Over the tormentors of Negresses
Over openhearted sans-culottes

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Charles Henri Ford,Poems for Painters,
New York: View Editions, 1945 (cover)

Over a stactometer for the tears of France
Over unmanageable hermaphrodites

Over the rattlesnake sexlessness of art-lovers
Over the shithouse enigmas of art-haters

Over the son’s lascivious serum
Over the sewage of the moon

Over the saints of debauchery
Over criminals made of gold

Over the princes of delirium
Over the paupers of peace

Over signs foretelling the end of the world
Over signs foretelling the beginning of a world

Like one of those tender strips of flesh
On either side of the vertebral column

Marcel, wave!

Penny Arcade: Marvelous.

R.S. Great, wonderful, beautiful. Thank you

C.H.F. I’m out of practice, I don’t read. People ask me
to read and I don’t usually read. But you win.

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Frederick J. Kiesler and Marcel Duchamp,
center fold-out tryptich for View,
vol. 5, no. 1 (March 1945)
© 2000 Succession Marcel Duchamp,
ARS/N.Y., ADAGP/Paris

R.S. I thank you, we love your work. Tell us about the Frederick J. Kiesler fold out in View’s Duchamp number. You said that was very expensive to do. It’s beautiful. Do you like it?

C.H.F. Yes, sure. It cost a lot of money. I think it broke our budget.

R.S. So what do you remember in terms of Duchamp and Kiesler doing this? Were they pushing you to, saying it had to be done?

C.H.F. No, they just turned it in.

R.S. Yup, and you just liked it and had to do it.

C.H.F. Yeah, I thought that I would risk all.

R.S. Yeah, that’s what art is about, isn’t it? Who is Peter Lindamood that wrote the “I Cover the Cover.” as an introduction to the View magazine of March 1945? Is that just a pseudonym?

C.H.F. No. Peter Lindamood was from Mississippi, he was a corporal in the military and so on.

P.A. Was he a friend of yours from Mississippi?

C.H.F. Yes he was, yes. He edited a special Italian number, didn’t he?

P.A. I don’t know.

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Marcel Duchamp,front cover
for View magazine,
vol. 5, no. 1 (March 1945),
© 2000 Succession Marcel
Duchamp, ARS/N.Y., ADAGP/Paris

Marcel Duchamp,back cover
for View magazine,
vol. 5, no. 1 (March 1945),
© 2000 Succession Marcel Duchamp,
ARS/N.Y., ADAGP/Paris

R.S. And so he apparently worked very hard on this issue, the Duchamp issue, it says. What this talks about is that he heard that Duchamp went through a lot of trouble to make this special effect for the cover and apparently there’s all sorts of levels of trick photography in making this cover. Do you recall?

C.H.F. No.

R.S. But it’s beautiful.

C.H.F. Yes it is.

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Marcel Duchamp,
cover for André Breton’s
Young Cherry Trees Secured
Against Hares, New York, 1946,
© 2000 Succession Marcel
Duchamp, ARS/N.Y., ADAGP/Paris

R.S. Another of Duchamp’s covers for View Editions, “Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares,” André Breton’s collected poems, shows the Surrealist’s face through a cut-out, thus posing as the Statue of Liberty. Did you ask Duchamp to make this cover?

C.H.F. Yes. Duchamp always liked to be surprising and Breton of course was noted for not cherishing homosexuals. That’s why André Breton was put in drag.

T.G. Breton supposedly liked the cover.

C.H.F. He liked any attention that was paid to him. I mean nobody was publishing his poetry in America.

T.G. That was the only translated volume of poetry resulting from his time in New York.

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Charles Henri Ford
flipping through his current
sketchbook (2 May 2000)

C.H.F. And then he came out with another edition too and they didn’t use his cover somehow. But its all water under the bridge…what I’ve been doing for the past few years is taking up where Matisse left off, doing cut outs and things but it was limited to the female sex so I’ve been making up for his neglect. I’ll show you an example.

R.S. Originally you’re from Mississippi?

C.H.F. Born in Mississippi, raised in Tennessee, if you don’t like my peaches, don’t you shake my tree.

T.G. From Columbus, Mississippi you started Blues in 1929, the short-lived poetry magazine which Gertrude Stein once praised as “the youngest and freshest of all the little magazines which have died to make verse free.” You were only 16 when its first issue came out.

C.H.F. Now I’m 87, about the same as Balthus and Cartier-Bresson.

T.G. And Balthus is still doing as well as you are.

P.A. Did you know Balthus?

C.H.F. I met him, once.

T.G. He’s very reclusive, Balthus. He lives in a tiny village in Switzerland, Rossinière, in a little chateau, with a beautiful wife maybe 40 years his minor.

