“He rides penny-farthings, tandems, tricycles, racing bikes—
and when he dies at the end, he rides on his bike up a sunbeam straight to heaven, where he’s greeted by a heavenly chorus of bicycle bells.”
Dylan Thomas, Me and My Bike

Hamm: Go and get two bicycle-wheels. Clov: There are no more bicycle-wheels.
Hamm: What have you done with your bicycle? Clov: I never had a bicycle.
Hamm: The thing is impossible.
Samuel Beckett, Endgame

The bicycle offered unsuspected possibilities for the depiction of the raised skirt.
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

Introductory Observations

• The bicycle tends to arouse sexual desire or excitement.
• The bicycle is a traditional narrative usually involving supernatural or imaginary persons and embodying popular ideas on natural or social phenomena.
• The bicycle is commonplace.
• The bicycle is an unmarried man.
• The bicycle is a branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.
• The bicycle gets you nowhere.

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Figure 1
Leonardo da Vinci, Bicycle Drawing,
Codex Atlanticus
(f. 133v)

In 1966 the monks of Grotto Ferrata, near Rome, discovered a sketch-apparently by Leonardo da Vinci, or by one of his pupils-depicting a bicycle-like machine complete with pedals, cogs, and chain mechanisms. (Fig. 1) The sketch was found alongside some caricatures, as well as some pornographic drawings. This scene could also be described as the collected works of Marcel Duchamp and Samuel Beckett.

Beside an Olympic skating oval, a world-class athlete (unable to ride outside because of the ice and snow) trains indoors on a real bicycle. The wheels, however, are set on soundless steel rollers: allowing the tires and rims to spin freely (at significant speeds) while keeping the bike and its rider stationary. We count this powerful, impotent spectacle as technology reversing technology (rollers unroll wheels), caught in a ceaseless loop of motionless motion. The avant-garde, too, can make modernity stand still-by moving it/stopping it yet again. Krzysztof Ziarek contends that “art is avant-garde to the extent to which it keeps unworking the technologization of experience by showing how, in order to reinscribe experience within the order of representation, it effaces historicity” (90).

The bicycle is very simple.

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Figure 2
Henry James

Leaving his fine suite in the Osborne Hotel, on Hesketh Crescent, feeling radiant and fresh after his hot morning bath, Henry James (Fig. 2) hopped on his bicycle and toured the sites of Torquay. Imagine it! Modernity takes shape in, and as, The Master’s black and yellow bruises-of which he was so proud.

Consider Renoir’s broken arm and Toulouse-Lautrec’s lonely, longing gaze at the velo-drome. (The pride of a sling; and legs too short to reach pedals?)

It sucks to write about bicycles. In that: it is much better to ride bicycles. Duchamp ride (Fig. 3): I would be doing lascivious things with my sprockets. Beckett ride (Fig. 4): I would be pedalling backwards and shitting on the saddle.

Artistical-historical (bland): the bicycle, the bicycle wheel (Fig. 5), and the objects of the bicycle are powerful symbols in the work of Duchamp and Beckett.

The presence of any technology that at once facilitates and complicates mobility is an interesting presence. Second thought: all technology simultaneously facilitates and complicates mobility. If the bicycle falls to this side of the modernist road then it lands in the ditch-water, if it falls to that side of the road it ends up in pasture. The modernist road has space for all mobilities: pedestrians, pedestrians on bicycles, pedestrians in motorcars, and even pedestrians in aeroplanes (emergency landings). But there is nothing more beautiful than a bicycle descending a hill by itself: ghost-rider.

The bike is a gender machine.

The modern is a technology machine?

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Figure 6
Image of F.T. Marinetti

In the climactic scene of F.T. Marinetti’s original Futurist manifesto-“The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 1909”-Marinetti (Fig. 6) and his car (the beautiful shark) are famously flipped into the maternal ditch only to be born again in the metallic, celestial muck of industrial modernity. The newly baptised Marinetti, now a begrimed singer-apostle of all things dangerous, violent, machined, and frenetic, is literally tossed into his modern-technological epiphany by an older, slower mode of transportation. He recalls, “¡¦ I spun around with the frenzy of a dog trying to bite its tail, and there, suddenly were two cyclists coming towards me, shaking their fists, wobbling like two equally convincing but nevertheless contradictory arguments. Their stupid dilemma was blocking my way- Damn! Ouch! . . .” (20). The moment is significant, it seems to me, not as some elegiac snap-shot depicting the obsolescence of the bicycle and thus the triumph of the age of the automobile, but rather the exact opposite: Marinetti’s tale constitutes a vision of the stubbornness and presence (the stupid dilemma) of the bicycle itself. Marinetti’s manifesto, caught in a Keystone-cop-like loop, is indirectly documenting the very complexities, ironies, and even impossibilities of mobility in the modern moment. It shows the tragic-comic intermingling of technology with technology, and technologies with the modern subject. For me, the image of these wobbling, contradictory bicycles, despite the fact that they lack the throaty roars of Marinetti’s racing cars, is profoundly moving, because the bikes are curious, hybrid machines: both connotative of the past and yet apparently crucial (if annoying) fixtures on this future, avant-garde road.

Mikael Hard explains that “Facing a world of tanks and assembly lines, and using telephones and automobiles, ‘modern’ men and women were forced to differentiate the uses of technology from the abuses. The proliferation of the machine into ever more areas of social and economic life led to a need to interpret its meanings in a much more comprehensive way than in the past” (2). These transformative technologies of the modern period gave rise to new economies, new cities, new narratives of progress and anxiety and thus, necessarily, new bodies. The modern technologies of the plane, train, and automobile, for example, are not only devices that enhance the mobility of the modern subject, but also contraptions that transform the subject’s relationship to landscape and being itself.

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Figure 7
Alfred Jarry on bike

Figure 8
Marcel Breuer,
Wassily Chair, 1925

Bicycles are a central contraption in the tropics of the avant-garde. From Alfred Jarry’s bicycle obsession (Fig. 7) (he slept with his bike at the foot of his bed), to Picasso’s uncanny handlebar bull-hornism to Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair (Fig. 8), inspired by the tubular steel of his brand-new Adler bicycle, the machine haunts avant-garde experimentation. And this is particularly the case in the works of two exemplary avant-gardistes, Marcel Duchamp and Samuel Beckett. While there has been some critical attention paid to the place of bicycles in the texts of Samuel Beckett (notably Hugh Kenner’s work), there has been rather scant focus on the place of the two-wheelers in Duchamp’s corpus and nothing, as yet, that expressly pairs the two artists’ fascination with the bicycle as modern machine. What I argue in this essay is not only that the bike is a crucial facet in the experimental work of both Beckett and Duchamp (allowing one to glimpse significant aesthetic parallels across genres) but specifically that the bike, in their works, comes to represent a crisis of mobility in the modern moment. My contention is that, for both artists, this crisis plays out most tangibly in the fields of language and subjectivity so that the act of “being” in modernity, for Beckett and Duchamp, comes to be playfully linked to the problems of the modern self in interaction with technology. This essay explores the nuances of this interaction by interrogating the place of habit, language, desire, and daily experience in both the avant-garde and modern environments.

The Ride

Any study of the Duchampian/Beckettian bicycle swiftly transports a reader/viewer into the neighbourhoods of ontology, eroticism, bachelorhood, gender, myth and its relationship to the modern everyday. In using the symbol of the bicycle, Duchamp and Beckett illustrate the tragic-comic bind of the modern subject: the body is at once liberated by technology and yet also dangerously dependent on, if not indentured to, its power. (The same scenario exists, generally, for the artist in relation to technology; in relation to the technologization of both the artist and the art in modernity). For the modernist avant-garde then, the question is how to respond to the technological revolution of the everyday environment, which necessitates a grappling with the revelation that technology and reality are mutually constitutive.⁽¹⁾ In other words, something lies beyond the simple bind of liberated/indentured in reference to modern art and the birth of the technological everyday. The avant-gardiste is clearly implicated, perhaps more explicitly than the non-artist, in the invention of the new: in the construction of his or her own unique aesthetic technologies. Therefore, the avant-garde artist becomes and is obsessed with the relationship between making and power; invention and history; progress and immobility. This suggests that the technologization of art and the artist is not just a one-sided narrative about cameras or cinema affecting painting and sculpture and novels. Rather, one sees-in Duchamp and Beckett most powerfully-that a toaster or a bicycle is also an art object, a site of desire, a mechanical conveyance, a glyph.

In this way, the technologization of art and the artist, plus the tragic-comic bind of the modern subject, is one way of discussing a competition of realisms: if there is no set trajectory for any given object then what results is either (or both?) experimental art or something like official status. The goal of the avant-gardiste may be to rethink history, rethink the experience of how one (a culture) gets to a confusion of signifiers, a multiplicity of meanings-and then to rework or restate or re-inscribe that otherwise blanked-out narrative, but to do so always provisionally (this can mean humour). The technologization of anything can therefore be the habitualization of anything, too, and so, in the hands of the experimental artist, the resulting “defamiliarization” is also always a new form of technology. Art restores order through disruption: we see that a bike can also “work” mounted on a stationary stool or that it does not need, as in Beckett’s Mercier and Camier, a chain to actually work. This implies that the avant-garde artist is declaring that no function is absolute and all functions are historically contingent. Perhaps modernity or modernism quite simply means: there is no going back, which then electrifies the present. Modernity (time) captures modernism (“time”) as modernism captures modernity. Modern art is implicated-as the Frankfurt school writers, most notably Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, have already shown-in the workings of industrial culture and this is an aesthetic boon of sorts but also a dilemma.

Krzysztof Ziarek’s recent work The Historicity of Experience: Modernity, the Avant-Garde, and the Event, boldly challenges earlier theories of the avant-garde-including the important work of Peter Burger, Andreas Huyssen, Jurgen Habermas, and Rita Felski-by insisting that discussions of modernist experimentation must move beyond a simple art/life dialectic. Ziarek proposes that the avant-garde be understood not as something outside or “other” to everyday existence (avant-garde art merely transforming the everyday through representation) but rather as something directly temporal. In both Duchamp and Beckett, the bicycle often morphs into a corporeal, body-like presence-one that profoundly questions the stability of definitions of the modern, human subject. Duchamp’s and Beckett’s appropriations of the bicycle are also knowing disruptions of the everyday “sense” or use-value or art-value of the modern technological object and consequently serve to challenge more general, conventional (modern) notions of mobility. These two artists thus lend credence to Ziarek’s, as well as Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe’s, theories of the avant-garde which stress that the classic avant-garde work tends to disrupt an object’s “stream of function” (von Berswordt-Wallrabe) and also then refigure the (ostensibly evacuated of history, transparent) everyday moment as a vital and fluid setting of the “Event.”

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Figure 9
Rover safety bicycle, 1885

Figure 10
célerièfre,1790s

The bicycle is a new genre, a radically unique object. It is at once a device that enhances human speed and propels the body through a landscape, and yet it is not so fast that the body is ever removed from the intimate motions of its immediate surroundings. The bicycle, for all its metallic presence, is a comfortable citizen of the back road, the country field, even the mountain pass. It has a relationship to the movement of the wheat as well as to the airy dips of the birds. As a nostalgia-contraption, it is predictably a locus for memories and childhood. As I discuss later on in the essay, the modern bicycle (the “safety” bicycle (Fig. 9), which very closely resembles our contemporary bicycles, was perfected around the late 19th century) has its technological roots in the 1790s’ French children’s hobby-toys called celerifere or velocifere (Fig. 10). From their beginning, then, bicycles have seemed to connote newness but also, perhaps more palpably, nostalgia and the vanished moments of youth.⁽²⁾ Cranking the pedals, or even just gliding down a hill, powers on the film of the past, a kind of Proustian recreation in which every new ride is always a tour backwards into time-lost. The bicycle is forever patient, too. Its simplicity is magnificent, how it waits against a shed, for example-not as a car sulks in a driveway or lurks beside the curb, but with a kind of Zen-like, friendly abandonment. The bike can look lonely, to be sure, but unlike other technologies of mobility (cars, planes, trains) it seems reconciled to melancholy; without ever being indifferent to, or utterly consumed by, its singularity. The poetics of the bicycle is infinite if only because-along with the complete entity known as “the bicycle”-each part of the machine (pedals, wheels, horn, handlebars, fenders, lugs, hubs, sprockets) resonates with particular, symbolic force.

The bicycle, importantly, is not just a double-sided object. It is multi-dimensional and it is therefore too reductive to state: “the bicycle has another side¡¦.” Yet the bicycle does exist-despite its halcyon glitter-as a protean modern object: it literally comes from (within) modernity. And quite possibly the bicycle can be seen as bringing modernity with it, pulling it out of the Victorian moment toward a late capitalist present. In the conventional cultural-historical narrative of European modernity-a tale that includes the spectacular entrance of planes, trains, and automobiles; the dramatic growth of metropolitan centres (and the elaboration of imperial networks); the birth of photography and cinema; not to mention the inventions of the telephone, typewriter and even tape-machine-the bicycle is a rarely-discussed, almost quaint participant. But for all its romantic-nostalgic energy, moving harmoniously through the ambience of sun-touched, pre-modern country lanes, the bicycle also helped create our modern/urban economies of mass consumption. Avram Davidson, in his short story “Or All the Seas with Oysters,” plots a brilliant, if idiosyncratic, evolution for the bicycle suggesting that safety pins are the larval and coat hangers the pupal stage of the machine’s gestation. What is fascinating about Davidson’s hypothesis is its mingling of the bicycle with other vital, but often overlooked, technologies of the modern. It seems to me it is precisely the apparent insignificance of the everydayness of the safety pin and the coat hanger that also gives the bike its power and poetics-all of these items are the overlooked, invisible dynamos of modernity.

The bike functions as a childhood emblem, then, but is emblematic too of Coca-Cola, Levi’s Jeans, MTV (Figs. 11, 12 and 13). Science historian Sharon Babaian explains that “The bicycle helped to forge the link between advertising and the mass consumption of luxury goods. It was the first expensive, non-essential product to be sold in such numbers-over 1.2 million bicycles per year where produced in the U.S. in the mid-1890s. Also, the bicycle industry was among the first to introduce annual model changes as a way of selling more products” (97). The bicycle, to use Raymond Williams’ term here, is “magical” but only as a revolutionary marketing tool-as a discovery, namely that within modernity a non-essential object could be engineered, mass-produced and sold for significant profit. The bicycle industry prefigured the automobile industry and thus anticipated the latter’s (soon to be more complete) construction and manipulation of appetites of mass consumption. And this was not only the case with the automobile industry but also with the aeronautics business. The Wright brothers, most notably, were originally a cycle firm. Moreover, Wiebe E. Bijker argues that by the turn of the century “Weapon makers, sewing machine manufacturers, and agricultural producers were only too happy to shift their production to bicycles” (32). And so the bicycle is a key protagonist not only in the narrative of mass transportation but also, and more expansively, in the drama of modern marketing, everyday consumption, modern technology, and the diversification of industrial technology.

The bicycle, as both modern symbol and modern technology, is hence deeply embedded in a grander narrative of progress and use-value. To some extent the avant-garde is the manifestation of the retooling of such narratives-a practice of functional dysfunction and, like the everyday itself, much of the avant-garde’s power (force) resides in the play with context and referentiality. Ziarek writes.
Duchamp’s urinal or bicycle wheel ¡¦ stand the ordinary on its head, disconnecting everyday tools from their functional context and, thus, bringing into the open the invisible regulative force with which technicity forms modern being . . . In other words, the concept of the ordinary as immediate, as a place of common knowledge or a sphere of prelinguistic experience, sheltered from the influence of technology and mass culture, has to be called into question. The ordinary is already mediated, it is enframed technologically and functions as a font of availability, as resource or Bestand. (113)

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Figure 14
Photograph of Duchamps
studio showing the
Fountain (1917),
1917-18

Figure 15
Photograph of Duchamps
studio showing the
Bicycle Wheel
(1913-14), 1917-18

The urinal or the bicycle wheel (Figs. 14 and 15) are revealed (as opposed to made) by the avant-gardiste as displaced, even suspended, artefacts of the everyday. They are recontextualized and thus undergo a number of-by now very well documented-changes. First, their use-value is confused as soon as they are “noticed” as art. Part of the enduring aesthetic, even revolutionary, energy of the Duchampian urinal, for example, lies in the crisis it creates for the viewer, forcing one to wonder as if for the first time: “what is a urinal? what is an art object? do I associate art with piss? do I now piss in art?” Perhaps the urinal never asked to be viewed before either. The avant-garde’s use of everyday objects is necessarily a radical play with the technologization of sense, use-value and function. Berswordt-Wallrabe explains that Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel “had its roots in the artist’s ability to distance himself from the intended utilitarian purpose of the object and thereby to interrupt the existing stream of function, diverting the object or parts of it into an entirely different stream of function” (19).⁽³⁾ The “other dimensions” of the everyday object are all contained within the art object itself; it is the context-shifting that here brings them into view. (Uselessness, nonsense, suspended function, purposeless play-these are, incidentally, the adjectives also applicable to the characteristic bodies and modes of Beckett’s fiction.) If the everyday object is removed from the everyday (or at least becomes embossed on the template of the everyday), is the same-but in reverse!-true of the art itself? In other words, is part of the crisis that the avant-garde inaugurates that of necessarily returning art to the setting of prosaic, modern being? A curious “cycle”?

Beckett 1

In considering the richness of Samuel Beckett’s numerous bike riders, Hugh Kenner famously surmises in his 1962 monograph, Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study, that Molloy, Moran, Malone, Mercier & Camier et al are representations of “Cartesian Centaurs” (121). Kenner understands this centaur-subject to be guided by rational intelligence yet ever and necessarily obeying the mobile, irrational wonder of the bicycle’s own motion and desire. The Cartesian Centaur is therefore a compliment of mind and body, but also and most importantly of body and machine: “Cartesian man deprived of his bicycle is a mere intelligence fastened to a dying animal” (124). The Beckettian bicyclist, however hopelessly, utilises the bike as a substitute body: one that, if not deathless, at least presents the illusion of delaying or denying mortality.

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Figure 16
French childrens
late 18^th
Century hobby horses

Figure 17
cherubim riding on similar contraptions

Kenner’s Centaur is also interesting because, as aforementioned, the earliest known bicycles are thought to have derived from French children’s late 18th Century (1790s) hobby horses (Fig. 16). These proto-bikes were unsteerable and pedalless (very Beckettian attributions!), but equipped with two wooden wheels which would allow a rider to propel (push) themselves with their own leg power, or easily coast down a hill. The celeriferes⁽⁴⁾ bear an interesting resemblance to certain medieval church iconography in which cherubim and seraphim are shown riding on very similar contraptions.⁽⁵⁾ (Fig. 17) These early bicycle images suggest a complicated, if curious, history for a poetics of the modern bicycle. The self-propelled, wheeled vehicle is-from its earliest representations-aligned with the sacred, and specifically with images of ascension and purity. At the same time, these medieval proto-bikes are of course excessively, necessarily earthly machines: the wheels themselves most obviously requiring the stability of the ground, the real. The fundamental tension of the bicycle, perhaps, and one that Beckett exhaustively mines, is that which exists between its angelic and corporeal symbology: it strives dynamically upward and yet is, unfailingly, a mortal vehicle.⁽⁶⁾ The discrepancy between virtuous potential and practical, ignominious fact fully articulates the tragic-comic grey space of Beckett’s fiction.

The bicycle first appears in Beckett’s work in his early 1934 collection of short stories, More Pricks Than Kicks. In the “Fingal” tale, the young lovers Belacqua and Winnie head off from Dublin for a romantic afternoon in the country. Their relationship is decidedly cool and characterised by defensive, droll repartee that is further ironized by the arch, omniscient narration. To confirm the subversion of the romance story, Belacqua is inflicted with “impetigo,” the knowledge of which compels Winnie (post-smooch) to thoroughly clean her mouth. And so it is not surprising-in this context of diseased, contaminated “romance”-that the destination of the love-jaunt in the country soon turns out to be the Portrane Lunatic Asylum (“she having a friend, he his heart, [there]”) (26).

On their way, however, Belacqua discovers something in the grass: “They followed the grass margin of a ploughed field till they came to where a bicycle was lying, half hidden in the rank grass. Belacqua, who could on no account resist a bicycle, thought what an extraordinary place to come across one. The owner was out in the field, scarifying the dry furrows with a fork” (27). The context of Belacqua’s discovery-especially in light of this being the first appearance of a bicycle in Beckett’s work-is significant in that the bicycle is riderless. The bicycle, lying abandoned in the rank grass, cannot help but be read as a kind of object counter-part to Belacqua’s own melancholy subjectivity. In particular, Belacqua’s interest in the bicycle is described in relation to his desire: he could, on no account, “resist” a bicycle. In this way, too, the bicycle is the clear, if wry, substitution of or for Winnie and, indeed, the scene mimics the encounter just previously in which the two lovers had been lying on the grass. What is clear here is that the bicycle is Belacqua’s discovery, and so his relationship to the machine is vaguely illicit and, at the very least, works to further his own solitude. Janet Menzies points out in her discussion of the scene that the encounter of the bike is “faintly disturbing” (99). One reason for this uncanny feeling is presumably that the bicycle and Belacqua seem to become indistinguishable. “Fingal”‘s narrative power rests not only in its rather flawless balance of aloof omniscience with caustic dialogue, but also with the mysterious anxiety that the discovery of the bicycle produces. The bicycle takes on a kind of “being” and seems to wordlessly, eerily compete with the superficial intentions of the love story.

This eerie competition is compounded by Belacqua’s developing connection, almost a homosocial alliance, with the bicycle owner and, of course, with the bike itself. The narrative makes it quite clear that Belacqua and the bicycle owner are aligned on the level of their shared masculinity. They both agree, for example, that “it needed a woman to think [the logistics of efficient travel] out” (28). Moreover, as Belacqua and Winnie move away from the man, we read that “Belacqua could see the man scraping away at his furrow and felt a sudden longing to be down there in the clay, lending a hand” (28). This moment happens two short paragraphs after an extended allusion to Hamlet: “The tower began well; that was the funeral meats. But from the door up it was all relief and no honour; that was the marriage tables” (28). If Belacqua is vaguely figured as the dispossessed son here and the bicycle owner as the ghostly father-figure, then Winnie is by default or implication a representation of Gertrude. Regardless, “Fingal” is to some extent a condensed and energetic reworking of the Hamlet themes of madness, diseased desire, and homosocial longing. Indeed, Winnie is evidently also the Ophelia representation here as she and Belacqua seem to be perpetually replaying a modernist version of the get-thee-to-a-nunnery exchange.

As Belacqua and Winnie sit and watch the “lunatics” taking their recreation on the grounds of the asylum, the bicycle owner (apparently an inmate of the asylum himself) comes running towards the lovers. “Belacqua rose feebly to his feet. This maniac, with the strength of ten men at least, who should withstand him? He would beat him into a puddle with his fork and violate Winnie” (30). Beckett’s narration is so comically convincing here because it completely undermines all the “masculine” labour that has previously sought to align Beckett and the bicycle owner. Now Belacqua is positioned less as a modernist Hamlet hero and more as a pathetic-neurotic anti-protagonist. Importantly, the bicycle owner not only runs innocently by the lovers but-crucially-leaves his bicycle behind him, unattended in the grass: “the nickel of the bike sparkled in the sun” (31). The alliterative, consonance clucks of the k’s alone in this sentence work to distinguish the bicycle as a glorious, exquisite signifier (and align it with Belacqua’s own clicky appellation). Thus Belacqua-all things working in his favour-manages to pass Winnie off on her friend Dr. Sholto while he promises to rendez vous with them “at the main entrance of the asylum in, say, an hour” (31). Belacqua, of course, takes a route back to the resplendent machine:

It was a fine light machine, with red tires and wooden rims. He ran down the margin to the road and it bounded alongside under his hand. He mounted and they flew down the hill and round the corner till they came at length to the stile that led into the field where the church was. The machine was a treat to ride, on his right hand the sea was foaming among the rocks, the sands ahead were another yellow again, beyond them in the distance the cottages of Rush were bright white, Belacqua’s sadness fell from him like a shift. (31-2)

Only the interaction with the bicycle seems to allow the narrative to mobilize, so to speak, its most romantic descriptions. Belacqua’s ride literally shakes off his melancholy and it is quite clear that the bike represents both a metaphysical escape from his sadness as well as a physical flight from Winnie. It seems significant, too, that Belacqua’s depression falls from him like a shift, as if the action of the ride is also sexual or (perhaps less carnally) at least cleansing and perhaps feminizing, too-returning him to a first, innocent, and naked moment. Belacqua, of course, never keeps his promise with Winnie and Dr. Sholto and the climax of the story depends on his callous departure. Sholto and Winnie, left waiting, are forced to inquire of another bicyclist entering the asylum if he has seen a person resembling Belacqua: “‘I passed the felly of [that description] on a bike’ said Tom, pleased to be of use, ‘at Ross’s gate, going like flames.’ ‘On a BIKE!’ cried Winnie. ‘But he hadn’t a bike.'” (34). The “going like flames” is a hilarious insertion that contrasts even more comically with Winnie’s slapstick, higher-case exclamation. Her position here, terribly outside the narrative asides, is now confirmed and her innocent “but he hadn’t a bike” comment renders her character charming but slow. Belacqua’s escape is, indeed, complete as the tale closes by revealing that he was “safe in Taylor’s public-house in Swords, drinking” (35). The bicycle, in its first Beckettian mode, is truly a remarkable bachelor’s conveyance: a reliable escape machine, something that can be literally discovered in the grass.⁽⁷⁾

Duchamp 1

“Fingal” can be read as a type of onanistic bachelor’s allegory and, as such, it has (of course!) much in common with Marcel Duchamp’s corpus-especially his celebrated, pioneering ready made Bicycle Wheel. In a 1955 letter to his acquaintance Guy Weelen, Duchamp writes:

My recollections as to the apparition of a bicycle wheel mounted on a kitchen stool in 1913 are too vague and can only be treated as a posteriori reflections. I only remember that the atmosphere created by this intermittent movement was something analogous to the dancing flames of a log fire. It was as if in homage to the useless aspect of something generally used to other ends. In fact, it was a ready made “before the event” as the word only came to me in 1914. I probably accepted the movement of the wheel very gladly as an antidote to the habitual movement of the individual around the contemplated object. (Letters, 346 June 26).

Like Beckett, Duchamp reveals the bicycle (or its components) as a clearly seductive object. If Belacqua’s bicycle scintillates like nickel and allows him to “go like flames,” then Duchamp’s 1913 Bicycle Wheel, too, adopts the erotic, hallucinatory rhythms of a log fire⁽⁸⁾ Importantly, Duchamp’s recollection of the creation of this ready made is a characteristically paradoxical mixture of both elucidation and mystification. It is clever as well as strategic that Duchamp refers to the Bicycle Wheel’s construction as an “apparition.” Duchamp casually tinges his entire recollection of the Bicycle Wheel’s construction with the qualities of serendipity, not to mention ethereality. Also, that he offers that the sculpture was “a ready made ‘before the event'” is an audacious and sly manoeuvre in that Duchamp is actually depicting himself as anticipating himself. A fascinating confusion results because the Bicycle Wheel piece, on the one hand, seems to merely “appear” while, on the other, Duchamp’s sole responsibility as the magician behind its fantastic apparition is implied. Regardless of Duchamp’s brilliant, self-mythologizing prose, the letter also reveals that the Bicycle Wheel constitutes a sort of homage to “the useless aspect of something generally used to other ends.” This statement, in miniature, is a provisional definition for all experimental projects in that it indicates the fraught, necessary tension that exists in the avant-garde between function and dysfunction.

Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel is dependent on its general function, presumably, as a device in a larger piece of machinery that conventionally facilitates human mobility-a bike. It is also dependent, as a seeable piece of art, on highlighting the transparency of that original function while at the same time asserting or proposing an alternative (dis)application (here a wheel mounted upside down in a stool.)⁽⁹⁾ What exists between the function and dysfunction are the inter-workings of the everyday (the minutiae of cultural history): the particularly intimate negotiations between objects and subjects. Nothing, it seems, is outside history, nothing is entirely bland, nothing is beyond power. Here modernity is the discovery that the human subject exists no less arbitrarily or perversely than its surrounding objects. Technology-in all its forms-is thus the dynamic crisis of human uselessness. Both Beckett (especially in Molloy as we will see) and Duchamp mobilize the bike to highlight the tragic-comic complications of this critical ontology.

Yet in Duchamp’s brief letter to Guy Weelen it is the last sentence that is arguably the most compelling. Duchamp states that, “I probably accepted the movement of the wheel very gladly as an antidote to the habitual movement of the individual around the contemplated object.” The habitual movement around the contemplated object could refer to the everyday activity in a kitchen. If so, then the wheel is arguably an anti-everyday object (anti-domestic and anti-materiality, on one level). In this way, and despite Duchamp’s characteristically oblique, ingenious phrasing (he “accepted” [“accepte”] the movement of the wheel), he seems to be indicating that the spinning wheel directly disrupts conventional aesthetic viewing patterns. While the bicycle wheel spins on top of a stool it is presumably fixing the viewer in one location. Duchamp implies that the Bicycle Wheel is an alternative sculpture because it is kinetic but also because it seems to invert the object/subject aesthetic relationship. In other words, there is a startling suggestion that the Bicycle Wheel is, in fact, looking back at (contemplating) the viewer. This looking-back-at-ness is not so much a result of a personification of the art-object, but rather more generally of how the Bicycle Wheel (and all ready mades) draw(s) attention to conventional modes of viewership and reception. More importantly perhaps, Duchamp links “contemplation” with mobility and habit.⁽¹⁰⁾

Beckett, too, in his later Texts for Nothing, finds in the bicycle wheel specifically a metaphor for the repetitive, often futile, work of memory. He writes, “What thronging memories, that’s to make me think I’m dead, I’ve said it a million times. But the same return, like the spokes of a turning wheel, always the same, and all alike, like spokes” (128). Duchamp’s letter to Weelen continues on to detail a kind of collision of movements-a clash of mobilities- within the field of vision. Herbert Molderings contends that, “The bicycle wheel with its fork pointing down and mounted on a stool is fundamentally a chronophotographic sculpture voiced in the language of the Futurists: a sculpture of movement” (150). The Bicycle Wheel, if not entirely “futurist,” is unarguably concerned with the seeing of movement (as opposed to a merely futurist-like glorification of the mobile). Moreover, for Duchamp, viewership and reception are also forms of mobility just as the new, ready made Wheel derives its force from a type of counter-movement. According to Duchamp, then, his ready made sculpture is, at once, an entrancing, lulling spectacle comparable to the dance of flames on a log and yet also an object that resists (is an antidote to) habitual forms of aesthetic contemplation.

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Figure 18
Man Ray, The Gift, 1921

Figure 19
Marcel Duchamp,
Bottle Dryer, 1914

But the Bicycle Wheel is only, it seems to me, half of the aesthetic story. The wheeled-sculpture depends crucially on its stool mounting. The Bicycle Wheel is hardly a ready made in the sense that Duchamp’s Bottle Rack or Snow Shovel are: these items qualify as “toute-fait” in that they require no elaborate aesthetic manipulation or intervention. The Bicycle Wheel, unlike its counterparts, does not merely await selection, it also demands assemblage and, to some extent, physical contact (spinning the wheel) from the viewer. The Bicycle Wheel is, above all else, a bizarre object because it defamiliarizes the everyday by blending typically aloof components of the everyday with each other. The avant-garde formula here is to add mundane objects (common technologies but technologies commonly not associated with each other) together in order to equal the experimental aesthetic machine. (Man Ray’s “Gift,” (Fig. 18) for example, a household iron with nails solder on its smoothing surface, would also be apposite here.) If the Bottle Rack (Fig. 19) is avant-garde because it is a prosaic, overlooked object that is then chosen, inscribed, and signed, then the Bicycle Wheel is radical both because it is not fully a stool (and the stool is not fully a bicycle) and because it now demands aesthetic contemplation. The Bicycle Wheel is still highly “artistic,” therefore, in the sense that it spotlights both the artist’s cleverness and his delectation (though Duchamp always and emphatically denied that his “selections” were aesthetically or “retina-lly” motivated). The Bicycle Wheel also introduces (at least) a double crisis: the viewer is incited to wonder not only ‘what is art?’-as is the case with the other ready mades-but also, more simply, ‘what is this?’⁽¹¹⁾

Significantly, on the level of practical everyday objects, the Bicycle Wheel is a ridiculous and even useless machine: a subverted stool and a corrupted bike. Like the depictions of bicycles we discover in Beckett’s Molloy and Mercier and Camier, for example, Duchamp’s bicycle is a playful emblem of the comedic failure of (again, at least one kind of) mobility. A viewer, accustomed to that “habitual movement around the contemplated object,” is now fixed with a machine that moves elegantly, entrancingly, yet never, finally, goes anywhere.⁽¹²⁾

The maddeningly enclosed, even intensely self-regarding, circuit of contemplation that Duchamp’s Wheel inaugurates is arguably but another bachelor apparatus, specifically what we might call an onanism process. Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp’s English language biographer, points out that, as a verbal or visual image, the machine-onaniste [Duchamp’s phrase] comes up again and again in Duchamp’s work: . . .Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel and his obsession with circular forms; his optical machines whose spiral patterns oscillate in a pulsating, back-and-forth rhythm; his invention of Rrose Selavy, a female alter ego; and the very fact that in the Large Glass the unfortunate bachelors never do manage to strip bare the willing but imperious bride-all these can be seen as signposts in the life cycle of the solitary male” (276).

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Figure 20
Marcel Duchamp,
Note from the
Green Box (1934)

It is not clear whether Tomkins is intentionally punning on the “life cycle” of the male, but the Bicycle Wheel (with its erotic allure and circuit) is certainly symbolic of Duchamp’s dual fascination with the cyclical nature of delay and desire.⁽¹³⁾ Indeed, Duchamp’s Green Box catalogue refers enigmatically to the “litanies of the Chariot: slow life, vicious circle, onanism” (Fig. 20) (np). The bio-mechanics or bio-morphism are incorporated by the symbol of the wheel (the vicious circle) and thus also by both the body and desire.

And beyond the particular narrative that highlights the desiring, self-gratifying bachelor, there is also an extra-textual and aesthetic onanism potentially at work. Amelia Jones, in her shrewd study of Duchamp’s relationship to postmodernism, suggests that Duchamp himself has come to stand-in for the ready mades, and vice versa. Postmodernist criticism has thus created a kind of art historical fantasy in which the object replaces the artist-and, in so doing, installs Duchamp as self-generating, ever-fecund patriarch. She writes, Duchamp’s significance as originating father is generally seen to be identical to the significance of the readymades in relation to postmodernism. As mass-produced objects rendered as art only by reference to their authorizing function, Duchamp, the readymades become Duchamp as we know him today. As paternal, theological origin, Duchamp is the readymades and the ‘readymade Duchamp’ comes to signify postmodernism. (8)

Thus Duchamp’s objects are always conflated with Duchamp’s subject-position and presumably every reading of the Bicycle Wheel, for example, is also a reading of a complex metonym for the artist himself. The crisis is most fascinating then in reference to the re-aura-ification of the work of art by way of granting a distinct “author” to an otherwise nameless object. Part of the force of Beckett’s and Duchamp’s mobilization of these everyday technologies lies in the way they draw attention to the radical anonymity of the objects’ function. Thus, if Jones is correct in asserting that the ready made and “the Duchamp” have become interchangeable, it is perhaps a result of a collective refusal (anxiety) to grant objects any serious, non-human identity and presence. Both Duchamp and Beckett illustrate that the everyday object is interesting precisely because there is no certain boundary between it and the human subject.

As Tomkins implies above, the Bicycle Wheel is also connected to Duchamp’s invention of his female alter ego, Rrose Selavy. And indeed, the Bicycle Wheel is a particularly Selavy-esque technology-a kinetic sculpture that can also be seen as an impish reference to women’s knitting wheels of the past. The bicycle is an important technology for modernity not just in the context of its inspiration of advanced capitalist marketing strategies, which were then adopted by numerous other companies, but also in terms of women’s emancipation and the New Woman specifically. As Patricia Marks elaborates, “These New Women, who wanted all the advantages of their brothers, asked for education, suffrage, and careers; they cut their hair, adopted ‘rational dress’, and freewheeled along a path that lead to the twentieth century” (1). Bicycles allowed women to not only escape the home and the obligation of the knitting wheel, they also crucially allowed women to be mobile and to be so without either a male or female chaperone.⁽¹⁴⁾

The bicycle was such a new technology that its effects on both the male and female body were a source of serious and continual concern. The Penguin Book of the Bicycle reports that, “Up till 1893 doctors had maintained that cycling was a notorious cause of illness. The medical profession worried deeply about ‘bicycle walk,’ ‘bicycle heart,’ or, most dreaded of all, kyhosis bicyclistarum, ‘cyclist’s hump,’ caused by strenuous pulling on the handlebars” (126). For women bicyclists, medical practitioners (including woman doctors) worried that bicycle riding would exhaust female riders’ vital, maternal energy and thus complicate, or even prohibit, child-birth (Marks, 174). The action of pedalling, in this instance, is a kind of anarchist threat to all normative gender and social systems. If the Bicycle Wheel is in fact a Rrose Selavy (might then Rrose’s wheel become “Roue C’est La Vie”?)⁽¹⁵⁾ machine, then it is a bachelor apparatus ironized and nuanced by the contexts of both the gendered history of bicycle riding as well as that of domestic labour and public culture.

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Figure 21
A French poster by
Jules-Alexandre Grun for
Whitworth Bicycles, “Quelle
Machine Acheter?”, circa 1897

Figure 22
A French advertising
poster by Edouard
Corchinoux for Cycles
Meteore, circa 1920

The modernity of the bicycle is inseparable from the advancement of women’s rights, but it is also directly linked to the objectification of the female, particularly as it figures a classical, feminine, mythic beauty as the ample spokes(!)-woman for this new technology. As if an extension of the early church-window cherubim straddling wheels of fire, the representations of women in early (late Victorian) bicycling advertisements are also strikingly iconographic. This lyrical idealization of the woman is an interesting contrast with the practical concerns for women’s safety, health, and sexuality. The woman, refracted through the medium of the bike, is both the angelic metonym for airy travel but also the latent threat of what that freedom might inspire. Consider the numerous advertisements collected in Jack Rennert’s 100 Years of Bicycle Posters in which turn of the century (late 1800s) women are depicted as bewinged, sylvan, naked, sword-wielding, flying, shield-carrying, wind-tussled beauties. (Figs. 21 and 22) One poster in particular, an 1897 Paris ad for Catenol bicycles, reveals a voluptuous, completely naked woman sitting on the edge of a stone well. The bucket mechanism for the well is apparently driven by a bicycle crank and pedal system. The woman is staring out at the viewer giving the “evil eye” hand-signal while her right ankle is chained to the well. The poster reads, “La Verite Assise!!!” or “the Truth is Seated/Established.” This bride stripped bare here reveals the bizarre, ever-erotic connotations of the bicycle. Perhaps because of its own mechanical nakedness, the bicycle is to some extent always obscene and thus connotative of erotic excess. That the woman here, with her simple but queenly(16) tiara showing an impish, cartoony smiling face in its centre, is literally chained to the “well of truth” is a useful reminder that the bike is unavoidably-if comically!-connected to both desire and mobility.
 
