Marcel Duchamp, beholding the flowering of the New York art scene, once said that “the great artist of tomorrow will go underground.” In at least one case, that prediction has proved truer than even the grand old trickster may have imagined.

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• Figure 1
• Figure 2

• Salon de Fleurus
• Salon de Fleurus

• Figure 3
• Figure 4

• Painting at Salon
  de Fleurus
• Painting at Salon
  de Fleurus

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Figure 5
Mike Bidlo, The
Fountain Drawings, 1998

The immediate effect is clear enough. Typically, the process of integrating art into the world begins with an advance broadcast of the artist’s personality, often a single memorable word (“insane,” “British,” “doctor,” etc.), which serves as a seed for all that follows. At the salon, this strategy of reductionism has reached its apogee: the viewer no longer knows whom to turn to for the expected explanation. Like the spherical caves in E.M. Forster’s A Passage To India, the Salon de Fleurus is perfectly self-contained, canceling out every echo with an opposing one, until one is essentially left with one’s own thoughts.

But why, and to what end? Ten years after the day I first sat in the salon and breathed the pungent scent of mothballs, I am in no better position than the average observer to answer this question. I still bring my own ideas to the space, pitting my forensic powers against hints and clues, with no hope of confirmation or denial. What follows are some of the thoughts I’ve accrued in the presence of this artistic sphinx.

First and foremost, it is not really correct to speak of the Salon de Fleurus as an art space. This may explain why so few have tried. It has been described as a curiosity, a recreation of Gertrude Stein’s storied salon, a sardonic comment on Modernism, a masterful reflection of the same, and more.

But whatever the analysis, it has mobilized no great hope for the rebirth of Cubism–and understandably so. The salon may be about art spaces, but that is not the same thing as being one.

In the strictest sense, we cannot even call the individual paintings art, just as we cannot know if prehistoric cave painters would have consented to today’s definition of the term. Indeed, the only time any objects from the salon have only been classified as such is when they have appeared outside their original context, as in their recent inclusion in the Whitney Biennial.

An Australian aborigine, seeing his dreamings in a plush uptown gallery, would certainly appreciate the paradox.

We have entered the realm of archeology, then, but of archeology of what? Having opened a fault line between image and word, the salon seems to demand a re-examination of art criticism, which has become increasingly reliant on personality to find its way. Perhaps, in referring to the most iconic of Modernist painters, it seeks more specifically to disassemble the story of Modernism, which has been selling so many T-shirts of late.

Of course, Picasso, Matisse, and Cezanne have been interpreted in such widely varying ways by now that the spectrum would seem to include all possible responses to anything. In this sense, the salon has benefited from its longevity. The varied attempts to explain its contents–as a hoax, as an experiment, as a subversive act–mirror the whole range of interpretations of 20th-century art. With each unconfirmed reading, the next prospect is trotted out, until the final exhaustion of Modernism is replayed.

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Figure 6
Painting at Salon
de Fleurus

That, perhaps, is a conclusion worth living with: where Duchamp introduced familiar objects as works of art (albeit in a magisterial act of misdirection), the Salon de Fleurus manages to cast familiar art works back to the unknown (Fig. 6). The structure of what we see is, if not shattered or exploded, at least rendered expertly tenuous, like a house with all of its nails removed.

At this stage in the game, it is worth asking whether such an intriguing project can ever bear offspring. Or rather, if it has, how would anyone know? With no one on hand to confirm or deny, anyone can lay claim to the salon as an influence–provided, among the infinite interpretations, he can discover what constitutes lineage. A space is open, waiting to be recognized and claimed, Should that come to pass, we can look forward to a growing body of work that is not only brilliant in its implications, but expansive as well.

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Figure 1
The projection of
a painting on the
glass window

The use of glass in architecture was associated with the use of other artificial materials, such as steel and reinforced concrete. These materials heralded new trends in architecture. Glass was initially incorporated into steel structures destined for railway 0terminals and glasshouses; Paxton and Burton come to mind. Pavilions for national exhibitions⁽¹⁾ like Paxton’s Crystal Palace were also beneficiaries of this new architectural technology. Possibilities for the use of glass were dazzling and transcended the mere technical. (Fig. 1)

Use of glass and the subsequent effect on the space that it enclosed challenged traditional architectural concepts. The most significant change was brought about by the introduction of levity–or the transgression of solidity. Traditionally the stone wall had dictated how architecture was approached and, curiously perhaps, an absence of material introduced the idea of gravity into architecture. A wall brings with it the concept of subtraction for it must be pierced or opened up in some way to allow the entry of light. The oculus of the Pantheon or Salon de Comares in the Alhambra palace are here brought to mind. Glass, for its part, demarcates and encloses. Levity is an intrinsic and unencumbered quality of this material and for whatever reason glass qualitatively increases the density of a space.

Glass came to symbolize anthropological expectations⁽²⁾ which architects interpreted as a way of stigmatizing incipient modernity⁽³⁾ . This material triggered a series of reflections regarding its capacity to limit and expand interior space. As far as spatial projection is concerned, use of glass alone is limited as it, in time come to present boundaries and thresholds. It supposes both lines moving towards others, and the disappearance of edges.

The departure of the window as marker, and loss of the objectifying effect of the perforation which can serve to locate a building in its surroundings broadened architectural horizons and brought about new notions of material: not only can visual continuity can be obtained via the glass surface, but also an infernal conflict between the order of the crystal mesh and the flatness of the membrane. This conflict engenders intense conceptual density. The apparent external order or finality implicit in transparent thinness is not so. What we are experiencing here is, in fact, the ideal expression of entropy.⁽⁴⁾

This being so the fascination exerted on man by this material poses a fundamental question: The very natural nature of the architecture that we have been loyal to since the 400s has been architecture linked to seeing, and to the process by which we see. The development of vertical panes of glass between horizontal ones from floor to ceiling meant an opacity of almost zero. The resulting virtually complete transparency of the wall introduced a kind of ontologous motive to the process of construction⁽⁵⁾ . This process of association had a direct effect on the construction process and, more importantly it defined a specific way of knowing: Knowing through seeing⁽⁶⁾.

This tuning ofperception that enabled glass to be exploited brought about a changein the way one perceived ones surroundings from within buildings as there was now a multiplication of viewing points. The objective perspective was removed. The simplest way of seeing glass incorporated architecture was as a structure that incorporates a personal understanding of the space that can be successively transformed across a horizon defined by a person’s ability to see things⁽⁷⁾ . Glass edges, in spatial architectural terms, signify a geometrical space that encloses perpetual multiplicity. The glass space becomes a spatial interpretation of one’s own.

This idea is backed up by the idea of the reversibility of glass through transparency and reflection. A plural reality or truth evolves, which implies the superposition of converging layers; a constant disintegration of the limits and a permanent propulsion of space. Reality and truth stop being the same implying that some kind of totality might be attained. Sight becomes linked to the transformation of consciousness. When one’s view is sequestered by glass, a glass that reveals the visible surroundings moment the moment is expanded. A lasting but fugitive unassailability is conceived: the superposition of time, the detainment and advance of sight ends up becoming an almost aesthetic dimension of the glass itself. Amongst the architectural resonances there is a kind of identification between mind and material⁽⁸⁾.

Space, when imagined in this way, is something that is alive. It is a place of continualbirth, of endless possibilities and differences, a fertile generator of signs, rhythms and forms. It is not by mere chance that glass has come to provoke so many questions, it is due to its expressive nature and ability to resonate for man.

Duchamp and the circularity of vision

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Figure 2
Marcel Duchamp,
Nude Descending a Staircase,
no. 2, 1912

The effort required to envisage space as the superposition of independent layers, each one interacting with one another lies in the identification of the invisiblemarker that runs through all the layers. When Marcel Duchamp painted Nude Descending a Staircase ⁽⁹⁾ (Fig. 2), of fictitious moments; a series of rhythms that will constitute a defiance of understanding of this situation as any kind of spatial continuity, since what this static collection of captured movements does is dissolve a central idea of an ephemeral moment. It does not capture a precipitation of pure time, but time itself.