P.A. Fascinating … we should send a message to Balthus, “Charles Henri Ford says ‘Hi.’ Still alive…”

T.G. “…we’re still standing, alive and kicking.”

R.S. Did you know the librarian at the Morgan library,
her name was Belle Greene? Did you know her?

C.H.F. No.

R.S. She was the woman that put the library together for Morgan. And she knew a lot of the artists, she posed nude for a lot of the artists and actually wrote an article in 291 and was hanging out with Stieglitz. I don’t know if you ran into her.

C.H.F. No. If she ran into me, I didn’t feel it. (An air of flirtation ensues.) Penny looks always surprised when she’s not at all surprised.

P.A. Not at all surprised. It’s your latent bisexuality.

C.H.F. Not only latent, it was executed.

R.S. Really?

P.A. Oh, yes. You can join the ranks of women like Frida Kahlo.

R.S. So does this mean that I have a chance?

C.H.F. Huh?

P.A. He doesn’t want to understand you.

R.S. He pretends he doesn’t. Does this mean I have a chance?

C.H.F. Oh. Yeah.

T.G.Your entry for the Dictionary of Literary Biography mentions your submission of a poetic prose piece to Readies for Bob Brown’s Machine. Your contribution of 1931 was intended for a Reading Machine that allowed readers to speed the words past their eyes via reels and a crank. The streamlined sentences should be as far away from conventional books as sound motion pictures were from the stage. You simply eliminated all punctuation and capital letters.

C.H.F. e.e. cummings did that too

P.A. One of the things that’s unusual about Charles is that he actually acknowledges other artists. Once I said to Charles, “One of the things that I really love about you is that you promote other artists.” And you said, “I don’t promote other artists,” and I said, “But you published other writers, you promoted other writers,” and you said, “I wasn’t promoting other artists, I was exercising my taste.”

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Charles Henri Ford
reading a haiku

T.G. And you still write poetry, right? You write haikus.

C.H.F. Only haiku… I have a thousand page book I think of haiku and a friend of mine is going to make a typescript for that book.

T.G. Do you write them daily, haikus?

C.H.F. Yeah, I guess so, but I don’t make a point of it. If they come to me, I have to write them down quick, otherwise they fly out of my head.

R.S. Would you read a couple?

C.H.F. Good with the bad
Charles is ready when you are
Good with the bad, what does that mean?

Unbelievable! Somebody’s going to type up all of those for a big book.

Let the other people be homosexual,
As for him,
He’s not that queer

 

R.S. How about this one?

C.H.F. To my unexpected
Nude niece: “Get out of here,
You look like a bum!”

T.G. In 1924 Duchamp published something more longingly on the themes of nieces: “My knees are cold because my niece is cold.”

C.H.F. Oh yeah.

T.G. I actually have another question about him for you.

C.H.F. Well, let’s see if I know the answer.

T.G. In recent years, Duchamp scholars like Amelia Jones and Jerold Seigel have discussed Duchamp’s possible bi- or latent homosexuality, a claim that seems solely supported by Duchamp in drag as Rrose Sélavy and other androgynous themes running through his oeuvre. Bisexual? Marcel?

T.G. Mm-hm.

C.H.F. Yeah, he’s really a real actor.

 

 

Picture Gallery: Charles Henri Ford

click images to enlarge

• 
  Charles Henri Ford,
  “Irving Rosenthal as l’Epoux Abandonné, Poem Poster Series, 1964/65 courtesy of Ubu Gallery,
  New York
• 
  Charles Henri Ford,
  “Fallen Womane”, Poem Poster Series, 1964/65 courtesy of Ubu Gallery, 

  New York

• 
  Charles Henri Ford,
  “Jane as Jane” (Violet/Blue), Poem Poster Series, 1964/65 courtesy of Ubu Gallery,
  New York
• 
  Charles Henri Ford,
  “One of the World’s Giant Queens,”, Poem Poster Series, 1964/65 courtesy of Ubu Gallery,
  New York

  

Four more haikus by Charles Henri Ford

Weeping and wailing
And grinding of teeth … you don’t
Have to go below

I don’t know if I’ve
Settled down or not but I’m
Not moving for now

You haven’t changed she
Said I thought I looked a
Little better I said

If it’s worth reading
Once it’s worth reading twice so
You know where to start

 

We are grateful to Penny Arcade and Indra Tamang, Ford’s longtime personal assistant and frequent collaborator, for making this interview possible. For more information on View, we recommend Charles Henri Ford (ed.), View: Parade of the Avant-Garde, 1940-1947 (with a preface by Paul Bowles), New York: Thunder Mouth, 1991

The interview was conducted at Charles Henri Ford’s New York apartment on May 2, 2000. It is preserved in part as a digital videotape (filmed by Martin Samsel) and available in full on audiocassette. © ASRL, 2000.