Beckett 2

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Figure 23
Cover of Molloy by Samuel Beckett

The Beckett novel in which bicycles (and thus desire at work as mobility) play the most significant role is Molloy (Fig. 23), the first section of Beckett’s celebrated trilogy. Molloy opens in a motherless mother’s room. The eponymous character tells the reader that a man comes every week to “take away the pages” (7). The novel is hard not to read as an allegory for the plight of the neurotic artist: boxed in his mother’s chamber, the writer can’t really be certain of anything. Molloy, however, despite this claustrophobic opening, is a grandiose journey story, or journey stories (Molloy is looking for his mother; Moran & son are looking for Molloy), which document(s) not (by now a Beckett critical cliche) the futility of progress but rather something entirely antithetical: the fact that motion, the need for mobility, is inevitable and intimately connected with both language and being. The Trilogy, and Molloy most abundantly, is a meditation on the inevitability of action, especially as action becomes confused and conflated with both dwindling speech and decaying physical presence. J.D. O’Hara reveals that, “Molloy progresses, so to speak, from one-legged bicycling at the start, and is about to set out on crutches at the end; Malone begins as a bed-ridden octogenarian and ends dead; the Unnamable, a weeping egg, conjures up surrogates who hobble on crutches or exists armless and legless in a jar” (10). For Beckett, it appears that all mobilities (verbal and physical) are complicated by their intimate dependence on each other, which thus serves to produce other competing, interactive binaries: silence and speech, for example, or death-rattles and long novels.

Visual artist Stan Douglas notes this unceasing energy in Beckett’s work and observes that, “Characters and voices in extreme situations of solitude seem to await silence or death but in fact seldom come to rest and even more rarely stop talking; persistent in their desire for something not yet said or not yet done” (11). Beckett’s characters, Molloy as an exemplar, are hardly despairing, existential party-poopers, but rather bizarrely dynamic entities: bodies and languages that utterly refuse to either rest or shut-up. Considering this manic context in Beckett’s work, the bicycle machine is an apposite device that condenses and contains his preoccupation with both mobility and speech.

Molloy appears to be uncertain of almost everything in his world other than his affection for the classic two-wheeler. Like Belacqua in “Fingal,” Molloy comes upon a bicycle as he ventures outside. Ludovic Janvier states that, “The bicycle, then, is an instrument of derisory super-power, of cheap super-lightness, to which the ‘hero’ trusts his destiny” (47). It seems to me that these Beckettian “bike-discovery scenes” ⁽¹⁷⁾are comparable to the thrilling moment in Cervantes’ Don Quixote in which the narrator states that Quixote, “t[ook] whatever road his horse chose, in the belief that in th[at] lay the essence of adventure” (36) The bicycle, like the horse, embodies adventure and whimsy but also, and crucially, the power of both destiny and chance to shape being. Of course Molloy is on crutches, and so his ride is spectacularly distinct (even Quixotic?) from Belacqua’s going-like-flames style. This fact alone suggests the serious chasm separating Beckett’s original bachelor rider from his Trilogy-era one. While Belacqua is literally able to make his fiery escape to the local pub, Molloy is much more entangled with the technology.⁽¹⁸⁾ Molloy explains, “This is how I went about it. I fastened my crutches to the cross-bar, one on either side, I propped the foot of my stiff leg (I forget which, now they’re both stiff) on the projecting front axle, and I pedalled with the other” (17).

To complicate matters further, Molloy’s bicycle happens to be chainless and one with a free-wheel-essentially an impossible machine. As Molloy becomes the bicycle, so to speak, the resulting visual (M. lashed to his self-propelled, chainless vehicle) is like a mirror of Beckett’s own appropriation of (self-fastening to) impossible language. In other words, as Molloy integrates with a superbly faulty machine so too does Beckett-throughout the Trilogy-blend with a severely and increasingly restricted (chainless) language, character and plot. Molloy thus sabotages the familiar technology of the bicycle by making it interchangeable with his own being. Molloy is a cyborg body (propped up with crutches, steel, and rubber) but also, and more simply, just a tangle of prosthetics: an ironic symbol of motion. Molloy’s impossible “mobility” is dependent, therefore, on an array of mobility-technologies and, as he is the symbolic author stand-in, his strange “mobility” is necessarily and always about the (im)mobility of writing and reading, too. So, Molloy’s technological reliance is a self-conscious staging of the avant-garde author-function-wanting and needing to move through an environment that is either hostile or indifferent to action.

After Molloy describes his mounting of the bicycle he becomes hilariously, beautifully absorbed in a description of his machine. He sighs, “Dear bicycle, I shall not call you bike, you were green, like so many of your generation. I don’t know why. It is a pleasure to meet it again. To describe it at length would be a pleasure. It had a little red horn instead of the bell fashionable in your days. To blow this horn was for me a real pleasure, almost a vice” (17). Molloy’s disquisition on the pleasures of bicycles (and horns) is then disturbed by his recollection of his true subject: that of “her who brought [him] into the world, through the hole in her arse if [his] memory is correct. First taste of the shit” (17). Again, as in “Fingal,” it is clear that the bicycle is inseparable from the question of gender-and specifically “woman.” As Molloy arrives in the world through the hole in his mother’s ass, it is a further reversal of traditional (in this case, biological) “technologies.” Molloy is literally a piece of shit, on the one hand, but he is also (though this is no doubt scant consolation) a resplendent symbol of inverted modern “production.” His bicycle exists in some ideal, pluperfect past while Molloy is left to narrate that past with, it seems, the “first taste of the shit” still (always) on his tongue. Thus Molloy’s “productions” are always, like his own birth, scatological “issues.”

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in their own machine-obsessed text, Anti-Oedipus, wonder about the function of the bicycle in Beckett’s work, specifically asking what relationship the bicycle-horn machine might have with the so-called mother-anus machine (2). If, as they suggest, that “There is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together” (2) then the Beckettian avant-garde technology is located in that place in which function becomes actively blurred with form and vice versa. One can ask what things do in this scenario but one cannot ask what processes produce because they are always in flux. The avant-garde’s stake is therefore in the ing of the verb. Jean-Francois Lyotard contends that technology is traditionally founded on principles of optimum performance, and specifically that technology can be understood as a drama of efficiency (Postmodern Condition, 44). Technology is a game of mobility, a contest of speeds, in this reading: power is speed, finally. Powerful technology is anything therefore that does not complicate or obtrude motion. Infinite process (that which is not ever resolved-that which is always in the middle of doing something more) is hedonistic and even paradoxically unproductive as it looks only to be intent on motion, not resolution. The in-flux processes, the body technologies, in this case, consist of Molloy and his mother who, as he describes it, are thoroughly malleable as identities. Molloy is finally unsure, as he says, whether he is the father or the son in the relationship and even whether his mother is “Ma, Mag or the Countess Caca” (18). And when Molloy moves into the terrible but uproarious description of his improvised form of communication with his deaf mother (he has had to, he tells us, resort to knocking on her skull to get a yes or no answer) then the absurd possibilities of bodies is confirmed. Beckett does not, of course, endeavour to detail human potential on a sentimental scale, he instead illustrates the potential for subjectivity to be no different than objects. A mother, to some extent, is discovered as merely a machine you have to knock your knuckles against to “make work”; a son is a ridiculous prosthetic apparatus; while the bicycle itself is the ideal by which human potential is measured. Here the lyrical, human technology trumps the human altogether.

As Molloy sets off on his fantastic but everyday machine he, like Mercier and Camier, is soon stopped by a policeman. The convergence of Molloy and the law is Buster Keaton-like in its potential for slapstick and destruction, but also attains the gravely serious and melancholy. Beckett’s writing is, first of all, remarkably balanced-throughout Molloy-between ironic quips and perceptive, affecting human observation so that a reader must continually weigh Molloy’s digression on toilet paper (the policeman has asked for Molloy’s “papers”), for example, with the vivid lines that immediately follow it: “We took the little side streets, quiet, sunlit, I springing along between my crutches, he pushing my bicycle, with the tips of his white-gloved fingers” (21). The writing effect here is to produce a kind of delirious but always lucid collage-patching together both startlingly beautiful and hilarious elements. Molloy and the policeman are obviously caught in the gagster and the straight-man roles, but they also suggest the father and son team.

The bicycle takes on a charming, limpid modesty as it literally runs along beneath the tips of the gloved-fingers of both the policeman and of Beckett’s prose. As the bicycle, and the journey itself, is stalled by the presence of authority, Molloy slips into an elegiac reverie concerning his profound loneliness: While still putting my best foot foremost I gave myself up to that golden moment, as if I had been someone else. It was the hour of rest, the forenoon’s toil ended, the afternoon’s to come. The wisest perhaps, lying in the squares or sitting on their doorsteps, were savouring its languid ending, forgetful of recent cares, indifferent to those at hand. Others on the contrary were using it to hatch their plans, their heads in their hands. Was there one among them to put himself in my place, to feel how removed I was then from him I seemed to be, and in that remove what strain, as of hawsers about to snap? It’s possible. Yes, I was straining towards those spurious deeps, their lying promise of gravity and peace, from all my old poisons I struggled towards them, safely bound. Under the blue sky, under the watchful gaze. Forgetful of my mother, set free from the act, merged in this alien hour, saying Respite, respite. (21-2).

Molloy’s exquisite meditation on rest and relief, framed by his acute sense of his separation from other human beings, serves to also grant the bicycle the dual purpose of practical machine and metaphysical prism. Janvier states that in Molloy “The body is powerless to continue, but it must continue: the bicycle is this impatience” (47). Molloy’s journey is obviously one of grim longing-his search for his mother is also a more general, sentimental quest for human connection and so his bicycle comes to embody the pathos of his loneliness. When Molloy leaves the police barracks with his bicycle, the quality of fading sunlight affects him once again and he notices the play of shadows on the wall: Let me cry out then, it’s said to be good for you. Yes, let me cry out, this time, then another time perhaps, then perhaps a last time. Cry out that the declining sun fell full on the white wall of the barracks. It was like being in China. A confused shadow was cast. It was I and my bicycle. I began to play, gesticulating, waving my hat, moving my bicycle to and fro before me, blowing the horn, watching the wall. They were watching me through the bars, I felt their eyes upon me. The policeman on guard at the door told me to go away. He needn’t have, I was calm again. (25)

It is fitting that Molloy’s encounter with the law resolves in this moment of play and official supervision. If Molloy is sentimentally searching for some kind of community or companionship, Beckett reveals that it perhaps can only take place-and finitely-in this other-, shadow-dimension. “A confused shadow was cast” articulates the oblique, ontological ambience of the entire Trilogy. Molloy, already excessively distanced from his own surroundings and his own being, now divides himself once more by throwing his lightless reflection against the wall.⁽¹⁹⁾ Molloy is indeed split but also re-unified here as well as the “I and my bicycle” become an “it.” For Molloy, the shadow play is obviously a semi-ecstatic event, as he concludes by grumbling that he “was calm again.” The shadow play also implies (“It was I and my bicycle”) how intimate Molloy is with his bike: the wall ostensibly integrates them both in a kind of ideal, wordless, Beckettian theatre until their independent forms are indistinguishable from each other.

But Molloy’s realism is precisely, if paradoxically, what makes his naivete so convincing. He tells the reader, “The shadow in the end is no better than the substance” (26). Molloy is an apparent amalgam of the hardened knowledge of cold experience and yet also the embodiment of radical optimism and innocence. Molloy follows his grim utterance above with a confession that if he ever thinks consciously about riding his bicycle then he invariably falls off. One of the joys of Beckett’s prose is that every line, so often pared down to its simplest, most honest form, yearns to be read allegorically. Molloy says, “I had forgotten where I was going. I stopped to think. It is difficult to think riding, for me. When I try and think riding I lose my balance and fall. I speak in the present tense, it is so easy to speak in the present tense, when speaking of the past. It is the mythological present, don’t mind it” (26). Molloy’s journey is obviously utterly complicated by memory and habit.

Importantly, Molloy’s speaking in the present tense is also-metaphorically-Beckett’s writing and so Molloy’s anxiety about the difficulty of “think[ing] riding” is also a potential pun on thinking writing. Of course, these lines are mobius strips of self-consciousness: Molloy and Beckett, like Duchamp’s Wheel, are caught in a circuit⁽²⁰⁾ of hyper-self-awareness so that the journey (the riding and the writing) are apparently compromised by the first-, second-, third-order consciousnesses at play. However, Molloy is also caught in a temporal paradox in which “it is easy to speak in the present tense, when speaking of the past.” This tense is more specifically “the mythological present” which proves Molloy’s ability to make ironic even his own more sage insights. Part of the problem of time that Molloy explores, in its dark Proustian way, is exactly the dilemma of how a subject ever speaks the history of the self. To think too much, in Beckett, is to lose your balance and fall but also-conversely-to give rise to the most telling (moving) diversions. What Molloy calls his “raglimp stasis” (26) begins to look, and read, like whirlwind activity-and vice versa. Whatever “balance” Molloy locates is thus an avant-garde one. Just as the “mythological present” logically cancels out (makes impossible) the very temporal moment it inaugurates by laminating it with the past, so too does Molloy find that not only can he never fully stop or start but rather that he is always doing both simultaneously.

The hilarious pacing of Molloy itself confirms its investment in the blending of the sublime and banal. Shortly after Molloy rides out of town he surmises that “the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle” (31). In the next sentence we read, “For I had hardly perfected my plan, in my head, when my bicycle ran over a dog.” The clause, “in my head,” is a strange and even apparently useless qualification which is made, however, immediate and humorous by Molloy’s bicycle then running over a dog. The stunning shift in focuses-from nebulous or abstract in my head to concrete my bicycle ran over a dog-fully situates Molloy as an endearingly powerless entity. For, it is his bike, for example, that appears to be the true perpetrator of the dog murder; and all of the aspects of Molloy’s environment are thus imbued with a vaguely if hilariously “human” quality. It is almost as if Molloy’s own consciousness, his ability to lose himself in making plans in his own head, is what reduces his own human presence. In separating himself from his surroundings (in becoming a virtual, thinking object), his bicycle is forced to stand-in for his physical agency.

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Figure 24
Laurel and Hardy in
Towed in a Hole,
Hal Roach-MGM, 1933.

Figure 25
Gustave Dore,
Don Quixote,
1862

All technologies are both time-machines and space-machines. Lorenzo C. Simpson, in his work Technology, Time, and the Conversations of Modernity, argues that technology “is a response to our finitude, to the realization that we are vulnerable and mortal and that our time is limited” (14). Technology, to some extent, is always anxious and always bodily. This suggests that technology works paradoxically to both counter-act the fact of mortality (to conceal or deny it) but to also function as an anxious, strangely emphatic symbol of our very finitude. It is revealing then that in the second part of Molloy (after Molloy’s reverse-travels have taken him back, so to speak, from where he and the reader started), Moran begins his narrative-not unlike Molloy-by making reference to his immediate surroundings and by then stating that “I shall be forgotten” (84). This line is followed by the mention that Moran’s “report will be long” and so both parts of Molloy quickly figure their protagonists as writers.

If, as Edith Kern argues, “His [Molloy’s] trials served but to lead him to his ‘mother’s room,’ where writing is identical with existence and existence means writing” then Moran’s being, too, is described in direct relation to his obligation to produce a written, literary report. It seems to me significant, also, that Moran, like Molloy, is immediately preoccupied with what vehicle (car, motorcycle, bicycle) to take on his journey. The preoccupation is unnecessary, of course, because Moran and his son soon end up-after much digression-leaving on foot. Indeed, Beckett’s genius “pacing” in these initial scenes of Part Two depend on his idiosyncratic fascination with the minutiae of walking and travel. For Beckett, the spectacle of Moran and Son trying to make progress, trying to proceed, is of course a decidedly complex and seemingly inexhaustible, philosophically rich, affair. Moran recalls, “Get behind me, I said, and keep behind me. This solution had its points, from several points of view. But was he capable of keeping behind me?” (118) Beckett’s discovery here is to hollow out infinite possibilities behind even the most rational and apparently complete utterance. Moran’s prosaic, even boring decision (from a traditional narrative sense) to keep Jacques behind him is not only contingent but also, finally, a source of powerful narrative humour and speculation. The problem and suspense of the journey or the quest, then, is construed-like a Laurel and Hardy film or Don Quixote (Figs. 24 and 25) itself-more around issues of the absurdity of mobility rather than those of conventional heroic trials. Moran himself declares-in lines that Beckett must be said to be at least partly present within, too-that, “I have no intention of relating the various adventures which befell us, me and my son, together and singly, before we came to the Molloy country. It would be tedious” (121).⁽²¹⁾

What resolutely isn’t tedious, for either Beckett or Moran, is the description of bicycles. As Moran and his son wake up outside, and some vague distance from their objective, Moran prepares his son to travel to the next village in order to buy a bicycle. In the context of the Trilogy this is of course a decidedly fraught employment. First of all, the name of the destination-town is-rather unsubtly but still uproariously-Hole and so Jacques is being sent, metaphorically, into an abject absence: the anus. Moran and his son enjoy a long Moe and Curlyesque exchange about what type of bike, what price etc. until Moran accuses his son of stealing ten shillings. The two-page debate is finally resolved and Jacques heads off for Hole-yet before he is out of sight Moran yells one last request, instructing his son to buy a lamp for the bicycle. Beckett’s scenic architecture is comparable here to Molloy’s shadow-wall episode. He follows an extended passage of brilliant farce with a kind of lyrical, melancholy meditation that is always-necessarily-tinged with irony:
Later, when the bicycle had taken its place in my son’s life, in the round of his duties and his innocent games, then a lamp would be indispensable, to light his way in the night. And no doubt it was in anticipation of those happy days that I had thought of the lamp and cried out to my son to buy a good one, that later on his comings and goings should not be hemmed about with darkness and with dangers (133).

The bicycle is a form of elegiac transport, for Beckett, as much as a mechanical proof of the ridiculousness of the human subject. The power of the bicycle machine in Molloy is that it generates, or at least connotes, a sort of silence in the text. How does a reader finally process the weird union of intellectual slapstick and spiritual sadness? Beckett’s language always moves towards silence and death, but it does so with the utmost vocality and verve. To read the Trilogy is to some extent to encounter the sounds of speechlessness, the actions or mobilities of utter exhaustion.

So, as Moran’s lovingly described, imaginative bike lamp sends its glow out backwards over the text it is then compromised-thoroughly de-sentimentalized-by his apparent murder of a man. Moran, who has been waiting uneasily for his son’s return, is approached by a figure who seems to resemble himself and ostensibly kills this stranger by bashing him over the head. The murder scene (which is never explicitly narrated) enacts the very shadow-quality of the novel and also its fascination with identity and anonymity. Moran’s encounter is an encounter with himself and to some extent with his own speech and predicament. In this way Moran implicates the reader in the paradox of his terror: he has killed a man who eerily resembles himself and yet this victim is also radically anonymous-even disposable-in the context of the narrative. Moran’s predicament-who was the stranger? am I guilty?-is thus a mimicking of the reader’s interaction with an often brutally absurdist text. That is to say, Moran’s lostness in his own private narrative comes to ironize the reader’s own experience of deep bewilderment. In this sense then, Beckett’s writing is an explicit ethical challenge because he forces the question-especially in such a stripped-bare, cold, often human-indifferent landscape-how are emotional and physical violence supposed to be received?

When Moran’s son returns with a bicycle from Hole, the father & son team-like the single Molloy before them-become entangled with the machinery. The grim irony here is that the bicycle, like language itself, becomes exposed as merely a diversion-not as some evanescent, pure technology but rather as means to pass the time. All of Moran’s dialogue with his son about the bike is evidently and merely just something “to do”-rhetoric about the curious appetite for rhetoric. Moran and his son make it to Ballyba but it too is a finally unimportant destination. Molloy concludes, tellingly, in the shadow-world of both memory and writing. Molloy recalls his original mission-a voice asking him to complete his report-and then wonders if he is any freer now than before. The point seems radically incongruous, even ridiculously inflated, as the entire text has revealed not only these ideals as chimerical, but the technology and the language by which these ideals are fashioned as wholly contingent and constructed. Molloy ends, famously and literally, with an act of writing. Molloy says, “I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining” (162). As readers, we are incorporated into this paradoxical final moment until it is unclear whether we are reading Molloy’s text or the narrative’s commentary on, and perhaps extension of, that very writing. That is to say, Molloy’s writing (a text unable to offer the real) suspends our act of reading Molloy-like him, perhaps, we are ultimately unsure of the boundaries and forces of our immediate material environment. Though, concluding in negation is also a strangely affirmative exit-a paradigmatic Beckettian mode-because it simultaneously invokes in the midst of its cancellations. Beckett’s phrasing here, on the minute level of grammar, enacts the text’s more general fascination with the commingling of subjects and mobility/death. The active, nearly suicidal desire, say, to end one’s life (to complete one’s report) is always apparently premised on a real dynamism and indisputable agency.

Duchamp/Beckett: Last Lap

click to enlarge

Figure 26
Marcel Duchamp,
To Have the Apprentice
in the Sun, in
Box of 1914

For the journey that is not a journey, Duchamp’s drawing-the sole drawing in his first publication of accompanying notes for the Large Glass entitled Box of 1914-To Have the Apprentice in the Sun is apposite as it illustrates a hard-pedalling bicyclist (the “apprentice”) proceeding on a diagonal line that runs up and across the staffs of music paper. The line or hill begins with a small loop underneath the rider and then ends at the right margin. The apprentice is an angelic rider-even a personification of musical perfection, a true note-en route to a kind of ethereal territory in which roads or lines or hills are unnecessary. The apprentice, in his scene of ascension, recalls the medieval church iconography in which cherubim and seraphim are shown riding on (mar)celifere-like winged-machines. Alternatively, the apprentice can be seen here as literally riding towards his own fall or even, quite simply and plainly, not going anywhere at all.

There is a Dedalusian aspect to the rider, too-the title To Have the Apprentice in the Sun (Fig. 26) pointing less at an ideal future location and more at a perverse desire to see the unfortunate apprentice actually in the sun. In a 1949 letter to Jean Suquet, Duchamp referred to the Box of 1914 drawing as a “silhouette” (283). This comment curiously situates the rider in the context of profiles, a kind of one-dimensionality, but then also in the context of shadows-a context of multi-dimensionalities. With his head bent, and body taut with pedalling, the apprentice is unbearably stalled-the bike itself seems full of motion and yet utterly frozen. Like Beckett, Duchamp employs the everyday technology of the bike to both embody and then complicate the “obviousness” of mobility. Marjorie Perloff stresses that this image epitomizes Duchamp’s fascination with concept of “delay.” Duchamp described “delay” as “merely a way of succeeding in no longer thinking that the thing in question [The Large Glass] is a picture” (Green Box). As Perloff writes, “To ‘have’ this particular ‘apprentice’ in the sun, as the title suggests, is thus not to ‘have’ him at all” (Stanford 7.1 1999).

Like so much in Duchamp’s corpus, the rider is also enacting an allegory of desire-in this instance, possibly one of delayed sexual consummation. The climax of the apprentice’s ride of desire, an apparently self-pleasuring kind of ride, is always maddeningly suspended. Onanism, again, is one of the more prominent themes of Duchamp’s Large Glass (Fig. 27). The Apprentice may be linked here with the wheels of the “Chocolate Grinder” (Fig. 28) (“the bachelor,” Duchamp informs us, “grinds his chocolate himself”) as well as the erotic “Water Mill.” (Fig. 29) Furthermore, in the Green Box, Duchamp explicitly links To Have the Apprentice in the Sun with the “slopes” and “illuminating glass” of the Large Glass. Duchamp’s mobile and slopes drawing in the Green Box is showing perhaps the ultimate conclusion of the Apprentice’s line-which is, in fact, a fall into the illuminating gas. We are involved here in what Duchamp calls, perhaps echoing Jarry’s Faustrollian theories, his “playful physics.” The illusion of motion is directly contingent on these planes of possibility and angles of action in delay. Like Beckett’s writing-poised for (in)action and yet always documenting the speech of speechlessness (imagination dead imagine)-Duchamp’s aesthetic is an impossible machine of almost-desire.

click to enlarge

Figure 30
Vibeke Tandberg,
Princess Goes To Bed
With A Mountain Bike, 2001

The reader or viewer of the avant-garde is necessarily involved in a game of identity and complicated progress: the how now/who now of Beckett is often complemented by the what is/when will of Duchamp. In such a subverted art experience, there is necessarily a demand for a new mode of reading and looking. Both Beckett and Duchamp use the technologies of the everyday to confuse its own modes: they effect this by using the habit of modern machinery against itself in order to finally break the pattern (or reveal the workings) of daily experience. In this way, reading and viewing are comparable to riding a bicycle or vacuuming or answering the telephone: everyday reflexes that are merely trained responses to a particular modern environment. The notion of recycling (despite the bad pun) is therefore vitally important here. What Duchamp calls in the Green Box the “junk of life” is thus inverted to read the life of junk: we see into the historicity of the modern object and thus into one component of the circuitry of the modern subject.

Aesthetic beauty for Beckett and Duchamp is less the victory of aesthetic form over mechanised and hackneyed contemporaneity, but rather the revelation of form (form as engineering) within modernity. So Duchamp’s delay, or Beckett’s deliberately counter-Joycean literature of failure, are both eagerly implicated in the inauguration of a grand scientific and artistic tension. In the Duchampian delay, as in the Beckettian grand exhaustion, the act of signification is aligned with the process of subject formation: the workings of modernity and history are exposed as vital, necessary elements in all forms of representation and technology. (There is nothing that does not form being!) So the bicycle, as an emblem of the manufacturing-, engineering-, marketing-genius of modernity is parsed-so to speak-until its powerful, informing tropics of chaos, pain, impossibility are laid bare.

The bicycle is here remoulded. Peter Wagner states that, “The uses and effects of technology have to do with the transformation of the conditions of human action (on whatever terms: toward predictability or creativity, toward autonomy or control) and are not just means to given ends.” (251-2). The revelation of the avant-garde vis a vis modernity here is that the modern gets you nowhere-fast. This revelation-sometimes erotically charged, sometimes banal-is what the post-modern (the legitimately post-aesthetic) inherits from the corpus of both Beckett and Duchamp. (See Josef Beuys’ Bike; Vibeke Tandberg’s Princess Goes to Bed with a Mountain Bike (Fig. 30); Greg Curnoe’s water-colour Duchamp’s Wheel.) Ziarek says that, “Reformulating the valency of experience in modernity from technic to poietic [a term he takes from Heidegger to refer to a rethinking of the commonplace through poetic language], the avant-garde poses the question not only of freedom from aesthetic conventions but of experience as freedom” (299).

If poetic living itself is a kind of liberty then the ethics of the avant-garde are founded not in the utopian, ideal obliteration of the bourgeois field (a nostalgic returning of the work of art and artist to the independent realm) but rather in the implication of all objects and subjects within history. No Beckett genius, no Duchamp genius, steps forward in this particular analysis. We merely end up, at best, riding on our hybrids: a ten-speed becoming a book on wheels, and then a book becoming a bike with pages. Ziarek calls this the “tangled web of relations between experience, technology, and aesthetics.” Tangled, perhaps, because each strand is, finally, connotative of the very same thing-a force shivering (dynamically, resplendently) towards nothingness.

Notes

1. Gertrude Stein’s comment concerning the new modern artist is apposite: “The painter can no longer say that what he does is as the world looks to him because he cannot look at the world any more, it has been photographed too much and he has to say that he does something else” (357).

2. Incidentally, Leon Edel points to another possible reason for the bicycle’s nostalgic aura (its horse-like qualities) in his discussion of Henry James’s riding habits (circa 1896): “When he was not walking the hilly streets [of Rye], he took the circling sea roads on his bicycle, going to nearby Winchelsea, where Ellen Terry had her cottage, and to a host of little towns with soft quaint names . . . As the summer deepened, as the shepherds and their dogs passed him in the grassy meadow once marshland, Henry James was reminded of his younger years when he had galloped on horseback past Italian shepherds and their flocks and felt the stir of ancient things in the Roman Campagna” (159).

3. Astradur Eysteinnson may be said to anticipate, to some extent, both Ziarek and Berswordt-Wallrabe: “I find it more to the point to see modernism as an attempt to interrupt the modernity that we live and understand as social, if not ‘normal,’ way of life” (6).

4. See The Penguin Book of the Bicycle for more information on the history of this early form of bicycle.

5. See Bicycling, a History (12). Also, see 100 ans de cyclisme which reproduces a fascinating stained-glass image of an angel riding a bike-like, cloud-riding machine.

6. Jacques Henri Lartigue, in his brilliant journal and collection of early 20th century European photographs (Diary of a Century), recalls attending the Buffalo racetrack in Paris where he would watch the aviette races. An “aviette” was a bicycle fitted with wings, upon which riders hoped (relying solely on their own leg power) to fly (n.p.).

7. Jerome McGurn’s text, On your Bicycle, reproduces a 1929 line drawing by Frank Patterson (“the celebrated artist of leisure cycling”) illustrating a pastoral, idyllic scene in which a young couple have clearly bicycled into the country for a weekend of camping. Beckett’s form of “escape” in “Fingal,” of course, contrasts strikingly-and deliberately-with the nostalgic and saccharine fantasy presented in this contemporary advertisement.

8. Ferdinand Leger is quoted as saying, “The bicycle operates in the realm of light” (quoted in McGurn, 122).

9. The very nakedness of the bicycle wheel-its built-in honesty-is also relevant. Roderick Watson and Martin Gray discuss the allure of the perfectly balanced cycle wheel: “A well-trued cycle wheel will revolve so smoothly when it is suspended that it should always come to a stop with the tyre valve at the bottom. Even its spokes are thinner in the middle and the thicker at each end (double-butted) to give the best in both lightness and strength. Under tension these spokes are a shimmer of extraordinarily complex forces and to compare a cycle wheel to a car wheel is rather like comparing the airy grace of a suspension bridge to a plank across a ditch” (97).

10. Leonardo Da Vinci, the Renaissance polymath that Duchamp is frequently compared to, says in his Notebooks, “You will speak of wheels that turn and return” (79).

11. This crisis may also, more generally, be a result of the bicycle wheel’s own mysterious properties. Lao Tse as quoted in Alan Fletcher: “Thirty spokes meet in the hub, / But the empty space between them / is the essence of the wheel” (n.p.).

12. Douglas Mao, in Solid Objects, writes that, “Anglo-American modernism is centrally animated by a tension between an urgent validation of production and an admiration for an object world beyond manipulations of consciousness-a tension that lends modernist writing its dominant note of vital hesitation or ironic idealism, and that leads modernists, as thinkers and artists, to that impasse in which all doing seems undoing, all making unmaking in the end” (11). Both Duchamp and Beckett, of course, mine this impasse and both artists thus traffic in what might be called a poetics of effective futility.

13. Duchamp’s avant-garde colleague, and sometime collaborator, Man Ray was also compelled by the relationship between bicycles and eroticism. See, in particular, his onanistic Monocopter engraving which shows a man on a four-wheeled machine grasping a long pole between his legs that resolves above him into propeller blades. Also, see his cartoony The Bicycle which shows a woman, legs spread and vulva exposed, apparently in a state of ecstasy on her penny farthing.

14. The bicycles, a dynamic technology of “independence,” thus shaped cultural realities as well as social and gender relations. Bicycling fashion, as well as practical bicycling clothing, was very important to both male and female riders. And because dresses were a definite nuisance/danger-especially while riding on the average late 19th century “safety” bike-many early women riders adopted (bloomer-style) pants. In their rational dress, these pioneering women riders were for the most part shocking spectacles. As the advent of the bicycle helped contribute to the redefinition of traditional boundaries of gender and social propriety, it also metamorphosed women riders into quasi-cosmopolites. Marks stresses that, “The woman who travelled on her own wheels, then, whether she did so for a lark or for serious transportation, expanded her boundaries well beyond the home circle. She became . . . a citizen of the world” (203).

15. It is interesting to note that Raymond Roussel, a writer Duchamp cites as his key aesthetic influence, in his infamous fantasy novel Impressions of Africa (Impressions d’Afrique)-which is essentially a narrated list of wondrous machines-includes a scene in which a fourteen year-old girl dances on top of a wheel. Roussel’s name seems to be at least one of the phonetic ghosts inside Rrose Selavy’s and it is fun to speculate that the Bicycle Wheel (Roue de bicyclette) may also be an homage to Roussel. Janis Mink further speculates that “The phonetic collage of roue (wheel) and sellette (stool) could make it a ‘little’ portrait of Roussel” (49).

16. The Penguin Book of the Bicycle states that the French often call bikes “little queens” (np).

17. Mercier and Camier, eponymous characters of Beckett’s 1970 novel, also discover a bicycle.

18. This suggests, I think, in microcosm, the more general trajectory of modernist texts as they approach the post-modern moment. I hope to explore this point further in the general “theory” introduction to my dissertation proper.

19. Duchamp, too, is obsessed with the other-dimensionality of shadows. His final painting, Tu’m, for example, is a catalogue of his ready-mades and their attendant darker selves.

20. Northrop Frye contends that “The figure of the pure ego in a closed auto-erotic circle meets us many times in Beckett’s masturbating, carrot-chewing, stone-sucking characters” (o’hara 30?).

2. Moran will also state towards the end of his narrative, “I am sorry I cannot indicate more clearly how this result was obtained, it would have been something worth reading. But it is not at this late stage of my relation that I intend to give way to literature” (139).

Works Cited

Alderson, Frederick. Bicycling-a History. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972.

Babaian, Sharon. The Most Benevolent Machine. Transformation Series 8. Ottawa, Canada:
Museum of Science and Technology, 1998.

Beckett, Samuel. “Fingal.” More Pricks than Kicks. New York: Grove P, 1970.

-. Mercier and Camier. New York: Grove P, 1975.

-. “Texts for Nothing.” Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose (1929-1989). Ed. and
intro. S.E. Gontarksi. New York: Grove P, 1995.

-. The Beckett Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. Great Britain: Picador, 1976.

Berswordt-Wallrabe, Kornelia von. “Fishing in the Stream of Function.” Marcel Duchamp:
Respirateur. Germany: Cantz Verlag, 1995.

Bijker, Wiebe E. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1995.

Booker, Keith M. “The Bicycle and Descartes: Epistemology in the Fiction of Beckett and
O’Brien. Eire. 26.1 (1991): 76-94.

Cervantes, Miguel. The Adventures of Don Quixote. Trans. J.M. Cohen. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972.

Da Vinci, Leonardo. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Sel. and ed. Irma A. Richter.
Oxford, England: Oxford UP, 1986.

Davidson, Avram. “Or All the Seas with Oysters.”

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert
Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. New York: Viking P, 1977.

Douglas, Stan. Preface. Samuel Beckett: Teleplays. By Samuel Beckett. Fwd. Willard Holmes.
Vancouver, B.C.: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1988.

Duchamp, Marcel. “Letter to Guy Weelen.” 26 June 1955. Letter 237 of Affectionately, Marcel:
The Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp. Ed. Francis M. Naumann and Hector Obalk, trans. Jill Taylor. Ghent, Belgium: Ludion P, 2000. 345-6.

-. “Letter to Jean Suquet.” 25 December 1949. Letter 186 of Affectionately, Marcel: The
Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp. Ed. Francis M. Naumann and Hector Obalk, trans. Jill Taylor. Ghent, Belgium: Ludion P, 2000. 282-4..

-. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even : a Typographical Version of Marcel
Duchamp’s Green Box. Devised Richard Hamilton, trans. George Heard Hamilton. Stuttgart: H. Mayer, 1976. n.p.

Eysteinsson, Astradur. The Concept of Modernism. England: Oxford UP, 1990.

Fletcher, Alan. The Art of Looking Sideways. London: Phaidon, 2001.
Frye, Northrop. “The Nightmare Life in Death.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Molloy,
Malone Dies, The Unnamable: a Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. J. D. O’Hara. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Hard, Mikael. The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology : Discourses On Modernity, 1900-
1939. Boston, Mass. : MIT P, 1998.

Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1998.

Janvier, Ludovic. “Molloy.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Molloy, Malone Dies, The
Unnamable: a Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. J. D. O’Hara. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Jones, Amelia. Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge UP, 1994.

Kenner, Hugh. Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study. London: John Calder, 1962.

Kern, Edith. “Moran-Molloy: The Hero as Author.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of
Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable: a Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. J. D. O’Hara.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff
Bennington and Brian Massumi, intro. Fredric Jameson. Minneapolis, Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1984.

click image to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain,
photograph by Alfred
Stieglitz from
The Blind Man
No. 2, 1917

When Duchamp in 1917 labeled a urinal an art work, a sculpture (Fig. 1), he raised questions that have engaged generations of critics, and the work continues to inspire artists.⁽¹⁾ Its designation as a fountain raises other questions; e.g., how could a piece of plumbing, a receptacle for standup male excretion, serve as a fountain that sprinkles water? The association of the “fountain” with the male organ makes some sense; but the recent view of critics that its round compact shape suggests female qualities compounds the paradox of reception/projection of fluid: did Duchamp conceive an incongruous representation in which a female’s anatomy, designed for a vertical drop, serves the function of horizontally directed discharge like the male’s? and was this conception unique, unprecedented?

The answers I propose are yes to his conception and no to its uniqueness.

In an irony that has not escaped his critics, the
Fountain
(or its replicas) and all the other ready-mades of Duchamp, which he considered anaesthetic and antiretinal, remain on public view in museums as centers of attention and discourse, ccupying aesthetic space rather like the unrestored marks of an iconoclast or like the cracks in his definitively unfinished
Large Glass
. (Fig. 2) Their status grows in prominence among some critics even as other contemporary manifestations-for example by the Dadaists-fade into obscurity or a scholarly twilight zone.

click image to enlarge

Figure 2
Marcel Duchamp,
Close-up view of the
Large Glass
showing the crack

No work seems more understated and prosaically obvious than the Fountain, generally presented as a protest against the institution of gallery and museum exhibition. Yet this popular object continues to generate a big literature dedicated to the insatiable interpretation of its hidden implications. A recent theory claims that the work presented by Duchamp as a sample of prosaic American plumbing was not simply ready-made but artfully altered, confected to seem readymade: ars celare artem. This view has inspired erudite research among the manufacturers’s toilets and led some to conclude that Duchamp simulated the standardization.⁽²⁾ This corroborates the view that at least some of the “mades” were not all “ready-” and merely selected, but evolved over time and with premeditation, a point that emerges also in the following discussion of the Fountain.

click image to enlarge

Figure 3
Marcel Duchamp,
Bottle Dryer,
1914/64

Duchamp’s toilet sculpture makes an exquisitely ironic comment on the view circulating in France since the nineteenth century that advocates of utility-whether in philosophy, art or plumbing-were tasteless. (The epitome of industrial utility were of course the Anglo-Saxons, particularly the Americans.) As the champion of l’art pour l’art Théophile Gautier asserted in 1834, “There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man’s needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water closet. / For my part … I am fond of things and people in inverse ratio to the service they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase with its mandarins and dragons, which is perfectly useless to me, to a utensil which I do use…”⁽³⁾ It was with this aesthetics of tastelessness in mind that Duchamp the socioaesthetic gadfly wryly remarked (1946), “I threw the bottle rack (Fig. 3) and the urinal into their faces as a challenge, and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.”⁽⁴⁾

As noted above, the upright urinals were designed to receive and remove a standing man’s urination, his jet d’eau (“fountain”); in contrast the female’s downward stream favor(ing)s squatting.

click to enlarge

Figure 4
Mannekin-pis fountain, Brussels
Figure 5
Hellenistic marble
Fountain Nymph of
the second century A.D

This property yielded the convenience denied women of the stand-up pissoirs once common on public streets in France.⁽⁵⁾ (Fig. 4) A German feminist, concerned about the gendered function of the urinal, argued that the Fountain has an exclusionary significance for Frenchmen: its awkwardness for women embodies in her view an implicit sexism.⁽⁶⁾

Yet the Greeks already conceived of a fountain in which the water gushed from a standing female. The plumbing built into a Hellenistic marble Fountain Nymph of the second century A.D. allowed a strong, horizontally-directed flow of water, projecting a stream identical to that from the male organ. In this rare construction a round vaginal channel passes through the pelvis of the standing figure. The water moved through that passage toward a facing water basin, filling and overflowing it.⁽⁷⁾ (Fig. 5) I don’t know whether Duchamp saw a version of this fountain in Paris or Munich, but the idea of adapting replicas of classical statues to contemporary household fixtures was quite common. In this increasingly commercial consumer society even hallowed works like the Venus de Milo could be subjected to caricature: the Vénus de Mille-eaux of 1896 resembles a kiosk plastered with stickers advertising-not fountains, but popular watering places. Thus, engaging the vast upsurge of middle class tourists seeking culture, humorists in anticipation of Duchamp’s Fountain, made sport of bringing dignified classics down to a plebeian level.

click image to enlarge

Figure 6
Jean Arp, Portrait of
Tristan Tzara.1916.
Estate of the
artist: on loan to
the Musee d’Art
et d’Histoire, Geneva.