This painting, in its spatial development, incorporates time and movement as a definitive element for understanding the object. Its approach is not at all technical; it is dispossessed of expressive techniques like those of Chocolate Grinder number 2 (1914) (Fig. 3) in which disproportionate attention is given to precision and exactitude. Jumping from one work to another is fundamental when trying to understand Duchampian conceptual origins: The Large Glass⁽¹⁰⁾ (Fig. 4) implied a movement from expressive retinal vision to intellectual vision, aimed at understanding. In this work Duchamp made no attempt to represent reality. He was trying to give some kind of presence to reality. This desire to stop the Large Glass being subjected to any kind of aesthetic provoked the appearance of the Green Box (11) in 1934 ⁽¹¹⁾ in 1934 (Fig. 5),, a series of writings, calculations and reflections to be consulted while observing the Large Glass. It would prevent the chance of any kind of association between traditional painting and this work. The need for plastic support to facilitate these readings implicated glass as being a replacement for the traditional canvas, lacking any interpretative possibilities–visual ones aside. In pictorial terms glass signified absence. The transparency of glass makes it a means of a certain type of expression related to its surroundings⁽¹²⁾. As the work develops the relationship between the work and the object is established, and vice versa. These links are sustained by the superposition of the significant elements. Having abandoned the spatial development of cubism, whereby fragmentation and development of the object make it plastic, Duchamp extracts that space from the canvas and generates an object capable of holding that space. In this way he establishes a dialogue between ideas suspended in his new glass membrane and those of the observer who approaches, goes round and situates himself in a space shared with the work. The work is nourished by this process of spatial recognition. In preliminary studies for the Large Glass, 9 Malic Moulds (Fig. 6),and the Glider containing a Water Mill made of Neighbouring metals⁽¹³⁾(Fig.7) and Duchamp discovered the possibilities of glass by photographing little sketches drawn on the glass in different spaces and positioning himself for these photographs either in front of or behind the glass. Now it was not a question of seeing less, rather seeing through or, in the case of the encrypted Large Glass, not seeing through the transparency. This fundamental idea of concentrating on the threshold, on the surface of the relation between two faces was concurrent with propositions by the so-called Modern Movement in architecture. Using a thin threshold the dual possibilities of space are suggested. Duchamp is even more challenging as he places the individual inside the space and somehow negates its existence through the affirmative presence the observer, as well as giving the space a relational potency that is activated one the individual is installed.

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• Figure 3
• Figure 4
• Figure 5

• 
  Marcel Duchamp, Chocolate Grinder
  number 2, 1914
• Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even [The Large Glass], 1915-23
• Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Eeven [a.k.a. The Green Box], 1934

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• Figure 6
• Figure 7

• Marcel Duchamp, Nine Malic
  Moulds, 1914-15
• Marcel Duchamp, Glider Containing
  a Water Mill made of Neighboring
  Metals, 1913-15

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Figure 8
16^the
century perspectives by Durer

Thus one possibilityis superposed upon another, a mass of accumulated space projected onto a minimum transparency: A huge amount of meaning is thus conferred upon an evanescent threshold. Here the idea of the infrathin ⁽¹⁴⁾ is highly significant, which Duchamp accorded the highest emotional significance. The notion of infrathin is one of focus, focus viewing spatial positions, a definitive nexus with later architectural concepts the qualities of the space to maximum involvement: a crystallized skin that simultaneously resolves the interior space and the exterior symmetries of the building. The projection of different, meaningful layers on one level means that the Large Glass presents a critically suspended perspective. Duchamp’s work as a librarian in St. Genevieve in Paris would allow him to study different treatments of perspective, about which he would make copious notes. Explicit links between the Large Glass and 16^th century perspectives would be established at this time, like those of Durer (Fig. 8) who would expose Duchamp to new pathways in the spatial development of the collection as a whole⁽¹⁵⁾. The possibility of changing the traditional concept of spatial representation lead him to conceive of the space as a spatial projection within the space itself, that is to say, not indifferent to it as in a painting, but dependant on it. Having been divested of any kind of gravitational support, objects become linked to a kind of idealized space. The marker nevertheless, and its clearly demarcated lines of division functions with the indescribable power of a decontextualized window (ie estranged from its wall). This marker, however, has the ability to emphasize the idea of transit, of thresholds and of significant space.

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Figure 9
Photo of the Large Glass
taken in Katherine Dreier’s
home at West Redding, Connecticut, summer 1936

Glass turns space towards the observer by suspending retinal values and the subsequent aesthetic enjoyment brought about by contemplating them, it distances the object and affirms the space, which results in the individual questioning the very act of seeing⁽¹⁶⁾. Multiple readings, as well as the projection onto the work of different visions of the surroundings, variations in light, fragmented reflections ultimately expand the process of cognition. (Fig.9) The development of the viewpoint passes from birth asa vision to maturity as knowledge. The individual sees himself looking.In this way, the encounter with the glass leads the observer back to his starting point, in which finally the work confronts the observer with himself, with his space and with his desire to know it. The circularity of the process is ensured.

1. The possibilities of expanding the use of glass to other types of buildings were very small, at least in the beginning in the UK. This was before the tax on the consumption of the material was stopped in 1845. The Palm House, by Richard Turner and Decimus Birton (1845 – 1848) was one of the first buildings to benefit from the availability of laminated window panes.

2. In his novel “Six Memos for the Next Millenium”, Italo Calvino speaks of the Nexus between desired levitation and deprivation suffered as an anthropological constant in which the constant search for levity and expressions of levity were a reaction against the weight of living. (Italo Calvino, Seis Propuestas para el Proximo Milenio. Libros del Tiempo (Madrid: Editorial Siruela, 1989) 39).

3. I used glass. Glass alone, without our help, might have destroyed classical architecture. Nowadays glass panes hold perfect visibility,thin sheets of air crystallized to hold air inside and outside Glass is unquestionably modern.
( Frank Lloyd Wright, Modern Architecture, being the Kahn lectures. Collected writings, vol 2 (New York: Rizzoli Publications, 1992) 38-39).

4. “…within the crystal there are constant combinations where the mass of the crystal is shifted to form new structures. The energy that the crystal uses to produce new structures implies that its old structures are broken down… in the natural sciences, this process is called entropy. In other words, the crystal is constantly moving because of breakdowns and structural developments, but outwardly it is maintained by a superordinate system.”
( Robert Smithson, A sedimentation of the mind: Earth Projects. Retrospective works 1955-1973 (Oslo: The National Museum Of Contemporary Art, 1999) 85).

5.”Invisible but blocking all sound, glass consecrates visibility, thus inviting an experience of objective truth.”
( Dan Graham, My Position (Villeurbanne: Nouveau Musée/Presses du Réel, 1992) 15).

6. “The eye as an organ for seeing things is part of the whole soul’s activity; an organ for looking yes, but the underlying purpose, the ultimate objective, is to see whet cannot be looked at. Looking must become contemplation which must become vision which is knowledge. Vision is a state of consciousness, an extreme atate of attentiveness, like listening, seeing what one knows deep down. Pablo Palazuelo. 1995.
(Translated from Spanish. Pablo Palazuelo, La Vision y el tiemo (Madrid: Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, 1995) 17 – 19)34

7. …Happily because it is already a house, image of firmness and hollowness that separates it from the earth. In it, in the hut or the shop, first dwelling built by man, the boundary forms the horizon that encircles, demarcates and shelters, it is the personal horizon of its inhabitant…1977
(María Zambrano, Claros del bosque (Barcelona: Ed Seix Barral, 1993) 63-64).

8.“Intelligent energy with material energy. The deepest srtratum of the mind is “nature”, nature which contains material and the unknown.
(Geometry and Vision: a conversation with Kevin Power (Canada: Diputacion Provincial de Granada, 1995) p 35).

9. Nude Descending a Staircase. No. 2, January 1912.

10. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even [The Large Glass], 1915-23, New York.
“Employer “retard” au lieu de tableau ou peinture; tableau sur berre devient retard en verre–mais retard en verre ne veut pas dire tableau sur verre.–
C’est simplement un moyen d’arriver à ne plus considérer que la chose en question est un tableau–en faire un reatrd dans tout le général possible, pas tant dans les différents sens dans lesquels retard peut être pris, mais plutôt dans leur réunion indécise. “Retard”–un retard en verre, comme on dirait un poème en prose ou eun crachoir en argent.” [Use “delay” instead of “picture” or/”painting”; “picture on glass” becomes “delay in glass”–but “delay in glass” does not mean “picture on glass”–
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. “Dealy”–a “delay in glass” as you would say a “poem in prose” or a spittoon in silver.”
( Duchamp du Signe (Paris: Ed. Flammarion, 1975/1994) 41).

11.The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachlors, Even [The Green Box], 1934, Paris.
“I wanted that album to go with the “Glass,” and to be consulted when seeing the “Glass” because, as I see it, it must not be “looked at” in the aesthetic sense of the word. One must consult the book, and see the two together. The conjunction of the two things entirely removes the retinal aspect that I don’t like. It was very logical.”
(Pierre Cabanne, Dialogus with Marcel Duchamp, Ron Padgett, trans. (London: A Da Capo, 1979) 42.)

12. “I don’t know. These things are often technical. As a ground, the glass interested me a lot, because of its transparency. That was already a lot. Then, color, which, when put on glass, is visible from the other side, and loses its chance to oxidize if you enclose it…”
(Pierre Cabanne, Dialogus with Marcel Duchamp, Ron Padgett, trans. (London: A Da Capo, 1979) 38.)

13. Nine Malic moulds. 1914 – 1915 (Paris)

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Figure 10
Marcel Duchamp, Note
on the inframince

Figure 11
Photograph of the
surface of water

14.In Duchamp’s revisions for the Tokyo exhibition of 1980 new unedited notes and manuscripts appeared, in which the word inframince appeared, (Fig. 10) a word that doesn’t exist in French making one of the many plays on words in conceptual art. It is composed of the word infra (low) and mince (thin). The absolute connection between language and plastic expression throws light on this point, finding, amongst other quotes “…painting on glass, seen from this side without painting, creates the infrathin. The Interchange between what is put in view and the glacial observation of the public (that sees and immediately forgets). At least this exchange holds the value of an infrathin separation.”

Yoshiaki Tono, responsible for organizing this exhibition, illustrates this term with different photographs of the surface of water, continual, dual and with no thickness (Fig. 11)

15. References to the different approaches to perspective from this library are important, especially in Durero’s Painting Manual, 1538 and Du Breuil’spractical painting perspective, 1642. Furthermore there existed a significant similarity between sketches that show two superimposed planes of the latter approach and the final perspectival disposition of the Large Glass. Amongst the omotted notes from the Green Box the following stands out (published in A L’infinitif, 1964 “Use transparent glass and mirror for perspective [….] paint the definitive picture “sur glace sans tain (two way mirror thick)…Marcel Duchamp.1913.
(Dawn Ades, Neil Cox, David Hopkins, eds., Marcel Duchamp (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999) 111 – 112).

16. “….ng of that most certainly incomplete vision that his brief look will procure. Contemplative in the stricter sense of leeting himself prolong his regard”
(Zambrano, De la Aurora (Madrid: Ed Turner, 1986) 39-40).

Fig. 2-7, 10
©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

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• Figure 1
• Figure 2
• Figure 3

Frederick J. Kiesler and Marcel Duchamp,center fold-out tryptich for View (ed. Charles Henri Ford),vol. 5, no. 1 (March 1945), various details

Sometimes we tell each other Duchamp stories, which might surprise you since, you would reasonably point out, there is practically nothing about old Marcel that hasn’t been told, already, to death. Yet if God is in the details, the endlessly ironic touches in Duchamp´s narrative are also, even in their apparent irrelevance, the source of a strong exhilaration and brilliance.⁽¹⁾~Rosalind Krauss

Frederick Kiesler and Marcel Duchamp met in the mid-1920s in Paris and stayed in contact until the early 1950s when, for reasons still unknown, their friendship suddenly seems to have fallen apart. During those 25 years, Kiesler and Duchamp worked within the same vein, both occupied with predominant themes like perception and mechanisms of visions. They shared the same friends in Paris and frequented the same intellectual circle in New York. In 1937 Kiesler published his first article on Duchamp´s Large Glass⁽²⁾ based on the extensive use of photomontage and on a free association of images. Five years later, Duchamp rented a room in Kiesler´s apartment for twelve months. Also in 1942, Kiesler designed the gallery Art of This Century for Peggy Guggenheim in which he installed a Vision Machine⁽³⁾ to look at a series of reproductions from Duchamp´s Bôite en Valise.⁽⁴⁾ During the 1940s Kiesler and Duchamp collaborated on several projects such as the cover of the 1943 VVV Almanac and the exhibition Imagery of Chess at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. In 1947 they worked together again in Paris at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme for which Kiesler designed the Salle des Superstitions. A few months later, Kiesler executed a portrait in eight parts of Marcel Duchamp which can probably be considered the last collaboration between the two artists.⁽⁵⁾ The Archive of the Frederick Kiesler Center in Vienna preserves a photocopy of some handwritten notes⁽⁶⁾ by

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Figure 4
Frederick J. Kiesler,
picture of Marcel Duchamp
used for View-tryptich,
1945 (Archive of the Kiesler
Center, Vienna, Austria)

Frederick Kiesler recording various events of Marcel Duchamp´s life. This copy came to our attention half a year ago. As far as we know, an excerpt from this manuscript has been quoted only by Jacques Caumont and Jennifer Gough-Cooper in their remarkable text on Marcel Duchamp and Frederick Kiesler⁽⁷⁾ , in which they have reported a passage regarding Raymond Roussel and chess. In their text they did not specify the provenance of the source⁽⁸⁾ but they date it to 1945, when Kiesler provided a triptych-photomontage published in View.(Figs. 1-3, 5, 6) The issue included several other texts on Marcel Duchamp, while Kiesler’s photomontage combine photos of Duchamp´s studio at 210 West 14^thStreet with reproductions of his works⁽⁹⁾ . Furthermore, the Archive of the Kiesler Center preserves some of the pictures which used to compose the triptych. (Fig. 4) Those images – in combination with the manuscript – help to complete the puzzle of the complex relationship between the two artists and they reflect Kiesler´s ability in transforming real images in surreal visions where the borderline between reality and fiction fades.

Three books inspired the decision of presenting this text in a typographical version: the Green Box by George Heard Hamilton and Richard Hamilton;Á l´Infinitif by Ecke Bonk, and last but not least Affectionately, Marcel by Francis M. Naumann and Hector Obalk. We have tried to follow this tradition in a sort of divertissement which helped us to approach the world of the »Emeritus for Chronic Diseases of the Arts«, as Kiesler once described Marcel Duchamp⁽¹⁰⁾.

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• 
• 
• Click to see video animation (455KB)
  download QuickTime Player
  

• Figure 5
• Figure 6
• Animation

• Marcel
  Duchamp, front cover for
  View, vol. 5,
  no. 1 (March 1945)
• Marcel Duchamp, back
  cover for View,
  vol. 5, no. 1 (March 1945)
• Frederick J. Kiesler and
  Marcel Duchamp, center fold-out
  tryptich for View
  (ed. Charles Henri Ford),
  vol. 5, no. 1 (March
  1945), animated detail

Anyone who has information on the original manuscript, please contact the Kiesler Center at: research@kiesler.org

[The typeface used for Kiesler´s handwriting is Baskerville Old Face; for Lillian Kiesler´s it is Zapf Calligraphic and for the footnotes it is Times New Roman.]

Click to browse through

Notes

1. R. Krauss, The Optical Unconscious, London/Cambridge 1996, p.95.

2. F. Kiesler, Design Correlation in: »Architectural Record« May 1937, pp.53-60.

3. For more information about Vision Machines see Y. Safran, »L´angle de l´œil« in: Frederick Kiesler. Artiste Architecte, Paris 1996 and D. Bogner »Frederick Kiesler et la Vision Machine« in: Vision Machines, Nantes 2000.

4. For more information on the gallery Art of This Century see E. Kraus; V. Sonzogni a.o., Friedrich Kiesler: Art of This Century, Ostfildern 2002.

5. In the 1950s no more trace of communication between them can be followed, not even through Kiesler´s wife Steffi, also a good friend of Duchamp. A reason for the end of their friendship could have been the so-called »Affaire Matta« which involved several surrealist artists following Gorky´s death in 1948.

6. The manuscript is composed of five pages numbered later by Lillian Kiesler. Lillian gave it a title pertaining to the possibility that those papers could contain some notes written by Kiesler during an interview with Duchamp.

7. J. Gough-Cooper and J. Caumont, »Kiesler und Die Braut von ihren Junggesellen nackt entlößt, sogar« in: D. Bogner a.o., Friedrich Kiesler 1890-1965, Wien 1988, pp.287-296.

8. »Kiesler schrieb mehrere undatierte Seiten über das Große Glass, auf die er auch einige interessante biographische Notizen kritzelte, Informationen über Duchamp, die er zweifellos schon in der Zeit vor der Veröffentlichung inView gesammelt hatte.« (»Kiesler wrote several undated pages on the subject of the Large Glass onto which he also scribbled some interesting biographical information on Duchamp, no doubt collected prior to the publication in View«) J .Gough-Cooper and J. Caumont, ibid. p.293.

9. Kiesler used a photomontage technique in combination with double exposure of the film in order to achieve, in a sort of ghostly effect, a vision of the Large Glass superimposed to a wall of Duchamp´s studio.