Figure 7
Brancusi,Portrait of
Princess X, 1916

Duchamp generated something more than the ironic display of a provocatively vulgar and sexist object, and his piece bears comparison with some sculptures by his contemporaries. Duchamp in fact emphasized that in choosing an ordinary article of life, and causing its useful significance to disappear under the new title and point of view, he “created a new thought for that object.” The new thought in this protoconceptual piece involved, as we have seen, complicating the gender question by truncating the projecting tubes of the male utensil and rotating its axis. The compact form he devised emphasizes curvilinear lines, like the mechanomorphic female nudes of his friend Picabia; and it also suggests the r(R)eliefs Jean Arp made between 1916 and 1922,(Fig. 6) which Duchamp admired as among the most convincing sculptures of that “antirationalist era,” adding that “his Concretions are like a three-dimensional pun on the female body.”⁽⁸⁾ More directly relevant to the Fountain’s implied androgyny is a sculpture exhibited in 1917 in the same Independents exhibition that refused the Fountain-Brancusi’s Portrait of Princess X of 1916, (Fig. 7) notorious for uniting in one piece phallic and female aspects.⁽⁹⁾

A subtle-or controversial-source for the Fountain arguably comes from the collages of Picasso and Braque. When Duchamp rejected Cubist painting-notably the variant practiced by his brothers and their friends at the Section d’Or-he turned to selecting and modifying objects available for purchase. This move to readymades was inspired I believe by the example of Cubist collage, admittedly as an intellectual response to its concept. He made ironic comments or exaggerations of the formal or verbal games of Picasso and Braque, who for example suggested making a “urinal” from a “(jo)ur(i)nal” and-anticipating his play on Q in LHOOQ-insinuated a playful androgyny in the letter Q (a hole with a cedilla) and in the hollow frontal tubes of pipes (derived from the famous Grebo mask’s eyes?).⁽¹⁰⁾ In contrast to the artistic finesse of these androgynous tubes, the frontal hole of Duchamp’s Fountain -at once a truncated penis and a protruding vagina-seems like an artless display of plumbing.

By displaying this utensil upside down-inverting it-Duchamp slyly enhanced the uncertainty of the object’s gender, intimating its androgyny.⁽¹¹⁾ Aas in note 13 described the Fountain as a receptacle for the male “jet” turned upside-down and made female, a vagina potentially containing its own fluids. This inversion that accentuates the feminine lines of a utensil intended for males, provides one more example of the theme of androgyny so often noted in Duchamp’s work.⁽¹²⁾

The Fountain provided Duchamp with a field suited to his prankish humor about his own gender identity. One of the most important books on the Fountain opens with the remark, “We do not even know with absolute certainty that Duchamp was the artist-he himself once attributed it to a female friend …”⁽¹³⁾ The confusion of authorship and gender culminated a few years later in his female persona Rrose Sélavy, a playful transformation of his sex, name and religion; but he may have adumbrated the Fountain’s link of female to male (urinal) earlier in his notes of 1914 for the Large Glass. In one of them he says that “one only has: for female the public urinal and one lives by it.”⁽¹⁴⁾ It seems to me that “one lives” anticipates the name Rrose Sélavy (arrose, c’est la vie).⁽¹⁵⁾ A drawing for the Large Glass traces a parabolic trajectory of water spurting like urinary discharge. The text next to it curiously associates fountain (jet d’eau) or water spray and a subtle confusion of genders: “MOULIN A EAU / Chute d’eau / Une sorte de jet d’eau arrivant de loin en demi-cercle-par-dessus les moules malic.”⁽¹⁶⁾ The word moules embodies androgynous meaning: on the one hand it is defined as male by the adjective malic as the mold for the bachelors; on the other hand a second definition of moule means mussel, which served as a metaphor in Parisian modernist circles to signify the vulve.⁽¹⁷⁾

click image to enlarge

Figure 8
Marcel Duchamp,
Family Portrait (1899),1964
Rhonda Roland Shearer COLLECTION

Can Duchamp’s archly subversive efforts to bring together the genders have covered a personal agenda? Perhaps his endless fascination with the coincidentia oppositorum evidenced in the Fountain’s implicit androgyny can provide a brief glimpse beneath his otherwise impersonal facade. I am by no means alone in elevating Duchamp above the impersonal collectivity of the Dadaist movement.⁽¹⁸⁾ In 1964 Duchamp exhibited a photo of his family cut to fit into a replica of the Fountain , a devoutly irreverent monument perhaps prompted by the death of his brother Jacques Villon the year before.(Fig. 8) This is a photomontage composed of photos from 1899 showing the 12 year old Marcel in the center beneath his mother holding a baby and above his father and two sisters. An inked out form between the sisters might have been a photo of his deceased brother Jacques. He had often over the course of his career created figure groups directly or indirectly suggesting family pictures: his brothers playing chess; the King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes ; and the Big Glass with its cloud “parents” above and “bachelors” below.⁽¹⁹⁾

Family photo in a urinal. Androgyny. Pseudonymous roles-male and female. All this would seem to invite psychological analysis; but the personality of this wily chess master, a connoisseur of stalemates, has discouraged analyses of his motivations. We may note, it is true, that the jarring discord between a family photo and its unseemly location recalls a description of the Freudian family scene in which all differences-gender, age, love and hate, the oedipal triangle-merge in incestuous union;⁽²⁰⁾ moreover, that as Rrose Sélavy Duchamp once equated incest and a “passion de famille.” However, the approach of Adlerian Individual psychology may offer a more direct access to his intentions. Such an approach would interpret his behavior as largely a reflex of his place in the family constellation-a middle child between siblings of opposite gender.

click to enlarge

Figure 9
Marcel Duchamp,Portrait of
the Artist’s Father, 1910
Figure 10
Marcel Duchamp, The King and Queen
Surrounded by Swift Nudes, 1912

Marcel was the youngest of the three artist sons of Eugène Duchamp, a well-to-do notary, and experienced an apparently normal and happy childhood in an affectionate family milieu. His father tolerated and even supported financially the artistic ambitions of his sons. In 1910 Duchamp painted a loving Cézannesque portrait of his seated father with a large urn over his left shoulder.(Fig. 9) Rather than engaging in a simple Oedipal revolt against the father’s prosaic job as notary, he entered into a complex dialectic with him. His older siblings already broke with the bourgeois profession of his father, and Duchamp like them rebelled professionally (a position epitomized, perhaps in The King nd Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes
of 1913 (Fig. 10)). As the most rebellious sibling and the last-born male Duchamp invites the Adlerian thesis that personality is determined by birth order of children within a family.⁽²¹⁾Duchamp’s case is rather complex since as last of three males in a family of six children he was at once last born and middle child. Adlerian Individual Psychology says of the middle child,⁽²²⁾especially the male, that he will sometimes become a rebel, either covertly or overtly, but that if not encouraged he could drop out of competition and become an observer. Forced to be self-sufficient he will seek out an independent path. While defying authority figures, he can keep a lower profile or stay out of the limelight.⁽²³⁾

In seeking out an independent place for himself Duchamp implicitly rebelled against his brothers’ authority, rejecting their use of traditional materials and techniques in favor of technology and commercial materials. He mimicked his brothers’ interest in science especially optics, transmogrified into a mocking pataphysics, an unstable mixture of Jarry and Leonardo.⁽²⁴⁾ In the end he assimilated the logic and scrupulous attention to detail of his father the notary while rejecting the life style of the staid bourgeois: he carefully filled notebooks (for the Large Glass) with systematic calculations so obscurely self-referential that many are incomprehensible. In doing so he created an onanistic Summa filled with overt and covert sexual annotations: the art of the notary turned into a notarial art.

All this certainly describes the famous anonymous author of R. Mutt’s Fountain, an artist who celebrated and profaned his family by placing their image at the bottom of a urinal (illustrating his famous word play “Ruiner – Uriner”), just as he may have soiled and celebrated the ghosts of millenial sculpture.

Notes

1. To take one example: Mike Bidlo in 1995 titled a version of Fountain Origins of the World (an allusion to the title of Courbet’s painting of female pudenda). Recalling Stieglitz’s famous photo of the Fountain before a painting by Marsden Hartley, he placed behind it a copy of a painting of a flower with vaginal suggestions by Georgia O’Keeffe. Interestingly O’Keeffe’s flower is a rose whose color is visible through the holes of the fountain—doubtless an allusion to Duchamp’s alter ego Rrose! Bidlo produced more than 3,000 variations on the “Fountain” motif. On these and other relevant issues see the valuable article by Michael R. Taylor, “Blind Man’s Buff: Duchamp, Stieglitz, and the Fountain Scandal Revisited,” in the exhibition catalogue Mirrorical Returns. Marcel Duchamp and the [sic] 20th Century Art (Yokohama Museum of Art, 2005) 206-13.

2. Rhonda Roland Shearer has spearheaded this new view of the readmades. Working with her husband the late Stephen Jay Gould, she has investigated Duchamp’s sources for the Fountain and for Apolinère Enameled in “Marcel Duchamp: A readymade case for collecting objects of our cultural heritage along with works of art,” in Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, 1: 3 (Dec. 2000): Collections. William A. Camfield held to the established opinion when he drew attention to Duchamp’s selection of a urinal from the J. L. Mott Iron Works in “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917,” in Rudolf E. Kuenzli and Francis M. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989) 64-94. In fact, the first version of the work, refused for the exhibition, has long ceased to exist except as replicas, a photo by Stieglitz, and numerous texts starting with Duchamp’s letters and notes and extending through an interminable series of commentaries and critical footnotes, including this one.

3. See Gautier’s preface to Mlle. de Maupin.

4. The journalist Louise Norton wrote an early critical examination of the Fountain’s aesthetic properties titled “Buddha of the Bathroom” that appeared in the second issue of The Blind Man. (Fig. 11) Duchamp rejoined her piece with a letter to Rongwrong (Fig. 12) on May 5, 1917 calling her sarcastically an “exquise psychologue” who “à propos de pissotières, invoque d’une façon si éclectique Montaigne, Nietzsche et Rémy de Gourmont.”

5. The Robert Dictionnaire historique, assuming the pissotière was designed for men, defines it in terms of the membre viril and urine. A French colloquialism describes the urination of boys as occurring while standing. See Michel Maillard, “’Un zizi, ça sert à faire pipi debout! Les références génériques de ça en grammaire francaise,’ in Recherches linguistiques 12: 157-207 (1987). The projective aspect of the standing male urinator is well represented by the penis faucet of the famous Mannekin-pis fountain in Brussels.

6. See Uli Schuster, “Was macht ein Werk zum Kunstwerk? Betrachtungen zu einem Objekt von Marcel Duchamp: Fountain.” It is interesting to note the remarks of the famous Freudian analyst Marie Bonaparte as presented by N. Thompson, “Marie Bonaparte’s Theory of Female Sexuality,” in American Imago 60:3 (Fall 2003): 239, “An additional theme in Bonaparte’s characterization is her grandmother’s alleged virility. Justine Eléonore reinforced the impression that she was a ‘phallic woman’ by boasting that she could urinate while standing up, a claim that astonished her granddaughter.”

7. The statue, recently excavated, is exhibited at the Pergamum Museum under nr.768.

8. Duchamp wrote this retrospectively in 1949.

9. Can an association between Brancusi’s androgynous figure and Duchamp’s androgynous urinal account for one artist’s idea of turning Brancusi’s into toilets? In the 1990’s Tim Thyzel exhibited in the Cynthia Broan Gallery in N.Y.C. an ensemble of “Bathroom Brancusis”; and—echoing Brancusi’s formal vocabulary—starting in 1993 he even fashioned an “Endless Column” of toilet bowls. Doïna Lemny, Edith Balas and William Camfield explore Duchamp’s relation to Brancusi in Marielle Tabart, editor, Brancusi-Duchamp, in the collection “Les Carnets de l’Atelier Brancusi” Paris, 2000. Recent scholarship has explored Brancusi’s androgyny and ambiguity: Bernard Marcadé in Femininmasculin: Le sexe de l’art, exh. cat., Centre G. Pompidou, Paris 1995, p. 31, quoted an interview of Brancusi with Robert Devigne originally published in L’ère nouvelle, ‘Le devenir-femme de l’art,’ Jan. 28, 1920. On Brancusi’s use of ambiguity, see Friedrich Teja Bach, Constantin Brancusi, Metamorphosen plastischer Form (Cologne 1987) 184-7.

10. See also my article “A Symbolist Antecedent of the Androgynous Q in Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q.,” in Source XVIII.4 (Summer, 1999): 40-7.

11. In an article in a respected German medical journal, Karl Westphal in 1869 introduced a new mental disorder he called “Contrary Sexual Feeling.” According to Westphal, male inverts exhibit obvious signs of effeminacy and experience sexual desire directed toward their own sex. Similarly, female inverts, including a case he reported on, are tomboys who turn away from “normal” sexual contacts with men, favoring other women instead. Westphal’s successor Richard von Krafft-Ebing viewed sexual inversion as a mental disease, and popularized the notion that male inverts are profoundly feminine and delicate. Havelock Ellis rejected the idea that male inverts are necessarily girlish, but retained the term in his book Sexual Inversion (1896).

12. Lanier Graham, “Duchamp and Androgyny: The Concept and its Context,” Tout-Fait 2:4 (Jan. 2002), Articles. The link between androgyny and the coincidentia oppositorum has led some to speculate about Duchamp’s interest in alchemy. See, for example, Arturo Schwarz, “The Alchemist Stripped Bare in the Bachelor, Even,” in Anne d’Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, Marcel Duchamp (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973).

13. See William A. Camfield, Marcel Duchamp: Fountain (Houston: The Menil Collection, 1989)..

14. See Duchamp, Box in Sanouillet and Peterson, The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (1973) 23.

15. Perhaps Duchamp had in mind Lumière’s celebrated slapstick film of 1905 L’arroseur arrosé (the sprinkler sprinkled) in which a man watering his lawn lets slip his garden hose which splashes water all over him-“that’s life.” The children’s journal, Musée des enfants in 1897, p.96 contains “sprinkling” cartoons; e.g. one captioned “Il est là, Monsieur” in which a worker hosing the street points the way to a well-dressed gentleman, and inadvertently directs the hose at the shocked, recoiling figure.

16. See Duchamp du Signe, p.89. Duchamp sustained his fascination with fluids over the next decades right to his death; e.g., in the 50 cc. of Paris Air, (Fig. 13) in the Eau de voilette,(Fig. 14) and in the late waterfall of Etant donnés. (Fig. 15)

17. Mussels first entered French dining in the late 19th century, and Apollinaire already compared it to the vulva in Les Exploits d’un jeune Don Juan (1907) 31): “A la fin je découvris que [la] fente [de Berthe] que l’on pouvait comparer à une moule entr’ouverte …”

18. See Camfield, op.cit., and Marjorie Perloff, Dada without Duchamp / Duchamp without Dada: Avant-garde Tradition and the Individual Talent,1998

19. Duchamp’s efforts to control his siblings and his continual assigning them nicknames suggest a remark made by Robert Smithson in an interview shortly before his death. Smithson observed somewhat caustically the growing influence of Duchamp whom he described as “a kind of priest … who turned a urinal into a baptismal font.” In Moira Roth, “Robert Smithson on Duchamp, an Interview,” Artforum XII.2 (Oct. 1973): 47, reprinted in J. Maschek, ed., Duchamp in Perspective (NJ, 1975) 134-7.

20. See Guy Rosolato, Essais sur le symbolique (1969) 291: “Le mythe serait … dans la nostalgie idéalisée d’une unité originelle qu’entretient le fantasme infantile de la Scène Primitive.”

21. Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel. Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives (New York: Random House, 1996) follows Adler in his essential thesis. But he adds a statistical veneer and uses (without citing) Popper’s once fashionable “principle of falsifiability” to refute Adler’s lack of scientific rigor.

22. The complexity of his emotional and artistic relations to his next younger sibling Suzanne have yet to be explored. Replacing him as youngest child she may well have dealt a mildly traumatic blow to his ego. Can his envy of her have contributed to his wish as Rrose to rival females in general, to adopt their look while retaining his male prerogatives?

23. Duchamp advances a concept of “sister squares” in his book on chess theory.

24. Linda Dalrymple Henderson has written extensively on Duchamp’s interest in contemporary science.

Figure(s) 1-3, 10-14 © 2005 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

1. “Be your own university”— An introduction

It was last June when I decided to go for an interview in the Kunstmuseum (Museum of Art) in Vaduz in Liechtenstein. In my letter of application I mentioned the barriers between different arts as well as the resulting ‘pigeonholing’–to stress the fact that in my mind it is essential to see those barriers not in the sense of limits but rather as challenges. After all I applied for a position which is not exactly tailored to a future high school teacher of History and English. One could interpret this short ‘philosophical interval’ in my letter as a kind of justification–though this was definitely not my aim. Instead I refuse to be labelled as a Historian or English linguist when my interests are distributed among different areas.

“Art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it.”⁽¹⁾
-John Cage

In my short introductory remark I already mentioned barriers as a central term. I am interested in barriers between different arts and disciplines not in the sense of respecting them but in the sense of blurring. Both, Duchamp and Cage offered me a lot of input through their art, music, philosophy and their blurring of the distinction between art and life. They were in search for a way to escape from traditional painting respectively music. Cage was particularly interested in Zen Buddhism and accordingly invented a new notion of music by using chance as a compositional tool. He was trying to break the traditional barriers between not only theatre, music, dance and fine arts: “I am out to blur the distinctions between art and life, as I think Duchamp was. And between teacher and student. And between performer and audience, etcetera.”⁽²⁾

Both Cage and Duchamp revolutionized the common understanding of modern art. They withdrew themselves from commitments to what I call ‘entertaining’ artists who were interested in pleasing a large audience. Duchamp, during his whole lifetime refused to be labelled an artist. “My attitude towards art is that of an atheist towards religion. I’d rather be gunned, kill myself or somebody else than creating art again.”⁽³⁾ Duchamp was certainly doing art while provocatively refusing it, but here the central message was that he did not want to be categorised in any way. In an interview, he similarly remarked that “a human is a human, as an artist is an artist; only if he is categorised under a certain ‘- Ism’ he can’t be human nor artist.”⁽⁴⁾As I continue my lines of thought at this point it only indicates the beginning of a long walk along these (sometimes invisible) barriers. My ‘philosophical walk’ will be that of an amateur wanderer, someone who got deeply inspired by three outstanding, challenging and at the same time, enigmatic characters.

John Cage first attracted my interest at a lecture in college where our English professor acquainted us with an apparently bright and free mind. When I learned about Cage’s ideals in education I realized that this was the opposite of what we mostly experienced as college students. Reproduction of knowledge is the most common and also most uncomplicated form of assessment, while the written and oral creative output of a student, even when studying languages, lies at a minimum. However, university, as I experienced it, greatly encouraged the meeting with others. It is a place where social exchange can usually take place on a spontaneous basis.

An appealing aspect while working with Cage was the fact that his influence was not just felt in music, but also in visual arts, dance and aesthetic thought in general. He believed that art was intimately connected with our lives and thus not to the museums. Cage stressed the concepts of diversification for unification, of multiversity for university–to express the idea of bringing joy and liveliness into education. He brought into question the term ‘university’ which, he believed, was not encouraging the meeting with oneself.⁽⁵⁾ The first rethinking process has to take place in our own minds, thus my title ‘Be your own university.’
My walk will sometimes take place on thin ground, but this interest in border areas would be also in the sense of Cage and Duchamp. Both artists were in search for means to escape tradition. Cage, by inventing compositional tools other than harmony, Duchamp by “unlearning to draw.”⁽⁶⁾In the course of examining those two characters I found many common elements in relation to the mentioned blurring that my final interest focused on this topic. The fact that they shared a lifetime friendship as well as their likewise, but also contrasting ideas and artistic tools represented other interesting elements when studying both characters. Duchamp, more than Cage, created a real challenge for me as his often paradoxical and ironic statements made it hard to ‘complete the puzzle.’ I decided to partly leave the puzzle unfinished–with the slight intention to let my readers finish it.
During the last 50 years, there have been numerous publications on both Duchamp and Cage. I must admit that, for some reasons I intentionally have not read many of them. One reason is that, if I would have, this paper would have ended in a life-time project. Moreover, if the information load is too heavy, one would support unconscious reproduction of different information sources. And I wanted my mind to keep a sense of freedom and space. I gained a great understanding through primary sources as interviews, lectures, texts and letters. Now and then I grabbed books which had only indirectly to do with my topic, such as Rodin’s Art or Gertrude Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography….in order to keep my mind a bit detached. Thanks to technology it is not much of a problem to get a lively impression of Cage fooling around with the interviewer in a live discussion about his Roaratorio. Those conversations transported the sense of humour and lightness in Cage. I also tried to get familiar with his music–with the rhythms I have heard so much about and still could not guess how they sounded in reality. Sometimes it was indeed an adventurous listening practice and I literally had to keep in mind Cage’s quotation that “disharmony is simply harmony we are unaccustomed to.”⁽⁷⁾
It is worth stating at this point that this project is not intended to be a scientific text in the common sense (as some may have noticed already) Many art historians, at least in German, tend to write in a manner which is apparently designated for a minority target group. It is not the fact that it is impossible for someone interested to understand such a text but that it seems to be an interminable play with words. It appears that they often claim a sense of totality if not universality and thus maintain a clear distinction between art specialists and public. Both Cage and Duchamp have not left behind the impression that their ideas are not accessible to the interested public. After having read some of Cage’s interviews and quotations I almost feel that it is needless to add anything. Many quotations I will cite in the course of this paper could indeed speak for themselves. I guess I just did not have the nerve to leave the space blank in between. Now honestly – I believe that one should first of all enjoy both artists without much scholarship. Cage, in particular, strived to make his work accessible and useful.
This project is best described as an attempt to find my personal way of approaching two artists. I doubt that Duchamp or Cage can be ‘understood’ in the common sense. Duchamp rather left the door open by saying that observers complete works of art themselves. In the end it is up to the audience if a sculpture or a painting is worth surviving. And still, there is something hermetic and mysterious about his work. I must admit that I feel no need to completely uncover its mystery as this would be in contrast to his intentions. The following text will not be scientific in the sense that I do not exclusively intend to give answers but rather challenge new questions. Cage once mentioned in an interview on Duchamp: “‘What did you have in mind when you did such and such?’ is not an interesting question, because then I have his mind rather than my own to deal with.”⁽⁸⁾ The paper does not claim comprehensiveness as it, among other things reflects my own experience with both artists.
In order to give hints about what my chapters will be about, I used various quotations which I thought would quite well convey the central topic of the respective essay. However, I refrained from giving too much away and also deliberately missed writing summaries of my ‘essay results.’ The topic is too complex to be packed in a few words and I wanted to allow a space where some doors remain open.
The idea to partly use translucent paper originates from a quotation by John Cage. In his interview with Moira Roth he was asked if his idea of silence had anything in common with Duchamp’s. He answered:

“Looking at the Large Glass (*which is considered to be Marcel Duchamp’s masterpiece), the thing that I like so much is that I can focus my attention wherever I wish. It helps me to blur the distinction between art and life and produces a kind of silence in the work itself. There is nothing in it that requires me to look in one place or another or, in fact, requires me to look at all.”⁽⁹⁾

A glass indeed does not require the spectator to observe the artwork itself, but encourages him to see the environment behind it. In my mind the notion of ‘looking beyond’, that is not being dictated to focus on the work of art itself is a wonderful idea. Through the symbolic use of translucent paper for the initial chapter pages the environment becomes visibly through the pages. As the pages are closed, one can see traces of the next page’s writing. The paper’s contents are blurring in view of the next page’s font. In case my readers believe they are not learning anything new, I invite them to skip parts of the paper.
In History seminars we were taught about the crucial objectivity of a historian. Objectivity is certainly a necessity or at least something to accomplish in this particular area, while at the same time it is almost impossible. Our personal background will, at least subconsciously, make it difficult to maintain objectivity. In view to Cage’s and Duchamp’s overwhelming philosophical input I found it hard to perpetually keep scientific objectivity. I must admit that I did not manage to repress some creative outbreaks. Regarding objectivity, Cage’s introduction to his Autobiographical Statement seems to be quite apt to end my introduction:

“I once asked Arragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, ‘you have to invent it.’ When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons and events that have influenced my life and work the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me.”⁽¹⁰⁾

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2. “There is only one-ism and that is idiotism”⁽¹¹⁾
attempt to de-categorise marcel

Paul Cézanne, frequently referred to as the father of Modern Art, once mentioned the line “The great artist is defined by the character he imparts everything he touches.”⁽¹²⁾ These words almost ascribe a certain sacredness to the artist. Duchamp’s early oil paintings, in particular the Portrait of the artist’s father or The chess game were apparently influenced by Cézanne. However, as he later self-confidently recalled, those “were only the first attempts at swimming.”⁽¹³⁾ At the age of about 25, Duchamp found his own way of self-expression. He more and more distanced himself from what he called “retinal painting” where colour and form of an artwork were overvalued. Oil painting, to his mind, could no longer claim perpetuity. Duchamp believed that true art could only be found in the conceptual space of human mind rather than on the surface of the canvas. This idea reminded me of Kandinsky, who, in his famous Essays on Art and Artists⁽¹⁴⁾, similarly wrote that it is not so much the form of a work of art which is of significance, but the spirit behind it. Duchamp was one of the first artists who made every effort to desacrifice the common notion of art.

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp

Who is this Marcel Duchamp?
“He neither talks nor looks, nor acts like an artist. It may be in the accepted sense of the word he is not an artist.”⁽¹⁵⁾
I think of Duchamp (Fig. 1) primarily as an intelligent deceiver. Most of the time he led us believe he was not doing art, as when he was playing chess. Cage commented on him: “All he did was go underground. He didn’t wish to be disturbed when he was working.”⁽¹⁶⁾ In his ‘professional life’ Duchamp wanted to make his own way, accepting a certain isolation. It seems that he often enclosed himself in the solitude of his studio, not telling anybody of his artistic activities. In this way he made a real distinction between his life as artist and his social life. Duchamp wished to be an ‘invisible’ artist as he constantly pretended art did not play a crucial role in his life. He gave up art for chess, experimented with language, eluded us and well kept his mystery. Duchamp’s enigmatic silence led us to questioning and next to the analysis. His silence, among other things, caused curiosity and made him such an interesting character for the public. Joseph Beuys, however, interpreted his silence as ‘silence is absent’⁽¹⁷⁾ and thus criticised Duchamp’s anti-art concept. He believed that Duchamp’s silence was overrated. Beuys’ statement probably also adverts to his giving up art for chess and writing. On the other hand, Beuys’ artistic goal had much in common with Duchamp’s–he also felt that the action of the artist was more important than the final product. Beuys, by using everyday materials such as fat and felt, also pivotally contributed to the blurring of the distinctions between art and life.
“It’s very important for me not to be engaged with any group. I want to be free, I want to be free from myself, almost.”⁽¹⁸⁾-Marcel Duchamp

Figure 2
Marcel
Duchamp, Note of 1913

A note, written in 1913, (Fig. 2) reveals an interesting thought, which, in my mind turned out to be central in Duchamp’s artistic life: “Can one make works of art which are not works of art?”⁽¹⁹⁾ As is known, he did make works of art which were up to that point not considered as such–however, he revolutionized the art concept at least for himself. Duchamp wanted art to be intelligent instead of aesthetic. It seems as if he wanted to escape art as practiced in his environment. Duchamp always distanced himself from mainstream artists or what he called “society painters.”⁽²⁰⁾ However, as we well know, his small, but controversial output exerted a strong influence on the development of the 20th century avant-garde art.
Duchamp was not only interested in art–but in many different areas such as literature, music, mathematics and physics which he tried to incorporate in his art. The fact that he was worrying about problems aside from art, in my mind made him a philosopher. And sometimes history teaches us that a philosopher is more successful than an artist who concentrates too much on art itself. Paradoxical as it may seem, Duchamp did not give up life for art but instead made his life a work of art by living and practicing anti-art. He was probably the first anti- respectively non-artist in history. In an interview he once remarked: “I am anti-artistic. I am anti-nothing. I am against making formulas.”⁽²¹⁾ He denied himself as an artist. Some years later he interestingly revised his thoughts by saying that he

“became a non-artist, not an anti-artist…The anti-artist is like an atheist–he believes negatively. I don’t believe in art. Science is the important thing today. There are rockets to the moon, so naturally you go to the moon. You don’t sit home and dream about it. Art was a dream that became unnecessary.”⁽²²⁾

Anti- or non-artist–in view of Duchamp’s often contradicting statements this question is beside the point. He questioned art as an institution. As Cage mentioned in his 26 Statements Re Duchamp, he “collected dust”⁽²³⁾ while other artists concentrated on being artists. Duchamp refused to lead a painter’s life as he refused to exhibit his works of art. In a letter to an artist fellow, he ironically responded (on the question if he wanted to take part in a public exhibition): “I have nothing to exhibit and, in any case the verb exposer (French word for exhibit) sounds too much like the verb épouser (to marry).”⁽²⁴⁾ Paradoxically, he did take part in numerous exhibitions of his time…duchamp the intelligent deceiver…Duchamp could obviously live comfor without creating artworks, but never ceased to be an artist of the mind.
Duchamp’s characteristic anti-position was not only expressed in art. Cage, in relation to this, commented: “Marcel was opposed to politics. He was opposed to private property. He was opposed to religion as is Zen. However, he was for sex and for humour.”⁽²⁵⁾ It seems that what Duchamp refused to do often carried as much significance as what he actually did.

“I am a réspirateur (breather). I enjoy it tremendously.”⁽²⁶⁾ -Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp had an ironic way of referring to himself in terms as lazy–as a réspirateur or breather–but in fact he was very efficient. In the interview with Cabanne he noted that he preferred breathing to working. When asked how artists manage to make their living, he answered “they don’t have to live. They simply breathe.”⁽²⁷⁾ According to Duchamp, every breath is itself an artwork without being visually recognizable. He did nothing against the rumour that he had stopped being an artist since the forties–while he was secretly working on Etant Donnés, his last masterpiece, for two decades. Apparently, Duchamp did not even induct his friends into his artistic secrets. Cage commented: “Of course, he was referring to the Etant Donnés, without my knowing that the work existed. He had two studios in New York, the one people knew about, and one next door to it, where he did his work, which no one knew about. That’s why people were able to visit his studio and see nothing going on.”⁽²⁸⁾ Duchamp managed well to deceive us.
At first sight, Duchamp seemed to be a confirmed anti-materialist. He rarely took a job as he viewed the bourgeois business of having a job and making money as a waste of time. In Paris he worked as a librarian for about two years only to escape from the artistic life there. When he came to America, he gave French lessons in order to bring in enough money to live on. Among his friends, Duchamp was well known for his economy regarding his garments. Cage, in this respect mentioned that Duchamp “was opposed to private property” and recalled the following story:

“Before he married Teeny, he went to visit her on Long Island. Bernard Monnier, her future son-in-law, went to meet Marcel at the station. He said. ‘Where is your luggage?’ Marcel reached into his overcoat pocket and took out his toothbrush and said. ‘This is my robe de chambre.’Then he showed Bernard that he was wearing three shirts, one on top of the other. He had come for a long weekend.”⁽²⁹⁾

Art should not be mixed up with commerce⁽³⁰⁾, he said–although he could have easily made a fortune from Cubistic paintings. This attitude, however, did not prevent him from buying and selling works of art as a means to earn a living. After having read some of Duchamp’s letters in Affectionately Marcel, I got the impression that he was much more than just an art dealer because of existential reasons. His often dry diplomatic letters to Katherine Dreier and the Arensberg family do not sound much like Duchamp, the réspirateur and anti-materialist. “Budget. Enclose the figures on separate sheet: On one side what I received, on the other side the expenses (I have already paid many things or deposited advances). You will see that on account of the new price of the port-folios, I will be lacking 1221 francs in the end.”⁽³¹⁾ Cage, in relation to this said that Duchamp was actually

“extremely interested in money. At the same time he never really used his art to make money. And yet he lived in a period when artists were making enormous amounts of money. He couldn’t understand how they did it. I think he thought of himself as a poor businessman (…) He couldn’t understand why, for instance Rauschenberg and Johns should make so much money and why he should not. But then he took an entirely different life role, so to speak. He never took a job.”⁽³²⁾

Cage’s statement reveals interesting insights in view to Duchamp’s anti-materialistic attitude (which was of course not truly anti-materialistic) in view to art. Cage indirectly suggested Duchamp’s jealousy of other artists of his time. Without my aiming to give a pseudo-psychological comment, Duchamp apparently resigned making money from art as it did not work out for him. This (well pretended) notion of the anti-materialist fits perfectly into his role as the anti-artist and his withdrawal from painting and the art-world in general, and …it seems as if he once again managed well to deceive us. Duchamp’s self-contradiction must not confuse us, for it is as much one of his trademarks as deception.
Duchamp tried to break with the traditional aesthetic predominance through provocation and irony. He thought that painting as a manual activity increasingly covered the true nature of art by overvaluing retinal aspects. With the invention of his readymades, Duchamp completely changed the direction of modern art. By declaring banal, everyday objects as works of art, he did not only desacrifice art in general, but also the artist himself. “Good taste is repetitive and means nothing else than the rumination of traditional forms of taste.”⁽³³⁾This certainly meant a provocation for artists who felt related to an art movement such as the Cubists or Abstract Expressionists. Duchamp chose his readymades “on the basis of a visual indifference, and at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste.”⁽³⁴⁾ They were no longer created by the artistic skill, but by the mind and decision of the artist.
Duchamp wanted to break with art as a movement or constitution by turning away from naturalistic modes of expression and inventing his own symbols. Duchamp did not yearn to reach a large audience. Moreover, Marcel was prepared to be misunderstood by the public. He wished to make his own way, accepting a certain isolation: “In 1912 it was a decision for being alone and not knowing where I was going. The artist should be alone…Everyone for himself, as in a shipwreck.”⁽³⁵⁾ Duchamp, much in contrast to Cage, was never fond of working in a team. He preferred to be an outsider. This outsider role in view to his ‘job’ as an artist, however, must not be confused with the role he took in social life. Duchamp was often described as sociable by his artist fellows, and interviewers “marvelled at how easy it was to talk with Duchamp.”⁽³⁶⁾
After a three-months stay in Munich in 1912, Duchamp noted:

“I was finished with Cubism and with movement–at least movement mixed up with oil paint. The whole trend of painting was something I didn’t care to continue. After ten years of painting I was bored with it–in fact I was always bored with it when I did paint, except at the very beginning when there was that feeling of opening the eyes to something new. There was no essential satisfaction for me in painting ever…anyway, from 1912 on I decided to stop being a painter in the professional sense. I tried to look for another, personal way, and of course I couldn’t expect anyone to be interested in what I was doing.”⁽³⁷⁾

Apparently, Duchamp tried somehow to escape the traditional notion of being an artist. When Duchamp speaks of trend in relation to art, it sounds unusual as it is frequently associated with fashion. The public art world must have become too superficial and materialistic for him. He was not interested in art in the social sense. Duchamp felt more attracted to the individual mind as such, as he believed most artists were simply repeating themselves. He worked conceptually, putting art “in the service of the mind”⁽³⁸⁾, as he would say.
Cabanne:
“You were a man predestined for America.”
Duchamp: “So to speak, yes.”⁽³⁹⁾
Things had to change. Duchamp, in a letter to his American friend Walter Pach expressed his dislike for the Parisian art milieu. “I absolutely wanted to leave. Where to? New York was my only choice, because I hope to be able to avoid an artistic life there, possibly with a job that would keep me very busy (…) I am afraid to end up being in need to sell canvases, in other words, to be a society painter.”⁽⁴⁰⁾ These lines express crucial reasons for his giving up life as an artist in the professional sense. Duchamp felt incompatible with the French art milieu and wished to escape the prison of tradition where the artist ended up in ‘producing’ paintings in order to earn his living. He felt a strong disapproval of meeting up with other artists. Paris bored him and represented everything he associated with tradition. Duchamp, at this point did not only break with the artistic ties but also with those of his home country. He fled to a country where “they didn’t give a damn about Shakespeare.”⁽⁴¹⁾ His arrival in New York in 1915–Duchamp was 28 at that time–would prove the beginning of a new Duchampian era. By that time, he was already known in America, as his painting Nude descending a staircase caused a scandal at the famous New York Armory Show, an international exhibition of Modern art two years earlier. New York, in contrast to Paris, offered him a “feeling of freedom” and as he said he “loved the rhythm of this town.”⁽⁴²⁾Duchamp and America turned out to be the perfect couple.
Duchamp obviously never felt part of an artistic group such as the Dadaists. Moreover, he constantly expressed his dislike for categorisation. From the very outset, he never aimed to describe objects or comment on painting. The more paradox I found the fact that, in most encyclopaedias, Duchamp is either associated with the Cubists or Dadaists. We must rethink the common notion of art in order to get involved with Duchamp. We must free ourselves from convention, categorisation and from -Isms. The following mesostic written by Cage expresses very well Duchamp’s ultimate artistic intention. He wrote it shortly after he had died.

The iMpossibility of TrAdition the loss of memoRy: To reaCh ThEse Two’s a goaL ⁽⁴³⁾

For those of you who nevertheless feel they have to look up Duchamp’s encyclopaedic biography–(I
am not keeping the secret) See next page.

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3. Silent biography Introduction to John Cage

I thought that the best introduction to John Cage would be an ‘incomplete’ or ‘imperfect’ mestostic. ‘Incomplete’ as I would like to leave enough space for thoughts. Cage described his mesostic technique as follows:

“Like acrostics, mesostics are written in the conventional way horizontally, but at the same time they follow a vertical rule, down the middle not down the edge as in an acrostic, a string spells a word or name, not necessarily connected with what is being written, though it may be. This vertical rule is lettristic and in my practice the letters are capitalized. Between two capitals in a perfect or 100% mesostic neither letter may appear in the lower case. In the writing of the wing words, the horizontal text, the letters of the vertical string help me out of sentimentality. I have something to do, a puzzle to solve. This way of responding makes me feel in this respect one with the Japanese people, who formerly, I once learned, turned their letter writing into the writing of poems (…)”⁽⁴⁵⁾

My mesostics follow a vertical line while the horizontal words consist of different quotations by Cage. Quotations which, in the case of Cage, contain a stronger message than an encyclopaedic biography. Respecting Cage’s ideas such as experience, silence and non-teaching, I would like to leave the reader with the following mesostic. In order to make it easier to identify Cage’s thoughts, I used different type faces. To my astonishment, I found out later that Cage, as a consequence of dealing more and more with the media, also used various font types in various chapters of his book A Year from Monday. In the first chapter,Diary: How to improve the world (you will only make matters worse) 1965, Cage made use of twelve different type faces, letting chance operations determine which face would be used for which statement.