10. See the notes to the triptych in View (ed. Charles Henri Ford), vol. 5, no. 1, March 1945 (Marcel Duchamp number).

Figs. 1, 3, 5-6
©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

Über die Marcel Duchamp-Rezeption in Mittel- und Osteuropa ist bisher wenig bekannt. Die sich seit Glasnost grundlegend veränderten gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse ermöglichen es nun, sich diesem Thema unkomplizierter zuzuwenden. Die 1996 im Staatlichen Museum Schwerin gezeigte Ausstellung Mail Art–Osteuropa im internationalen Netzwerk ließ auf Projekte und Künstler aufmerksam werden, die sich nachweislich mit Duchamp auseinander setzten. Darüber hinaus wurde das Netzwerk der Mail Art auch für Diskussionen und Auseinandersetzungen mit der von Duchamp vertretenen künstlerischen Position genutzt. Für Künstler aus Mittel- und Osteuropa wurde dieses Netzwerk zum wichtigen Kommunikationsmedium, da es trotz der Systemgrenzen die Möglichkeit bot, am internationalen Kunstgeschehen zu partizipieren und in einen weltweiten künstlerischen Austausch zu treten. Mit der Gründung eines Schweriner Mail Art-Archivs setzte eine Forschungsarbeit ein, die sich auch speziell mit der Marcel Duchamp-Rezeption im Netzwerk der Mail Art und darüber hinaus in Mittel- und Osteuropa beschäftigt. Zumal Marcel Duchamp als geistiger Anreger für die Mail Art gilt. Das Interview mit dem russischen Künstler Serge Segay versteht sich als ein erster Schritt, den durch die Ausstellung vermittelten Hinweisen nachzugehen. Die Forschungsarbeit zu diesem Thema steht noch am Anfang, so dass weiterführende Informationen dankend entgegengenommen werden. Bei Rea Nikonova und Sege Segay handelt es sich um zwei Künstler, die einen wichtigen Teil ihrer Arbeit darin sahen, Publikationen zur klassischen russischen Avantgarde in hand- und maschinenschriftlichen Texten, mit Fotografien, Collagen und Zeichnungen herauszugeben. Rea Nikonova, die 1942 in Eysk geboren wurde und Regie studierte, arbeitet im Bereich von Performance, Sound Poetry und Mail Art. Sie gründete 1965 die Zeitschrift Nomer, die sie ab 1968 gemeinsam mit ihrem Mann Serge Segay veröffentlichte. Serge Segay, 1947 in Murmansk geboren, beschäftigt sich als Kunsthistoriker und Künstler mit lettristischer und akustischer Poesie, Performance und Mail Art. Von 1979 bis 1986 gaben er und Rea Nikonova die Zeitschrift Transponans heraus. Neben den eigenen Werken publizierten sie darin regelmäßig Arbeiten von Neo-Futuristen und von Vertretern der Moskauer und Leningrader Postavantgarde. Diese Zeitschrift fungierte als Kommunikationsplattform, die auf eine Vernetzung der in diesem Bereich tätigen Künstler zielte. Im Jahr 1983 gründeten Rea Nikonova und Serge Segay gemeinsam mit Boris Konstriktor und anderen die Gruppe der Transfuturisten. In Eysk organisierten sie zahlreiche Ausstellungen vor allem im Bereich der Mail Art und der visuellen Poesie. Das Archiv des Staatlichen Museums Schwerin verfügt sowohl über Arbeiten der Künstler als auch über Plakate von den in ihrem Heimatort gezeigten Ausstellungen. Heute leben und arbeiten beide in Kiel (Deutschland). Ihr Archiv befindet sich in der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa an der Universität Bremen. Werke von ihnen lassen sich auch im Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami Beach, Florida finden. Beide Künstler beteiligten sich 1996 an der Ausstellung Mail Art–Osteuropa im internationalen Netzwerk in Schwerin, 1998 an Präprintium. Moskauer Bücher aus dem Samizdat im Neuen Museum Weserburg Bremen und im Jahr 2000 an Samizdat. Alternative Kultur in Zentral- und Osteuropa: Die 60er bis 80er Jahre in der Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

Interview mit Serge Segay (S. S.), geführt von Kornelia Röder (K. R.), Dezember 2002:

K. R.: Welche Rolle spielte Marcel Duchamp in Ihrer künstlerischen Arbeit?

click to enlarge


Abb. 1

Abb. 2
Marcel Duchamp,
L.H.O.O.Q., 1919

S. S.: Marcel Duchamp hatte eine große Bedeutung für mich, als ich ganz jung war und wie alle frühzeitig erwachsen gewordenen Kinder die Welt der Avantgarde für mich entdeckte. Es waren die sechziger Jahre, ich war 14-15 Jahre und versuchte, nachdem ich mir Informationen beschafft hatte, im gleichen Maße die malerische Plastik von Cézanne, die Deformationen von Picasso, den französischen Tachismus und … Giocondas Schnurrbart von Duchamp in eigenen Werken umzusetzenumzusetzen (Abb. 1 und 2).Diese merkwürdige Einflussmischung entwöhnte mich des „richtigen“ Malens–die allgemein anerkannten Fähigkeiten hierzu besaß ich von klein auf –und zwang mich, über einen eigenen Beitrag zur existierenden Kunst nachzudenken. Wenn es möglich ist, der Gioconda einen Schnurrbart anzumalen, dann müsste man auch jede Form zu jedem fremden Kunstwerk hinzufügen können. Erstmals ahmte ich den Schnurrbart von Duchamp 1962 nach und später, Anfang der siebziger Jahre, schuf ich eine Reihe von „abgeküssten“ Reproduktionen nach Cranach und Dürer. „Die Küsse“ waren zwar nicht echt (ich begriff zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch nicht, dass man einen richtigen Lippenstift und eigene Lippen statt traditioneller Farben und das Zubehör eines Kunstmalers verwenden kann), nur künstlerische Imitationen, angeblich die Lippenspuren. Im Weiteren wiederholte ich den Schnurrbart 1972, 1983 und sogar 2000.1983 entstand mein Bild Hommage à Duchamp, in dem ich ein reales Rad benutzte, aber von einem Kinderfahrrad(Abb. 3 und 4).Wahrscheinlich war es eine Art Antwort auf Duchamp. Das Kindesalter der Frühavantgarde fand für mich in diesem Jahr sein Ende. Ich müsste lügen, wenn ich sagen würde, dass ich mich nur auf diese Memoiren beschränkt hätte. Wesentlich öfter, als in meiner Malerei, verwendete ich „das Prinzip des Schnurrbarts“ in meinen dichterischen Werken. Seit 1962 fügte ich klassischen Gedichten anderer Dichter eigene abstrakte Refrains hinzu. Diesem, von meiner Hand ausgeführten Los entgingen weder die altgriechische Sappho noch der Franzose Jean Cocteau und auch nicht der durchschnittliche Puschkin, der allgemein in Russland beliebt ist. Ich übersetzte sogar einige Wortspiele von Duchamp aus dem Französischen ins Russische (Abb. 5)weswegen er sich wahrscheinlich mehrmals im Grabe umgedreht hätte. Bei diesen Experimenten half mir das Wissen über John Cage, der das Klavier „präparierte“ (ein fremdes Werk), die Wiener Gruppe und die Fluxus-Künstler , die es zersägten. Nicht wenig Denkanstöße zur Enträtselung der Buchstaben L.H.O.O.Q. gab mir Sigmund Freuds Buch Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci, herausgegeben 1912 in russischer Sprache in Moskau.

click images to enlarge

• 
• ‘
• 

• Abb. 3
  Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913
• Abb. 4
  Serge Segay: Hommage à Duchamp, 1982 Holz, Karton, Rad, Öl
• Abb. 5
  Segay Segay: Poem Textpassage aus Written rotten/Morceaux moisis von Marcel Duchamp ins Russische übersetzt

K. R.: Wann haben Sie das Werk des Künstlers für sich entdeckt?
S. S.: Tatsächlich wusste ich bereits 1962 von Marcel Duchamp, von seiner Teilnahme am Dadaismus und von seiner Lieblingsbeschäftigung, dem Schachspielen! Während mir der Film von Man Ray nur aus Beschreibungen der dicken Kinematographiegeschichte bekannt war, führte die Interpretation des Schachspiels im Gedicht Das große Lalula von Christian Morgenstern zur Annahme, dass etwas mehr dahinter steckt. Aus diesem Grund entstand in einigen meiner Bilder ein „Schachhintergrund“.

K. R.: Was interessierte Sie an Duchamp?
S. S.: Ich war immer von der Fähigkeit westlicher Künstler und Dichter angetan, reiche Frauen zu heiraten, um unverschämt eigenen künstlerischen Vergnügungen und Vorlieben nachgehen zu können. Eine dieser Vorlieben von Duchamp bestand in der Auswahl von reproduzierten Bildern von David Burliuk für ein Buch, das Katherine Dreier über ihn schrieb. Einen erstaunlichen Wendepunkt sah ich darin, dass Duchamp die ihm im wesentlichen (angeblich!) recht fremde primitivistische Art von Burliuk akzeptierte, indem er wirklich die besten Arbeiten auswählte.

K. R.: Gab es Möglichkeiten, sich in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion über Duchamp zu informieren?
S. S.: In der Sowjetunion war Duchamp kein unbekanntes Terrain. In meiner Jugend verweilte ich oft in den riesengroßen Bibliotheken in Wologda, Rostow am Don und Leningrad. Dort war es leicht, jede Ausgabe der 10er und 20er Jahre zu bekommen; schon 1923 wurde im Magazin Moderner Westen alles über den Dadaismus veröffentlicht–diese Ausgabe des Magazins kannte ich 1963 fast auswendig (die Gedichte von Picabia, Tzara und Manifeste in russischer Übersetzung). 1968 habe ich das Buch von Hans Richter Dada – Art und Anti-Art gelesen, das zu der Zeit gerade in London erschienen war. Auch dort wurde über Duchamp ausreichend berichtet. In der UdSSR konnte man auch die französische Zeitschrift Moderne Architektur in russischer Übersetzung abonnieren. Dort wurde ein vorzügliches Manifest von Friedrich Hundertwasser veröffentlicht. Damals war dieser Künstler noch nicht so kommerziell. Er rief alle Künstler auf, die Umwelt zu verändern, indem man seine Handflächenspuren auf allen Gebäuden, Autos und schließlich auch auf Denkmälern hinterlässt. Mir wurde klar, dass das „Prinzip des Schnurrbartes“ nicht nur mich beschäftigte. Auch heute existiert diese Idee (z.B. in den neuesten Ausstellungen zu Iconoclast), obwohl sie nicht mehr neu ist.

K.R.: Gab es Diskussionen in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion über die von Duchamp vertretene
künstlerische Position sowohl unter Künstlern als auch offiziell?

S. S.: Ich gehörte in der Sowjetunion nie zu den offiziellen Künstlern und habe mich nicht sonderlich für deren Diskussionen interessiert. Aber Duchamps Position war mehrmals ein Diskussionsthema in zwei Samizdat Zeitschriften, an denen auch ich beteiligt war. Die erste Ausgabe von Nomer enthielt die Theorie „Addition der Form“. Rea Nikonova, Valerij Dijatschenko und ich haben eine Menge graphischer Arbeiten, Collagen und theoretischer Artikel dem „Transponierungsprinzips“–unserer Hauptidee, basierend auf der Hinzufügung des Schnurrbarts durch Duchamp–gewidmet. In einer anderen Zeitschrift mit dem Titel Transponance ⁽¹⁾ wurden unter anderem spezielle Materialien über das „Konzeptuelle Ready-made“ veröffentlichet ⁽²⁾

K.R.: Sind Ihnen Ausstellungen seiner Werke in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion bekannt?

S.S.: Ausstellungen mit Werken von Marcel Duchamp gab es in der Sowjetunion nicht, aber Kataloge und Bücher über ihn waren im Antiquariatsbuchhandel in Moskau erhältlich. Es brachte immer jemand etwas für den Verkauf aus dem Ausland mit.

K.R.: Spielte das Netzwerk der Mail Art in dieser Beziehung eine Rolle?

click images to enlarge

• Abb. 6
  Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
• Abb.7
  Serge Segay: one R. Mutt equates one 1917,getöntes Papier, Poem aus der Serie Name poems, 1989

S. S.: Mit Mail Art begannen Rea Nikonova und ich Ende 1985 oder Anfang 1986. Zu dieser Zeit wussten wir alles, was für uns wichtig war. Aber dank einiger Mail Art-Projekte erfuhren wir, dass es auch in der westlichen Welt viele Künstler gibt, für die Duchamps Gedanken genauso wichtig sind wie für uns. 1988 habe ich damit angefangen, eine graphische Darstellung zu verschicken, die aus der Signatur R. Mutt, 1917 bestand, mit der Duchamp sein Pissoir bezeichnet hatte (Abb. 6 und 7). Diese kleine Aktion führte zu einem überraschenden Ergebnis: An meine Adresse wurden Briefe und Päckchen geschickt, die an diesen R. Mutt adressiert waren. In meinem Archiv befinden sich noch einige davon.

K.R.: Beteiligten Sie sich 1987 an dem Projekt In the Spirit of Marcel Duchamp
von György Galántai (Artpool, Budapest)?

S.S.:Es gab einige Projekte zu Ehren von Duchamp. Eins der interessantesten für uns beide war das Projekt Mona Lisa (Gioconda) des polnischen Mailartisten Thomas Schulz, denn gerade Duchamp aktualisierte im 20. Jahrhundert dieses Werk von Leonardo. Für dieses Projekt gestaltete Rea Nikonova mehr als 50 Blätter. Einige Werke von ihr und von mir wurden später veröffentlicht. Ein anderes interessantes Projekt war der von Pascal Lenoir periodisch herausgegebene Katalog The secret life of M. Duchamp⁽³⁾. Das Projekt von Artpool fand viel später statt und erweckte nicht mehr unser Interesse.

K. R.: Worin liegt Ihrer Meinung nach die Aktualität Duchamps?

S.S.: In der Kunst existierten immer unterschiedliche Tendenzen, aber selbst gegenseitig ausschließende künstlerische Ideen können nicht ohne einander existieren. Die Sterilität und die Frakturlosigkeit von Duchamps Hauptwerken stehen in vollem Widerspruch zur Hauptidee der Kunst z. B. von Kasimir Malewitsch. Aber sowohl heute als auch in Zukunft kann man weder auf Malewitschs noch auf Duchamps Kunstvorstellungen verzichten. Es geht nicht darum, sich für den einen oder den andern zu entscheiden. Es ist aus meiner Sicht notwendiger, den allgemein anerkannten Werten und Normen der Gesellschaft zu widersprechen und die Vorgänger zu leugnen mit einer größeren Intensität, als es diesen gelang, Neuerungen in ihrer Zeit zu etablieren. Eine einfache Nachahmung oder das Im-Fahrwasser-segeln dient nicht der Kunst von morgen. Duchamp gelang es mit seinem „Schnurrbartprinzip“ das zu zeigen, was sich zur Zeit offenbart: Jeder neue Künstler „fügt“ bloß etwas zu dem bereits Geschaffenen „hinzu“.

click images to enlarge

• Abb. 8
  Serge Segay, Poem
  aus der Serie Monamanie
  , 1987 Chinatusche,
  Frottage
• Abb. 9
  Serge Segay, Poem
  aus der Serie Monamania
  , 1987 Seite aus:
  Theaftertomorrow:
  International Container
  of Art Interventions
  Manta Edizioni Colombo,
  1991
• Abb. 10
  Serge Segay:
  Quotations,
  1996 Collage
  and Frottage

Literaturhinweise:

Chuck Welch, Eternal Network. A Mail Art Anthology, Calgary 1995, pp. 95ff.
Welch, Eternal Network. A Mail Art Anthology, Calgary 1995, pp. 95ff.

Mail Art–Osteuropa im internationalen Netzwerk, Ausstellungskatalog, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe (hrsg.), bearbeitet von Kornelia Röder, Guy Schraenen, Staatliches Museum Schwerin 1996, S. 69-75, 256ff.

Präprintium. Moskauer Bücher aus dem Samizdat, Günter Hirt, Sascha Wonders (Hrsg.), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ausstellungskataloge, Neue Folge 28, Dokumentationen zur Kultur und Gesellschaft im östlichen Europa, Forschungsstelle Osteuropa an der Universität Bremen, Band 5, Edition Temmen, Bremen 1998, S. 125-131

Samizdat. Alternative Kultur in Zentral- und Osteuropa: Die 60er bis 80er Jahre, Wolfgang Eichwede (Hrsg.), Dokumentationen zur Kultur und Gesellschaft im östlichen Europa, Band 8, Forschungsstelle Osteuropa an der Universität Bremen, S. 315ff.

Inna Tigountsova, Handmade books and visual Poems of Serge Segay. A Russian „Transfuturist“, Canadian-American Slavic Studies 36, No. 4, Winter 2002, Offprint

(Zu einer der bedeutendsten Sammlungen konkreter und visueller Poseie in den USA, siehe das Sackner Archiv unterwww.rediscov.com/sackner.htm)

Notes

1. Anm. Einige Ausgaben sind in der HA Osteuropa Bremen; im Archiv von N. Hardschijew im Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam und 20 Ausgaben im Archiv von Marvin Sackner in Miami Florida, USA, vorhanden.

2.Verw. R. Kostelanetz, A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, New York, Schrimer Books, 2000, p.p. 618-619

3. Einige Ausgaben erhielt das Mail Art-Archiv Schwerin in diesem Jahr als Schenkung von Pascal Lenoir.

Figs. 1,3,6
©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All
rights reserved.