“As far as COnsistency Of I aM here and ThERe is iS NothING To say L SPACE FOR YOUR THOUGHTS SIMPLY GOES HARMONY WEARE PREFER EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED INCONSISTENCY UNCUSTOMED ZERO IS THE BASIC THOUGHT WE NEED NOT FEAR THESE SILENCES.”

To refer back to Cézanne’s quotation at the beginning of this chapter–Duchamp proposes the work of art as an independent creation, brought into being a joint effort by the artist, the spectator, and the unpredic actions of chance–a freer creation that its very nature, may be more complex, more interesting, more original, and truer to life than a work that is subject to the limitations of the artist’s personal control.

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4. Passionate encounters Johnand Marcel

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Photograph
of
Duchamp and Cage

John Cage’s and Marcel Duchamp’s (Fig. 3) ways first crossed in 1942. Duchamp, as many European artists, spent the war years in New York. They met in famous Hale House, home of Peggy Guggenheim and Max Ernst which was then well known as the meeting place for European artists in exile. 30 year-old Cage, originally from Los Angeles was invited by his artist-friend Max Ernst to stay in Hale House. When, after a short period, Peggy informed Cage and his wife Xenia who were penniless at the time, to move out of Hale House, Cage “retreated through the usual crowd of revellers until he came to a room that he thought was empty, where he broke down in tears. Someone else was there, though, sitting in a rocker and smoking a cigar. It was Duchamp.” Cage mentioned that “he was by himself, and somehow his presence made me feel calmer. Although I could not recall what Duchamp said to me, I thought it had something to do with not depending on the Peggy Guggenheims of this world.”⁽⁴⁷⁾
Their first encounter reveals interesting aspects of their prospective friendship. Duchamp, the cool smoking type, sitting in a room all by himself, mumbling something amusingly at a desperate stranger. “He had calmness in the face of disaster”⁽⁴⁸⁾, Cage said later. Duchamp could not so easily be disconcerted. The odd encounter scene between Duchamp and Cage somehow conveys Duchamp’s inclination to indifference. Years after they had first met each other, Cage noted in his 26 Statements Re Duchamp: “There he is, rocking away in that chair, smoking his pipe, waiting for me to stop weeping.”⁽⁴⁹⁾ Cage obviously experienced Duchamp’s cool indifference first-hand.
Cage, in many interviews, mentioned his friend’s sense for wittiness. As he told Moira Roth, Duchamp was paradoxically “very serious about being amused and the atmosphere around him was always one of entertainment.” He further remarked that “we get to know Marcel not by asking him questions but by being with him.”⁽⁵⁰⁾ The reason why Cage did not want to disturb him with questions was that he then would have had Duchamp’s answer instead of his personal experience. Indeed, the concept of experience, deriving from Zen Buddhism, is central in Cage’s philosophy and should not merely be considered in context of his music. He believed that experience, in most respects, was more significant than understanding. It seems that Cage rather wanted to let things happen when spending time with Duchamp. This philosophy has much in common with Cage’s notion of ideal education, but also with his idea of silence and chance in music. Cage was amazed “at the liveliness of Duchamp’s mind, at the connections he made that others hadn’t (…).”⁽⁵¹⁾ These words undoubtedly give evidence of a unbroken Duchamp admirer. When asked what artist had most profoundly influenced his own work, Cage regularly cited Marcel Duchamp.
Duchamp, on the other hand, fondly spoke of Cage as someone full of lightness. “He has a cheerful way of thinking. Not ingeniously (…) He is not acting like a professor or schoolmaster.”⁽⁵²⁾ I believe that Duchamp did not either want to appear like a schoolmaster, but the respect many people showed towards him, naturally made him less affable. Duchamp, as a consequence of his voluntary artistic isolation, stroke others as aloof.

“Had Marcel Duchamp not lived, it would have been necessary for someone exactly like him to live, to bring about, that is, the world as we begin to know and experience it.”⁽⁵³⁾ -John Cage

Cage’s respect for Duchamp had blossomed into a sporadic, yet close friendship. In his introduction to 26 Statements Re Duchamp, Cage noted that due to his view “he felt obliged to keep a worshipful distance.”⁽⁵⁴⁾ Duchamp’s often mentioned aloof character must have initially had an impact on their friendship. Following Cage’s remarks preceding his 26 Statements, his admiration must have led to dubitation concerning Duchamp. It seems as if he was inapproachable to Cage:

“Then, fortunately, during the winter holidays of ’65-’66, the Duchamps and I were often invited to the same parties. At one of these I marched up to Teeny Duchamp and asked her whether she thought Marcel would consider teaching me chess. She said she thought he would. Circumstances permitting, we have been together once or twice a week ever since, except for two weeks in Cadaqués when we were every day together.”⁽⁵⁵⁾

Cage’s memories leave the impression as though he had long waited for an occasion to ask Duchamp teaching him chess. He later told Calvin Tomkins that Marcel’s quiet way often gave him the feeling that he did not want attention, “so I stayed away from him, out of admiration.”⁽⁵⁶⁾ In contrast, it is hard to imagine Duchamp in the role of the passionate admirer. Duchamp rarely spoke about artists that he thought influenced or inspired him. He soon disengaged himself from a model once he grasped it. However, in the case of Raymond Roussel, a writer whose piece Impressions d’Afrique “greatly helped him on one side of his expression”, Duchamp made an exception: “I felt that as a painter it was much better to be influenced by a writer than by another painter. And Roussel showed me the way.”⁽⁵⁷⁾Duchamp found his models less in art than in literature. He was on the way to erase the borders between different arts.
Duchamp, more than Cage, was the type of artist who, due to his mixture of charm and extravagant aloofness, seduced his admirers into an uncritical adulation of his art. He had more of the cool, indifferent type of character who sometimes preferred not to be understood. Though Cage and Duchamp are often discussed in terms of the same artistic circle–along with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, their characters appeared to be quite different. Duchamp’s indifference among other things served to keep others from getting to close. I can only to some extent agree with Tomkins who wrote in this respect that “his lack of passionate attachments seemed rather to make him more lighthearted, more alert to everything, and less competitive than others.”⁽⁵⁸⁾ Someone who is equally passionate about gathering mushrooms and writing ambitious philosophical texts is in my mind more lighthearted than a professional chess player.
 

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Figure 4
John Cage

Cage’s sometimes amusing humbleness expressed in his interviews give evidence of his joyful character and his sense of humour (Fig. 4). As Anne d’Harnoncourt, one of Cage’s favourite scholars wrote, he was indeed a delight to observe observing. “Surveying the ground as he walked in a wet field, he found mushrooms; listening to a roomful of silence, he heard his blood circulate in his veins; concentrating on a game of chess, he enjoyed a nearby waterful.”⁽⁵⁹⁾ Cage’s interviews, I am thinking in particular of Musicage with Joan Retallack, are interspersed with laughter. Listening to Laughtears–a conversation on Roaratorio, it is not unduly to assert that both the interviewer and Cage laughed their heads off.⁽⁶⁰⁾ Though both Cage and Duchamp are frequently described as humorous, Cage’s optimistic and sometimes self-ironic personality probably made him more approachable:

“In connection with my current studies with Duchamp, it turns out I’m a poor chess player. My mind seems in some respect lacking, so that I make obviously stupid moves. I do not for a moment doubt that this lack of intelligence affects my music and thinking generally. However, I have a redeeming quality: I was gifted with a sunny disposition.”⁽⁶¹⁾

Isn’t it wonderfully amusing to find someone as Cage philosophising about his ‘lack of intelligence’? Duchamp appeared to be more amusing than humorous as a contemporary described him “(…) His blunders are laughable, but he laughs long before you do; as a matter of fact, you laugh at his amusement, not at him.”⁽⁶²⁾After having read parts of Duchamp’s letters and interviews, I must add that I found him very amusing. However I would cagely say that his nature of humour was more subtle and black than Cage’s. Duchamp enshrouded himself in a cloud of mystery. After having finished this chapter you will understand what Cage wanted to express by the following mesostic in memory of Duchamp:

Don’t YoU ever want to win? (impatienCe.) How do you mAnage to live with Just one sense of huMor? She must have Persuaded him to smile.⁽⁶³⁾

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Figure 5
Marcel
Duchamp, Rrose
Sélavy by Man Ray,
1921

As already mentioned in the last chapter, Duchamp was a convinced anti-artist. This attitude was expressed by the adoption of various ‘roles’ such as ‘Duchamp, the dandy’ or ‘Duchamp, the chess player.’ As Roth already wrote in her essay Duchamp in America, Duchamp could be described as a dandy who, as Baudelaire once put it, was obsessed with a “cult of self who used elegance and aloofness of appearance and mind as a way of separating himself from both an inferior external world, and from overt pessimistic self-knowledge.“⁽⁶⁴⁾His dandy appearance also found expression in his ‘roles’ …duchamp the intelligent deceiver… such as Rrose Sélavy (Fig. 5), a self-made, female image inhabiting the idea of an artist-substitute for Duchamp. There is nothing particular in taking on another name – many artists still do. However, he could not so easily take on another sex. Duchamp’s enacted deception was meant as a word play: “(…) Much better than to change religion would be to change sex …Rose was the corniest name for a girl at that time, in French anyway. And Sélavy was a pun on c’est la vie.⁽⁶⁵⁾ Duchamp, wearing a seductive fur dressed up as a female and posed for Man Ray’s camera. Rrose Sélavy clearly is the product of an artist who managed to deceive us more than once. After all, he left no indication he was a homo or transsexual.
The most famous role Duchamp however adopted was that of the chess player which again showed himself as the anti-artist. Both Cage and Duchamp devoted much of their energy to playing chess. Duchamp, however, was the more obsessive player. How addicted to chess must one be to neglect one’s bride by spending day and night playing chess during honeymoon? For Duchamp, chess apparently also served as a way to distract himself. Duchamp’s first wife, Lydie, was said to become such annoyed by her groom solving chess problems one night that she got up and glued the pieces to the board.⁽⁶⁶⁾ During his 9-months stay in Buenos Aires, Duchamp wrote to a friend: “I feel I am quite ready to become a chess maniac (…) Everything around me takes the shape of the Knight or the Queen and the exterior world has no other interest for me other than in its transformation to winning or losing positions”⁽⁶⁷⁾
For Cage, the goal of winning was clearly beside the point. His motto could be compared to that of the Olympic athletes, “taking part means everything”, under the premise of Duchamp as the antagonist. He was interested in the Buddhist notion of letting things happen, especially when spending time with Duchamp. Cage could apparently confirm Duchamp’s chess addiction – in his interview with Roth he remembered one game of chess where Duchamp got quite angry with him and ‘accused’ him of not wanting to win:

“The only time he disturbed me was once when he got cross with me for not winning a game of chess. It was a game I might have won; then I made a foolish move and he was furious. Really angry. He said ‘Don’t you ever want to win?’ He was so cross that he walked out of the room, and I felt as though I had made a mistake in deciding to be with him–we were in a small Spanish town–if he was going to get so angry with me.”⁽⁶⁸⁾

Duchamp was an excellent chess player, who, in the role of the tireless thinker even made it to the French national team. After his immigration to the United States, Duchamp was ranked among the top twenty-five chess players in the twenties and thirties. In 1932, he published a chess book titled Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled which was devoted “to a very rare situation in the end game, when all the pieces have been captured except for the opposing kings and one or two pawns on each side.”⁽⁶⁹⁾ The book gives evidence of Duchamp’s mathematical gift. Cage, on the other hand, used his mathematical ambitions for chance operations in music.
Duchamp and Cage spent more and more evenings together playing chess. “I saw him every night, four nights in a row,“⁽⁷⁰⁾ Cage recalled. What did they do when they were not indulged in their passion? It is certain that they were not talking about each other’s work, according to Cage’s interview with Moira Roth.⁽⁷¹⁾ Meanwhile, they were rather ‘experiencing’ each other simply by spending time together. Cage, rather humble in his statements, often admired his friends’ genius for chess:

“I rarely did (play chess), because he played so well and I played so poorly. So I played with Teeny, who also played much better than I. Marcel would glance at our game every now and then, and in between take a nap. He would say how stupid we both were. Every now and then he would get very impatient with me. He complained that I didn’t seem to want to win. Actually, I was so delighted to be with him that the notion of winning was beside the point. When we played, he would give me a knight in advance. He was extremely intelligent and he almost always won. None of the people around us was as good a player as he, though there was one man who, once in a blue moon would win. In trying to teach me how to play, Marcel said something which again is very oriental, ‘Don’t just play your side of the game, play both sides.’ I tried to, but I was more impressed with what he said than I was able to follow it.”⁽⁷²⁾

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Figure 6Photograph
of Reunion
performance, 1968

For Cage, chess apparently served as a pretext to spend time with Duchamp. In 1968, the year of Duchamp’s death, Marcel and his wife were invited to take part in a musical event entitled Réunion by John Cage (Fig. 6). Cage’s idea behind thishappening was that, in his mind, chess contained a finality in itself, as its goal was to win. Cage thus wanted to alienate the game from its ‘purpose’ by distributing sound sources each time movements took place on the chess board. He noted that “the chess board acted as a gate, open or closed to these sources, these streams of music (…). The game is used to distribute sound sources, to define a global sound system, it has no goal. It is a paradox, purposeful purposelessness.”⁽⁷³⁾ The event consisted of Cage and Duchamp (and later Cage and Teeny) playing chess on stage on a board that had been equipped with contact microphones. Whenever a piece was moved, it set off electronic noises and images on television screens visible to the audience. Cage’s alienation of the chess game from its original purpose is an interesting concept in view to both Duchamp’s and Cage’s understanding of art. Alienation indeed played a crucial role in both artists’ lives. I am thinking now in particular of Duchamp’s readymades and of Cage’s Prepared Piano. Duchamp later amusingly recounted the chess event: “It went very well, very well, it began about eight-thirty. John played against me first, then against Teeny. It was very amusing.” Asked whether there was any music, he replied “Oh yes, there was a tremendous noise.”⁽⁷⁴⁾
Chess brought in no money for Duchamp, but provided richer satisfaction. After all, he was aréspirateur. But why chess? When I learned how to play chess at about 14, I was fascinated about it and eagerly taught it some of my friends. However, I never aimed to perfect it, to rack my brain endlessly about possible combinations. A friend of mine is a passionate chess player and I was quite curious what he found so fascinating about it. He spontaneously answered: “Chess is completely different from other games–it has nothing to do with chance or luck.” I found this statement quite interesting in respect to Duchamp’s use of artistic tools–chance was not only typically Cagean, but in fact used by Duchamp in his music pieceErratum Musical already in 1912, the year Cage was born.⁽⁷⁵⁾ For both artists, chance functioned as a means to escape from tradition, taste and conscious intentions. Thus it appears that chess stood in strong contrast to various methods and ideas both Cage and Duchamp used in art. An instinctive compensation? Cage, according to an interview, was interested in mushrooms and chess as a compensation for his concern with chance.⁽⁷⁶⁾ This was apparently also true for Duchamp–after all he was well aware of the contradiction between chess and art: “The beautiful combinations that chess players invent–you don’t see them coming, but afterward there is no mystery–it’s a pure logical conclusion. The attitude in art is completely different, of course; probably it pleased me to oppose one attitude to the other, as a form of completeness.”⁽⁷⁷⁾On the other hand, Duchamp believed that art and chess were in fact closer to each other than they seemed. He thought that the game had a visual and imaginative beauty that was similar to the beauty of poetry. Duchamp ended his remarks by saying that “from my close contact with artists and chess players, I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”⁽⁷⁸⁾ When Cage asked Duchamp to write something in his book on the end game, he wrote: “Dear John, Look out! Another poisonous mushroom.”⁽⁷⁹⁾ Chess and mushrooms were obviously opposed to the chance operations both Cage and Duchamp used in their art.
What immediately came to my mind when I heard about luck in the course of the chess conversation with my friend, were some thoughts Duchamp wrote to his sister’s husband Jean–on the enquiry, what Duchamp thought about one of his works of art:

“Artists throughout the ages are like Monte Carlo gamblers and the blind lottery pulls some of them through and ruins others (…) It all takes place at the level of our old friend luck. Artists who, in their own lifetime, have managed to get people to value their junk are excellent salesmen, but there is no guarantee as to the immortality of their work. And even posterity is a terrible bitch who cheats some and reinstates others, and reserves the right to change her mind again every 50 years.”⁽⁸⁰⁾

This statement carries a touch of resignation. Duchamp believed that artistic luck had nothing to do with real genius. According to him, “a good artist is just a lucky guy, that’s all.” It seems that Duchamp refused to take part in the ‘artistic lottery’, in the useless competition between artists. Chess, in contrast, justly rewarded those who had a real talent. His passion required him to ‘work hard’ in order to win. Duchamp apparently forgot about his self-made image of the réspirateur when sitting in front of a chess board.
I found it interesting to observe that both Cage and Duchamp had obsessions which cannot immediately be connected to art. Duchamp did not exclusively devote his life to art, as did Cage not concentrate merely on music. The former had a passion for chess, the latter for mushrooms and cooking. Cage was aware of the fact that many people criticised him for not devoting his life to music utterly. When he began his studies with Schönberg, he told his teacher that could not afford the price. Schönberg then asked him if he would devote his life to music and Cage’s answer was “yes.”⁽⁸¹⁾ But–why devoting one’s life to art respectively music if all areas are interrelated? Cage, in this respect said that “I still think I’ve remained faithful. You can stay with music while you’re hunting mushrooms(…)”⁽⁸²⁾ Both Duchamp and Cage expanded the notion of art into areas which were up to that time clearly separated from art itself. Chess cannot be simply regarded as a pastime for Duchamp, as Cage’s mushrooms and cooking passion were not merely an amusement. They did not only function as a counterbalance to their work as artists. Instead, they were integrated within their thinking and philosophy. Both artists transposed the idea of blurring the distinctions between art and life simply by their way of life. A female friend of Cage interestingly reflected on him:

“The months that followed, which extended into years, afforded me close proximity to both the man and his work. What I came to see was that there was very little difference between the two. That is Cage cooking was Cage composing was Cage playing chess was Cage shopping was…You get the picture. All of his daily activities, from the most sublime to the most mundane, were equally infused with a kind of mindful detachment.”⁽⁸³⁾

The way Cage devoted himself to an ‘ordinary business’ such as mushrooms and cooking, is certainly remarkable. Much of his experimental writing and also music was dedicated to his mushroom passion. It seems that whatever Cage experienced in his daily life became raw material for his art. Many of his elaborate remarks in A Year from Monday rather reminded me of an affectionate cook. As in the second part of his Diary: How to Improve the World, where he wrote: “After getting the information from a small French manual, I was glad to discover that Lactarius piperatus and L. vellereus, large white mushrooms growing plentifully wherever I hunt, are indeed excellent when grilled. Raw, these have a milk that burns the tongue and throat. Cooked, they’re delicious. Indigestion.”⁽⁸⁴⁾
Similar to Beuys, who worked with felt, fat and cloth after these materials saved his life after an aircrash, Cage’s interest in mushrooms originated from necessity during the World Depression. He then solely lived on mushrooms for one week and after this experience decided to occupy with them intensely. According to Cage, much could be learnt from music by devoting oneself to the mushroom. “It’s a curious idea perhaps, but a mushroom grows for such a short time and if you happen to come across it when it’s fresh it’s like coming upon a sound which also lives a short time.”⁽⁸⁵⁾Cage found many parallels between mushrooms and music. However, he was well aware of the fact that his mushroom passion, like chess, was in fact in conflict to his idea of chance in music. To leave it to chance whether to eat a mushroom or not could after all end fatal. Mushroom growth is not even determined by chance. They are rather choosy–grow on wet grounds only. Like Duchamp, Cage published a book on his passion in cooperation with two other mycologists. And – surprisingly, he did make money with his mushroom passion. Cage once appeared on an Italian show as mushroom expert and won 6000 US dollars by answering ‘mushroom questions’ correctly ⁽⁸⁶⁾
Mushrooms fired Cage’s imagination. His idea was that everything on earth should be audible because of vibration–including mushrooms. “I’ve had a long time the desire to hear the mushroom itself, and that would be done with a very fine technology, because they are dropping spores and those spores are hitting surfaces. There certainly is sound taking place.”⁽⁸⁷⁾Proceeding on this assumption, he made explorations on which sounds further the growth of which mushrooms. Besides being one of the founders of the Mycological Societyin New York, Cage taught a course called ‘Mushroom Identification’ at the NY School for Social Research. One lecture he held dealt with the ‘sexuality’ of mushrooms:

“We had invited a specialist from Connecticut, who had cultivated a certain species of mushroom, a Coprinus, in very large quantities to study their sex. In his lecture, he taught us that the sexual nature of mushrooms wasn’t so very different from that of human beings, but that it was easier to study. He explained that there are around eighty types of female mushrooms and around one hundred and eighty types of males in one species alone. Some combinations result in reproduction, while others do not. Female type 42, let’s say, will never reproduce with male type 111, but will with certain others. That led me to the idea that our notion of male and female is an oversimplification of an actually complex human state.”⁽⁸⁸⁾

Would you have thought of mushrooms in terms of female and male? I would not and besides enjoying myself immensely, I am continually amazed at Cage’s affectation of details. He had an extraordinary ability to exploit these new insights and incorporate them into his artistic thinking. And yet at the same I am asking myself how one can possibly have such a playful mind in order to connect sounds with mushrooms…I wonder if Cage was aware of his mushroom passion as something which many people would simply consider absurd if they did not study him thoroughly. To my astonishment I found the answer on the very last page of Cage’s first book Silence. Cage’s thoughts prove that he was hardly someone worldly innocent.

“In the space that remains, I would like to emphasize that I am not interested in the relationships between sounds and mushrooms any more than I am in those between sounds and other sounds. These would involve an introduction of logic that is not only out of place in the world, but time-consuming. We exist in a situation demanding greater earnestness, as I can testify, since recently I was hospitalised after having cooked and eaten experimentally some Spathyema foetida, commonly known as skunk cabbage. My blood pressure went down to fifty, stomach was pumped, etc. It behoves us therefore to see each thing directly as it is, be it the sound of a tin whistle or the elegant Lepiota procera.”⁽⁸⁹⁾

“Isn’t cooking all about mixture and letting individual flavours hold our attention?”
-Anne d’ Harnoncourt
In the late 70s, Cage, after serious health problems, began a macrobiotic diet on the advice of John Lennon and Yoko Ono⁽⁹⁰⁾. The idea of the macrobiotic diet is to make a shift from animal fats to vege oils. What fundamentally distinguishes the macrobiotic diet from other health programs is that, rather than consisting of a fixed list of foods to be consumed or avoided, it provides a structure which applies to the whole range of available choices, an orientation which many adherents of the diet extend to a whole cosmology. For Cage, macrobiotics undoubtedly meant more than just cooking or eating. However, he did not take the diet too seriously–he used herbs and spices which he enjoyed. In the short introduction to his macrobiotic recipe collection in his Rolywholyover – A Circus Box, Cage wrote: “The macrobiotic diet has a great deal to do with yin and yang and from finding a balance between them. I have not studied this carefully. All I do is try to observe whether something suits me or not.”⁽⁹¹⁾ Strictly following a recipe would not sound much like Cage–reading his recipes for chicken or beans indeed sound a bit like his notations in music–they allow enough room for the performer’s interpretation.
Cage’s discovery of macrobiotics is no coincidence–with its oriental origin and its application of yin and yang, the macrobiotic diet fits in very well with both Zen and with the temperament of Cage. He believed he had already been affected by the ideas of the diet before he actually started it: “I accepted the diet you might say aesthetically before I accepted it nutritionally.”⁽⁹²⁾ As Harnoncourt’s interesting quotation (“Isn’t cooking all about mixture and letting individual flavours hold our attention?”) suggests, cooking has a great deal to do with music where individual sounds hold our attention. After studying Cage, I cannot suppress the impression that he could have utilized all daily activities in his art. Cage’s kitchen probably was one big sound studio:

“In all the many years which followed up to the war, I never stopped touching things, making them sound and resound, to discover what sounds they could produce. Wherever I went, I always listened to objects. So I gathered together a group of friends, and we began to play some pieces I had written without instrumental indications, simply to explore instrumental possibilities not yet catalogued, the infinite number of sound sources from a trash heap or a junk yard, a living room or a kitchen…we tried all furniture we could think of.”⁽⁹³⁾

Cage was astonished by the positive results of the macrobiotic diet. “Your energy asserts itself the moment you wake up at the beginning of the day. It remains constant. It doesn’t go up and down, it stays level, and I can work much more extensively. I always had a great deal of energy, but now it is extraordinary. At the same time,” he added, “I’m much more equable in feeling; I’m less agitated.”⁽⁹⁴⁾ His improvement so amazed him that he kept up the diet from that time onwards and frequently recommended it in interviews:

“Now, however, after, say, four years of following the macrobiotic diet, my health has so greatly improved that I would seriously advise almost anyone who would lend me an ear to make a shift in diet from animal fats to vege oils, to exclude dairy products and sugar, to ‘choose’ chicken only if it actually is a chicken, that is, free from injected hormones, agribusiness, etc., to eat fish, beans and whole grains, nuts and seeds, and vege s with the exception of theSolanaceae (potatoes, tomatoes, egg-plant, and peppers)”⁽⁹⁵⁾

Macrobiotics also inspired Cage to a growing concern with nature and ecological matter. Big business and agribusiness, he stressed, damage our meat, vege and water supplies. Food which he mostly advised in special books of recipes include proper preparations for brown rice, zucchini, beans and chicken. In connection with the museum project calledRolywholyover Circus⁽⁹⁶⁾, John Cage published various macrobiotic recipes. Four of them I will include at the end of this chapter.
“I try to discover what one needs to do in art by observations from my daily life. I think daily life is excellent and that art introduces us to it and to its excellences the more it begins to be like it.”⁽⁹⁷⁾ –John Cage
Cage’s devotion to macrobiotics and mushrooms are interesting insofar, as they once again witness his contribution to the blurring of the distinction between art and life. As already suggested, Cage’s passions cannot be simply regarded as pastimes or, as in the case of cooking, in the context of a human necessity–though Cage began his macrobiotic diet on medical grounds, thus out of a necessity. We certainly do not get past spending time to prepare our daily food–nevertheless it is a question of how we deal with those daily routines. Cooking was as much a part of Cage’s life as composing music and poetry. Once Cage managed the shift from ordinary cooking to macrobiotics, he consciously devoted more time to what can be called the ‘act of cooking.’ This is at least the impression he left behind in his elaborate recipe descriptions. As Kuhn wrote in her essay, it was hard to distinguish Cage from his work: “Cage cooking was Cage composing was Cage playing chess was Cage shopping was…”
Cage, in contrast to Duchamp, frequently made his friend the theme in his writings as well as music. Cage’s ‘homages to Duchamp’ give evidence of the importance of this friendship for him. In his book, A Year from Monday he dedicated 26 Statements on Re Duchamp to his artist friend. The Statements are among other things Cage’s reflections on Duchamp’s artistic methods: “The check. The string he dropped. The Mona Lisa. The musical notes taken out of a hat. The glass. The toy shot-gun painting. The things he found. Therefore, everything seen–every object, that is, plus the process of looking at it–is a Duchamp.”⁽⁹⁸⁾Cage continued his reflections on Duchamp in the second and third part of his Diary: How to Improve the World. In the late 40s, Cage wrote the music for a Duchamp sequence in Hans Richter’s famous avant-garde film Dreams that Money Can Buy. The song is called Music for Marcel Duchamp. In his M–writings ’67-’72, Cage composed several mesostics in memory of Marcel. The following mesostic was written shortly after Duchamp’s unexpected death in 1968. Cage remarked, “it was a loss I didn’t want to have.”⁽⁹⁹⁾

click to enlarge

Figure 7
Marcel Duchamp,
The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even,
1915-23

Undoubtedly, Duchamp’s work and philosophy lived on in the work of John Cage – as in the case of his visual work titled Not Wanting to Say Anything about Marcel (1969). The work consists of a Plexiglas field on which one may find letters and fragments of words. Anne d’Harnoncourt wrote about it that “Cage characteristically sought to maintain both multiplicity and transparency by setting eight sheets of clear plastic printed with words in stands so that the viewer peered through them; and if he wasn’t careful, his gaze passed beyond them.”⁽¹⁰¹⁾ The work is indeed very reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’sLarge Glass (Fig. 7). As the title suggests, Cage did not want to say anything about his artist friend and thus subjected words to chance operations. He possibly wanted to leave the spectator with language fragments in order not to take him in completely. There is no point in attempting to ‘resolve’ Not Wanting to Say Anything about Marcel. I believe it is a homage to a very good friend.

Another interesting work which Duchamp apparently inspired him to, was the box which I already mentioned in connection with his macrobiotic recipes. Duchamp, in his artwork called Boite, gathered together small reproductions of his artworks unbound in boxed form rather than in an album or a book. So did Cage: Rolywholyover – A Circus is a reflecting box which was designed in consultation with Cage himself. The publication accompanied with a major exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles conceived of by Cage as a “composition for museum.” The box is an artwork fully in keeping with his philosophy. It contains a wide range of materials, printed in different formats–such as reprints of texts that Cage found useful and inspiring. The texts can be read in any order. The box also includes reproductions of works by Cage, musical scores, recipes, advice on healthy eating and photography. As Cage said in discussing the box,

“The world is vast, give the impression that the materials are endless.”⁽¹⁰²⁾ -John Cage

Despite Cage’s intense occupation with Duchamp, he always remained a somehow mysterious mind. In the foreword to his alphabet in X-writings ’79-’82, Cage reflected on Satie, Joyce and Duchamp–three artists who greatly inspired him. Cage is quite explicit about his ‘goals’ in respect to those three artists–namely that he is not interested in ‘understanding’ in the sense of giving ultimate answers. His humbleness nevertheless gives evidence of an exceptional bright and free mind. In relation to Joyce’s masterpieceFinnegan’s Wake he wrote:

“When I was in Ireland for a month last summer (…) many Irishmen told me they couldn’t understand Finnegan’s Wake and so didn’t read it. I asked them if they understood their own dreams. They confessed they didn’t. I have the feeling some of them may now be reading Joyce or at least dreaming they’re reading Joyce. Adaline Glasheen says: ‘I hold to my old opinion. Finnegan’s Wake is a model of a mysterious universe made mysterious by Joyce for the purpose of striking with polished irony at the hot vanity of divine and human wishes.’ And she says: “Joyce himself told Arthur Power, ‘What is clear and concise can’t deal with reality, for to be real is to be surrounded with mystery.’ Human kind, it is clear, can’t stand much reality. We so fiercely hate and fear our cloud of unknowing that we can’t believe sincere and unaffected, Joyce’s love of the clear dark–it has got to be a paradox….an eccentricity of genius.”⁽¹⁰³⁾

I was impressed by Joyce’s quotation–for reality is indeed often mysterious and inexplicable. In Cage’s interview on his Roaratorio–An Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake, Cage remarked that “Joyce didn’t mean Finnegan’s Wake to be understood, he meant it to be a piece of music.”⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ We tend to question everything which is unfamiliar with. Asking questions is one thing but expecting precise answers is another. In relation to Duchamp, Cage thought that asking him questions was the wrong tactic. He had no special intentions when spending time with him. I believe that we can learn a lot from Cage when trying to study Duchamp. Asked on how Cage would circumscribe his friendship with Duchamp, he answered:

“If, for instance, you go to Paris and spend your time as a tourist going to the famous places, I’ve always had a feeling you would learn nothing about Paris. The best way to learn about Paris would be to have no intention of learning anything and simply to live there as though you were a Frenchman. And no Frenchman would dream of going to, say, Notre Dame.”⁽¹⁰⁵⁾

Nevertheless, there remained a hermetic aspect of Duchamp’s work. Cage once spoke to Marcel’s wife, Teeny Duchamp about this: “I said, ‘You know I understand very little about Marcel’s work. Much of it remains very mysterious to me.’ She answered “It does to me, too.”⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ We must be satisfied with what we are offered by Duchamp–otherwise we will end in a never ending helix. John and Marcel simply enjoyed each other’s presence, without much talking about their work. In order to contribute something to your enjoyment – my suggestion is that you try Cage’s Roast chicken before you continue with the next chapter. In case you are not hungry you will enjoy reading them.
‘Passionate encounters’, this chapter’s motto, is dedicated to the personalities of both Cage and Duchamp as well as their friendship – a friendship which was very much formed by their passions. Though chess initially functioned as a pretext for Cage to spend time with Duchamp, it became an important and enjoyable common amity experience. While writing about chess, I found many parallels in Cage’s passions repertoire and thus tried to examine it also in view to the central notion of the essay–the blurring of the distinction between art and life. Moira Roth’s interview with John Cage has helped me a lot to get an insight into their nature of friendship. However, this only gives a one-side impression and as Duchamp’s documented statements on Cage were comparatively rather rare, it is far from completing the puzzle. I am writing this with the humble precaution of a historian who was taught to take all possible historical resources into account.
As I am writing these lines, my thoughts lead me to Duchamp, the perpetual intelligent deceiver. I am thinking of the Duchamp who was never willing to give away too much. While listening to the last beats of Cage’s Music for Marcel Duchamp I am constantly reminded of the Duchamp who managed well to surround himself with mystery. One should be a clairvoyant rather than a historian.

Recipes À LA JOHN CAGE

“Cage’s scores for music, scores for prints, recipes for chicken, all exist for realization by the artist in real time, and he invited his audience (or his dinner guests) to realize that listening, cooking, and eating are also creative acts.”⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ -Anne d’Harnoncourt
John Cage’s recipes are an interesting experience in view to his whole philosophy. His cooking advices are precise and clear, but far from elitist. They give evidence of his pedagogical gift not to impose his ideas on anybody. Cage, for example did not use the imperative form of “you do …(such and such)”, but instead used the self-referential “I” when explaining the cooking procedures. Interesting also, that his recipes are be inspired by various cultures. The following recipes should offer a possibility to ‘experience’ John Cage. I found it quite interesting what Cage said about experience:

“I think that there is a distinct difference between…. I think that the most pointed way to put this distinction is by using the word “understanding” as opposed to “experience.” Many people think that if they are able to understand something that they will be able to experience it, but I don’t think that that is true. I don’t think that understanding something leads to experience. I think, in fact, that it leads only to a certain use of the critical faculties. Because…say you understand how to boil an egg. How will that help you in cooking zucchini? I’m not sure. One could make the point more dramatically by saying, “How will that help you to ride horseback?” But that probably goes too far. I think that we must be prepared for experience not by understanding anything, but rather by becoming open-minded.”

Roast Chicken

Get a good chicken not spoiled by agribusiness. Place in Rohmertopf (clay baking dish with cover) with giblets. Put a smashed clove of garlic & a slice of fresh ginger between legs and wings and breasts. Squeeze the juice of two & three lemons over the bird. Then an equal amount of tamari. Cover, place in cold oven turned up to 220°. Leave for 1 hour. Then uncover for 15 minutes, heat on, to brown. Now I cook at 170°, 30 minutes to the pound. Or use hot mustard and cumin seeds instead of ginger. Keep lemon, tamari or Braggs and garlic. Instead of squeezing the lemon, it may be quartered then chopped fine in a Cuisinart with the garlic & ginger (or garlic, cumin & mustard). Add tamari. The chicken & sauce can be placed on a bed of carrots (or sliced 3/4-inch thick bitter melon obtainable in Chinatown)

Brown Rice

Twice as much water as rice. If you wish, substitute a very little wild rice for some of the brown rice. Wash or soak overnights then drain. Add a small amount of hijiki (seaweed) and some Braggs. Very often I add a small amount of wild rice. Bring to good boil. Cover with cloth and heavy lid and cook for twenty minutes over medium flame, reduce flame to very low and cook thirty minutes more. Uncover. If it is not sticking, cook it some more. If it is sticking to the bottom of the pan, stir it a little and then cover again and let it rest with the fire off. When you look at it again after ten minutes or so it will have loosened itself from the bottom of the pan. Another way to cook rice: using the same proportion of rice, bring to a boil and then simply cover with lid without the cloth, reducing the fire to low. After forty-five minutes, remove from fire but leave lid on for at least 20 minutes.

BEANS

Soak beans overnight after having washed them. In the morning change the water and add Kombu (seaweed). Also, if you wish, rosemary or cumin. Watch them so that they don’t cook too long, just until tender. Then pour off most of the liquid, saving it, and replace it with tamari (or Braggs). But taste first: you may prefer it without tamari or with very little. Taste to see if it’s too salty. If it is, add more bean liquid. Then, if you have the juice from a roasted chicken, put several teaspoons of this with the beans. If not, add some lemon juice. And the next time you have roast chicken, add some of the juice to the beans. Black turtle beans or small white beans can be cooked without soaking overnight. But large kidney beans or pinto beans can be cooked without soaking overnight. But large kidney beans or pinto beans, etc. are best soaked (So are the others.) Another way to cook beans which has become my favourite is with bay leaves, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper. You can cook it with some kombu from the beginning. I now use the “shocking method.” See Avelines Kushi’s book. And now I’ve changed again. A Guatemalan idea: Bury an entire plant of garlic in the beans without bothering to take the paper off. Cook for at least 3 hours.

Chick-Peas (Garbanzos)

Soak several hours. Then boil in new water. Until tender. They can then be used in many ways. 1. Salad. Make a dressing of lemon or lime with olive oil (a little more oil than lemon), sea salt and black pepper, fresh dill-parsley, and a generous amount of fine French mustard (e.g., Pommery). 2. Or use with couscous having cooked them with fresh ginger and a little saffron. 3. Or make hummous. Place, say, two cups of chick-peas with one cup of their liquid in Cuisinart. Add a teaspoon salt, lots of black pepper, a little oil and lemon juice to taste. Add garlic and tahini. Now I no longer add salt, but instead a prepared gazpacho.

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5.
“If that’s art, I’m a Hottentott”

“Everyone is doing something, and those who make things in a framed canvas, are called artists.” ⁽¹⁰⁹⁾–Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp was apparently interested in a general conception of art. What do we call art? Or better what is not considered as art? Can we define works of art which are not works of art–as Duchamp already questioned. Moira Roth, in relation to this wrote that “if one is Duchamp the answer is probably no, although he did ‘make’ works which were not immediately works of art.”⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Otherwise, these questions are not easy ones to answer–on the contrary, they provoke a number of new question marks. Where is the border between art and non-art? And then–how do we define non-art?

As a historian, I was first of all interested in a definition of art. And as it turned out I had to dig a bit into philosophy. Art originally derived from Sanskrit and meant ‘making’ or ‘creating something’. Plato took up the definition and went one step further by distinguishing artists into two categories: those who are productively creating objects such as architects or carpenters and those who are restricted to the already existing or imitation (what he calledMímesis)⁽¹¹¹⁾. Plato honoured the craftsman more than the artist as he believed that the former was oriented at the ideas of the mind, while the latter was simply creating an imitation of the already existing. According to Plato, the painter distanced himself from the truth–in order to attain it, one has to leave all appearances behind and should not duplicate it by a sort of reflection. In the Middle Ages, art (Ars) was generally interpreted as a production and design of everyday objects. It was a skilled trade which was thus never valued under just aesthetic aspects.⁽¹¹²⁾ If we strictly stick to this definition, an artist is nothing else than a workman. And as Duchamp said in an interview, everyone of us is somehow a workman⁽¹¹³⁾–in different areas of course. Artworks have not always been valued under just aesthetic characteristics–as this short historical outline teaches us.