On the afternoon of October 5, 1986, works exhibited in the “Xiaman Dada” exhibition at The Cultural Palace of Xiamen, the coastal province in southern China, were set on fire, turning to ashes by a sheer breathe of the autumn breeze. “The show no longer exists,” proclaimed the initiator of the group, Huang Yong Ping, in the accompanying statement commenting upon the burning event that day. “The way one treats one’s work of art marks the degree to which the artist is willing to liberate himself… even undergoing an irrational process.” Huang Yong Ping intended to undermine the importance artists place on the value of their works throughout the entire history of Chinese Art.

Among the first generation of avant-garde artists active in the 1980s, Huang Yong Ping, like his fellow artists of the same generation, seeks to demolish the tyranny of the doctrine of Social-realism by promoting free expression. He has lived and worked in Paris since participating in the “Les Magiciens de la Terre” exhibition at the Paris Museé National d’Art Moderne de Centre Georges Pompidou” in 1989. He regularly participates in international exhibitions, including “Hommages à Marcel Duchamp” at the Ecole Régionale des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France, in 1994; the “Hugo Boss Prize 1998” at The Guggenheim Museum of New York; “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” at the PS1 and Asia Society Galleries, New York; the installation project for the French Pavilion in 1999 Venice Biennale.

In recent decades, Chinese artists have emerged on the international art scene generating interest and engaging in a multicultural dialogue regarding the re-thinking of meaning as well as that of the global structure. In the case of Huang Yong Ping, he takes Duchamp as one of the strategic elements–as sign–aiming at deconstructing art and traditional value for the new. His approach is a negation process deriving from ancient Chinese philosophy by connecting Dada with Zen–borrowing Duchamp to go against Duchamp–for the re-thinking of text. From my interview with Huang, the acknowledged impact of Duchamp on the conceptual development of his art enables us to speculate on the range of issues the artist has tackled throughout the chronological and geographic changes of his life. By means of Huang’s cross-cultural and cross-historical approach, in the end, the aesthetic impact we experience from his works eventually validates the hybridity of cause and effect. The linear perception of historical determinism no longer qualifies as the single answer to homogeneity and difference in our environment.

Rewriting example 1:
When you have no cane, I will take it away.
When you have one, I will give you one.– Zen Buddhism⁽¹⁾
TF: Being an active member of the Avant-garde Art Movement during the mid-1980s [a.k.a. the “85 Movement”] and the leader of the ‘Xiaman Dada’ group, please outline this influential movement, and its contribution to the overall development of contemporary art in China?

HYP: Looking back at the ’85 Mei-Shu (Art) Movement,’ it was more like the ‘Peasants’ Reform.’ As I graduated from the Fine Art Academy of Zhejiang, and was deployed back to my hometown, Xiaman, to teach art, I was already seen as member of the rebellion. At that time, many revolts had begun impulsively throughout the nation. This countrywide phenomenon generated all sorts of liberations and dynamics among various circles. More importantly, it was a group of young editors of art journals in Beijing, Wuhan, and Nanjing which introduced these personal and underground acts to the general public and the society. In the long run, these connections disseminated and caused the pivotal effect.

TF: What would be the goal and meaning of this movement to the history of art in China? And, its association with the Western Avant-Garde?

HYP: The meaning of this fractal history would be that it had surpassed the boundary of Social-realism in the society, awakening a sense of individual vitality among the young generations. And then, we expect to associate this vitality with Western Avant-Garde, although this association seems somewhat abstract, however superficial. In other words, the movement is to include China’s contemporary art into a grand background of the “Globalization,” rather than just self-murmuring in the given political rhetoric.

TF: Under what circumstance did you first learn of Marcel Duchamp? And to what extent has he influenced your aesthetic concerns?

HYP: Back then China did not have any publication on Marcel Duchamp at all. I learned about him through any materials that I could possibly acquire. The most influential book to me is the Chinese edition of Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp by Pierre Cabanne, published either in Taiwan or Hong-Kong. I borrowed the book from the library, and made copies to circulate among my fellow friends. I even carried the copy with me when I had to leave the country in 1989. In 1994, this copy became an essential part of my installation work (to be mentioned below). What interests me about Duchamp are the qualities, such as the ambiguity of languages (his use of puns), the ability to transform a stone into gold (alchemy), and his hermetic life style. It is also very Eastern. Yet, when I was drawn into his art in the beginning; I was also against him. In 1988, I wrote an essay entitled “Duchamp Stripped Bare by People, Even: Rewriting Case 5, or Duchamp Phenomenon Study.” I thought that such a study was a pure joke on theories, without any substantial quality except gesture and rhetoric. As a matter of fact, the more one is attempting to study, the more ridiculous one will become.
TF: In 1986, you brought the ‘Xiaman Dada’ into public attention. By definition, how does the concept of “Dada” derive, and differ from that of the Western context?

HYP: There is seventy years separating 1916 and 1987. It is in no way to evaluate history of Western Art and that of China in a parallel or linear way. In 1986, when I initiated Dada in Xiaman, I meant to pinpoint the “85 Mei-Shu Movement.” I felt responsible of imposing the “non-,” or “anti-” conception, in order to promote a kind of skeptical and critical attitude. I didn’t appropriate “Dada” in a strict sense. To be honest, I was not interested in those artists who were labeled as Dadaists except Duchamp. As an alternative, I would rather like to include Yves Klein, John Cage, and Joseph Beuys into this category which I identify as “Dada is Zen, Zen is Dada.” You can also refer to two papers I wrote during the period–“Xiaman Dada: A Form of Post-modernism,” and “Pointing to the Complete Void: Dada and Zen.”

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Huang Yong Ping,
Big Roulette, 1987

Figure 2
Huang Yong Ping,
Small Portable
Roulette, 1987

TF: The Roulette Series (1986-88) (Figs.1 & 2) has obvious allusions to Duchamp as you take on the roulette wheel to construct “Non-expressive painting” by chance. Although the approach and concept are undoubtedly Duchampian, you adopted I-Ching to design the rules for the game. It turned out to be the key to the entire creative process through which a different thinking is given. Duchamp negates the retinal effect of the visual aspect; you appropriated the roulette wheel to replace the artist’s hand for non-expressive painting. In reality, the abstraction of the resulted painting is self-evident, albeit it is the end product of the artist’s indifferent act. Are contradiction and irony part of your intentions, or more of a surprising effect?

HYP: Yes, completed by turning the roulette wheel to determine the color, strokeand its pictorial arrangement (Fig. 3), Non-Expressive Painting (Fig. 4) at first glance indeed resembles abstract expression, so to speak. It is not only self-contradictory but also ironic, almost ridiculous. I carefully arranged a network of conventions, excluding psychological impulse. Turning the wheel entirely based on the pre-designed mechanism, as if a student imitates from the given materials. As a result, the painting appeared to be automatic, and impulsive. It is perfectly proving my original thinking–the painting as the consequential entity in its own right is divorced from the initial intention of the author, and does not necessarily have direct association with it.

click images to enlarge

• 
  Figure 3
  Photograph of Huang Yong Ping turning the Roulette
  for Non-Expressive Painting
• 
  Figure 4
  Huang Yong Ping, Non-Expressive Painting, 1988

YLC: You also made Repacking Catalogue: It is Most Easy to Set a Beard on Fire (1986-87). (Fig. 5) Borrowing a concept in which Dechamp appropriates works by masters from the history of art, Repacking Catalogue seems to be the counterpart of L.H.O.O.Q. (Fig. 6).

click images to enlarge

• 
  Figure 5
  Huang Yong Ping,
  Self-Portrait?
  da Vince? or Mona
  Lisa?, 1986-87
• 
  Figure 6
  Marcel Duchamp,
  L.H.O.O.Q., 1919

HYP:In the mid-1980s, it was impossible to find a Duchamp catalogue in China. Nevertheless, catalogues by masters from the classical era are everywhere. There are four or five similar works in the Repacking Catalogue series. After finishing Set a Beard on Fire, I said, “You see, da Vinci is still perfectly relaxed even his beard has caught fire.” Accidentally, I placed the cheap publication against the light. The images on both sides of the catalogue overlapped–the image of da Vinci’s Self-Portrait overlapped with that of the Mona Lisa on the opposite page. After the painting is finished, friends discovered that “It looks just like you.” Thus, I titled the work as Self-Portrait? da Vinci or Mona Lisa?

TF: You began the Dust Collecting Project in 1987. (Figs. 7 & 8) What is the content, process and the result of this particular project?

click images to enlarge

• 
  Figure 7
  Huang Yong Ping, Dust Collecting
  Project, 1987
• 
  Figure 8
  Huang Yong Ping,
  Dust Collecting Project, 1987

HYP: There are four pieces in the Dust Collecting Project series: the first one is the white canvas collecting greasy dirt and dust on the kitchen stove; the second is a roll of white paper pulled out from a self-made wooden box letting dust fall through time; the third piece is a canvas receiving dust from trimmed pencils by students in my drawing class at a high school where I used to teach; the last one is a glass bottle collecting dirt from the cleaning ritual at New Year’s Eve. The last two are missing. They are supplementary to our daily life, not worth to pay special attention to.
TF:What was the reaction from the official and the public to the “Xiaman Dada” exhibition?

HYP: “Xiaman Dada” events did not attract huge crowds. During 1986 and 87, social climates in China kept changing recklessly. When we set the works on fire in the 1986 “Xiaman Dada” exhibit in front of the Cultural Palace of Xiaman, China, only some forty to fifty people participated. The “Event” exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art of Fujian lasted only two hours before it was being forced to shut down. However, albeit these uprisings happened only in small circles in the beginning, they were able to disseminate out eventually.

Rewriting example 4:
Art is dead, yet it is still happening;
art is happening, but it is dead. – Anonymous⁽²⁾

TF: Before leaving China, the inspiration from Dada is a kind of resonance from a distance (historically, culturally, and socially). Just out of curiosity, has the geographic and cultural relocation ever affected your reading of Duchamp?
HYP: I think what you mean is if in fact it is distance that evokes resonance; the change of distance would in turn create alienation. This perhaps relates with what I used to mention in 1991–the strategy of “Using the East to fight the West; Using the West to fight the East.”

TF: From 1997 to 1998, you finished Thousand Armed Buddha and The Saint Leaned from a Spider to Weave a Cobweb. Before we talk about these works, have you also made any work inspired by Duchamp before 1997?
before 1997?

click images to enlarge

• 
  Figure 9
  Claude Yutault,
  Movable Chess
  Board, 1985
  
• 
  Figure 10
  Huang Yong Ping,
  Water Jar, 1992
  
• 
  Figure 11
  Huang Yong Ping,
  Water Jar, 1992
  

click to enlarge

Figure 12
Huang Yong Ping,
108 Answers,
1993 (the 10th, 65th,
74th, 58th, and
59th Answers)

HYP: After 1989, there are several works associated with him. As a result of the geographical change, my reading approach has shifted as well. In 1992, Jean-Hubert Martin (the curator for the 1989 exhibition “Magician of the Earth”) organized the “Résistance” exhibition at the WATARI-UM Museum in Japan. Four artists took part in this show, including Duchamp’s Chess Board, Green Box, and Coatrack. Behind the wall where displays of Duchamp’s Chess Board, the French artist Claude Yutault installed his Movable Chess Board of 1985 (Fig. 9). I presented a giant tank filled with water on top of the Movable Chess Board in a wide-opened courtyard. I intended to imply the scene in which Marcel Duchamp and May Ray played chess and then were washed away by water in 1942 (Figs. 10 & 11). It has to do with the “Food Chain” between artists and their works. In the 108 Answers of 1993(Fig.12), I incorporated six components from works by Duchamp, such as hair, a comb, a lock, a lamp, a urinal, and dust, with a well-known book of Chinese herbal medicines, P’en-Ts’ao Kang-Mu, by Li Shin-Chen (1590-96) from the Ming Dynasty. I attempt to tackle the possible interpretation of substance in different cultures and eras. In the Trois Pas – Neuf Traces project of 1993 at Ateliers d’Artistes de la Ville de Marseille, France, Duchamp’s Torture-Morte (1959) is transformed into The Foot of Christ (Figs. 13, 14, 15, 16).
click images to enlarge

• Figure 13
  Huang Yong Ping,
  Drawing and Study for
  Trois Pas – Neuf
  Traces, 1995
• Figure 14
  Huang Yong Ping,
  Floor plan for Trois
  Pas – Neuf Traces, 1996

• Figure 15
  Huang Yong Ping, Trois
  Pas – Neuf Traces, 1995
  (Installation view)
• Figure 16
  Huang Yong Ping, Trois Pas –
  Neuf Traces, 1995
  (Installation view)

click to enlarge

Figure 17
Huang Yong Ping,
Thousand Armed
Buddha, 1997

TF: You installed a giant bottle dryer with various objects of our daily life attaching to the end of the racks in the “Muenster Installation Project” of 1997. Through the outsized form and dancing objects, the relation between the signifier and the signified becomes evident. First of all, why the title Thousand Armed Buddha (Fig.17)Any indication in terms of the selection of the hanging objects?
HYP: Bottlerack is commonly perceived as “erotica” in terms of the protruding rack, as if it is an invitation for the bottle opening. I borrow this original meaning, if any, and transform the object into an Eastern Thousand Armed Buddha. Fifty “arms” grasp fifty objects on the enlarged bottlerack. Some are symbolic objects deriving from Buddhism, such as a steel bowl, a Goddess of Mercy bottle, a small pagoda, a spiral sea shell, a lotus flower, a snake, etc. Others are our daily objects incongruent with religious context, including a broom, a feather duster, and a cane. Hence, the indifference and estrangement of the ready-made is disenchanted and concealed by multiple symbols. This sculpture juxtaposes contexts of two cultural backgrounds, allowing them to correct each other.
TF: In 1917, the Blind Man journal published an article entitled “Buddha of the Bathroom” after Duchamp’s Fountain was rejected by the jury of the Society of the Independent Artists, commenting upon the irony of the event. It is intriguing you also take on Buddha as an East-meets-West connection.
HYP: I am not sure about the association between Fountain and Buddha. If in fact there is a formal similarity between Fountain and Bottlerack, it must be the narrow-to-wide shape from top to bottom, resembling a “seated Buddha.” Therefore, if Fountain transforms into a meditating Buddha, then Bottlerack is naturally a “Thousand Armed Buddha.”

click to enlarge

Figure 18
Huang Yong Ping,
The Saint Learned from
a Spider to Weave a Cobweb, 1994

Figure 19
Huang Yong Ping,
The Saint Learned
from a Spider to Weave
a Cobweb, 1994

TF: Can you describe The Saint Learns from a Spider to Weave a Cobweb (1998) (Fig. 18)? It is said that when you were in the process of installing, it reminded you of Duchamp as well, especially the projected shadow, and the hanging approach?
HYP: The title, The Saint Learned from a Spider to Weave a Cobweb, derived from the wisdom of a Taoist philosopher. In 1994, I had created a work bearing the same title for The “Hommages à Marcel Duchamp” exhibition organized by the Fine Art Academy of Rouen. It has a direct association with Marcel Duchamp. A live spider crawls slowly on a transparent glass panel, on the bottom of a lampshade-like bamboo cage. The Moving shadow of the spider is projected on a photocopy of Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp I placed on the table directly beneath the bamboo cage (Fig. 19)–is the spider reading? In the meantime, the spider shadow resembles a two-dimensional projection of the three-dimensional hatrack! I also used the same title for the 1997 project at the Galerie Beaumont Iro, Luxembourg, with some changes. Instead of the live spider, in a giant vertical cobweb the projected shadow of a coatrack is transformed into a multiple-armed chair. The chair in the center returned to the traditional Master Armchair in the 1998 version of the same work in New York.

Notes

1.Cited from Huang Yong Ping, “Duchamp Stripped Bare by People, Even: Rewriting Case 5, or Duchamp Phenomenon Study,” 1988.

2. Cited from Huang Yong Ping, “Duchamp Stripped Bare by People, Even: Rewriting Case 5, or Duchamp Phenomenon Study,” 1988.

SSome months before his death, Duchamp produced a series of nine etchings dedicated to the theme of Lovers (Figs. 1 and 2) Aside from their erotic content, these nine etchings are alike in that they mark a return to “figurative” art, they are directly linked to Étant Donnés(through at least one among them, Le Bec Auer), and finally, they are copies in the style of older masters.

click on images to enlarge

• 
  Figure 1
  Marcel Duchamp
  Selected Details after Courbet, 1968.
• 
  Figure 2
  Marcel Duchamp
  Selected Details after Ingres I, 1968.

click to enlarge

Figure 3
Auguste RodinDrawing for
The Torture Garden, 1899.