An important milestone in so-called ‘aesthetic’ art was the beginning of the 19^th century. The Impressionists’ usual subjects were landscapes or social scenes like streets and cafés. While Impressionist paintings are commonly regarded as ‘beautiful’, it is also undeniable that they helped to create and to preserve–in their depiction of the pleasures of café life, the comfor ladies at bath–a class divided from the world in its comforts and signs of sophistication. Beauty, here, was a means of escaping from the issues and obligations of the day. Beauty separated those who appreciated it and wished to reside within its frontiers. Expressionism, on the other hand represented a move away from the Impressionist trends and was concerned with conveying the artist’s emotions as aroused by his subjects. Any painting technique that helped to express these feelings was considered a valid medium.⁽¹¹⁴⁾

I found it quite interesting to observe that all art movements or -Isms were somehow a response or artistic counteraction to the preceding movement. The Impressionists strongly rejected the Romantic idea that a painting should convey strong emotions. Expressionism, on the other hand, aimed at stressing the artist’s emotions, which was again in contrast to Impressionism. Duchamp lived in a time where he could choose from Abstract Expressionism, Cubism or Surrealism. However, none of the -Isms pleased him enough to get involved with it. He invented his own -Ism and it turned out to be a counteraction to all the previous art movements.
I was quite amazed by the fact that the common notion of ‘beautiful’ art had not always honoured. However, there was a long way to go between Plato and Duchamp. Duchamp’s idea of taste may be interpreted as a response to the governing taste concept since the 18^thcentury where

“taste was centrally connected with the concept of pleasure, and pleasure itself was understood as a sensation subject to degrees of refinement. There were standards of taste, and a curriculum, in effect, of aesthetic education. Taste was not merely what this or that person preferred, all things being equal, but what any person whatever ought to prefer.”⁽¹¹⁵⁾

Duchamp’s taste revolution, however, cannot only be interpreted as a denial of all -Isms and taste concepts at the time, but also as a very personal decision in search for his own expression. Defining art as a concept seems like an endless enterprise–not only because every point in history offers us its own definition, but because every single artist provides us with hints of his own world.
“For us, art is that which we find under this name: something which simply is, and which doesn’t need to conform to laws in order to exist; a complicated social product.”⁽¹¹⁶⁾ -Robert Musil
Let us imagine a scene in a Museum of Modern Art. A rather perplexed visitor and his child critically observe a Pollock. He turns to his son and whispers, “you could have done this with your left hand, don’t you?” A scene which is so familiar to us that it almost seems like a déjà-vu. Now, fine: “Every human being is an artist”, an impressive line Beuys once mentioned. In a broad sense–if we take together all definitions art history provided us–this statement can retain validity for we all ‘make’ or produce something. The father demonstrated with his statement that in his view art must have something to do with artistic skill. And–skill usually creates an aesthetic product, however the term aesthetic is defined. Van Gogh or Monet would be generally considered as ‘beautiful’ by the majority. Yet History has taught us that every masterpiece of modern art, whether Picasso, Cage or Duchamp, was first met with an outcry of indignation: “this is not art!” (or, maybe “If that’s art I’m a Hottentott”) Art is what we or what critics call art–as different the result may be. Robert Musil’s quotation on art hits the bull’s eye. Art is too complicated to be defined – as it is the product of human beings. It is impossible to find an objective explanation for something that is the most subjective expression of a human-being. The borders between art and non-art are blurring. In my view, art could be compared to a handmade mirror made by a reflecting individual at a particular point of history–whether we find it beautiful or not is beside the point.
It may be hard to understand why Duchamp invented his readymades or why Cage first rejected harmony and welcomed noise as an artistic tool. Both, Duchamp and Cage were interested in conceptual art which means that the idea behind a work of art, in the end, was more important than the finished work itself.
Duchamp believed that there was nothing inherently sacred about an art-object. This concept is realized in Duchamp’s readymades. He believed he could elevate common, store-bought items to the status of artworks by declaring them so. Cage wished to free himself from his likes and dislikes–by asking questions instead of making choices, by using chance as a compositional tool. Both artists rejected terms like tradition and categorization and were in constant search for an individual form of expression. There is no recipe for what is beautiful or musical–after all it is up to the audience if a work of art is worth preserving or not.

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Figure 8
Marcel Duchamp, Nude
Descending a Staircase ,No. 2,
1912

Duchamp’s taste revolution started rather turbulently. After some years of Cézanne’s and Matisse’s influence, Duchamp soon found his own path. His famous painting Nude descending a staircase (Fig. 8)scandalised the New York art world in 1913. When he first submitted his picture for exhibition in Paris, it was rejected on the grounds that it had “too much of a literary title, in the bad sense–in a caricatural way. A nude never descends stairs–a nude reclines….”⁽¹¹⁷⁾ Duchamp, at this point, apparently broke with all artistic conventions. He attempted to capture a figure in motion – a concept that apparently proved difficult for the audience of that time to understand. One critic wrote that this landmark painting resembled an explosion in a shingle factory.⁽¹¹⁸⁾When observing the Duchamp’s Nude, I was immediately struck by the cubistic elements–because of the darkish brown and grey colours as well as the characteristic angular forms. However, the painting was far from depicting the ideas of any -Ism. The Nude was rather made by a Duchamp who once again proved to be an intelligent deceiver. As Calvin Tomkins wrote, “nudes weren’t supposed to come down stairs and paintings weren’t supposed to have their titles written on the canvas, and any artist who broke the rules in such an irreverent manner must be kidding, right?”⁽¹¹⁹⁾ I would not say that his intention was to make fun of the Cubists–Duchamp was too much the indifferent type as to make fun of an art movement by such direct means. He did not even make efforts to explain his works of art–and if he did, he did so by making some remarks years later–as in the case of his Nude:

My aim was a static representation of movement, a static composition of indications of various positions taken by a form in movement–with no attempt to give cinema effects through painting. The reduction of a head in movement to a bare line seemed to me defensible. A form passing through space would traverse a line; and as the form moved the line it traversed would be replaced by another line–and another and another. Therefore I felt justified in reducing a figure in movement to a line rather than to a skeleton. Reduce, reduce, reduce was my thought–but at the same time my aim was turning inward, rather than toward externals. And later, following this view, I came to feel that an artist might use anything–a dot, a line, the most conventional or unconventional symbol–to say what he wanted to say.”⁽¹²⁰⁾

Interesting what Duchamp says about abstraction in terms of his painting. I do not believe, however, that the abstraction he mentioned carried much significance in his future career. Duchamp gave up painting altogether–as he said he tried to “unlearn to draw” in order to escape the prison of tradition.⁽¹²¹⁾ Cage did not have to make efforts to forget music, as he admitted he never had a feeling for harmony. “I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schönberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, ‘You’ll come to a wall you won’t be able to get through.’ So I said, ‘I’ll beat my head against that wall.’”⁽¹²²⁾ Cage indeed disposed of a strong ability to assert himself. Although Duchamp and Cage apparently had different initial positions, they both landed on a similar artistic track.
“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” -John Cage

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Figure 9
Robert
Rauschenberg, White Paintings

Let us begin from zero–silence, emptiness, nonsense. Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (Fig. 9). Empty space–no message, no dictatorship–we are free to bring in ourselves. Empty canvas–no need for interpretation; we need not say anything about it if we don’t feel like it. The blankness of the white paintings strongly reminded me of Cage’s silence. Rauschenberg, like Duchamp and Cage, was also interested in breaking down the barriers between art and life by using everyday artistic tools. Cage was indeed mesmerized by Rauschenberg’s empty walls. ”I responded immediately,” he said, “not as objects, but as ways of seeing. I’ve said before that they were airports for shadows and for dust, but you could also say that they were mirrors of the air.” What fascinated Cage about the White Paintings was Rauschenberg’s idea of emptiness: “A canvas is never empty”⁽¹²³⁾, Rauschenberg said; it acts as a landing-ground for dust, shadows, reflections. The White Paintings somehow gave Cage ‘permission’ to proceed with the composition of his silent pieces: “When I saw those, I said, ‘Oh yes, I must; otherwise I’m lagging, otherwise music is lagging.’”⁽¹²⁴⁾ “It’s out of that emptiness, and not being put off by ‘nothing’ happening–and when you see it, it really impresses you–that hearing it, hearing the emptiness becomes a possibility all over again.”⁽¹²⁵⁾ Rauschenberg’s white paintings greatly inspired Cage to silence in music. He was interested in a silence that was “not the absence of sound but the fact of having changed one’s mind to be interested in the sounds that there are, to hear them.”⁽¹²⁶⁾
Silence turned out to be one of Cage’s central concept in his music and philosophy. He defined silence as simply the absence of intended sounds, or the turning off of our awareness. At the same time he made it clear that he believed there was no such thing as silence, defined as a total absence of sound–similar to Rauschenberg, who did not believe in emptiness in terms of an empty canvas. In 1951, he visited a sound-proof chamber at Harvard University in order to ‘hear’ silence. “I literally expected to hear nothing,” he said. Instead, he heard two sounds, one high and one low. He was told that the first was his nervous system and the other his blood circulating. This was a major revelation that was to affect his compositional philosophy from that time on.

“The history of art is simply a history of getting rid of the ugly by entering into it, and using it. After all, the notion of something outside of us being ugly is not outside of us but inside of us. And that’s why I keep reiterating that we’re working with our minds. What we’re trying to do is to get them open so that we don’t see things as being ugly, or beautiful, but we see them just as they are.”⁽¹²⁷⁾-John Cage

Cage’s taste ®evolution started rather loud and clear. In 1940, he made the Prepared Piano. Before Cage left Cornish school, he was invited to compose the music for an African dance. The only instrument available was a piano. “I knew that wouldn’t work for Bacchanale which was rather primitive, almost barbaric,”⁽¹²⁸⁾ Cage recalled. He finally realized that he had to change the piano. Cage tried placing objects between the strings. “The piano was transformed into a percussion orchestra having the loudness, say, of a harpsichord.”⁽¹²⁹⁾ Noise as a compositional tool was born….interpenetration of life and art.
“You have to remember how straight-laced everything had always been in music…Just to change one little thing in music was a life’s work. But John changed everything…John was freer than the rest of us.”⁽¹³⁰⁾ – Morton Feldman
When Cage was writing percussion and prepared piano pieces, he became concerned with a new change. He noticed that although he had been taught that music was a matter of communication, when he wrote a sad piece people laughed, and when he wrote a funny one they started crying. From this he concluded that people did not understand each other’s music, that “music doesn’t really communicate to people. Or if it does, it does it in very, very different ways from one person to the next.”⁽¹³¹⁾ Cage said that “no one was understanding anybody else. It was clearly pointless to continue that way, so I determined to stop writing music until I found a better reason than ‘self expression’ for doing it.”⁽¹³²⁾ Cage’s reaction to ‘common composition’ is very much reminiscent of Duchamp’s rejection of what he called ‘retinal painting’. Strictly speaking, Cage stopped being a composer in the traditional sense, similar to Duchamp who refused to lead an artistic life.

“The reason I am less and less interested in music is not only that I find environmental sounds and noises more useful aesthetically than he sounds produced by the world’s musical cultures, but that, when you get right down to it, a composer is simply someone who tells other people what to do. I find this an unattractive way of getting things done. I’d like our activities to be more social and anarchically so.”⁽¹³³⁾

Cage wanted to create music that was free of melody, harmony and musical theory. In an interview he once gave on his project Roaratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake, Cage said that “he wanted music not to be in the sense of music, but in the sense of Finnegan’s Wake” which means that he wanted to turn away from music itself–just like Joyce turned away from conventional writing. Cage, by writing Roaratorio, actually turned literature into a piece of music. He made a text from the original and catalogued the sounds and locations mentioned in Finnegan’s Wake. All sound effects were inspired from the text and many recorded in Ireland, with traditional instruments such as flutes, pipes, fiddles and bodhrans (a special drum type).
To link up with Cage’s conception of music as an unapt means of self-expression (“when he wrote a sad piece people laughed, and when he wrote a funny one they started crying.”) – Cage had determined that the purpose of music could not be communication or self-expression. What then, was its purpose? The answer came from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian singer and tabla player: “The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.”⁽¹³⁴⁾Cage was tremendously struck by this. For more than a year he immersed himself in the philosophy of East and West, and began studying Zen Buddhism with Daisetz T. Suzuki, a Japanese Zen teacher who taught at Columbia University. “I had the impression that I was changing–you might say growing up. I realized that my previous understanding was that of a child.”⁽¹³⁵⁾ Cage was determined to find out more about the “divine influences”, Gira Sarabhai had told him about. He came to the conclusion that they were the sounds and events that were free to everyone, that is, those of our nature and environment. Buddhism also teaches the transitoriness and fugacity of all creatures and objects. Its ultimate goal is the recovery of a higher purpose which is one independent of likes and dislikes–and thus of everything that is intentional.⁽¹³⁶⁾
As soon as Cage gained those insights from oriental philosophy, he introduced it into his music. A quiet mind, he determined, was one free of dislikes; but, since dislikes require likes, it must be free of both likes and dislikes. “You can become narrow minded, literally, by only liking certain things and disliking others, but you can become open-minded, literally, by giving up your likes and dislikes and becoming interested in things.”⁽¹³⁷⁾ Thus, Cage more and more became interested in sounds and noises. He gave up harmony, which he believed, had nothing to do with noises. “Sounds should be honoured rather than enslaved. Every creature, whether sentient (such as animals) or non-sentient (such as stones and air), is the Buddha. Each being is at the centre of the universe.”⁽¹³⁸⁾ This oriental insight may also express Cage’s passion for mushrooms and his belief to hear the sounds of any plant or object: “I have recently learned that plants respond to the affection you show them! They can almost tell you exactly who cares for them. And they won’t grow if they’re not loved.”⁽¹³⁹⁾
In Cage’s mind, the function of music was not to entertain or communicate, but to be a process of discovery, to become aware and sensitised to the environmental sounds that are all around us, and to be free from personal taste and manipulation. The following statement by Cage summarizes this point of view:

“Art may be practiced in one way or another, so that it reinforces the ego in its likes and dislikes, or so that it opens that mind to the world outside, and outside, inside. Since the forties and through the study with D. T. Suzuki of the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, I’ve thought of music as a means of changing the mind. I saw art not as something that consisted of a communication from the artist to an audience but rather as an activity of sounds in which the artist found a way to let the sounds be themselves. And, in being themselves, to open the minds of people who made them or listened to them to other possibilities than they had previously considered.”⁽¹⁴⁰⁾

Thus, music lost its purpose of communication and expression. In contrast to the Western practice of making hierarchies–of separating, discriminating and dividing–Zen Buddhism suggested the opposite: no single centre (no best or least), only “an endless plurality of centres, each one world honoured.”⁽¹⁴¹⁾
Cage believed that emotions, like tastes and memory were too closely linked with the self and that the ego would not open the minds to noises and sounds. There was a way out–that is, Cage’s notion that art and life should no longer be separate but one and the same: “Art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it.”⁽¹⁴²⁾ This idea led him to the concept of interpenetration. Previously, sounds that were outside the composer’s intentions were considered alien intrusions, unwelcome ‘noises’. Cage, for example, welcomed noises that were unintentionally produced by the audience–such as coughs or whispers. As a result of including sounds outside of the composer’s and performer’s intentions, Cage welcomed interpenetration.
Another important dictum which greatly inspired Cage to his new musical thought were the works of Ananda Coomaraswamy who wrote that “art is to imitate nature in her manner of operation.”⁽¹⁴³⁾ This idea should not be confused with imitating nature’s appearance. But how does nature operate? According to the naturalistic evolution theory and natural phenomena, they are not based upon a mechanical, deterministic model, but based on interdeterminacy and chance, such as in quantum mechanics and chaos theory. In the time of the Big Bang, there was a total chaos (a mixture of gases and other elements), and paradoxical as it may seem, this chaos was from time to time organised by chance.⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ In fact we are all existed by chance. As Cage’s works demonstrate, chaos is not really chaos, but unexpected order. I hope there are not too many critical mathematicians and physicists among you… Cage’s response to the chaos of our world was to welcome both its order and its disorder to the greatest extent possible. “Here we are. Let us say Yes to our presence together in Chaos.”⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ Cage met this chaos by using chance operations which encouraged him to shift his focus of attention away from the making of choices to the asking of questions. Likes and dislikes became irrelevant. Cage used his aesthetic of non-intention for making music, poetry and visual art. However, he assured that he did not use it when crossing the street, playing chess, hunting for mushrooms or making love. ⁽¹⁴⁶⁾

“What his music is ‘about’ is changing the mind–creating musical situations which, being analogous to life, have the effect of returning himself and his listeners to a level of consciousness freed from intrusive preconceptions, desires and intentions, and leading them toward an unfettered experience of what is before them in the present.”⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ – Laura Kuhn

I believe that knowing about Cage’s philosophy is crucial in order to comprehend his musical pieces as serious artworks. Only then we are able to understand that his silent piece or 4’33”was not a deliberate affront or insult to the audience or the act of a fool who made a child’s play. Cage repeatedly stated that he was not interested in shocking or insulting audiences. “I have never gratuitously done anything for shock.”⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ He had no intentions to shock, but the audience did not always perceive it that way. The first performance of John Cage’s 4’33”created a scandal. Written in 1952, it is Cage’s most notorious composition, his so-called “silent piece”. The piece consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds in which the performer plays nothing. At the premiere some listeners were unaware that they had heard anything at all. It was first performed by the young pianist David Tudor in New York, for an audience supporting contemporary art.

“Tudor placed the hand-written score, which was in conventional notation with blank measures, on the piano and sat motionless as he used a stopwatch to measure the time of each movement. The score indicated three silent movements, each of a different length, but when added together totalled four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Tudor signalled its commencement by lowering the keyboard lid of the piano. The sound of the wind in the trees entered the first movement. After thirty seconds of no action, he raised the lid of the first movement. It was then lowered for the second movement, during which raindrops pattered on the roof. The score was in several pages, so he turned the pages as time passed, yet playing nothing at all. The keyboard lid was raised and lowered again for the final movement, during which the audience whispered and muttered.” ⁽¹⁴⁹⁾

Cage said later that “people began whispering to one another, and some people began to walk out. They didn’t laugh–they were just irritated when they realized nothing was going to happen and they haven’t forgotten it 30 years later; they’re still angry.”⁽¹⁵⁰⁾
Maverick Concert Hall, the site of the first performance, was ideal in allowing the sounds of the environment to enter, because the back of the hall was open to the surrounding forest. One could hear raindrops patterning the roof –and Cage welcomed all those unexpected, natural sounds. When Tudor finished, raising the keyboard lid and himself from the piano, the audience burst into an uproar–“infuriated and dismayed”, according to the reports.⁽¹⁵¹⁾ Even in the midst of an avant-garde concert attended by modern artists, 4’33” was considered “going too far.”⁽¹⁵²⁾
As I am so eagerly writing about Cage’s discovery of Oriental philosophy, Zen Buddhism and the impact they had on his music and thinking in general, I am reminded of his mushroom passion, the macrobiotic recipes, his use of chance and I have the impression that I am writing in circles–that is, I am repeating Cage’s ideas which once again witness the unity in his philosophy as well as in all his daily activities. Cage’s interpenetration of art and life is thus also apparent in my writing–I somehow feel that my chapter mottos do not (exclusively) convey the contents of the respective chapters–everything is blurring in view to Cage’s entirety philosophy. Though a bit confusing, I believe that this is an interesting insight in view to the topic of this paper. It seems as if I am ‘experiencing’ what I am writing about.
The fact that Cage was interested in noise and sounds and consequently incorporated it into his music seemed somehow familiar to me. Yesterday I dug out the first compact disc I received from my parents around Christmas 1990. I was 14 years old by that time and a crazy Beatles fan. Up to that time I had listened to earwigs such as Let it be, Yellow submarine, Two of us or Dear Jude and eagerly tried to play them on the guitar. I can vividly remember my disappointment at first listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. The songs seemed strange to me, they sounded completely different from the cheerful songs I had listened before. At least I was compensated with When I’m sixty four and With a Little Help from my Friends, but what about songs like Within you Without you? What was George doing with his voice and with all those weird instruments? Or the church like singing of She’s Leaving Home… The cover featuring the wax figures was so queer, not to mention about the odd costumes they wore. Nevertheless, I could not stop listening to the strangeness of the music. I was listening to the songs again and again and with the time I became fascinated about the Beatles’ different music aspect. I tried hard to figure out the contents of songs like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and was wondering what Lennon wanted to tell us by ‘marmalade skies’ or ‘plasticine porters with looking glass ties’. Those mysterious songs somehow transferred me into another, mysterious world, if only for a few minutes. Maybe one’s ears slowly have to familiarise with good music.

“The Beatles insisted that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different,” says Emerick, “so everything was either distorted, limited, heavily compressed or treated with excessive equalisation. We had microphones right down the bells of the brass instruments and headphones turned into microphones attached to violins. We plastered vast amounts of echo onto vocals, and sent them through the circuitry of the revolving Leslie speaker inside a Hammod organ. We used giant primitive oscillators to vary the speed of instruments and vocals and we had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck together upside down and the wrong way around.” ⁽¹⁵³⁾

The Beatles apparently wanted to turn all musical conventions upside down when recordingSgt. Pepper. The album is seen by many people to be the Beatles’ masterpiece. It is especially denoted by its asymmetrical musical phrases and rhythms and its integrated use of electronic music techniques and Indian sitar sound. The album is very experimental. Around the timeSgt. Pepper was released, all Beatles were more or less occupied with Indian philosophy. They attended a seminar by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and learned about sublime consciousness and inner peace and these insights undoubtedly influenced their music. What struck me when I listened to songs like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was that you heard the orchestra rehearsing before the song actually started. In between you could perceive the audience laughing and applauding (although it was studio recorded). Interesting also, that some songs ‘interpenetrate’, which means that there are no pauses in between the songs. I found these impacts more than interesting after studying Cage’s understanding of music. I was struck….

“The very end of the album typifies the advanced studio trickery applied throughout Sgt. Pepper. After the last droplets of the crashing piano chord of ‘A Day in the Life’ have evaporated, come a few seconds of 15 kilocycle tone, put there –especially to annoy your dog–at the request of John Lennon (it contains a note that is so high-pitched that it is only audible to dogs) Then, as the coup de grace, there is a few seconds of nonsense Beatle chatter, taped, cut into several pieces and stuck back together at random so that, as George Martin says, purchasers of the vinyl album who did not have an auto return on their record player would say “What the hell’s that?” and find the curious noise going on and on ad infinitum in the concentric run-out groove.”⁽¹⁵⁴⁾

The Beatles undoubtedly wanted to include some elements that caused some unexpected reactions by the audience. Besides applying different rhythms in one and the same song, they used everyday life sounds such as alarm ringing and someone gasping. They did not even frank us from chance–some of the recordings were stuck together by chance order. Interesting also, the topics of the songs on Sgt. Pepper which differ a great deal from the lighthearted love songs they wrote before. The Beatles were inspirited by different, daily life sources–Lennon wrote Good Morning Good Morning after he was inspired by a TV-spot on Cornflakes. McCartney sang about ”Fixing a hole where the rain gets in (…).” In A Day in the Life, John Lennon reads a newspaper report on a fatal car accident. Harrison’s Within You Without You was inspired by Indian philosophy and turned out to be a co-project with Indian musicians–it was recorded without Lennon, McCartney and Starr. The borders between the music of Sgt. Pepper and life are blurring.
It would be interesting to find out what Cage thought about this innovative Beatles album–I can imagine he would have loved the illogical barrage of noise at the end of A Day in the Life. However, I doubt that Cage would have wanted to listen Sgt. Pepper in any recorded version. He did not even listen to the radio. “If you’re in a room and a record is playing and the window is open and there’s some breeze and a curtain is blowing, that’s sufficient, it seems to me, to produce a theatrical experience.”⁽¹⁵⁵⁾ I suppose that Cage would have enjoyed experimenting with the Beatles on the different sound effects. Once asked about popular music in general, Cage responded that

“it’s very hard for me to listen to music nowadays with a regular beat; so that I have a hard time to begin with, with most popular music. On the other hand, some of it gets free of it. Rock seems to me to get free of it, because it calls so much attention to loudness that you forget the beat.”⁽¹⁵⁶⁾

Sgt. Pepper is of course far from popular. It is a rather a unique music experience, full of surprising sounds and noises. It allows us to dip into a different world.

“He simply found that object, gave it his name. What then did he do? He found that object, gave it his name. Identification. What then shall we do? Shall we call it by his name or by its name. It’s not a question of names.”⁽¹⁵⁷⁾ -John Cage

The last pages, besides digressing briefly on the Beatles, were dedicated to Cage’s study of Zen Buddhism and accordingly his invention of dichotomies like silence, sounds and noises in music. Although Duchamp had no direct connections with oriental thoughts, he madereadymades to which said to be completely indifferent.⁽¹⁵⁸⁾ This notion has of course a lot to do with the Cage’s idea of freeing oneself from one’s likes and dislikes.

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Figure 10
Marcel Duchamp,
Bicycle Wheel,
1913/1961

Figure 11
Marcel Duchamp, In
Advance of the Broken
Arm, 1915

In 1913, Duchamp took a bicycle wheel, turned it upside down and mounted it on a kitchen stool. The Bicycle Wheel (Fig. 10) was originally not intended to be shown, it was just for Duchamp’s own use. One year later, this wheel was the first of what came to be known as readymades, ordinary objects delocated and decontextualised. According to Duchamp, his first readymadecan also be seen as a “homage to the useless aspect of something generally used to other ends”, as well as an “antidote to the habitual movement of the individual around the contemplated object.”⁽¹⁵⁹⁾ These lines clearly witness Duchamp’s anti-artistic attitude, his revolt against the tradition where museum visitors admire works of art. He stressed that his readymades were chosen on visual indifference–while, on the other hand he said that looking at the Bicycle Wheel gave him the same kind of pleasure than watching a log fire. Calvin Tomkins’ statement on Duchamp’s first readymade reveals the erotic aspect of his work: “He found it wonderfully restful to turn the wheel and watch the spokes blur, become invisible, then slowly reappear as it slowed down; something in him responded, as he said, to the image of a circle that turns on its own axis, endlessly onanistically.”⁽¹⁶⁰⁾

If Duchamp now found pleasure in observing his Wheel, he is clearly contradicting himself in terms of his idea of indifference. But – is it possible to completely ignore taste when choosing objects? Human-beings are subjective characters and I believe it is basically impossible to separate oneself from likes or dislikes. Our subconsciousness will not play along. However, Duchamp got quite close to the artistic realization of visual indifference. An ordinary object could after all attain the status of areadymade merely by giving it a title and signature. Duchamp’s goal of desacrificing an artwork was attained – other people could buy it and it could easily be replaced. After buying his second readymade, a snow shovel which became known as In advance of the broken arm (Fig. 11), he wrote the following lines to his sister Suzanne in Paris. In this letter he first mentioned the term readymade.

“Now, if you went up to my place you saw in my studio a bicycle wheel and a bottle rack. I had purchased this as a sculpture already made. And I have an idea concerning this bottle rack: Listen. Here in N.Y., I bought some objects in the same vein and I treat them as ‘readymade.’ You know English well enough to understand the sense of ‘ready made’ that I give these objects. I sign them and give them an English inscription. I’ll give you some examples: I have for example a large snow shovel upon which I wrote at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, translation in French, En avance du bras cassé. Don’t try too hard to understand it in the Romantic or Impressionist or Cubist sense–that has nothing to do with it. Another ‘readymade’ is called: Emergency in favour of twice, possible translation in French: Danger (Crise) en faveur de 2 fois. This whole preamble in order to actually say: You take for yourself this bottle rack. I will make it a ‘Readymade’ from a distance. You will have to write at the base and on the inside of the bottom ring in small letters painted with an oil-painting brush, in silver and white colour, the inscription that I will give you after this, and you will sign it in the same hand as follows: (from) Marcel Duchamp.”⁽¹⁶¹⁾

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Figure 12
Marcel Duchamp, Bottle
Dryer, 1914

Duchamp had a clear notion about his readymades. Those objects he chose for readymades were easily to replace, under the premise that Duchamp signed them. Duchamp could make contracts with art dealers, authorizing them to make editions of his readymades: “10 $ for myBottle Dryer. If you’ve lost it, maybe buy another one at the Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville.”⁽¹⁶²⁾ Almost all original pieces actually got lost–among them the famous Bottle Rack (Fig. 12) and the Bicycle Wheel, which had been both thrown out by Duchamp’s sister. She must have decided they were useless junk.⁽¹⁶³⁾ A similar fate befell Joseph Beuys’ Fat Wedgewhich was conscientiously scrubbed by the cleaning ladies. The fusion of art and life became more and more visible.
Duchamp’s readymades were actually a denial of aesthetics and taste and had nothing to do with the artist, his consciousness or his autobiography. It was not anymore a question of visualization, but the simple fact that existed: “You don’t have to look at the readymade in order to respond to it. The readymade is practically invisible. It is a completely grey substance, anti-retinal, so to speak.”⁽¹⁶⁴⁾ Freeing oneself from likes and dislikes required an objective mind which was free from the ego. And yet, Duchamp emphasised his ego, by, for example saying that “everything in life is art. If I call it art, it’s art, or if I hang it in a museum, it’s art.”⁽¹⁶⁵⁾ It seems rather clear that Beuys, with his dictum that “Everyone is an artist” did not much sympathise with Duchamp. John Cage got closer to freeing himself from the ego by using chance operations. Moira Roth, in her essay “Marcel Duchamp in America” wrote in this respect that

“The readymades are acts of a dandy’s arrogance. He, and he alone, can point to an object and make it art. He can do what he likes. He makes his own rules. Some critics, and even some artists, might like to imagine it, but the message from Duchamp’s readymades is clear: anything and everything does not constitute art, not is anyone and everyone an artist. Duchamp makes readymades. Other people do not.” ⁽¹⁶⁶⁾

Roth’s interpretation of Duchamp’s readymades as products of a dandy’s arrogance seems to fit quite well into the whole context of Duchamp. Let us take the famous Fountain, for example. Duchamp took a porcelain urinal, turned it upside down and signed with the pseudonym – R. Mutt. The most banal of objects was made holy by a decision to place it in a museum–because HE chose it and HE signed it. Duchamp’s idea behind it was that “whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view–created a new thought for that object.”⁽¹⁶⁷⁾ Duchamp’sreadymades were not an expression of artistic skill but the result of the artist’s choice. TheFountain was rejected on the grounds that it was immoral. Consequently, Arensberg, one of Duchamp’s collectors and friends, responded to the sponsors by saying that “this is what the whole exhibit is about; an opportunity to allow the artist to send in anything he chooses, for the artist is to decide what is art, not someone else.”⁽¹⁶⁸⁾

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Figure 13
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain
, 1917

Duchamp’s reaction on the Fountain’s (Fig. 13) rejection was expectedly one of amusement. His urinal was out of question a deliberate provocation perfectly enacted. Duchamp attained the goal of desacrificing his works of art–however, he was far from desacrificing himself as an artist. Whereas the Fountainplayed a supporting role, Duchamp was the main actor. “Some contended it was immoral, vulgar. Others it was plagiarism, a piece of plumbing. Now Mr. Mutt’s fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, not more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ show windows.”⁽¹⁶⁹⁾ Strictly speaking, Duchamp’s statement was indeed justified, for he had simply taken an everyday object, decontexualised it and thus gave it a new meaning. What was vulgar about a common urinal? After all, it could even suggest something aesthetic–as one of Duchamp’s art collectors and friends had proved: “Arensberg had referred to a ‘lovely form’ and it does not take much stretching of the imagination to see in the upside-down urinal’s gently flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance Madonna or a seated Buddha (…).”⁽¹⁷⁰⁾ As a matter of fact, the Fountain as a symbol of sexuality that underlay most of Duchamp’s later work has been subject of endless speculations. The taste revolution undoubtedly reached its climax–and no one had been prepared to it already in 1917.
I am slowly trying to get back to the starting point of this chapter where I philosophised about questions like “where is the border between art and non-art?” In the course of a historical analysis concerning the definition of art as well as my personal approach, I came to the (possibly possible) conclusion that the borders between art and ‘non-art’ are blurring. Both Duchamp’s and Cage’s artworks can be regarded as mirrors of a time where radical changes in all possible areas took place. This more or less universal explanation, however, is only one side of the coin. It would be rather paradoxical to find one generally valid interpretation of Duchamp’s and Cage’s highly complex as well as personal taste revolution.
“I have never been able to do anything that was accepted straight off.” ¾Marcel Duchamp
I believe that Duchamp’s taste revolution was primarily the result of his very personal protest against almost everything connected with art as an institution. He wanted to revolutionize the common understanding of art by turning all possible artistic conventions upside down. The following interview extract is only one of Duchamp’s bitterly sarcastic statements about the (then) current state of art:

“The entire art scene is on so low a level, is so commercialised–art or anything to do with it is the lowest form of activity in this period. This century is one of the lowest points in the history of art, even lower than the 18^th Century, when there was no great art, just frivolity. Twentieth century art is a mere light pastime, as though we were living in a merry period, despite all the wars we’ve had as part of the decoration. All artists since the time of Courbet had been ‘beasts’ and should be put in institutions for exaggerated egos. Why should artists’ egos be allowed to overflow and poison the atmosphere? Can’t you just smell the stench in the air?”⁽¹⁷¹⁾

These words speak volumes about Duchamp, the confirmed anti-artist. His cynical expression is of such intensity that the outcome is simply Duchampian–in other words, bitterly sarcastic and amusing. In order to fight the war against all retinal artists he used weapons such as sarcasm and provocation. He refused to establish any art school as he refused tradition as a doctrine. Duchamp wished to break the aesthetic predominance of the past as he believed that the distinction between beautiful and ugly simply had been acquired. For Duchamp it was important not to be stereotyped in any way. He wanted to be free of tradition and of categorisation. Duchamp’s taste revolution was the product of a thoroughly convinced protest artist. I will keep in memory Duchamp, the artistic nihilist who could not yet live without creating works of art.

Cage’s taste revolution, in contrast, was much more the product of an artist in constant search for self-expression. His life is an example of a multiplicity of interests. As a result of studying Zen Buddhism and Oriental philosophy, Cage’s work became an adventurous experience of dichotomies such as silence and sounds. Not only Zen inspired Cage to create artworks free from intention but an endless kaleidoscopic mixture of interior and exterior influences such as
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DAILYLIFE Mushrooms Marcel
Duchamp……. Cage’s sense of humour and openness………….Arnold Schönberg DadaismMacrobiotics, Language, Jasper Johns, chance, Zen, Merce Cunningham, Visual Arts, Eric Satie, James Joyce………………………
Cage’s convictionoriginalityflexibilitydevotionhonestyintegrityaffability⁽¹⁷²⁾……………………..Robert Rauschenberg, Buckminster Fuller, Chess, Anarchy, Theatre, Henry David Thoreau, Dance, Pedagogy, Literature, Ludwig Wittgenstein…………………..Oscar Wilde, Andy Warhol, White paintings, HIS Audience, Avant-garde, Bauhaus, The Large Glass…………………. Architecture, the Eastern comedic view of Life, Emptiness, Emotions, I-Ching or The Book of Changes, the Magic Square, Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake, Henry David, Chaos Theory, Cornish School, Meister Eckhart, Etant Donnés…………………….. Finnegan’s Wake, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Haikus, Hermann Hesse, Japanese culture, Marshall McLuhan, Mathematics, Number Systems, Realism, Nam June Paik, Ezra Pound, Pythagoras, Kurt Schwitters…………………………….. Spirituality, Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, Mark Tobey, Media, Utopianism, Surrealism, Walt Whitman, Zukofsky Paul, to name but a few
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I guess this list could be stretched to …..an infinite number of pages but I do Not Intend to Waste your time any Longer.
IN case you still have some time left ………….you are warmly welcome to philosophise about this Cage quotation……………….
“Which is more musical: A truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?”⁽¹⁷³⁾

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6. A visit in the Virtual DuCage Museum An imaginative meeting with Works of Ducage

I am sitting somewhere in a stuffy room in a Museum of Modern Art. Tired of all the impressions, of the numerous paintings and sculptures I have already observed. The cosy bench in the middle of the exhibition room is apparently there for people who want to observe some paintings in elaborate detail. I guess I am not one of the pseudo art connoisseurs who sit on this bench to discuss with their partner about the revealing colour ‘distribution’ of Jackson Pollock’s Number 4. I find it more interesting to hear the wooden floor cracking as a middle-aged couple enters the room. My head feels in a dubious state; I feel like leaving the museum and yet wish to stay to watch people watching. The couple is walking through the room as soon as they have entered. The artworks apparently did not appeal to them. Which artworks? I have not yet paid attention to the objects that are all around me. Too tired to focus my attention on any painting or one of those small printed plates which contain loads of information on the artist and the work itself. I am turning my head a little so that I get an elusive overview of the works of art surrounding me.

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Figure 14

Something unidentifiable has focused my attention and overthrown my tiredness. Looks like a huge window divided in two that has been deliberately cracked and then fixed again. (Fig. 14) On the glass there are weird technical drafts. Big question mark……My eyes are slowly wandering to the window behind and the life outside. The church bell is already ringing a loud and clear 5^th time. I can perceive a young mother eagerly trying to catch her son who is running away from her. She is wearing high heels which make it almost impossible to catch up with the runaway. The boy and his mother disappear. My eyes are wandering back to the strange object. The second time I watch it, it seems already familiar. The upper half of the glass is somehow more artistic than the lower one which reminds me of a technical draft of whatever. I like the three ‘windows’ on the very top of the upper half. A frame on a frame….it is like featuring a TV on TV…have you seen the movie Pleasantville? The three ‘windows’ tempt me to watch beyond the glass a second time. This time, however, I am focusing my attention on the mysterious glass. Do not misunderstand me – I do not ‘like’ this art-object – after all I would not say it’s beautiful, though it’s not ugly either. It’s simply there. One could object now that everything in this museum is ‘there’. That’s right. But the other paintings hanging on the white walls are not sui for tired museum visitors like me. They call for attention. The glass is different. I am walking around a little and observe the glass from a different angle. It looks different from behind – I can see through it the painting on the opposite wall. Now I know – it’s the unobtrusiveness that makes the glass somehow special for me. The fact that it’s there and yet seems to dissolve in the background….it can be looked at and looked through at the same time….the glass encourages me to see the world behind. And the world somehow looks different through it. I have never had such an experience in a museum.

“Use ‘delay’ instead of picture or painting…It’s merely a way of succeeding in no longer thinking that the thing in question is a picture … to make a delay of it in the most general way possible, not so much in the different meanings in which delay can be taken, but rather in their indecisive reunion.”⁽¹⁷⁴⁾
—Marcel Duchamp

This is how Duchamp referred to The Large Glass or better The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even in one of his working notes that he collected in The Green Box. He meant it to be a “delay” instead of a picture. Delay…does this make any sense? Delay: make or be slow or late (be delayed by traffic); put off until later (delay a journey)⁽¹⁷⁵⁾. Maybe Duchamp simply opened his dictionary and chose first term his eyes spotted – or delay was meant as one of Duchamp’s numerous wordplays: “One Duchampian has suggested that it be read as an anagram for ‘lad(e)y,’ so that “delay in glass” becomes glass lady.”⁽¹⁷⁶⁾ Whatever the case, he managed well to keep the secret. The Large Glass is probably Duchamp’s most complex and mysterious artwork and has been subjected to endless analysis. As with Duchamp’s most statements on his artworks, his notes published in The Green Box are very hard if not impossible to decode and leave much space for speculation. Duchamp wanted to leave the door open, for in his mind, the spectator ultimately finished the artwork by observing and interpreting it. Or he did not want us to understand The Glass at all. Duchamp would have probably commented on the numerous speculations on his masterpiece “there is no solution as there is no problem.”⁽¹⁷⁷⁾ I am sure that he would have been quite amused at the endless number of interpretation attempts.
“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone. The spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”⁽¹⁷⁸⁾ Marcel Duchamp
Unfortunately I have not yet seen the Large Glass in the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art – unless in my imagination. When observing pictures of The Glass, I do not focus my attention on any of the objects resembling the bride or the bachelor – nor am I tempted to find out about the meanings of the individual elements…The central message for me is the medium of the artwork itself – that is the glass. The glass as a strong contrast to the traditional paintings drawn on canvasses. I like the idea of an artwork that can be looked at and looked through at the same time. The experience of looking at or beyond the glass is an endless one. Whatever is beyond the painting – it looks different when seen through the cracked glass. In fact, it is not only the environment which is in constant change, but also the artwork itself. The life outside the museum window becomes art – interpenetration of art and life. Thus, the experience of observing an artwork is an unexpected and unique one.
Cage, in his interview with Joan Retallack commented on the Large Glass: “The experience of being able to look through the glass and see the rest of the world is the experience of not knowing where the work ends. It doesn’t end. In fact it goes into life.”⁽¹⁷⁹⁾ The elements depicted on the glass are not beautiful nor ugly – but rather indifferent and thus do not much focus the viewer’s attention. Duchamp remarked that “every image in the glass is there for a purpose and nothing is put in to fill a blank space or to please the eye.”⁽¹⁸⁰⁾ His message is clear: Duchamp, as a consequence of ‘unlearning to draw’, wanted to create an artwork which was completely anti-retinal and free of artistic tradition. Besides using glass instead of a canvas, he worked with unconventional materials such as lead foil and wires. I found it quite interesting that Duchamp never actually ‘finished’ his masterpiece. He remarked that “it may be subconsciously I never intended to finish it because the word ‘finish’ implies an acceptance of traditional methods and all the paraphernalia that accompany them.”⁽¹⁸¹⁾ It is up to us to ultimately ‘finish’ his Large Glass. Duchamp’s wish to escape the prison of tradition is not something we are unfamiliar with. He wanted to find a way of expressing himself without being a painter or a writer, without taking one of these labels and yet producing something that would be a product of himself.
As Duchamp meant it to be, The Glass is far from retinal as it represents a complex subject which cannot possibly be decoded by simply looking at the artwork. The process of thinking, according to Duchamp, is more significant than the artistic result. If that was the case – why wouldn’t he have wanted to make his ideas as clear as possible? We must at least read Duchamp’s notes or statements and even then we are confronted with the cryptic nature of this artwork. Who would guess an act of love behind the weird mechanical elements of theBride? One could never suspect the subject of sexual desire from simply looking at TheGlass. Duchamp left us behind some more or less abstruse indications in his Green Boxnotes:

“The Bride is basically a motor. This bride runs on love gasoline which is ignited in a two-stroke cycle. The first stroke, or explosion, is generated by the bachelors through an electrical stripping whose action Duchamp compares to the image of a motor car climbing a slope in low gear…while slowly accelerating, as if exhausted by hope, the motor of the car turns faster and faster, until it roars triumphantly.”⁽¹⁸²⁾

It is not hard to guess from Duchamp’s formulation that the subject of the Bride is nothing else than the sexual intercourse. However, I do not intend to analyse Duchamp’s notes or statements nor am I interested in reflecting on the numerous interpretations written on Duchamp’s complex masterpiece. I have already commented on my personal interpretation of the artwork and thus believe that I cannot contribute anything more to the endless number of interpretation attempts. My readers, however, can…as every person responds in his own way. Listen to Duchamp’s ‘theory’ how in his mind works of art become works of art:

“A work of art exists only when the spectator has looked at it. Until then it is only something that has been done, that might disappear and nobody would know about it, but the spectator consecrates it by saying this is good, we will keep it, and the spectator in that case becomes posterity, and posterity keeps museums full of paintings today. My impression is that these museums – call it the Prado, call it the National Gallery, call it the Louvre – are only receptacles of things that have survived, probably mediocrity. Because they happen to have survived is no reason to make them so important and big and beautiful, and there is no justification for that label of beautiful. They have survived. Why have they survived? It is not because they are beautiful. It is because they have survived by the law of chance. We probably have lot many, many other artists of those same periods who are as beautiful or even more beautiful…”⁽¹⁸³⁾

It is our responsibility if an artwork is worth preserving or not. According to Duchamp, a work of art is incomplete until it has been seen and thought about by one or more spectators.⁽¹⁸⁴⁾ We are no longer passive observers but part of the creative process – as the artist himself.
Cage’s idea of blurring the distinction between audience and performer was a different one than Duchamp’s. Cage, more than Duchamp was interested in actively incorporating the audience into his art – I am thinking now I particular of Cage’s Silent piece. Cage said that “the performance should make clear to the listener that the hearing of the piece is his own action – that the music, so to speak is his, rather than the composer’s.”⁽¹⁸⁵⁾The performer’s responsibility thus shifted from self-expression to opening a window for the sounds of the environment. Cage wished to create a music that was performed by everyone. In Cage’s performance of 4’33”, it was actually the audience that was ‘performing’ by contributing sounds such as whispers and coughs. He wanted his music to be free of his own likes and dislikes and let the audience feel that ‘silent music’ was more interesting than the music they would hear if they went into a concert hall.⁽¹⁸⁶⁾ Cage, as a result of welcoming everything that was non-intentional and natural, aimed at creating a music that was a mixture of all sounds the environment and audience offered him.
Cage’s ideas of incorporating the audience into his live performances are vividly expressed in numerous interviews. I believe his statements do not need any further explanation – instead, they rather speak for themselves. His interviews are a real pleasure to read.

“I think perhaps my own best piece, at least the one I like the most, is the silent piece – 4’33”, 1952. It has three movements and in all of the movements there are no sounds. I wanted my work to be free of my own likes and dislikes, because I think music should be free of the feelings and ideas of the composer. I have felt and hoped to have led other people to feel that the sounds of their environment constitute a music which is more interesting than the music which they would hear if they went into a concert hall.”⁽¹⁸⁷⁾
“More and more in my performances, I try to bring about a situation in which there is no difference between the audience and the performers. And I’m not speaking of audience participation in something designed by the composer, but rather I am speaking of the music that arises through the activity of both performers and the so-called audience.”⁽¹⁸⁸⁾

“Well, music is not just composition, but it is performance, and it is listening. The Amplification of those cards, though it was high, almost at the level of Feedback – which we heard now and then – produced sounds that were still so Quiet that one could hear the audience as performers too. And I’m sure that they noticed that themselves. You noticed, for Instance, the man in The Back who was having trouble with his digestion. And I would hear many different kinds of coughing and I’m sure that people heard those themselves as sounds, rather than as interruptions. I hope, and I’ve hoped this now for thirty years, when I make music that it won’t interrupt the silence which already exists. And that silence includes coughs. I thought the Audience behaved/Performed beautifully, because they didn’t intend to cough – they were obliged to cough; the Cough had its own thought, interpenetrated – nothing obstructing anything Else.”⁽¹⁸⁹⁾
“I just performed Muoyce which is a whispered version of my Writing for the Fifth Time Through Finnegan’s Wake, and it was done in Frankfurt. It lasts for two and a half hours. Klaus Schöning of Hörspiel WDR told the audience which was large, about four or five hundred Joyce scholars, that the doors were open; that once the performance began, they could leave as they wish, and that they could also come back if they wanted. After twenty minutes, they began to leave, and he told me later that only about half of the audience was there at the end. So I think that the work is still irritating. People think, perhaps, that they are no longer irritated, but they still have great difficulty paying attention to something they don’t understand. I think that the division is between understanding and experiencing, and many people think that art has to do with understanding, but it doesn’t. It has to do with experience; and if you understand something, then you walk out once you get the point because you don’t want the experience. You don’t want to be irritated. So they leave, and they say the avant-garde doesn’t exist. But the avant-garde continues, and it is experience.”⁽¹⁹⁰⁾

…I am feeling a bit dizzy of all the writing right now and decide to turn on my CD-player. My friend has recently recorded some John Cage pieces for me. Among them Music for Marcel Duchamp, 4’33” and Imaginary Landscape I do not really know what to expect – yet I have some vague ideas what Cage could sound like. A frenzy huggermugger of sounds and noises is what first comes to my mind….I won’t speculate any longer, I’ll press the play button….The first piece sounds a bit silent; must be 4’33”… I am curious if I can perceive any background noises, but I don’t. At least I have been waiting in expectation for exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Cage well managed to keep me curious for this period of time ;)…..The next piece reminds me a bit of a dramatic scene in a horror film. The music gets faster and faster….. My heart feels like bumping in the same rhythm as the music. It makes me feel nervous. At the point it reaches its climax, the piece unexpectedly ends…….The following track sounds, I would say, totally un-cagean…..harmony pure. This is what the beginnings of electronic music must have sounded like. The music permits me to slowly familiarise with it….Cage was apparently working with compositional tools such as repetition….and, believe it or not, the result sounds harmonious. Probably unintentional harmony. I would say that this is the first piece which permits me to think of something else than the music I am listening to. It does not completely take me in……Cage’s pieces are rather short in length…think I need a short break now in order to ‘digest’ this cagean music experience…..The next track starts with a sound I can hardly endure. Reminds me of an extremely boisterous aeroplane departure…. that suddenly turns into a vacuum cleaner noise. If we were able to receive all frequencies surrounding us, it would assumedly sound like this. The music is increasing in loudness and intensity that I have to skip to the following track………Relief…….The piece I am now listening to sounds like a conversation between two instruments. The one is a dominant cello, the other a timid bell. As different as they may be, they seem to be fond of each other. I begin to like the constant changes in rhythm…they bring about a sense of dramatic tension and yet a touch of playfulness. …I think I will now leave the Cagean music experience in order to reflect…

I would very much like to place myself in the position of being a spectator in Cage’s performance of 4’33”, but I think that it is impossible at least at the time. I have ‘listened’ to it on tape and unfortunately could not perceive any of the background noises. I don’t think, however, that the actual experience of having been ‘real’ part of the audience is what truly matters here. It is rather the idea behind the work which becomes part of our awareness once we have been acquainted with Cage’s philosophy. That is of course also the case with Duchamp.

Listening to Cage has been an exciting adventure. He offered me everything ranging from….complete silence, quiet harmony, refreshing sound……to unbearable noise. You never know what to expect when listening to Cage. My mind is wandering back to my virtual experience of Duchamp’s Large Glass……it permitted me to see the world beyond the artwork. Total blurring of the distinction between art and life.
Cage’s music left a different impression on me. Most of his music pieces, except of course his Silent piece, completely absorbed me. When listening to Cage’s pieces I was too involved in the musical experience in order to immerse in a different world. Too much intensity of sounds…..and thus little transparency. Cage wanted to incorporate environmental sounds into his music. The sounds we hear every day on the street do not have a distracting effect on us as we are used to them. However, we are not used to Cage’s intensification of these sounds. In my view, the blurring of the distinction between art and life did not work out in all of Cage’s music pieces – at least when listening to the recorded version. I can, of course, only speak about my subjective music experience – I suppose that it would be an entirely different experience if I were able to listen and watch his music in a concert hall. After all it should be considered that his pieces were originally not intended to be listened on CD or tape.

Duchamp, however, did not either constantly manage to realise his conception of breaking down the barriers between art and life. His last masterpiece, Etant donnés, is the exact reverse of the Large Glass. This disturbing and provocative work presents a startingly realistic nude made of leather and reclining on a bed of leaves in front of a mechanical waterfall. She is only visible through two peepholes in a massive wooden door.

“In 1943 Duchamp rented a studio on the top floor of a building in New York City. While everyone believed that Duchamp had given up “art,” he was secretly constructing this au, begun in 1946, which was not completed until 1966. The full title of the piece is:Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas. It consists of an old wooden door, bricks, velvet, twigs gathered by Duchamp on his walks in the park, leather stretched over a metal armature of a female form, glass, linoleum, an electric motor, etc. Duchamp prepared a “Manual of Instructions” in a 4-ring binder which explains and illustrates the process of assembling/disassembling the piece. It was not revealed to the public until July of 1969, (several months after Duchamp’s death), when it was permanently installed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. No photographs of the interior of the piece or of the notebook of instructions were allowed to be published by the museum for at least 15 years. The viewer of the piece first steps onto a mat in front of the door, which activates the lights, motor, etc., and then peers through two “peepholes” to view the construction behind the door. The voyeurstrains, unsuccessfully, to see the “face” of the eerily realistic nude female form which lies supine on a bed of twigs, illuminated gas lamp in hand. In the distance, a sparkling waterfall shimmers, backlit by a flickering light, part of a realistically rendered landscape painting on glass.”⁽¹⁹¹⁾

It seems rather hard for me to imagine what feelings a real encounter with Etant Donnéswould evoke in me. After looking at the black and white reproductions, I had the impression that this artwork represented everything Duchamp so vehemently refused: it is far from anti-retinal – the nude lies there, fully exposed and opened by the position of her legs. In contrast to the Large Glass where the viewer can look at and through it from any angle, he is restricted to a particular position – we can only see the artwork through the peephole in the wooden door; the way Duchamp prescribed it. Duchamp’s Manual of Instructions for Etant Donnés again prescribes step for step how to take the artwork apart and put it back together. No room for interpretation for those who install it.
When I think of Etant Donnés, I see a big question mark. To me it seems that Duchamp, the confirmed anti-artist tried in vain to keep up his anti-(quite everything) attitude throughout his life. Etant Donnés is after all the best example for a very retinal artwork. His numerous self-contradicting statements give evidence of a character who was not thoroughly convinced of himself as an anti-artist. The following statement made by Duchamp reveals quite a lot in this respect: “I have forced to contradict myself in order to avoid confirmation to my own tastes.”⁽¹⁹²⁾This line may also express Duchamp’s ‘gap’ in maintaining the blurring of the distinction between art and life. Who knows, maybe Etant Donnés was Duchamp’s only ‘honest’ artwork.

I believe, however that there is not only one possibility of realizing the blurring of art and life. Maybe Etant Donnés contributed as much to the blurring as the Large Glass. Duchamp probably wanted the spectator not immediately to see the ‘retinal’ aspects of his artwork, but rather what is ‘behind’ it. The ‘behind’ I am thinking of in particular, is the artists’ life, his biography. In Etant Donnés, Duchamp undoubtedly expressed suppressed emotions for a woman he had been in love with before he got married to his second wife. Maria Martins was a woman who would not give up her marriage for Duchamp. Maybe, in Etant Donnés he saw her in a figurative sense raped by her husband. In my view, the lamp she holds in her hand symbolizes a mute cry for help. She cries in vain, for she is locked up behind the heavy wooden door. There is no right or wrong when it comes to interpreting artworks – in the end there are only speculations. Cage quite interestingly commented on his friends’ last masterwork:

“I can only see what Duchamp permits me to see. The Large Glass changes with the light and he was aware of this. So does any painting. But Etant Donnés doesn’t change because it is all prescribed. So he’s telling us something that we perhaps haven’t yet learned, when we speak as we do so glibly of the blurring of the distinction between art and life. Or perhaps he’s bringing us back to Thoreau: yes and no are lies. Or keeping the distinction, he may be saying neither one is true. The only true answer is that which will let us have both of these.”⁽¹⁹³⁾

Cage’s quotation once again brings us back to the title of this project – the blurring of the distinction between art and life. Both Duchamp and Cage pivotally contributed to this blurring by realizing unique ideas in this direction – however, it also turned out to be an endless enterprise. It is now up to us to continue their project……….

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7.“That is a very good question. I do not want to spoil it with an answer” ⁽¹⁹⁴⁾
Some Final Remarks

This quotation is taken from Cage’s afternote to his Lecture on Nothing which is part of his book Silence. After delivering his Lecture on Nothing, “he prepared six answers for the first six questions asked, regardless of what they were.”⁽¹⁹⁵⁾“That is a very good question. I do not want to spoil it with an answer” is one of them. Cage’s amusing idea originated from the belief that a discussion is nothing more than an entertainment. Cage, as a result of using chance operations in his music, made his responsibility that of asking questions instead of giving answers and making choices. He was not much interested in giving answers as well as in receiving definite answers – as the nature of Cage’s friendship with Duchamp well demonstrated. Experience, in Cage’s mind, was much more important than understanding. Duchamp, on the other hand, made every effort to make his art mysterious. He was not either interested in giving ultimate answers as he believed that the creative act was a joint effort by the artist and the spectator.
I am introducing the final paragraphs of my paper with the analysis of a quotation that I believe is quite apt to ‘finish’ the never ending circle of the DuCage experience. Both Duchamp and Cage demonstrated with their artworks that there is much space for the spectator’s experience and curiosity. They do not offer ultimate answers but leave much space for our own imagination. Like Duchamp and Cage, I am not concerned here with an ultimate answer or ‘summary’ of my project. I see no point in writing a ‘summary’ after having studied those two artists. It would at least seem rather paradoxical to me. Instead, I would like to leave you with the voices of Duchamp and Cage as a ‘stepping stone’ for your own imagination:

“People took modern art very seriously when it first reached America because they believed we took ourselves very seriously (…) A great deal of modern art is meant to be amusing. If Americans would simply remember their own sense of humour instead of listening to the critics, modern art will come into its own.”⁽¹⁹⁶⁾ —Marcel Duchamp

“This is also for me the effect of modern painting on my eyes, so when I go around the city I look, I look at the walls….and I look at the pavement and so forth as though I’m in a museum or in a gallery. In other words, I don’t turn my aesthetic faculties off when I’m outside a museum or gallery.”⁽¹⁹⁷⁾ —John Cage
……………………………………………Why did I choose these two quotations?………………………
I believe that many people associate with modern art something that is worldly innocent, something that has nothing to do with their reality. After having had the possibility to immerse in the world of DuCage, I am not so sure if there is a difference between art and the life around us. Art, for them, was normality – it was a part of their life as was the street they were living in. Museums then, would symbolize nothing else than life – or we may also change this expression like a parable – namely that life is one big museum… Isn’t every single artwork simply an emotional expression of an individual? If that is so, isn’t then art all about the capability of interpreting the things that are going on around us? I believe it is enough if we try to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. This is what being a glass wanderer is all about.

Bibliography⁽¹⁹⁸⁾

Baruchello, Gianfran co and Martin Henry. Warum Weshalb Wozu Duchamp. Klagenfurt: Ritter,1993.

Bischof, Ulrike et al. Kunst als Grenzbeschreitung – John Cage und die Moderne. Düsseldorf: Richter-Verlag, 1992.

Bianco, Paolo und Doswald Christoph. Andy Warhol – Joseph Beuys. Gegenspieler. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000.

Cabanne, Pierre. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. London: Paperback, 1988.

Cabanne, Pierre. Duchamp & Co. Paris: Terrail, 1997.

Cage, John. Silence. Middletown/Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1967.

Cage, John. M-Writings ’67-’72. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.

Cage, John. A Year from Monday. Lectures and Writings. London: Marion Boyars, 1985.

Cage, John. X-Writings ’79-’82. Middletown: Wesleyan Paperback, 1986.

Cage, John. Composition in Retrospect. Cambridge/MA: Exact Change, 1993.

Cage, John. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures. Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Charles Daniel. For the Birds – John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles. London : Marion Boyars, 1995.

Charles Daniel. John Cage oder Die Musik ist los. Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1979.

Daniels, Dieter. Duchamp und die Anderen. Köln : DuMont Buchverlag, 1992.

De Duve, Thierry. Kant after Duchamp. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press, 1996.

D’Harnoncourt, Anne and McShine Kynaston. Marcel Duchamp. New York : Prestel, 1989.

D’Harnoncourt, Anne et al. Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp…in Resonance. Houston: Cantz, 1998.

Duchamp, Marcel. A l’Infinitif. The Typosophic Society. Over Wallop/UK: BAS printers, 1999.

Fetz, Wolfgang, Hrsg. Sommerprojekte Bregenz 1998. Kunst in der Stadt 2. Bregenz: Teutsch, 1998.

Fetz, Wolfgang, Hrsg. L’Art est Inutile. Avantgardekunst/Arte D’Avanguardia 1960 – 1980. Bregenz : Hecht Druck, 1993.

Geddes & Grosset. Dictionary of Art. New Lanark/Scotland: Brockhampton Press, 1995.

Gena, Peter and Brent Jonathan. A John Cage Reader. New York: C.F. Peters Higgins, 1998.

Glasmeier, Michael und Hartel, Gaby, Hrsg. Beckett, Samuel. Das Gleiche noch mal Anders. Texte zur Bildenden Kunst. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2000.

Gough-Cooper, Jennifer et al. Marcel Duchamp. London : Thames and Hudson, 1993.

Hauskeller, Michael. Was ist Kunst? Positionen der Ästhetik von Platon bis Danto. München: C.H. Beck, 1998.

Kandinsky, Wassily. Essays über Kunst und Künstler. Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1973.

Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Conversing with Cage. New York: Limelight Editions, 1988.

Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. John Cage. London: Penguin, 1971.

Klotz, Heinrich. Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert. Moderne – Postmoderne – Zweite Moderne. München: C.H. Beck, 1999.

Kotte, Wouter. Marcel Duchamp als Zeitmaschine. Köln: Walther König, 1987.

Naumann, Francis and Obalk Hector, ed. Affectionately Marcel: The Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp. Ghent: Ludion Press, 2000.
Perloff, Majorie et al. John Cage. Composed in America. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1994.

Retallack, Joan, ed. Musicage – Cage muses on Words, Art, Music. John Cage in Conversation with Joan Retallack. Hanover/NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996.

Revill, David. The Roaring Silence. John Cage: A Life. London: Bloomsbury, 1992.

Rodin, Auguste. Die Kunst. Gespräche des Meisters. Zürich: Diogenes, 1979.

Roth, Moira and Katz D. Jonathan. Difference/Indifference. Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. Amsterdam: G + B Arts International, 1998.

Rotzler, Willi. Objektkunst. Von Duchamp bis zur Gegenwart. Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, 1981.

Ruhrberg, Karl. Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Malerei, Skulpturen und Objekt, Neue Medien, Fotografie. Köln: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 2000.

Stauffer, Serge, Hrsg. Marcel Duchamp. Interviews und Statements. Stuttgart : Cantz, 1991.

Stauffer, Serge, Hrsg. Marcel Duchamp. Die Schriften. Zürich: Regenbogen-Verlag, 1981.

Stein, Gertrude. Everybody’s Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1964.

Stein, Gertrude. Was sind Meisterwerke? Zürich: Die Arche, 1962.

Tomkins, Calvin. Duchamp. A Biography. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

Tomkins, Calvin. The Bride & the Bachelors. New York: Penguin/Viking, 1965.

Wellershoff, Dieter. Die Auflösung des Kunstbegriffs. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1981.

More Resources

• Tout-fait – The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal #3 www.toutfait.com

• The Museum of Contemporary Art. Rolywholyover – A Circus. Los Angeles: 1993.

• Microsoft Encarta ’95. The Complete Interactive Multimedia Encyclopedia. 1995 Edition.

• Leo Truchlar – Lecture Script

• Special thanks to ….Sweet Surprise Postcards © John Gavin Gillard

• Websit  

   

  https://www.freshwidow.com/etant-donnes2.html

  https://www.english.upenn.edu/??afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html

  https://www.freshwidow.com/duchampsources.html

  https://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/cage/

……….and finally……Thanks…… for more inspiration to:
my best friend Markus for not losing patience in endless discussions and his inspiring piano music my parents for distracting me now and then; Mr. Truchlar for granting me so much freedom and space; Christoph; Dido, Sinéad O’Connor, Era and The Beautiful South for their inspiring music.

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More Resources

1. Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage (New York: Limelight Editions, 1988) 211.

2. Moira Roth & William Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp”, in Difference/Indifference-Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage (Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 1998) 72.

3. Serge Stauffer, Marcel Duchamp (Stuttgart: Edition Cantz, 1992) 29.

4. Ibid. 14.

5. I am referring here to a lecture held by Prof. Truchlar, teaching Americanliterature at the University of Salzburg–however, Cage’s ideas concerning education can be read in Richard Kostelanetz’s Conversing with Cage.

6. Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp, A biography (New York: Henry Holt, 1996) 127.

7. Kostelanetz 91.

8. Roth, Difference/Indifference 73.

9. Roth 80.

10. John Cage, “An Autobiographical Statement”–first appeared in the Southwest Review, 1991. I found it reprinted in the Web: https://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html

11. SEE NOTE AT THE END OF THE ESSAY

13. Tomkins 42.

14. Original title: Wassily Kandinsky, Essays über Kunst und Künstler (Zürich: Benteli, 1955). Kandinsky’s book inspired me a great deal before I started my readings on Cage and Duchamp. He expressed many ideas which strongly reminded me of Cage’s and Duchamp’s philosophy. I can imagine that in view to the books’ popularity (it first appeared in 1911) both artists must have sooner or later come across it.

15. Roth, “Marcel Duchamp in America,” in Difference/Indifference 22.

16. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp” 76.

17. Wouter Kotte, Marcel Duchamp als Zeitmaschine (Köln: Walther König, 1987) 36/37.

18. Wolfgang Fetz, Kunst in der Stadt 2 (Bregenz: Teutsch, 1998) x -no page reference.

19. Tomkins 116.

20. Ibid. 142.

21. Stauffer, Marcel Duchamp 45/46.

22. Tomkins 408.

23. Cage, A year from Monday 70. Cage obviously referred to a joint work by Duchamp and Man Ray calledDust Breeding–“A glass panel which had been lying flat on sawhorses collecting dust. The resulting image was like a lunar landscape (…) Duchamp later fixed the dust with varnish on the sieves.” (Tomkins p. 229) –another, probably even more relevant explanation could be Duchamp’s “story of his 2 studios.” Cage recalled, “He had 2 studios. One was the one he was working in and the other was the one where he had stopped working. So that if anyone came to visit him they went into the studio where he wasn’t working, and there everything was covered with dust. So the idea was spread around that he was no longer working. And you had proof of it! –dust collected where he worked (laughs).” (Joan Retallack, Musicage p. 111)

24. Tomkins 236.

25. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp” 82.

26. Stauffer 85.

27. Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (London: Paperback, 1988) 8.

28. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp” 76.

29. Roth 82.

30. Tomkins 270.

31. Francis N. Naumann ed., Affectionately Marcel: The selected correspondence of Marcel Duchamp (Ghent: Ludion Press, 2000) 212.

32. Roth 77.

33. Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp 67.

34. Tomkins 157.

35. Ibid. 93.

36. Ibid. 15.

37. Tomkins 113.

38. Roth 23.

39. Ibid. 17.

40. Tomkins 141/142.

41. Tomkins 143.

42. Ibid. 152.

43. This ‘mesostic’ about Duchamp was published in Cage’s M–writings ’67-’72 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973) 34.

44. “Duchamp, Marcel,” Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall’s Corporation.

45. John Cage, Quotations found in the Web: https://www.english.upenn.edu/??afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html

46. “Cage, John Milton, Jr.,” Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall’s Corporation.

47. Tomkins 330/331.

48. Kostelanetz, 11.

49. John Cage, A Year from Monday-Lectures and Writings (London: Calder & Boyars Ltd, 1968) 71.

50. Roth 74.

51. Ibid. 73.

52. Stauffer 201.

53. John Cage, A year from Monday 70.

54. Ibid. 31.

55. Ibid.

56. Tomkins 411.

57. Ibid. 91.

58. Tomkins 176.

59. Anne d’Harnoncourt, “Paying attention” in Rolywholyover-A Circus (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1993).

60. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in enjoying a live interview with Cage. I found it in the Internet: https://www.2street.com/joyce/gallery/roaratorio.html

61. Cage, A year from Monday x (Foreword).

62. Tomkins, 151.

63. John Cage, M-Writings ’67-’72 (Middletown: Wesleyan, 1973) 27.

64. Roth, “Marcel Duchamp in America“ 19.

65. Tomkins 231.

66. Ibid. 282.

67. Ibid. 214.

68. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp“ 78.

69. Tomkins 290.

70. David Revill, The Roaring Silence. John Cage: A Life (London: Bloomsbury, 1992) 214.

71. Roth 74.

72. Ibid.

73. Cage, For the birds 168.

74. Jennifer Gough-Cooper & Jaques Caumont, Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy 1887-1968 (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1993) no page references!

75. Erratum Musical is a musical composition which was Duchamp’s first implementation of chance–Duchamp jotted down the notes as he drew them out of a hat; he was supposed to sing the resulting score with his two sisters, Yvonne and Magdeleine.

76. Kostelanetz, 18.

77. Tomkins 253

78. Ibid. 211.

79. Roth 81.

80. Francis N. Naumann , Affectionately Marcel 321.

81. Kostelanetz 5.

82 Ibid.

83. Laura Kuhn, “John Cage in the Social Realm“ in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

84. Cage, A year from Monday 61.

85. Kostelanetz 5.

86. Cage, Biography in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

87. Kostelanetz 89.

88. Cage, For the Birds 226.

89. John Cage, Silence (Middletown/Connecticut: Wesleyan, 1967) 276.

90. I must smile at this point–a good friend repeatedly told me in high school that no matter what I write about, I always include John Lennon. It seems as if I hold up to this tradition ;)) John Lennon and Yoko Ono were friends of Cage and sent him six cookbooks on macrobiotics.

91. John Cage, Macrobiotics Recipes , in Rolywholyover – A Circus (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1993).

92. Revill 259.

93. Daniel Charles, For the Birds-John Cage in conversation with Daniel Charles (London: Marion Boyars, 1995) 74.

94. Kostelanetz 30.

95. Daniel Charles, For the Birds 233.

96. Cage, Macrobiotic Recipes in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

97. Anne d’Harnoncourt, “Paying Attention” in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

98 Cage, A year from Monday 70.

99. Revill 230.

100. Cage, M – Writings ’67 – ’72 34.

101. Anne d’Harnoncourt, “Paying Attention“ in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

102. Cage, Introductory Notes in Rolywholyover-A Circus.

103. Cage, X-writings ’79 – ’82 54.

104. Interview Roaratorio.

105. Roth, “John Cage on Marcel Duchamp” 74.

106. Roth 73.

107. D’Harnoncourt, “Paying Attention“ in Rolywholyover-A Circus

108. Quotation by Harry S. Truman

109. Cabanne 11.

110. Roth, “Marcel Duchamp in America“ 27

111. Michael Hauskeller, Was ist Kunst? Positionen der Ästhetik von Platon bis Danto (München: C.H. Beck, 1998) 11.

112. Ibid. 22.

113. Fetz, Kunst in der Stadt 2 x.

114. Those insights are a derived from a mixture of sources such as Brockhampton’s Reference Dictionary of Art (London: Brockhampton Press, 1995) and Microsoft Encarta ’95.

115. Arthur C. Danto, “Marcel Duchamp and the end of taste: A defence of contemporary art” (Tout-fait The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal #3) https://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_3/News/Danto/danto.html

116. Thierry De Duve, Kant after Duchamp (London: MIT Press, 1996) 3.

117. Gough-Cooper, Ephemerides (reference to be found under 18^th March 1912).

118. Tomkins 117.

119. Tomkins 117.

120. Ibid. 79.

121. Ibid. 127.

122. Cage, Quotations

123. David Revill, The Roaring Silence (London: Bloomsbury, 1992) 164.

124. John Cage, The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990) 26.

125. Joan Retallack, Musicage (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1996) 91.

126. Cage, A conversation on Roaratorio (1976/79): https://www.2street.com/joyce/gallery/roaratorio.html

127. Julie Lazar, “Nothingtoseeness“ in Rolywholyover – A Circus.

128. Revill 69.

129. Ibid. 70.

130. Roth 2.

131. Kostelanetz, 120.

132. Ibid. 215.

133. Cage, A Year from Monday ix.

134. Cage, An Autobiographical Statement 3.

135. Calvin Tomkins, The Bride & the Bachelors (New York: Penguin/Viking 1965) 100.

136. Ulrike Bischoff (Hrsg.), Kunst als Grenzbeschreitung John Cage und die Moderne (München: Richter Verlag, 1991) 89.

137. Kostelanetz 231.

138. Ibid. 232.

139. Charles, For the birds 227.

140. Charles 42.

141. Ibid. 91.

142. Kostelanetz 211.

143. Cage, A Year from Monday 31

144. Thanks to my friend who is very much into Stephen Hawking and physics. If you are interested in finding out more about the Chaos Theory, I would recommend Hawking’s well known The Illustrated Brief History of Time.

145. Cage, Silence 195.

146. Charles, For the Birds 43.

147. Laura Kuhn, “John Cage in the Social Realm“ part of Rolywholyover

148. Richard Kostelanetz ed. John Cage (London: Penguin 1971) 117.

149. Tomkins 1965, 119.

150. Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage 66.

151. Revill 166.

152. Tomkins 1965, 119.

153. Quotation from page 1 of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Clubs Band’s cover

154. Ibid.

155. Kostelanetz 1988 101.

156. Kostelanetz 1988 225.

157. Cage, A Year from Monday 71.

158. Tomkins, Duchamp, A Biography 157.

159. Naumann, Affectionately Marcel 346.

160. Tomkins 135.

161. Naumann 44.

162. Ibid. 359.

163. Tomkins 158.

164. Stauffer 230.

165. Tomkins 401.

166. Roth 27.

167. Tomkins 185.

168. Ibid. 182.

169. Ibid. 185.

170. Ibid. 185/186.

171. Tomkins 418/419.

172. Don’t pay attention to the anarchic writing

173. Cage, “Quotations”: https://www.english.upenn.edu/??afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html

174. Tomkins 1.

175. The Oxford English Reader’s Dictionary.

176. Tomkins 1.

177. Ibid. 464.

178. Ibid. 397.

179. Retallack, 110.

180. Tomkins 124.

181. Tomkins 250.

182. Tomkins 5.

183. Fetz, Kunst in der Stadt 2 x.

184. Tomkins 397.

185. Peter Gena and Jonathan Brent, A John Cage Reader (New York: C.F. Peters Higgins, 1998) 22.

186. Kostelanetz 65.

187. Ibid. 65.

188. Ibid. 111.

189. Ibid. 129.

190. Ibid. 115.

191. Info about Etant donnés found in the Internet: https://www.freshwidow.com/etant-donnes2.html

192. Tomkins 419.

193. Roth 80.

194. Cage, Silence (Afternote to his “Lecture on Nothing“) 126.

195. Ibid.

196. Tomkins 226.

197. Fetz, Kunst in der Stadt 2 x.

198. The bibliography contains some books I have not cited in the paper itself – it is a mixed collection of books that have been piling up in my shelves in the course of writing…most of whom were quite helpful

En una conocida revista española de medicina llamada MD solían aparecer artículos relacionando el arte con diversas anomalías: el alargamiento de las figuras del Greco se debía a una distorsión producida por estrabismo; las pinturas negras de Goya, a un envenenamiento progresivo con blanco de plomo; los flamígeros colores de Van-Gogh, a un caso particular de esquizofrenia. Tal vez por ésta, y otras razones, terminé asociando luego a Duchamp (MD) con un pintoresco tío mío, doctor en medicina, a quien le llegaban estas revistas en los años 60. Conexión que logró escenificar uno de mis sueños en donde Duchamp aparecía camuflado con el tío en cuestión como si fuera un miembro más de la familia.

El sueño consiste en una reunión familiar en medio de una habitación cuya atmósfera, por lo que alcanzaba a verse a través de una ventana francesa, podía corresponder a Paris o a Buenos Aires. En un cinematográfico blanco y negro, el efecto de luces y de sombras contrastadas reproducía un saturado ambiente masculino -entre Bogart y Gardel- característico de las primeras películas de detectives. Lo que sucedía, simplemente, era estar todos allí sin pronunciar palabra recortados en contraluz sobre el resplandor de la ventana mientras un río crecía torrencialmente allá abajo arrastrando escombros a lo largo de la calle. Al poco tiempo, en un efecto de acetato a punto de quemarse, la imagen adquiría una coloración rojiza disolviéndose gradualmente en el rostro de Marcel quien terminaba con el cabello teñido de un rojo oxidado, entre minio y ladrillo, tal y como uno de sus “solteros” o, porqué no, como un Adán cosmopolita en traje de dos piezas a punto de incendiarse.

1

Esta referencia a un universo netamente masculino recuerda también el tipo de utilería que encontramos en los almacenes de artículos para caballeros: cigarros, pipas, naipes, dados, licoreras, mesas de juego forradas en paño verde, ruletas, fichas, tableros de ajedrez… Algunos de los elementos utilizados ampliamente en la imaginería cubista -junto con instrumentos y partituras musicales- de modo recurrente y enigmático.

click to enlarge

Figura 1
Marcel
Duchamp, Monte
Carlo Bond, 1924.

Aparte del ajedrez, presencia obsesiva en la vida de Duchamp, la única obra suya relacionada con este tipo de juegos, más específicamente con la ruleta, es la que se conoce como el Monte Carlo Bond (Fig. 1), obra fechada en noviembre 1 de 1924 al año siguiente de dejar “definitivamente inacabado” el Gran Vidrio (1915-1923), su obra mayor. Año que marca también su legendario y supuesto retiro del arte hacia las regiones mas enrarecidas y abstractas del ajedrez.

El Monte Carlo Bond u Obligación para la Ruleta de Monte Carlo se define como un “readymade rectificado e imitado”, una litografía que reproduce un documento verdadero, un bono emitido en 30 ejemplares numerados con un valor de 500 francos cada uno. Los bonos, obligaciones comerciales para cancelar una cierta suma en una fecha definida y con un determinado interés, fueron rediseñados y emitidos por Duchamp con el propósito de conseguir fondos para experimentar un sistema matemático en el juego del Trente-et-Quarante; una martingala⁽¹⁾ que le permitiría ganar “lenta pero seguramente” con el propósito de “quebrar el banco de Monte Carlo” obligando a la ruleta, un juego de azar, a comportarse como un ajedrez.

Sobre la litografía, pegada directamente sobre la figura radiante y circular de una ruleta, vemos una curiosa fotografía de Duchamp con el cabello y el rostro cubiertos de espuma. En la parte inferior del documento sobre el diagrama de la mesa de la ruleta, dos firmas: bajo el rombo negro, como Presidente del Consejo de Administración, Rrose Sélavy (alter ego femenino de Duchamp); bajo el rombo rojo, como simple administrador, el mismo Marcel. Impresa sobre el fondo, repetida 150 veces en tinta verde, un juego de palabras de la cosecha caprichosa de Rrose Sélavy: moustiques domestiques demistock (mosquitos domésticos semi-stock).

Pero veamos primero cómo algunos autores describen la imagen:

David Joselit: “una litografía que incluye un retrato de Duchamp por Man Ray transformado por medio de espuma de afeitar en una figura quimérica semejante tal vez a un fauno o un demonio (…) Marcel, como Rrose, travestido en un hiper-masculino demonio o fauno.” ⁽²⁾

Dalia Judovitz: “un auto-retrato de su cabeza cubierta de espuma de afeitar con su cabello estirado hacia arriba en forma de cuernos, desestabiliza aún más la autoridad de este documento financiero.”⁽³⁾

Calvin Tomkins: “Una fotografía de la cabeza de Duchamp por Man Ray –el rostro cubierto con espuma de afeitar y el cabello enjabonado en forma de dos diabólicos cuernos.”⁽⁴⁾

Peter Read: “una litografía coloreada representando la superficie de una mesa de ruleta con una fotografía de la cabeza de Duchamp cubierta con espuma de afeitar, y el cabello estirado como los cuernos de un fauno o un demonio, pegado a la rueda de una ruleta la cual forma un círculo, sin duda parecido al halo que a los ojos de Henri-Pierre Roché Duchamp siempre llevaba. Cortada (decapitada) de una fotografía más grande tomada por Man Ray, la cabeza de Duchamp se parece a aquella de Juan Bautista presentada en una bandeja con sus erectos cuernos de espuma listos para ser afeitados; el macho, a un mismo tiempo, víctima de Salomé y de Dalila –una poderosa recurrencia al simbolismo desgarrado.”⁽⁵⁾

Juan Antonio Ramírez: “El elemento visual más notable de los bonos impresos por Duchamp es su propia efigie, semejando a un fauno (ejecutado con espuma de afeitar) sobre el fondo de una rueda de ruleta. Una manera de agregar una historia humana a un mecanismo, un modo de añadirle sexualidad; aquí nuevamente el sátiro-soltero atrapado en su circularidad masturbatoria, pretende obtener las ganancias esperadas después de cada una de las ‘manipulaciones’ del croupier [A. Schwarz, citando a Freud: ‘La pasión por el juego es equivalente a la antigua compulsión por masturbarse.’] Pero tal vez haya aquí algo más, una alegoría del artista y sus afortunadas recompensas por azar.”⁽⁶⁾

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Figura 2
Giambologna,
Mercurio,1576.

Figura 3
Aviso publicitario

Figura 4
Aviso publicitario de Patek Philippe

En estas y en otras descripciones el consenso general supone que la cabeza enjabonada de Duchamp se asemeja a la de un fauno o una figura diabólica. Sin embargo, mirada más de cerca, la formas espumantes modeladas sobre la cabeza no corresponden realmente a los cuernos tradicionales de uno u otro; su forma, en cambio, evoca poderosamente uno de los atributos principales del dios mensajero de la antigüedad clásica, Mercurio (Fig. 2). Curvadas aerodinámicamente hacia atrás, estas formas coinciden con la forma de su casco alado conocido como petasus, tal y como puede verse en el bronce de Giambologna del siglo XVI, en lugar de los cuernos erectos y relativamente cortos que caracterizan generalmente a demonios y faunos.

¿No es curioso que en las diferentes lecturas el rostro de Duchamp se interprete repetidamente como un ser necesariamente provisto de cuernos? Atributo que, aparte de la ‘diabólica’ operación artístico-financiera que recuerda el Cheque Tzanck de 1919⁽⁷⁾, estaría tal vez sugerido por una cierta contaminación mitológica ocasionada por la presencia simultánea de la barba, ya que de este modo aluden fácilmente a imágenes lúbricas a través de la historia del arte. Los cuernos, en suma, procederían de las barbas.⁽⁸⁾

Iconográficamente, el dios romano Mercurio -o Hermes como era conocido en la Grecia antigua- resulta pertinente con respecto al documento financiero emitido por Duchamp. Conocido por su astucia, recursividad y veloz eficacia, Mercurio era el dios romano de comerciantes, viajeros y pastores, así como el patrono de artistas, ladrones, impostores y toda clase de gentes deshonestas.⁽⁹⁾ Derivado de la raiz latina para mercancia, a mercibus, el nombre de Mercurio está contenido en el término ‘mercantil’. Además de su casco alado, Mercurio estaba provisto de sandalias igualmente con alas llamadas talaria, un caduceo o vara con serpientes enroscadas y una bolsa como símbolo de sus poderes comerciales.⁽¹⁰⁾ Atributos intensamente asociados, de un modo u otro, con la conducta de Duchamp resumida en su mismo anagrama: el marchand du sel, el mercader de sal. Conducta acentuada a partir de ésta época (1924), cuando junto a su renovada pasión por el ajedrez emprendió una serie de negocios y especulaciones artístico-financieras. Actitud que podría ilustrarse con el emblema comercial de la Rueda Voladora (Fig. 3); una rueda con alas, idéntica en esencia al collage sobre la ruleta. Síntesis popular, si se quiere, de una buena parte de la iconografía duchampiana.

Por consiguiente, la imagen de Duchamp no sólo conserva una afinidad iconográfica con respecto al dios antiguo sino que también se relaciona conceptualmente con las actividades que rodean la Obligación de Monte Carlo. Más aún, su investidura puede leerse a un nivel con profundas implicaciones personales (como se verá en este ensayo) puesto que lo que vemos en este montaje es un Mercurio o un Hermes con barba, como aparece dibujado en algunas ánforas griegas. Un Mercurio algo inusual puesto que la historia del arte posterior lo muestra generalmente imberbe, casi femenino.⁽¹¹⁾ Ambigüedad subrayada por el hecho de que las barbas son de espuma de afeitar (como un adolescente al espejo conjurando fantasías de virilidad) (Fig. 4) indicando simultáneamente la ausencia de barba después de la afeitada y la aparición de una barba falsa en lugar de una real.

Los experimentos y obsesiones capilares de Duchamp y las consecuentes negociaciones psicológicas entre varias identidades comienzan casualmente en 1919, en Buenos Aires, cuando se hace rasurar la cabeza como parte de un tratamiento para evitar la caída del cabello. Lo que le confiere un aspecto más bien marginal en el amplio sentido de la palabra, ya sea como iniciado en alguna secta -¿el ajedrez?⁽¹²⁾-, como convaleciente -sus amigos lo encuentran excesivamente delgado- o simplemente como un delincuente⁽¹³⁾.

También, a su regreso a Paris a mediados de 1919, en un gesto que anticipa claramente la creación de su pseudónimo femenino Rrose Sélavy, realiza el conocido readymade de la Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q.) agregándole un bigote y una mefistofélica chivera. Mientras que en 1921, después de los aromáticos despliegues transexuales de Rrose Sélavy presentándose como Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette sobre la etiqueta alterada de un fúnebre frasco de perfume Rigaud⁽¹⁴⁾(Fig. 5), se hace afeitar sobre el cráneo una tonsura en forma de cometa con la cola proyectada hacia delante.(Fig. 6)

Tres años más tarde, inmediatamente después del autoretrato de Monte Carlo -en Ciné Sketch, un divertimento teatral de Picabia y René Clair- Duchamp reaparece haciendo de Adán en un cuadro vivo a partir de una pintura de Cranach, (Fig. 7)luciendo, en significativa contraparte a la equívoca barba de espuma, una evidente barba postiza, reloj y pubis afeitado. Ciertamente, no la última ‘afeitada’ en su obra.

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En lugar de los diabólicos cuernos, lo cual inclina de algún modo las interpretaciones hacia la naturaleza de la operación monetaria, el peinado con alas sugiere una interpretación diferente sobre todo si tenemos en cuenta que el hermético Mercurio aparece con el cabello y la barba cubiertos de espuma. Material evanescente, índice de alguna actividad, la espuma es un compuesto de burbujas producidas por un movimiento insistente de batido incorporando aire a un líquido dotado de una cierta densidad (en este caso jabón). Sustancia cargada de múltiples evocaciones sexuales y poéticas. Tal y como lo revela su etimología, ya que espuma, en griego, es Aphros, de donde proviene Afrodita (o Venus) la diosa nacida de la “espuma del mar”.⁽¹⁵⁾ Lo que nos suministra una clave importante para descifrar la identidad⁽¹⁶⁾ del insólito retrato a partir de la siguiente ecuación: Hermes + Afrodita = Hermafrodita.⁽¹⁷⁾

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Figura 8
Ruleta europea

Figura 9
Marcel Duchamp, Roto-relieve, 1935

Figura 10
Durero, Adán y Eva, 1504

Figura 11
Hermanos
Limbourg, Tentación y Caida, antes de 1414

Figura 12
Testigos Oculistas,
detalle (el ojo derecho al centro) y
ruleta con cero verde

Esta mezcla andrógina vendría a ser entonces la ‘corrección’ mitológica obtenida por la conjunción entre la capacidad comunicativa mercurial ejemplificada en el movimiento de la ruleta,(Fig. 8) y la perfección del acierto potencial en la figura de la apuesta⁽¹⁸⁾ representada indirectamente en los atributos de Venus (amor, belleza y pasión sexual), de dos entidades humanas en conflicto: Rrose Sélavy, la viuda que aparece firmando bajo el rombo negro⁽¹⁹⁾, y Marcel Duchamp, el soltero inveterado que firma simplemente como “Administrador” bajo el rojo ancestral⁽²⁰⁾.
La estructura de esta Obligación nos muestra claramente la duplicidad involucrada en los nombres y los colores que corresponden a cada uno de los rombos, así como la eventual convergencia en la figura central del hermafrodita como tercer elemento. En cada giro de la rueda, el rojo y el negro pierden, por velocidad, su identidad específica fundiéndose en lo que – en términos de Duchamp – podríamos llamar un gris de verticalité: “…a medida que todos los ejes desaparecen en gris de verticalidad, el frente y la espalda, el reverso y el anverso adoptan una significación circular…”⁽²¹⁾

Análogamente, la ruleta no sólo continúa en otro formato, en otro nivel topológico, la especulación inter-dimensional atribuida a su Rueda de Bicicleta de 1913⁽²²⁾ y la experimentación perceptual de sus dispositivos ópticos relacionados con los Testigos Oculistas en la región inferior delGran Vidrio, sino que incorpora la indeterminación del azar característica del juego de ruleta como un elemento necesario. De este modo, relativiza la dualidad narcisista en la historia delVidrio con un tercer elemento: el andrógino. Opción a la pareja incompleta de una viuda fresca (Fresh Widow) y un soltero indomable.

Refiriéndose al principio general del efecto ilusorio de sus espirales giratorias, Duchamp escribió: “Sólo tengo que utilizar dos circunferencias -excéntricas- y hacerlas girar sobre un tercer centro.” (Fig. 9)

Para visualizar el efecto simbólico de esta curiosa disolvencia, basta imaginar un desplazamiento del punto de vista frontal sobre una imagen arquetípica, digamos la xilografía del Adán y Eva (Fig. 10) de Durero. Si en lugar de mirarla de frente nos ubicamos arriba como quien observa la escena a vuelo de pájaro, en perspectiva de ruleta, podemos darnos cuenta que el eje vertical, la bisagra natural representada por el árbol, así como Adán y Eva (Marcel/Rrose; rojo/negro) se han transformado en tres puntos alineados sobre un plano. Ahora, si imaginamos el Paraíso circular como en algunas representaciones antiguas(Fig. 11) y hacemos girar velozmente a nuestros primeros padres (re-péres: referencias) alrededor del punto central, habrá un momento en que la posición tradicional, Adán a la izquierda Eva a la derecha, desaparece. Ya no podemos llamarlos izquierda y derecha de algo puesto que se encuentran simultáneamente -como en la Diligencia Innumerable de Pawlowski⁽²³⁾ – en todos los lugares al tiempo. La diferencia, mientras dura la ubicuidad de la velocidad instantánea ha sido, por así decirlo, reconciliada. Velocidad y movimiento, factores estratégicos de primer orden en las situaciones de emergencia sicológica a lo largo de la vida de Duchamp⁽²⁴⁾ .

Su obsesión con la síntesis de los contrarios⁽²⁵⁾ se manifiesta también en el montaje de la cabeza con relación al círculo de la ruleta que, en el fondo, cuestión de perspectiva, no es otra cosa que una diana o un target.(Fig. 12)La coincidencia del ojo derecho con el centro de la rueda (“Físicamente – el ojo es el sentido de la perspectiva”⁽²⁶⁾), anula, en principio, la distancia entre el observador y su objetivo, entre el self y el mundo, ya que estructuralmente el sistema de la perspectiva consiste en la identidad recíproca entre el punto de vista y el punto de fuga. Al superponer el ojo derecho con el centro de la ruleta, Duchamp convoca no sólo su intención de acertar en la predicción en que consiste la apuesta, sino que ilustra puntualmente el principio unitario de la conciliación⁽²⁷⁾.

Jarry, a propósito del insólito idioma de Bosse-de-Nage su personaje en Opiniones y Proezas del Doctor Faustroll que sólo decía “HA HA”, se refiere a la fórmula del principio de identidad: “A Thing is Itself”. “Pronunciadas suficientemente rápido, hasta que las letras se confundan, son la idea de unidad”, así como “pronunciadas lentamente, son la idea de la dualidad, del eco, de la distancia, de la simetría, del tamaño y de la duración, de los dos principios de lo bueno y lo malo.”⁽²⁸⁾

Por otro lado, la diferencia, digamos relacional, entre el Gran Vidrio y el Bono de Monte Carlo, estaría en que en el primero la separación es externa (solteros buscando pareja) mientras que en el segundo es interna (la incorporación de Rrose Sélavy por ‘infusión’ hermafrodita) proyectando la diana, el objetivo, sobre sí mismo.

De ahí que la estrategia de la imagen enjabonada, la fotografía que identifica el Monte Carlo Bond, se inscriba en el juego preciso de las identidades ofrecidas como forma de escape, o compensación renovada, a un artista claramente agobiado por su intensa inmersión a lo largo de los últimos ocho años en las complejidades y contradicciones del drama en que consiste elGran Vidrio: La Novia arriba⁽²⁹⁾ , los Solteros abajo, y la dificultad de concertar esas dos dimensiones a partir de uno de los últimos dispositivos en proceso, el de los Testigos Oculistas. Aparato óptico cuyo propósito no es otro que ayudar a superar el umbral de un horizonte prácticamente insalvable entre Novia y Solteros, en cuanto deja en suspenso el acto de consumación⁽³⁰⁾. Por algo Duchamp dejó en ese punto “definitivamente inacabado” elGran Vidrio; como queda indicado en el adverbio final del nombre completo de su obra central: La Novia puesta al desnudo por sus Solteros, aún.

Literalmente, entonces, el Monte Carlo Bond sería el lazo de unión, el ‘bond’ entre entidades atávicas opuestas representadas por los colores tradicionales de la ruleta. Dualidad ejemplarmente fragmentada en 37 números diseminados en el vértigo oracular de la ruleta⁽³¹⁾ anulando ópticamente, por “indiferencia”, la separación abismal en un paraíso andrógino instantáneo.

Por los años cincuenta, hablando de la relación entre el ajedrez y la ruleta, Duchamp le dice a Arturo Schwarz que ambos juegos involucran “una lucha entre dos seres humanos” los cuales intenta reconciliar “haciendo de la ruleta un juego más cerebral y del ajedrez más un juego de azar”. Y en 1968, último año de su vida, en una conversación con Lanier Graham, puntualiza: “El símbolo es universal. El Andrógino está por encima de la filosofía. Si uno se ha convertido en el Andrógino la filosofía ya no es necesaria.”⁽³²⁾

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Pero detrás de las rápidas alas y la ingrávida espuma está siempre el mar. Un mar indicado en varios lugares: 1. La misma localidad de Monte Carlo, 2. en la naturaleza de la espuma de afeitar transformada en Aphros, “espuma de mar”, y 3. oculta en el insistente trabalenguas moustiques domestiques demi-stock repetido 150 veces en tinta verde⁽³³⁾ como un slogan de ‘seguridad’ sobre el fondo de la Obligación. Frase casi idéntica a Nous livrons à domicile /des moustiques domestiques /[demi-stock]⁽³⁴⁾ . La cual aparece completa, tres años más tarde, en uno de los discos utilizados para Anemic Cinema⁽³⁵⁾ : ON DEMANDE DES MOUSTIQUES DOMESTIQUES [DEMI-STOCK] POUR LA CURE D’AZOTE SUR LA CÔTE D’AZUR.

Esa “cure d’azote sur la Côte d’Azur”, agregada posteriormente, la encontramos también camuflada en el dorso de la Obligación en uno de los estatutos:

Art. 1er. -La Société a pour object:
1º L’explotation de la roulette de Monte-Carlo dans les conditions ci-après.
2º L’explotation du Trente et Quarante et autres mines de la Côte d’Azur sur délibération du Conseil d’Administration.⁽³⁶⁾

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Figura 13
Duchamp.
Disco de Anemic Cinema, 1927.

El disco de Anemic Cinema (Fig. 13)vendría a ser un collage verbal entre el lema impreso sobre el fondo del Bono y la Côte d’Azur nombrada en los estatutos, transformada fonéticamente en la Cure d’Azote (traducido generalmente como “cura de nitrógeno”) introduciendo en este juego de palabras el términoAzoth cuyo significado trasciende la simple oxigenación estival, mediterránea.

Referencia que nos lleva necesariamente a la alquimia (fondo metafórico, junto con la ciencia moderna y la psicología, abundante en la exégesis Duchampiana) en donde se habla de tres substancias simbólicas básicas: mercurio, azufre, y sal; las cuales se complementan con una cuarta, el misterioso principio vital llamado Azoth. Este “fuego secreto” o primus agens, “algunos lo ven como electricidad; otros como magnetismo. Los trascendentalistas se refieren a él como la luz astral.” Isaac Myer lo llama “el aire primigenio”, “las Aguas o el Caótico Mar Cristalino”⁽³⁷⁾. Misterioso ingrediente cuya virtud principal consiste en mantener unida la totalidad de la materia física representada en estas tres substancias. Y es esta virtud unificante la que ha hecho que algunos la identifiquen con el “amor incondicional”. Especie de pegante genérico cuya poderosa y sutil naturaleza permanece por fuera de todo escrutinio.

Existen algunos documentos que permiten suponer que por la época de la Obligación de Monte Carlo Duchamp estaba pasando por un momento particularmente crítico. Y aunque su naturaleza reservada encubra estratégicamente, como siempre, los detalles, hacia el final de su vida, en los sesentas, escribe: “Desde 1923 me considero a mí mismo como un artista ‘défroqué’.”⁽³⁸⁾ “De ahí que, después de 1923, -según Jean Clair- vino un tiempo de desilusión y apatía. Duchamp défroqué. Duchamp desocupado. Duchamp el jugador de ajedrez.”⁽³⁹⁾

Katherine Dreier, uno de sus mecenas, consideraba maternalmente que la atmósfera psicológica de un casino de juegos era nociva “para una persona tan sensible como Marcel”. Y Breton: “‘¿Cómo es posible que un hombre tan inteligente -el hombre más original del siglo según Breton- pueda dedicar su tiempo y energía a semejantes trivialidades?’ Buscando una explicación, Breton sólo pudo concluir que todo se debía a algún oculto malestar -lo que él había descrito a Jacques Doucet como el ‘desesperado’ estado mental de Duchamp”.⁽⁴⁰⁾No obstante, en la primavera de 1924, antes de su experimento en Monte Carlo, Duchamp le escribe al mismo Doucet después de haber estado un mes en la Riviera durante un torneo de ajedrez: “El clima me sienta perfectamente, me encantaría vivir acá.”⁽⁴¹⁾

¿Terapia? ¿’Oxigenación’ en Monte Carlo? Tal vez el aire encapsulado en la espuma sea de la misma naturaleza que el Air de Paris; su readymade de comienzos de 1920. Originalmente una ampolleta de vidrio llena de suero fisiológico que Marcel hace vaciar en una farmacia parisina sellándola luego para ofrecerla de regalo a los Arensberg a su regreso a New York, traduciendo así los 50cc de aire de Paris en “suero psicológico”. Todo esto, el mismo año en que ‘nace’ Rrose Sélavy.

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Figura 14
Rrose
Sélavy, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette, 1921.

Figura 15
Cellini,
Perseoy and Medusa, 1545-54

Después de su primera manifestación detentando el copyright deFresh Widow (French Window), una ventana francesa condenada en su visibilidad por vidrios cubiertos de brillante cuero negro, Rrose Sélavy se presenta en imagen sobre el nombre y la etiqueta de Un Air Embaumé (Fig. 14)-originalmente un perfume de Rigaud– rebautizándolo como Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette. Otro suero psicológico, si se quiere, aunque un tanto lúgubre a juzgar por el estuche: un pequeño féretro en el cual se desliza la imagen del riguroso y concentrado travesti.

Identidad problemática que presagia el retrato espumante, anticipadamente triunfal, de Monte Carlo y que nos permite suponer de qué se trata en el fondo esta “explotación del Treinta y Cuarenta y otras minas de la Costa Azul bajo deliberación del Consejo de Administración”. Es decir, bajo deliberación de sus dos únicos miembros. Lo que Duchamp llamó en otras ocasiones “un pequeño juego entre Je et Moi“.

Y a propósito de dualidades, el retrato mercurial, como toda medalla, debe poseer otra cara. La imagen opuesta -a mi modo de ver- no es la bella y radiante cabeza decapitada de Juan el Bautista o la del narcotizado Holofernes, como algunos sugieren, sino la que reposa aterrada por su mismo reflejo sobre el escudo de Perseo: La Medusa, “potencia de la noche y de la muerte” que petrifica a aquel que la mira. Un verdadero mal de ojo; un mal de ‘Voilette’.

¿Porqué la Medusa? Por Perseo: “Mercurial, aéreo, Perseo es único en poder conjurar la gravedad de las cosas, la opacidad del caos, el entumecimiento del mundo pesado de Saturno… ahí donde el espíritu, demasiado atado a la tierra, se fija en el espanto de su petrificación.”⁽⁴²⁾ Porque Perseo, como Mercurio, lleva en su casco y en los tobillos las mismas veloces y etéreas alas ⁽⁴³⁾ . Y también, porque en el eje del árbol aquel la serpiente se enrosca como en un Caduceo, símbolo de la medicina [MD] y del poder transformador. Indispensable atributo de Mercurio en donde los dos animales opuestos, el ave y la serpiente, determinan el sentido y la polaridad del proceso: la serpiente como energía material asociada a la espiral ascendente y el ave como forma espiritual, liberada. Relación ilustrada didácticamente en el momento preciso en que Perseo, la cabeza cubierta con el casco alado, exhibe la cabeza cercenada de Medusa sosteniéndola simétrica, espéjicamente, de su enredada cabellera de serpientes.⁽⁴⁴⁾(Fig.15)

Por eso no resulta demasiado atrevido suponer que el reverso del autoretrato circular de Monte Carlo – su correspondiente imagen negativa – sea la efectiva imagen de la Medusa pintada por Caravaggio sobre un escudo real a finales del XVI ⁽⁴⁵⁾ . Pintura para la cual, según dicen, utilizó su propio rostro gesticulando espantosamente ante un espejo. Lo que nos permite proponer, en este punto, la siguiente relación iconográfica: (Figs. 16, 17 & 18)

En esta secuencia, la ‘petrificación’, la detención o apatía resentida por Duchamp en el período que sigue al Gran Vidrio necesitaría una cierta corriente de aire (courant d’air) que redima anímicamente sus facultades como ‘respirador’: “Me gusta vivir, respirar, más que trabajar (…) si usted quiere, mi arte podría consistir en vivir: cada segundo, cada respiración es una obra que no se inscribe en ningún lugar, la cual no es ni visual ni cerebral. Una especie de euforia constante.”⁽⁴⁶⁾ En esta particular circunstancia, la naturaleza y el secreto del elemento eufórico constante no podría encontrarse en la habitual ‘nutrición’ cultural, es decir, en su re-inscripción a la actividad artística y social, sino en las propiedades atemporales de un escenario simbólico esencial: El mar, y el azar. Las cristalinas, caóticas aguas -efectivamente, una cure d’azote sur la Côte d’Azur. Lugar de inmersión y bautizo en donde el agregado femenino (Afrodita/Rrose) establezca su complicidad mítica natural. Elemento ante el cual la razón y la lógica con toda su ardua intencionalidad se ve obligado a negociar entre los respectivos dominios metafóricos del masculino y combativo ajedrez y la caprichosa indeterminación del azar en la ruleta.

El suero, la burbuja de vidrio con su etéreo aire de Paris no vendría a ser entonces otra cosa que un ‘azoth’ necesario, un orden sensible encarnado libremente en ese alter-ego con nombre de rosa, de flor imbuida en la energía de eros. De ahí que podamos imaginar gráficamente cómo la asfixiante Medusa de Caravaggio incorpora la refulgente virtud del azoth como pócima totalizante. Resultado que puede apreciarse plenamente en el ‘camafeo’ de Monte Carlo con la cabeza espumante incrustada en el aura solar de la ruleta.

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Figura 19
Nacimiento de
Venus con Hermes/Mercurio
(con un caduceo) y Poseidón.

¿La Obligación de un posible?, de un nuevo nacimiento de un Je y un Moi unificados como perla en su concha a partir del Chaotic ‘gambling’ Sea de Monte Carlo. En todo caso, una martingala secreta, inconsciente, arrojando su apuesta sobre el target moroso de una auto-regeneración imperiosa. Curioso sistema de juego en el cual Duchamp, sin embargo, “nunca gana ni pierde”⁽⁴⁷⁾ , en natural condescendencia con aquel punto central, indiferente, del “et-qui-libre”⁽⁴⁸⁾hermafrodita.

Por otra parte, la figura sintética del Bond, el instrumento subyacente a todo el proceso terapéutico, no sería otro que el Caduceo (MD!), (Fig. 19) la vara alada con sus dos serpientes retorcidas simétricamente. Objeto asociado – vía Tiresias – con la alternancia sexual masculino/femenino y con el don oracular de la profecía. Su historia, como se verá, resulta a todas luces pertinente:

Vedi Tiresia che mutò sembiante
Quando di maschio femmina divienne,
Cangiandosi le membra tutte quante;
E prima, poi, ribatter li convenne
Il due serpenti avvolti, con la verga,
Che riavesse le maschili penne.”
(Dante, La Divina Comedia. Inferno, Canto 20:40)

(…)

En tiempos más recientes, en 1944, Poulenc adaptó musicalmente la pieza de ApollinaireLes Mamelles de Tiresias (Las Tetas de Tiresias) escrita en 1903. Ambas versiones se apartan del original de manera significativa y burlesca transponiendo en términos domésticos la alternancia hermafrodita del enceguecido vidente. A saber, el problema de un descenso en la tasa de natalidad del pueblo francés gracias a la emancipación feminista de Thérèse/Tirésias, carencia compensada por su esposo quien parió 40.000 niños en un solo día… En todo caso, Poulenc decidió transladar la acción de la pieza de Apollinaire de Zanzibar, una isla sobre la costa este de Africa, a Zanzibar, supuesta población sobre la Riviera francesa en algún lugar entre Niza y Monte Carlo. Todo porque adoraba Monte Carlo y porque “fue allí donde Apollinaire pasó los primeros 15 años de su vida”, agregando además que era un lugar “suficientemente tropical para un parisino como yo.”⁽⁵⁰⁾

Finalmente, Duchamp no logró convertirse en un adicto del juego de ruleta sumergiéndose en cambio, por el resto de sus días, en el sofisticado laberinto infra-leve de las posibilidades estratégicas del ajedrez. Con relación a Monte Carlo, sintetiza su aventura diciendo: “Los artistas a través de la historia son como jugadores en Monte Carlo, en la ciega lotería algunos resultan escogidos mientras que otros terminan arruinados… todo sucede de acuerdo al azar. Los artistas que logran hacerse notar durante su vida son excelentes vendedores lo cual no garantiza para nada la inmortalidad de su obra.” Es más, la posteridad es una terrible ramera que engaña a algunos mientras reintegra a otros, reservándose el derecho de cambiar de opinión cada 50 años.”

Pero tal vez la clave para trascender históricamente sin tener que someterse al mero azar tenga que ver con lo que dice el slogan comercial de una página web: “con Caduceo usted no es un número, usted es un individuo!”. ⁽⁵¹⁾ En otras palabras, uno tiene que pronunciarZanzibar! Zanzibar! lo suficientemente rápido, “hasta que las letras terminen confundidas”.

Notes

1. “La Martingala es un sistema muy simple y antiguo para recuperar pérdidas incrementando progresivamente las apuestas. Se basa en la probabilidad de perder infinidad de veces de seguido y se aplica usualmente a apuestas de igual cantidad.” <http://ildado.com/roulette_rules.html>

2. David Joselit, Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp, 1910-1941. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998.

3. Dalia Judovitz, Unpacking Duchamp: art in transit. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

4. Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp: a biography. New York: H. Holt, 1996.

5. Peter Read, “The Tzank Check and Related Works by Marcel Duchamp”, Marcel Duchamp Artist of the Century, edited by Rudolph Kuenzli and Francis M. Naumann. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1989.

6. Juan Antonio Ramírez, Duchamp, Love and Death, Even. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1993.

7. Cheque elaborado en su totalidad por Duchamp imitando un cheque real girado sobre The Teeth’s Loan & Trust Company, Consolidated, un banco inventado, con el cual pagó a su dentista Daniel Tzanck la suma de $115 dólares.

8. La atribución de cuernos a un autoretrato de Duchamp deja suponer una improbable dimensión dionisíaca derivada, tal vez, del juego de palabras involucrado en su seudónimo Rrose Sélavy (Eros, c’est la vie), dado que el erotismo que impregna su obra es más elaborado y mental que vitalista, como sucedería con Picasso cuya capacidad creativa se identifica fácilmente con la figura del minotauro o el sátiro.

9. Para “todo sobre Mercurio” ver: http://www.hermograph.com/science/mercury.htm Consultar el vínculo acerca del dios Mercurio para su historia, simbolismo y leyendas; en particular su “Work History”. Para sus actividades como ladrón, ver la entrada Mercurius, en John Lemprière, Classical Dictionary. (1788) London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, p. 373-374.

10. Para antiguas representaciones de Mercurio con sus diversos atributos ver Gregory R. Crane (ed.) The Perseus Project, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu August, 2002. Referencias a Mercurio en Greek and Roman Materials: 109. Boston 98.1135 en donde puede verse en una moneda de plata exhibiendo su petasus alado y sucaduceo; 122. Boston 98.676 donde aparece Mercurio con su bolsa.

11. Para imágenes de Mercurio con barbas, ver Gregory R. Crane (ed.) The Perseus Project (lugar citado). Referencias a Hermes en Greek and Roman Materials: 28. Louvre G192; 68. Toledo 1956.70.http://www.perseus.tufts.edu

12. Desde Buenos Aires escribe a Walter Arensberg: “Juego ajedrez todo el tiempo. Me he inscrito a un club local en el que hay muy buenos jugadores agrupados de acuerdo a su rango. Todavía no he sido honrado con un grado. (…) Juego día y noche y nada en el mundo me interesa más que encontrar la jugada correcta… Cada vez estoy menos interesado en pintura. Todo a mi alrededor adopta la forma del Rey o la Reina y el mundo exterior sólo me interesa en cuanto se traduce en posiciones de ganancia o pérdida.”

13. En 1923, en Wanted, obra inmediatamente anterior a las Obligaciones de Monte Carlo, se personifica como tal en un afiche de recompensa.

14. Originalmente, Un Air Embaumé. Un bálsamo, un perfume; un aire ‘embalsamado’, también.

15. Según Hesíodo, Afrodita nació cuando Urano (padre de los dioses) fue castrado por Cronos, su hijo. En su caída al océano los genitales produjeron espuma. De aphros, la “espuma de mar”, surgió entonces Afrodita, siendo luego arrastrada por el mar hasta la isla de Chipre o Cythera, la paradisíaca isla de la conocida pintura de Watteau.

16. Esta interpretación, más que un intento de recuperación del sentido (consciente o inconsciente) en el autor, es un acto de reconstrucción en el intérprete; una proyección de analogías sobre un juego propuesto en donde “el público, el intérprete, hace la obra”.

17. No en cuanto hijo de Hermes y Afrodita (como aparece registrado mitológicamente, siendo originalmente un hombre que luego se transforma en hermafrodita al fundirse en mágico abrazo con la ninfa Salmacis), sino como la mezcla simbólica de ambos. Para la historia de Hermaphroditus, ver Lamprière, p.227.

18. Duchamp a Picabia, en carta de 1924: “Es más, el problema consiste en encontrar la figura negra y roja para oponerle a la ruleta (…) Y yo creo haber encontrado una buena figura. Como ves, no he dejado de ser pintor, ahora dibujo sobre el azar.” DDS p. 269.

19. Tal y como apareció por primera vez en 1920, detentando el copyright de Fresh Widow: una ventana francesa pintada de verde ‘mentolado’ cuyos vidrios han sido suplantados por cuero negro, los que debían brillarse cotidianamente ‘como si fueran zapatos’, según instrucciones de Duchamp.

20. “Adán: ser rojo. Algunos escritores (…) asignan a la palabra adam la doble significación de ‘tierra roja’, agregándole a la noción del orígen material del hombre una connotación del color de la tierra de la cual fue formado.” www.newadvent.org/cathen/01129a.htm

21. “…à mesure que tous les axes disparaissent en gris de verticalité la face et le dos, le revers et l’avers prennent une signification circulaire. “Comparación Algebraica (de la Caja Verde de 1914). DDS, pg. 45. Tercera nota perteneciente al Prefacio y a la Advertencia, notas seminales en los escritos de Duchamp.

22. En, Ulf Linde. Cycle, La roue de bicyclette. Marcel Duchamp, Abécédaire. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1977.
Y también, inscribiéndose en la secuencia de su cronología giratoria: Molino de Café, Molino de Chocolate, Hélice (la declaración a Léger y a Brancusi a finales de 1912 en el 4º Salón de la Locomoción Aérea: ‘La pintura se acabó. Quién lo haría mejor que esta hélice?’), Rueda de Bicicleta, Rotative Plaque Verre, Discos con Espirales, ruleta de la Obligación de Monte Carlo, Puerta doble del 11 de la rue Larrey (resumida de algún modo en la puerta de la GaleríaGradiva de 1937), Roto-relieves, etc.

23. Capitulo del Viaje al País de la Cuarta Dimensión, novela científica de Gastón de Pawlowski publicada por primera vez en 1910, la cual, según declaraciones de Duchamp, tuvo mucho que ver con ciertas nociones especulativas aplicadas sobre todo al Gran Vidrio. El libro de Jean Clair, Marcel Duchamp ou le Grand Fictif. Paris: Editions Galilée, 1975, desarrolla in extenso esta referencia.

24. Baste citar el período más veloz, y tal vez el más significativo, del desarrollo de Duchamp (1912) comenzando por el Desnudo bajando una escalera y El Rey y la Reina atravesados por desnudos veloces (con sus variantes) hasta Aeroplano, en donde el factor velocidad es fundamental para enfrentar el estatismo ‘petrificado’ de ciertos referentes atávicos.

25. En The Spirit Mercurius Jung dice: “Verdaderamente, Mercurio consiste en los extremos más opuestos; por una parte es indudablemente afin a la divinidad, por el otro, se encuentra en las cloacas.” Y en Psychologie et Alchimie, Hermes/Mercurio “es el ser hermafrodita primordial que se divide para formar la pareja clásica hermano-hermana, uniéndose luego en la conjunctio para reaparecer finalmente bajo la forma radiante de la Lumen Novum, del Lapis.” El hermafrodita es también “el Adán filosófico, aún con su costilla…”

26. “Physiquement -L’œil est le sens de la perspective. DDS, p. 123.

27. “Le jeu du tonneau est une très belle scuplture d’adresse.” DDS, p.37. “El juego de rana es una bella escultura de destreza.” Juego bastante popular en donde se trata de embocar aros metálicos en figuras de ranas -o sapos- dispuestos sobre una caja con agujeros numerados.

28. Alfred Jarry, Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, editado por Roger Shattuck & Simon Watson Taylor, London: Jonathan Cape, 1965, p. 228-229.

29. Lo que hace pensar en la Novia como un avatar de Afrodita; originalmente una antígua diosa asiática similar a la Ishtar mesopotámica y la diosa Sirio-Palestina Astarté. Y obviamente, la Virgen; según sus palabras refiriéndose al Gran Vidrio, una “apoteosis de la virginidad”.

30. Lo que vino a cumplirse casualmente más tarde, cuando Novia y Solteros -al estilo estruendoso de Jarry- rompían literalmente el vidrio en medio de una accidental copulación mientras se transladaban, un panel encima del otro, en camión, desde el museo de Brooklyn donde fue exhibido intacto por primera y última vez, hasta Connecticut.

31. 18 negros y 18 rojos, más un cero verde en la ruleta europea, ya que en la americana se utiliza el doble cero.

32. Lennier Graham. Duchamp & Androginy: The Concept and its Context. Tout-Fait, vol.2, Issue 4 (January 2002) Articles <http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham1.html>.

33. El color del cero. Único oasis -junto con el paño de la mesa- flanqueado por un 26 negro y un 32 rojo [VOISINS DU ZERO!, vecinos del cero, en argot de ruleta] en una versión numérica de aquella escena indeleble en el imaginario de Occidente.

34. Duchamp, Marcel. Notas (póstumas) #s 227, 234, 249 y 279.

35. Película de 7′ realizada en 1926 con la ayuda de Man Ray y Marc Allégret, en donde discos con juegos de palabras de Rrose Sélavy escritos en espiral, alternan con patrones abstractos de Discos Portando Espirales(realizados años atrás) girando hipnóticamente de adentro a afuera.

36. DDS. Sur l’Obligation Monte-Carlo, p.268.

37. www.volcano.net/~azoth/newpage1.htm y http://azothgallery.com/index.htm

38. El sacerdote que cuelga sus hábitos. Por un lado, en el sentido de Laforgue: “La idea de libertad debería ser la de vivir sin ningún hábito (…) toda una existencia sin ningún acto generado o influenciado por hábito alguno. Cada acto un acto en sí mismo.” Revue Anarchiste, 1893. Pero también, porqué no, como una incapacidad específica: “L’impossibilité du faire (du fer).” Juego de palabras con el que Duchamp definió alguna vez el ‘genio’. Algo entre la imposibilidad de hacer (la incapacidad de continuar una actividad preestablecida) y la dureza o rigidez del hierro; lo que en español ofrece una precisión complementaria, la imposibilidad del yerro, del error. Es decir, una cierta infalibilidad intuitiva.

39. En Jean Clair. Duchamp at the Turn of the Century. Tout-Fait, vol. 1, Issue 3 (December 2000) News <http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_3/News/clair/clair.html>. leemos: “En dos apreciaciones, al menos, aparte de este manuscrito, Duchamp explicará su estado como ‘défroqué.’ La primera, en 1959, a G. H. Hamilton, ‘Es cierto que tengo mucho de Cartesiano défroqué –porque me he contentado con el así llamado placer de utilizar el cartesianismo como forma lógica de pensar, muy cercana al pensamiento matemático.” (Entrevista con la BBC, en Londres, septiembre 14-22, 1959.) (…) Por segunda vez, en 1966, le confiaba al crítico Pierre Cabanne: ‘Hace ya cuarenta años que no toco un pincel o un lápiz, verdaderamente he estado défroqué en el sentido religioso del término…’ (Entrevista con Pierre Cabanne, “Je suis un défroqué” in Arts-Loisirs, Paris, no. 35, May 25 -31, 1966, p. 16-17.)

40. Ambas referencias en Tomkins, p.261.

41. Tomkins, p. 259.

42. Clair, Jean. Méduse. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1989. p.93.

43. Para la historia de Perseo ver Lemprière, p.464-466. Es interesante anotar que fue precisamente Mercurio quien le dió a Perseo las sandalias aladas antes de que éste se embarcara en su aventura en pos de la Medusa. El casco alado, que garantiza invisibilidad, fue ofrecido en cambio por Plutón.

44. “El Perseo es un emblema de triunfo. Perseo levanta la cabeza decapitada de la Medusa, la horrenda gorgona cuya mirada convierte a quienes mira en piedra, agarrándola de su cabellera de serpientes. El ingenio del héroe –evitando su mirada petrificante al utilizar su escudo metálico para reflejar su mirada- le permitió vencer lo que parece haber sido una amenaza invencible para la civilización.” En Sarah Blake McHam, “Public Sculpture in Renaissance Florence”, Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture, ed. Sarah Blake McHam. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.169.

45. Para un resumen de la historia y la interpretación de esta pintura ver la entrada en el catálogo de la exposición escrito por Flavio Caroli, L’Anima e il volto. Ritratto e fisiognomica da Leonardo a Bacon. Milan: Electa, 1988, p.182-183.

46. Cabanne, Pierre. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. The Documents of 20^th-Century Art. New York: Viking Press, 1976. p.72.

47. Duchamp escribe a Picabia desde Monte Carlo: “es de una monotonía deliciosa sin la menor emoción.” Y a Doucet: “Estoy comenzando a jugar y la lentitud del progreso ya sea para más o para menos es un test de paciencia. Me mantengo en la igualdad, marcando el paso de una manera inquietante por la dicha paciencia. Pero en fin, hacer eso u otra cosa… No estoy arruinado ni tampoco soy millonario y no seré nunca lo uno ni lo otro.” DDS, p.269-270.

Y como resume Lebel: “El considera su martingala infalible en este respecto, pero también admite que si uno persevera lo suficiente podría esperar ganar una suma igual a la que ganaría un empleado que trabajase en su oficina tantas horas como el jugador en el casino.” Lebel, Robert. Marcel Duchamp. Paris: Le Dossiers Belfond, 1985, p.102.

48. Juego de palabras de Duchamp entre equilibre y et qui libre? (quién es libre?).

49. Lemprière, p.635.

50. Max Harrison, Poulenc, Les Mamelles de Tiresias. Le Bal Masqué.(CD brochure) Saito Kinen Orchestra, Seiji Osawa (456 504-2 Philips).

51. www.caduceus.co.uk

Fig. 1, 5-7 ©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

In a well-known Spanish medical publication called MD, diverse articles relating to anomalies in art were often published: the elongation of El Greco´s figures was the result of a distortion produced by squint; Goya´s black paintings were due to progressive lead poisoning; Van Gogh´s flaming colors, a particular case of schizophrenia. Perhaps because of this and other reasons, I ended up associating Duchamp (MD) with a picturesque uncle of mine, a doctor and subscriber to this magazine in the sixties. A connection that surely underlay one of my dreams where Duchamp appeared camouflaged with my uncle, as if he were another member of the family.

The dream consists of a family reunion, which takes place in a room whose atmosphere, from what could be seen through a french window, was redolent of Paris or Buenos Aires. In a cinematographic black and white, the effect of contrasted lights and shadows reproduced a saturated masculine ambiance –somewhere between Bogart and Gardel- characteristic of the first detective movies. No one speaking, we were all there, our silhouettes cutout against the window’s resplendence while a river grew torrentially outside, sweeping debris along the street. Shortly after, much like the effect of an acetate about to burn, the image acquired a reddish tone, gradually dissolving into the face of Marcel, who ended up with his hair tinged of a red oxide, a color between minium and brick, as one of his “bachelors” or, why not, like a cosmopolitan Adam in a two-piece suit about to ignite.
This reference to a distinctly masculine universe makes me think of gentlemans’ purveyers and of the goods themselves : cigars, pipes, cards, dice, liquor cases, gaming tables lined with green cloth, roulettes, domino pieces, chess boards… some of the elements extensively and enigmatically used in cubist imagery, along with instruments and music scores.

Figure 1
Marcel
Duchamp, Monte
Carlo Bond, 1924.

Except for chess, which was an obsessive presence in Duchamp´s life, the only one of his works related to these types of games, more specifically to Roulette, is that known as the Monte Carlo Bond (Fig. 1), dated November 1, 1924, the year after leaving his masterpiece The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923) ‘definitely unfinished’. This is also the year that marks his legendary and supposed retirement from art, and his move towards the more rarified and abstract world of chess.

The Monte Carlo Bond or Obligation pour la Roulette de Monte Carlo is a ‘rectified and imitated readymade’, a lithograph for a real document, a bond issued in 30 numbered exemplars each with a value of 500 francs. The original bonds, commercial obligations used to release a certain sum on a defined date with a determined rate of interest, were redesigned and released by Duchamp with the purpose of collecting funds in order to experiment with a mathematical system in the game of Trente-et-Quarante, using a Martingale⁽¹⁾ that would allow him to win ‘slowly but surely’ over the Monte Carlo bank, thus making roulette to behave like a chess game.

Placed directly over the ‘radiant’ image of a roulette wheel in the lithograph, is a curious photograph of Duchamp with his hair and face covered in foam. In the lower part of the document, inscribed on the roulette table there are two signatures : Rrose Sélavy’s (Duchamp´s feminine alter ego, here starring as President of the Administrative Council,) beneath the black diamond; beneath the red one, as simple administrator, is Marcel’s. Printed in the background and repeated 150 times in green ink, is a game of words of the capricious harvest of Rrose Sélavy: moustiques domestiques demistock (domestic mosquitoes half-stock). 

But let us first see how some authors have described this image: 

click to enlarge

Figura 2
Giambologna, Mercury, 1576.

Figura 3
advertising Notice

Figura 4
ad from Patek Philippe

General consensus seems to be that Duchamp’s lathered head is like that of a faun or devilish figure. On a closer look however, the foamy shapes above Duchamp’s head do not correspond to the traditional horns of devils or fauns; instead, their shape is strongly evocative of one of the principal attributes of classical antiquity’s messenger god Mercury (Fig. 2). Curved back in their own particular manner, these forms match Mercury’s winged traveler’s cap known as petasus, as can be clearly seen in Giambologna’s sixteenth-century bronze statue, rather than the short erect horns normally belonging to fauns and devils.

Is it not curious that in the different readings Duchamp´s face is repeatedly interpreted as a faun, a demon or a satyr, as a masculine being necessarily supplied with horns? This interpretation is fostered not only when thought of in connection with the ‘diabolic’ artistic-financial operation of the Tzanck Check of 1919,⁽⁷⁾ but also by images of the aforementioned creatures in classical mythology in which beard and horns appear simultaneously to characterize them. The horns, as history of art dictates, would proceed from the beard.⁽⁸⁾

Iconographically, the Roman god Mercury –or Hermes as he was known in ancient Greece— is suggestively pertinent to Duchamp’s financial document. Renowned for his speedy effectiveness, resourcefulness, and shrewdness, Mercury was the Roman god of trade, profit, merchants, travelers, and shepherds, as well as patron to artists, impostors, and all dishonest folk.⁽⁹⁾ In addition to the winged cap, Mercury was endowed with wings for his feet called talaria, a caduceus or rod entwined with serpents, and a purse as symbol of his commercial powers.⁽¹⁰⁾ Even his name resonates with these associations; deriving from the Latin root for merchandise, a mercibus, the name Mercury underlies the term ‘mercantile’. Indeed, these are all attributes intensely associated with Duchamp’s conduct, which may be summarized in his anagram: marchand du sel, or salt merchant.

Beginning at about this time (1924), this kind of behavior was accentuated when, along with his renewed passion for chess, Duchamp embarked in a series of negotiations and artistic-financial speculations. Such an attitude is well synthesized in the advertisement of the Flying Wheel (Fig. 3), a wheel with wings, identical in essence to the collage over the roulette: a popular synthesis, if you like, of a good part of Duchampian iconography.

Thus, Duchamp’s Mercurial image not only bears an iconographic resemblance to the ancient god but is also conceptually tied to the activities surrounding the Monte Carlo Bond. Moreover, Duchamp’s disguise may be read on yet another level, one with deep personal implications, as shall be developed throughout this essay. For what we see in the photomontage is a bearded Mercury, as he appeared in some archaic Greek vases, but which is rather unusual in later imagery, where he is generally shown beardless, almost feminine.⁽¹¹⁾ Duchamp’s use of foam for creating a beard (as an adolescent in front of a mirror conjuring up virile fantasies) (Fig. 4) exalts this ambiguity, for it simultaneously indicates the absence of a beard after shaving and the appearance of a false beard in place of a real one.

Duchamp’s obsessive capillary experiments, and the consequential psychological negotiations between various identities begins casually in 1919, in Buenos Aires, when he shaves his head as a part of a treatment to reduce hair loss. This confers him a rather marginal aspect in the widest sense of the word, whether as an initiate in some sort of sect – chess?⁽¹²⁾-, as a convalescent man –his friends find him excessively thin- or simply delinquent ⁽¹³⁾.

On his return to Paris in the midst of 1919, in a gesture that clearly anticipates the creation of his feminine pseudonym Rrose Sélavy, he creates the well-known readymade of the Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q.) adding a mustache and Mephistophelean small beard to the image. At the end of 1921, after the aromatic transsexual display of Rrose Sélavy presented as Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette on the altered label of a lugubrious flask of Rigaud perfume,⁽¹⁴⁾ (Fig. 5) he creates a tonsure on his head in the form of a comet with its tail projected towards his forehead. (Fig. 6)

Three years later, immediately after the self-portrait in the Monte Carlo Bond –in Cinésketch, a theatrical diversion of Picabia and René Clair- Duchamp reappears as Adam in a tableau vivant based on a sixteenth-century painting by Cranach, (Fig. 7) displaying an evidently artificial beard (a significant counterpart to the ambiguous beard of foam), a watch, and a shaved pubis. Certainly not the last ‘shaving’ in his work.

click to enlarge

• 
  Figura 5
  Figure 5 Rrose Sélavy, 1921. Photo Man Ray
• 
  Figura 6
  Marcel Duchamp, 1921.
• 
  Figura 7
  Adam and Eve. Marcel Duchamp and Bronja Perlmutter. Paris, 1924.

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2

In contrast to the horn theory, which focusses interpretative attempts on the nature of the monetary operation, the hairdo with wings might lead to a different interpretation, especially when we consider that the hermetic Mercury appears with his hair and beard covered in foam. An evanescent material indicative of some activity, foam is a composite of bubbles produced by an insistent battering movement where air is incorporated into a liquid of some density (in this case, soap). A substance fraught with multiple sexual and poetic evocations as revealed by its etymology: Foam, in Greek, is Aphros, the origin of Aphrodite (or Venus), the goddess born from the sea’s foam.⁽¹⁵⁾ This element offers an important clue for deciphering the identity⁽¹⁶⁾ of the unusual portrait, by setting out with the following equation: Hermes + Aphrodite = Hermaphrodite.⁽¹⁷⁾

Figure 8 ,Roulette

This androgynous combination could be interpreted as some kind of mythological correction made by joining Mercury’s communicative capacity (exemplified in the movement of the roulette) (Fig. 8) with the perfection of potential success in the ‘figure’ of gambling⁽¹⁸⁾which is indirectly represented through Aphrodite’s attributes (love, beauty, sexual passion) of two human entities in conflict: Rrose Sélavy, the ‘widow’ whose signature appears beneath the black diamond⁽¹⁹⁾ , and Marcel Duchamp, the confirmed ‘bachelor’ who signs as “administrator” under the ancestral red one⁽²⁰⁾.

Figure 9
Marcel Duchamp,
Rotorelief disk, 1935

The structure of this Obligation reveals the duplicity involved in the names and colors corresponding to each one of the diamonds, as well as the eventual convergence in the central image of the hermaphrodite as third element. With each turn of the wheel, the red and black loose their identity through the increasing speed of the movement, and end by fusing their specific identities into what in Duchamp’s terms may be called a gris de verticalité… “as all axes disappear in the gris de verticalité, the front and back, the reverse and obverse adopt a circular significance…”⁽²¹⁾
In analogous manner, the roulette not only continues (in another format and on a different topological level) the inter-dimensional speculation attributed to his Bicycle Wheel of 1913⁽²²⁾ and the perceptual experimentation of optical devices related to the Témoines Oculistes (Oculist Witnesses) in the lower part of the Bride Stripped Bare, but also incorporates chance (a characteristic element of the game of roulette) as a necessary element. In this way, the legendary duality of the Bride Stripped Bare is subverted by a third element: the androgyne, an option for the incomplete couple of a fresh widow and an untamed bachelor.

Figure 10
Durer, Adam and Eve, 1504.

Referring to the general principle of the illusory effect of his twirling spirals, Duchamp wrote: “I only have to use two –eccentric- circumferences and make them turn over a third center.” (Fig. 9)
To visualize the symbolic effect of this curious ‘dissolution’, one has only to imagine a displacement of the frontal point of view of an archetypal image, as for example Durer’s Adam and Eve (Fig. 10). If instead of looking at the image from a frontal position, we place ourselves over the image and look at it from a bird’s eye view, from a roulette type of perspective, we notice that the vertical axis (the natural hinge represented by the tree), as well as Adam and Eve (Marcel/Rrose; red/black) have been transformed into three points aligned on a plane.

 

Figure 11

Limbourg Brothers,Temptation &
Fall,before 1414

If we now imagine a circular Paradise, as in some early representations (Fig. 11), and we make our first parents (re-péres: references) circulate rapidly around the central point, there will be a moment where the traditional position (Adam at the left; Eve at the right) disappears. We can no longer speak of right and left, for these occur simultaneously –as in Pawloski’s La Diligence Innombrable ⁽²³⁾ – in all locations at the same time. All differences are reconciled as long as the ubiquitous and instantaneous velocity lasts. Speed and motion, a strategic resource used by Duchamp throughout his life as a hypothetical solution to psychological emergencies.⁽²⁴⁾
Duchamp’s obsession with the synthesis of opposites⁽²⁵⁾ also manifests itself in the arrangement of the head in relation to the roulette’s circular form which, deep down, is nothing other than a bull’s eye or target. (Fig. 12) The coincidence of the right eye with the center of the wheel nullifies, in principle, the distance between the observer and his objective, between the self and the world, for structurally the perspectival system consists of a reciprocal identity between the point of view and the horizon point.⁽²⁶⁾By superposing the right eye with the center of the roulette, Duchamp conjures up not only his intention of succeeding in the prediction of the bet,⁽²⁷⁾but also perfectly illustrates the unitary principle of conciliation.

Figure 12

emoins Oculistes, detail
(the right eye in the center)
and roulette with green zero

Jarry, in relation to the unusual language of Bosse-de-Nage, his character in Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll who only said “HA HA”, refers to the formula of the principle of identity: “A Thing is Itself.” “Pronounced quickly enough, until the letters become confounded, it is the idea of unity. Pronounced slowly, it is the idea of duality, of echo, of distance, of symmetry, of greatness and duration, of the two principles of good and evil.”⁽²⁸⁾

On the other hand, the difference (in relationship) between The Bride Stripped Bare and the Monte Carlo Bond lies in that in the former the separation is external (bachelors looking for their couple) while in the latter it is internal (the incorporation of Rrose Sélavy by hermaphrodite ‘infusion’) projecting the target, the objective, onto itself.
The strategy of the lathered image inscribes itself in the precise game of identities offered as a form of escape, or renovated compensation, for an artist who is clearly over burdened by his intense immersion during the past eight years in the complexities and contradictions of the drama underlying The Bride Stripped Bare: the Bride above⁽²⁹⁾, the Bachelors below, and the difficulty of connecting these two dimensions through one of the last devices in process, that of the Témoines Oculistes, an optical apparatus whose purpose is to help overcome the threshold of an almost forsaken horizon standing between the Bride and the Bachelors.⁽³⁰⁾ Significantly, Duchamp left the work ‘definitely unfinished’…as is indicated in the final adverb of the complete name of the work: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even.

Literally, the Monte Carlo Bond is then a unifying tie, the ‘bond’ between two ancient and opposite entities, represented by the traditional colors of the roulette. This duality is fragmented in an exemplary manner into 37 numbers disseminated in the oracle-like vertigo of the roulette⁽³¹⁾ , optically nullifying (through the ‘indifference’ produced by speed) the abysmal separation into an androgynous instantaneous paradise.

In the fifties, speaking of the relationship between chess and the roulette, Duchamp tells Arturo Schwarz that both games involve “a struggle between two human beings”, which he tries to reconcile by “turning the roulette into a more cerebral game, and chess into a game of chance”. And in 1968, the last year of his life, in a conversation with Lanier Graham, he specifies: “The symbol is universal. The Androgyny stands over philosophy. If one has turned into the Androgyny then philosophy is no longer necessary.

”⁽³²⁾ (32)

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3

But behind the rapid wings and the weightless foam, stands always the sea, a sea that is indicated in various locations: 1. the location of Monte Carlo itself; 2. in the nature of the shaving foam transformed into Aphros, ‘sea-foam’; 3. hidden behind the insistent tongue twister moustiques domestiques demi-stock that is repeated 150 times in green ink⁽³³⁾ much like a ‘security slogan’ in the background of the Obligation. The phrase is nearly identical to Nous livrons à domicile /des moustiques domestiques /[demi-stock]⁽³⁴⁾ , the same phrase that appears completed, three years later, on one of the discs of Anemic Cinema⁽³⁵⁾: “ON DEMANDE DES MOUSTIQUES DOMESTIQUES [DEMI-STOCK] POUR LA CURE D’AZOTE SUR LA CÔTE D’ÁZUR.”
That “cure d’azote sur la Côte d’Azur”, can also be found camouflaged in the back of the Obligation’s statutes:
Art. 1er. –La Société a pour object:
1º L’explotation de la roulette de Monte-Carlo dans les conditions ci-après.
2º L’explotation du Trente et Quarante et autres mines de la Côte d’Azur sur délibération du Conseil d’Administration.⁽³⁶⁾ .

Figure 13
Anemic Cinema disc

The Anemic Cinema disc (Fig. 13) would then be a verbal collage somewhere between the lemma printed in the Bond’s background and the Côte d’Azur named in the statutes, which is phonetically transformed into Cure d’Azote (generally translated as ‘nitrogen cure’). The Anemic Cinema disc indirectly introduces the term Azoth, a word whose significance transcends the simple summer Mediterranean oxygenation.
Azoth necessarily refers us to alchemy (a metaphoric background which, together with modern science and psychology, abounds in Duchampian exegesis) where the three basic symbolic substances (mercury, sulphur, and salt) are complemented with a fourth one, the mysterious vital principle known as Azoth. This primus agens is seen by some as “the invisible, eternal fire; others as electricity; still others as magnetism.

 

Transcendentalists refer to it as the astral light.” Also described as “primitive air” and as “the Waters or Crystalline Chaotic Sea”⁽³⁷⁾ , the key virtue of this mysterious ingredient consists in bonding together the physical matter represented in the three basic substances. And it is this unifying virtue that causes some to identify it as “unconditional love”. A sort of generic glue whose powerful and subtle nature cannot be wholly scrutinized.
Existing documents allow us to suppose that around the time of the Monte Carlo Bond, Duchamp was going through a particularly critical moment. And although (as usual) his reserved nature strategically covers the details, in the sixties, towards the end of his life, he writes: “Since 1923 I consider myself as an artist ‘défroqué’ [unfrocked].”⁽³⁸⁾ “Thus, after 1923, -according to Jean Clair- came a time of disillusion and apathy. Duchamp défroqué. Duchamp idle. Duchamp the chess player.”⁽³⁹⁾
In a maternal approach, Katherine Dreier, one of his patrons, considered that the psychological atmosphere of a casino was detrimental “for a person as sensitive as Marcel”. And Breton: “How could a man so intelligent –the most profoundly original man in the century, according to Breton- devote his time and energy to such trivialities? Searching for an explanation, Breton could only conclude that some hidden malaise must be at work –what he had described to Jacques Doucet as Duchamp’s ‘desperate’ state of mind.”⁽⁴⁰⁾ Nevertheless, in the spring of 1924, before the Monte Carlo Bond, Duchamp writes to Jacques Doucet after one month at the Riviera during a chess tournament: “The climate suits me perfectly, I would love to live here.”⁽⁴¹⁾
Therapy? ‘Oxygenation’ in Monte Carlo? Perhaps the encapsulated air in the foam is of the same nature as the Air de Paris, his readymade from the early 1920s. Originally a glass phial filled with physiological serum -bought and emptied by Duchamp in a Parisian pharmacy, and then presented as a souvenir to the Arensberg upon his return to New York – Air de Paris can be seen as a translation of the 50cc of Parisian air into a ‘psychological serum’. All this, the same year when Rrose Sélavy is ‘born’.

Figure 14
Rrose Sélavy, Belle Haleine,
Eau de Voilette, 1921

After her first manifestation retaining the copyright of Fresh Widow (French Window) — a French window condemned in its visibility by glass panes covered in brilliant black leather— Rrose Sélavy is presented visually on the name and label of Un Air Embaumé originally a perfume of Rigaud rebaptized as Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette. (Fig. 14) Another psychological serum, although rather lugubrious, judging from the initial case: a small coffin where the image of the rigorous and concentrated transvestite slides through.
This problematic identity foreshadows the foaming Monte Carlo portrait, and allows us to imagine the deep significance behind the “exploitation of Thirty and Forty and other mines of the Côte d’Azur under the deliberation of its Administrative Council.” In other words, under the deliberation of its only two members; what Duchamp calls on other occasions “un petit jeu entre Je et Moi”.  And apropos of dualities, the mercurial portrait, as any medal, must have another face. The opposite image -in my view- is not the beautiful and radiant head of John the Baptist or that of the sedated Holofernes as has been suggested, but is instead the image of that who lays fearful of her own reflection upon Perseus’s shield: Medusa. Deadly force that petrifies whoever looks at her. A true evil eye. An evil ‘Voilette’.

Figure 15
Cellini, Perseus and Medusa, 1545-54

Why Medusa? Because of Perseus: “Mercurial, aerial, Perseus is unique in being able to conjure the gravity of things, the opacity of chaos, the numbness of Saturn’s weighty world …there where the spirit, too tied to earth, becomes frozen in its fear of petrification.”⁽⁴²⁾ Because Perseus, like Mercury, carries on his helmet and sandals the same rapid and ethereal wings.⁽⁴³⁾ And also, because in the axis of that tree, the serpent twirls around like a Caduceus, symbol of medicine [MD] and transformative power. Another indispensable attribute of Mercury, where the two opposite animals, the bird and the serpent, determine the significance and polarity of the implicit process: the serpent as material energy associated with the ascendant spiral and the bird as liberated, spiritual form. The relationship with Perseus is then didactically illustrated at the moment when Perseus, his head covered with the winged helmet, exhibits Medusa’s severed head, sustaining her mangled hair made up of serpents in a symmetrical, mirror-like manner.⁽⁴⁴⁾ (Fig. 15)
It is therefore not beyond reason to suppose that the reverse of the circular self-portrait in the Monte Carlo Bond (its corresponding negative image) is Caravaggio’s image of Medusa (an actual shield) painted at the end of the sixteenth century.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Interestingly, it is often said that Caravaggio used his own features as the model for this round image, while gesticulating in front of a mirror. Thus allowing us to propose the following iconographic relationship: (Figs. 16, 17 & 18)

Figure 16	Figure 17	Figure 18
Caravaggio, Medusa, c.1597	Azoth.Union of the 3 elements: mercury, sulphur and salt	Marcel Duchamp, Air de Paris, 1920

In this sequence, the ‘ petrification’, the detention or apathy felt by Duchamp in the period following The Bride Stripped Bare would necessitate a certain ‘ breathing space…or draft of air’ (a courant d’air) that could revitalize his faculties as ‘respirator’: “I like living, breathing, better than working (…) if you wish, my art would be that of living: each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral. It’s a sort of constant euphoria.”⁽⁴⁶⁾ In this particular circumstance, the nature and secret of the euphoric and constant element could not be found in the habitual cultural ‘nutrition’ -that is in his reinscription into artistic and social activity- but in the timeless properties of an essential symbolic scenery: the sea, and chance. The crystalline, chaotic waters; effectively, a cure d’azote sure la Côte d’Azur – geographical location of immersion and baptism where the annexed feminine (Aphrodite/Rrose) establishes a natural and mythic complicity. An element in front of which, reason and logic (with all their intentions and grueling calculations) see themselves compelled to negotiate between the metaphoric territories of the combative (masculine) chess, and the roulette’s whimsical chance.

The serum, the glass bubble with its ethereal air of Paris is nothing else than a necessary ‘azoth’, a sensitive order freely incarnated in that alter-ego with the name of a rose, a flower imbedded with the liberating energy of eros. Thus we can imagine graphically how Caravaggio’s asphyxiating Medusa incorporates the revitalizing virtue of azoth as a kind of medicinal potion, transforming itself. The result may be fully appreciated in the Monte Carlo ‘cameo’ with the foaming head encrusted in the solar aura of the roulette.

Figure 19
Birth of Venus, with Hermes
(holding Caduceus) and Poseidon

L’Obligation d’un Possible? A feasible Bond? In any case, a secret unconscious martingale throwing its bet over the lingering target of a much-needed self-regeneration. A new birth of a Je and a Moi unified as a pearl in its shell generated by the Chaotic ‘gambling’ Sea of Monte Carlo. A very personal system where Duchamp nevertheless, “never wins nor loses”⁽⁴⁷⁾ , in natural compliance with that central point, indifferent, of the “et-qui-libre”⁽⁴⁸⁾ hermaphrodite.
On the other hand, the synthetic figure of the Bond, the underlying instrument to the whole therapeutic process is none other than the Caduceus, (Fig. 19) the winged rod with the two symmetrically intertwining serpents. This object may be associated – via Tiresias – with the alternating masculine/feminine sex, and with the oracular gift of prophecy. In this context, the story of Tiresias is quite pertinent:

Celebrated prophet of Thebes…It is said that in his youth he found two serpents in the act of copulation…and that when he had struck them with a stick to separate them, he found himself suddenly changed into a girl. Seven years after he found again some serpents together in the same manner, and he recovered his original sex by striking them a second time with his wand. When he was a woman, Tiresias had married, and it was from those reasons, according to some of the ancients, that Jupiter and Juno referred to his decision a dispute in which the deities wished to know which of the sexes received greater pleasure from the connubial state. Tiresias…declared that the pleasure which the female received was ten times greater than that of the male. Juno, who supported a different opinion…punished Tiresias by depriving him of his eyesight… But…Jupiter…bestowed upon him the gift of prophecy, and permitted him to live seven times longer than the rest of men.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Vedi Tiresia che mutò­ sembiante
Quando di maschio femmina divienne,
Cangiandosi le membra tutte quante;
E prima, poi, ribatter li convenne
Il due serpenti avvolti, con la verga,
Che riavesse le maschili penne.”

(Dante, Divina Commedia. Inferno, Canto 20:40)

In more recent times, in 1944, Poulenc created a musical adaptation of Apollinaire’s 1903 piece Les Mamelles de Tiresias (Tiresias’s Breasts). Both versions remove themselves from the original tale in a significant and burlesque manner, transposing the hermaphrodite sexual alternation into domestic terms. The modern narrators relate a decline in France’s birth rates due to the feminine emancipation of Thérèse/Tirésias, a loss compensated by her husband who gave birth to 40,000 children in one day… In any case, Poulenc decided to transfer the action of Apollinaire’s version from Zanzibar, an island near the African east coast, to Zanzibar, a supposed population on the French Riviera somewhere between Nice and Monte Carlo. All because he adored Monte Carlo and also because “that was where Apollinaire spent the first 15 years of his life”, adding that this was a place “sufficiently tropical for a Parisian like myself.”⁽⁵⁰⁾

In the end, Duchamp did not become an addict to roulette, but instead submerged himself for the rest of his days in the sophisticated infra-mince labyrinth of the strategic possibilities offered by chess. In relation to Monte Carlo, in 1952 he sums up his adventure by saying: “Artists throughout history are like gamblers in Monte-Carlo and in the blind lottery some are picked out while others are ruined… it all happens according to random chance. Artists who during their lifetime manage to get their stuff noticed are excellent traveling salesmen but that does not guarantee a thing as far as the immortality of their work is concerned. And even posterity is a terrible bitch who cheats some and reinstates others, and reserves the right to change her mind again every 50 years.”
But perhaps, the clue for transcending history and not simply being subject to random chance is as claimed by a commercial slogan of some web page: “with caduceus you’re not a number… you are an individual!”.⁽⁵¹⁾ In other words, you must pronounce Zanzibar! Zanzibar! “quickly enough, until the letters become confounded”.

Notes

1. “The Martingale is a very old and extremely simple system for recovering betting losses by progressively increasing the stakes. It is based on the probability of losing infinite times in a row and is usually applied to ‘even money’ bets.” For this definition of the Martingale, see < http://ildado.com/roulette_rules.html >

2. David Joselit, Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp, 1910-1941. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998.

3. Dalia Judovitz, Unpacking Duchamp: art in transit. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

4. Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp: a biography. New York: H. Holt, 1996.                                     

5. Peter Read, “The Tzank Check and Related Works by Marcel Duchamp”, Marcel Duchamp Artist of the Century, edited by Rudolph Kuenzli and Francis M. Naumann. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1989.

6. Juan Antonio Ramírez, Duchamp, Love and Death, Even. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 199

7. This piece was created by Duchamp as an imitation of a real check drawn upon The Teeth´s Loan & Trust Company, Consolidated, an invented bank, with which he paid his dentist Daniel Tzanck a sum of $115 dollars.

8. That people have read the foam-created forms as horns may also be due to the Dionysiac connections implicit in the game of words resulting from Duchamp’s pseudonym Rrose Sélavy (Eros, c’est la vie). However, this type of eroticism is more readily connected with an essentially vitalist oeuvre, as is Picasso’s, rather than with Duchamp’s, which may be characterized as mental and elaborate.

9. For “all things Mercury” see http://www.hermograph.com/science/mercury.htm Go to the link about the god Mercury for the history, symbolism, and legends surrounding the ancient god, and see in particular his “Work History”.

For Mercury´s thievish activities, see the entry for Mercurius, in John Lemprière, Classical Dictionary.(1788) London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, p.373-374.

10. For ancient representations of Mercury endowed with his various attributes see Gregory R. Crane (ed.) The Perseus Project, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu August, 2002. See the references to Mercury under Greek and Roman Materials: 109. Boston 98.1135 which shows a silver coin bust of Mercury wearing his winged petasus with caduceus; 122. Boston 98.676 which shows Mercury with his purse.

11. For images of a bearded Mercury, see Gregory R. Crane (ed.) The Perseus Project, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu August, 2002. See the references to Hermes under Greek and Roman Materials: 28. Louvre G192; 68. Toledo 1956.70

12. From Buenos Aires, Duchamp wrote to Walter Arensberg in 1919: “I play chess all the time. I’ve joined a local club, where there are very good players grouped according to grade. I have not yet been honored with a grade. (…) I play night and day and nothing in the world interests me as much as to find the right move… I am less and less interested in painting. Everything around me is knight shaped or Queen shaped and the outside world only interests me in as much as it transposes into winning or losing positions.”

13. In Wanted, dated 1923, a work immediately previous to the Monte Carlo Bond, he personifies as such in a reward poster. This was later used as the poster for his retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Museum in 1963.

14. Originally, Un Air Embaumé. A balm, a perfume; an ‘embalmed’ air, as well.

Fig. 1, 5-7

15. According to Hesiodus, Aphrodite was born when Uranus (father of gods) was castrated by Chronos, his son. When Uranus fell to the sea, his genitals produced foam. From aphros, or the sea’s foam, Aphrodite was born, and later drawn to Cyprus or Cythera, the paradisiacal isle of Watteau’s renowned painting.

16. More than a recreation of Duchamp’s conscious or unconscious intentions, this interpretation of the Monte Carlo Bond is an act of reconstruction in the interpreter. An analogical projection on a proposed riddle, where ‘the public, the interpreter, makes the work’.

17. Not as their son (as in the mythological account where Hermaphrodite is born from Hermes and Aphrodite, but is originally a masculine being who only later becomes androgynous after meeting the nymph Salmacis) but as a symbolic fusion of the two. For the story of Hermaphroditus, see Lemprière, p.277.

18. Duchamp writes to Picabia in a letter of 1924: “Le problème consiste d’ailleurs à trouver la figure rouge et noir à opposer à la roulette (…) Et je crois avoir trouvé une bonne figure. Vous voyez que je n’ai pas cessé d’être peintre, je dessine maintenant sur le hasard.” DDS p. 269.

19. As in 1920, in Fresh Widow: a French window painted of a ‘mint’ green color, whose glass panes have been supplanted with black leather. In accordance with Duchamp’s instructions, these had to be constantly shined ‘as if they were shoes’.

20. “Adam: to be red. Some writers (…) assign to the word adam the twofold signification of “red earth”, thus adding to the notion of man’s material origin a connotation of the color of the ground from which he was formed.” See www.newadvent.org/cathen/01129a.htm

21. See Algebraic Comparison (of the Green Box of 1914). DDS, pg. 45. Third note pertaining to the Preface and to the Warning, seminal notes in the writings of Duchamp. 

22. In Ulf Linde, Cycle, La roue de bicyclette. Marcel Duchamp, Abécédaire. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1977. And also inscribed in the sequence of circular chronology: Coffee Mill, Chocolate Mill, Propeller (the declaration to Léger and Brancusi towards the end of 1912 in the 4^th Salon de la Locomotion Aérienne: “Painting is over. Who could do it better than this propeller?”), Bicycle Wheel, Rotative Plaque Verre, Discs with Spirals, Monte Carlo Bond, Door of 11 of rue Larrey (somehow summarized in the door of the Gradiva Gallery of 1937), Rotoreliefs, etc.

23. See the chapter La Diligence Innombrable in Voyage to the Country of the Fourth Dimension, a scientific novel by Gastón de Pawlowski, published for the first time in 1910. According to some declarations by Duchamp, this novel was influential for certain speculative notions applied to the Bride Stripped Bare. Jean Clair develops this idea extensively in his book Marcel Duchamp ou le Grand Fictif. Paris: Editions Galilée, 1975.

24. The fastest and perhaps most significant period of Duchamp’s development (1912), beginning with Nude Descending a Staircase and King and Queen Traversed by Fast Nudes (and variants), to Airplane, where velocity is a fundamental factor for confronting the static petrification of certain ancient references.

25. In The Spirit Mercurius, Jung says: “Mercury truly consists of the most extreme opposites; on the one hand he is undoubtedly akin to the godhead, on the other he is found in sewers.” And in Psychologie et Alchimie, Hermes/Mercury “is the primordial hermaphrodite being that divides itself to form the classic couple brother-sister, unifying itself later in the conjunctio in order to finally reappear under the radiant form of the Lumen Novum, of the Lapis.” The hermaphrodite is also ‘the philosophical Adam, still with his rib…’

26. “Physiquement -L’œil est le sens de la perspective.” DDS, p.123.

27. “Le jeu du tonneau est une très belle sculpture d’adresse.” DDS, p.37. A popular game where the objective is to insert metal rings over metallic frogs -or toads- placed on a box with numbered holes.

28. Alfred Jarry, Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, edited by Roger Shattuck & Simon Watson Taylor, London: Jonathan Cape, 1965, p. 228-229.

29. This position makes one think of the Bride as a transformed Aphrodite, originally an ancient Asiatic goddess similar to the Mesopotamic Ishtar and the Syrian goddess Astarté, in addition to the Virgin. Or in Duchamp’s own words: “the apotheosis of Virginity”.

30. This was fulfilled only later in a casual manner, when the Bride and the Bachelors –in the clamoring style of Jarry- literally broke the glass in the midst of an accidental copulation while they were transferred (after the work’s first and last exhibition in intact form at the Brooklyn Museum, to Connecticut), one panel on top of the other, in a truck.

31. 18 black and 18 red, plus a green zero in the European roulette; the American version uses a double zero.

32. See Lanier Graham, “Duchamp and Androgyny: The Concept and its Context,” Tout-Fait, vol.2, Issue 4 (January 2002) Articles <http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham1.html>.

33. Green is also the color of zero, a unique oasis –together with the color of the game board—flanked by a black 26 and a red 32 [VOISINS DU ZERO! in roulette argot] in a numeric version of that ineffaceable scene of the Western imagination. 

34. Marcel Duchamp, Posthumous Notes #s 227, 234, 249 y 279.

35. This was a film of 7’ created in 1926 with the help of Man Ray and Marc Allégret, where discs with word games about Rrose Sélavy written in spiral form alternate with abstract patterns of Discs with Spirals (created two years before) and turn hypnotically inside out.

36. DDS. Sur l’Obligation Monte-Carlo, p.268.

37. See www.volcano.net/~azoth/newpage1.htm and http://azothgallery.com/index.htm

38. The priest who hangs his habits. On the one hand, in Laforgue’s sense: “The idea of liberty would be to live without any habits (…) a whole existence without a single act being generated or influenced by habit. Every act an act in itself.” Revue Anarchiste, 1893. On the other hand, as a specific incapacity: ”l’impossibilité du fer (du faire).”

39. “In two reappraisals, at least, other than this manuscript, Duchamp would explain his state of being ‘ défroqué’.” The first time, in 1959, to G. H. Hamilton, he confided, “It’s true that I really was very much of a Cartesian défroqué – because I was very pleased by the so-called pleasure of using Cartesianism as a form of thinking, logic and very close mathematical thinking.” (Interview with the BBC, in London, September 14-22, 1959.) A second time, in 1966, he confided in the critic Pierre Cabanne that, “Depuis quarante ans que je n’ai pas touché un pinceau ou un crayon, j’ai été vraiment défroqué au sens religieux du mot…” (Entretiens avec P. Cabanne, “Je suis un défroqué” in Arts-Loisirs, Paris, no. 35, May 25 – 31, 1966, p. 16-17.) In Jean Clair, “Duchamp at the Turn of the Century”, Tout-Fait, vol. 1, Issue 3 (December 2000) News <http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_3/News/clair/clair.html>.

40. Both of these references are in Tomkins, p.261.

41. Tomkins, p.259.

42. Jean Clair, Méduse. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1989. p.93. The original text in French reads: “Mercuriel, aérien, Persée est seul à pouvoir conjurer la pesanteur des choses, l’opacité du chaos, l’engourdissement du monde pesant du Saturne …là où l’esprit, trop rivé à la terre, se fige dans l’épouvante de sa pétrification.”

43. See Lemprière, p.464-466, for the story of Perseus. Interestingly, it is Mercury who gives Perseus the winged sandals when Perseus is about to embark on his adventure in pursuit of Medusa’s head. The winged helmet (which grants invisibility) is given to Perseus by Pluto.

44. “The Perseus is an emblem of triumph. Perseus holds up by her snaky hair the decapitated head of Medusa, the horrifying gorgon whose gaze turned onlookers into stone. The hero’s ingenuity –avoiding her petrifying gaze by using his metal shield to reflect her image- allowed him to vanquish what had seemed an invincible threat to civilization.” Quoted from Sarah Blake McHam, “Public Sculpture in Renaissance Florence”, Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture, edited by Sarah Blake McHam, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.169.

45. For a summary of the history and interpretation of this painting see the entry in the exhibition catalogue by Flavio Caroli, l’Anima e il volto. Ritratto e fisiognomica da Leonardo a Bacon. Milan: Electa, 1998, p.182-183.

46. Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. The Documents of 20^th-Century Art. New York: Viking Press, 1976, p.72.

47. Duchamp writes to Picabia from Monte Carlo: “it’s delicious monotony without the least emotion”. And to Doucet: “I’m beginning to play and the slowness of progress is more or less a test of patience. I’m staying about even or else am making time in a disturbing way for the aforementioned patience, but still doing that or something else… I’m neither ruined nor a millionaire and will never be either one or the other.” As summarized by Lebel: “He considers his martingale infallible in this respect but he also admits that if one perseveres long enough one can hope to win an amount equal to the wagers of a clerk who works in his office as many hours as the gambler does in the casino.”

48. A Duchampian game of words between equilibre and et qui libre? (Who is free?)

49. Lemprière, p.635.

50. Max Harrison, Poulenc, Les Mamelles de Tiresias. Le Bal Masqué.(CD brochure) Saito Kinen Orchestra, Seiji Osawa (456 504-2 Philips).

51. See www.caduceus.co.uk

©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.