The chosen models, Cranach, Ingres, Courbet, Rodin, are clearly artists to whom women and eroticism, as with Duchamp, played an crucial, if not determinant, role. A singular, intoxicating, cerebral eroticism, at times obsessive. To treat only the example of Rodin, it could be said that many of his sculptures–particularly Iris, Messenger of the Gods–are built around female genitals, or are sculptures of female genitals, just as ÉtantDonnés, with its perspectivist game and its illumination, is organized entirely around the genitals of a supine woman. What is more, in consulting certain Rodin drawings, one cannot help but notice their direct resemblance to the preparatory drawing of the Étant Donnés nude. Another pertinent example is drawing MR 5714 from the illustrations for Pierre Louÿs’ Bilitis or, more precisely still, drawing MR 4967 from the illustrations for Octave Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden (Fig. 3). Of the same illustrations, the drawings of these various titles merit further mention: “Buisson ardent,” “Flamme,” “Feu follet” (MR 4034)…
tranger still is the case of Courbet. The engraving is a “selected detail,” done in the style ofWoman with White Stockings, which now belongs to the Barnes Foundation in Merion/Pennsylvania. Duchamp, playing on words, adds a faucon ⁽¹⁾to it to trick us, his frustrated viewers, in keeping with Apollinaire’s address to the absent Lou:
Il me faudrait un petit noc
Car j’ai faim d’amour comme un ogre
Et je ne trouve qu’un faucon. ⁽²⁾

Arturo Schwartz is equally justified in directly relating this engraving to the highly provocative pose of the Étant Donnés nude. Guided by this interpretation, we should not hesitate to see in Étant Donnés a “collage” of two references drawn from two of Courbet’s works (Fig. 4) – just as the etching Selected Details after Ingres, # 1, is a combination of references drawn from two Ingres paintings. For one thing, the raised pose of the left arm recalls that of Woman Holding a Parrot (Fig. 5), a painting Duchamp could not have missed seeing in New York at the Metropolitan Museum. In addition and more importantly, the overall position of the body, the spread legs, cropped and separated from the head-the sort we tend to see, like pornographic graffiti, as sexual symbols, merely genitals and breasts, all the more provocative because they are anonymous-recall very distinctly the Courbet painting entitled The Origin of the World (Fig. 6).

It is possible here that Duchamp mocks Courbet’s penchant for painting feathers, hair, and fleece, both by the wig that he had wanted “from a dirty blond” ⁽³⁾ and by the hairless genitals. One may wonder why Duchamp, at the end of his life, felt the need to pay this sort of homage, albeit ironically,
to the “retinal” painter par excellance, and who, it is said, was no great intellect, and could be included in the category of painters who were paragons of the stupidity that Duchamp shunned.

Courbet gave many definitions to realism in art, such as “What my eyes see.” Particularly relevant here is this declaration that confines painting to the domain of visible things: “Anabstract, invisible object is not painting’s domain.” (from an 1861 letter) As it happens, precisely what Duchamp, from his youth, had endeavored to do was to turn away from such naturalism, leading the way toward what he once called “metarealism.⁽⁴⁾“

The Large Glass, which for many years had been his attempt to attain this “metarealism,” to portray this “abstract, invisible object,” is the appearance in a three-dimensional world of a nude young woman belonging to the four-dimensional realm…

Étant Donnés, with the weighty signification of a geometry problem, seems ironically to lead us to the solid ground of visible reality.

It unfolds before the eye-or rather before both eyes – in the depth of the three-dimensional space that the realist Courbet was satisfied to offer on the two-dimensional surface of a canvas. Realism pushed to the limit? Realism pushed to the absurd? And does the assemblage in Philadelphia herald, finally, as other aspects of the work heralded Pop Art or conceptual Art, the hyperrealist sculpture of a De Andrea or a Duane Hanson? It is something else altogether. These visible things (resorting to the Courbetian designation of “What my eyes see”) are affected by an additional, heightened visibility. The light is bit too intense, the flesh a bit too grainy.⁽⁵⁾

And this hint of abberation calls the “réalisme” of the entire scene into question.

The Bride is certainly there, surrounded by mechanisms now made visible. Finally, the appearance of what, in the Glass, remained hidden: the waterfall and the illuminating gas. She, herself, remains, with a sudden and strange reversal in appearance, something like the finger of a glove turned inside-out. In the Glass, she appears disembowelled, a mass of indistinct organs, an inside without an outside, entrails without skin-she conforms in this way to what theoreticians of the fourth dimension-Poincaré and Pawlowski-imagine in terms of the way our bodies would be seen by four-dimensional observers. On the other hand, in Étant Donnés, she appears as an exterior without an interior, an empty carcass, a hollow mold, a shell, an illusion.
Is this to say that she lacks insides? No, they exist. She has organs, organs that mark her as a sexual being: these are the four erotic sculptures, from Not a Shoe (Fig. 7) to Wedge of Chastity, which preceded her development, and which are, literally, the contents that correspond to her void (Fig. 8).
click on images to enlarge

• 
  Figure 7
  Marcel Duchamp
  Not a Shoe, 1950.
• 
  Figure 8
  MarcelDuchamp
  Wedge of Chastity, 1954.

If the Female Fig Leaf (Fig. 9) is, as the evidence indicates, the imprint of a female groin, it is easy enough to imagine that Not a Shoe is a more limited but deeper imprint, literally stated, the impression of a vulva. And Dart-Object (Fig. 10), far from being a phallic extravagance, as Arturo Schwarz suggests, is an impression still more limited, intimate, and profound, of a decidedly feminine organ. ⁽⁶⁾

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• 
  Figure 9
  Marcel Duchamp
  Female Fig Leaf, 1950.
• 
  Figure 10
  Marcel Duchamp
  Dart-Object, 1951.

There is a play here on the masculinity and the femininity of the mold: if the Malic Molds contained in their void the full form of the Bachelors, these molds that could be called “femalic,” embody in full the hollowed out forms of the Bride’s organs ⁽⁷⁾

But still further: what is suggested is the reversibility of these organs. Dart-Object has an effectively phallic appearance, and its title adds to this evidence the aggressive behavior attributed to the male. Inversely, Female Fig Leaf, a blunt and massive object, photographed under a sort of illuminating gas that reverses values, turns the concave into the convex, becomes, like on the cover of Surréalisme, meme #1, a female figure imprinted with a strong, unusual “sex appeal.”

The psychoanalyst, of course, has not failed to take an interest in this reversability of organs, the structure of a glove finger turned inside-out, that connotes sexuality. Sandor Ferenczi, in particular, in establishing his famous onto-and-phylogenetic parallel, had long meditated on the fact that the penis and vagina are a single organ, one and the same – a fanciful organ, a Mélusinian organ, developed here on the inside and there on the exterior, according to the needs of the species. ⁽⁸⁾We will come back to this.

But let us go on further or rather elsewhere: into geometry. At the turn of the century, the principal studies on topology (analysis situs) began. Mathematicians then concentrated on such strange objects as the Mobius Strip and the Klein Bottle (Fig. 11). Let’s also examine them. The strange particularities of the first are well-known. Take a strip of paper. It has two dimensions. Connect it by its shorter ends: you will get a ring with two surfaces, one internal and one external, and two sides. But if, instead of directly linking these two sides, you twist the strip before connecting it, you obtain a strange object that has no more than one surface and one side: paradoxical volume, unisurficial and unilateral (Fig. 12). Imagine, in a sort of Flatland à la Abott, a flat, two-dimensional being walking along this Mobius Strip: at no time would he be conscious of the third dimension that the torsion of the strip allowed him to cross (Fig. 13). Consequently, his consciousness could never grasp the exact form of this mathematical object.

click on images to enlarge

• 
  Figure 11
  Mobius Strip
• 
  Figure 12-13
  Drawings of a Klein Bottle

Let us move on to the Klein Bottle. Broadly stated, it can be said that it is to the three dimensional world what the Mobius Strip is to the flat realm. Take up the same piece of paper, connecting it this time by its longer ends, as if you were rolling cigarette paper. You get a tube. Connect the two ends of this tube: you get a torus. Just as in the preceding example, it has two surfaces, one internal surface and one external surface, one outside and one within. But if, once again, before making the connection, you twist the tube, in an analogous twist to the one that brought the strip into the third dimension, this time crossing the fourth dimension, you get a paradoxical, unisurficial, and unilateral volume, possessing neither an inside nor an outside. As three-dimensional individuals, we are incapable of precisely conceiving the reality of such a volume. Only one “indigenous to the fourth dimension,” to borrow the words of Duchamp himself in À l’infinitif, could grasp the torsion that creates such a volume that no longer has an outside nor an inside, and that makes of a solid mass a curious entity in which the notions of interior and exterior, of surface and depth, are annulled or exchanged.

Let us look at Dart-Object: this pseudo-phallic tube curves and bends in a curious way; if you mentally extend its inflection up to the point of the root or stalk it issues from, you get a volume strangely similar to a Klein Bottle. ⁽⁹⁾

Can we be accused of over-interpretation? Recall these facts: on the Glass, the Bride, a three-dimensional projection of a four-dimensional entity, presents herself as a mass of organs without a surface, a sort of inside without an outside. In Étant Donnés, by contrast, she is a shell without an interior, an outside without an inside. Recall also this note from theGreen Box: “The interior and exterior (in a fourth dimension) can receive a similar identification.⁽¹⁰⁾” Recall finally that topology was developing at the beginning of the century, at the very time that Duchamp read Henri Poincaré
and became interested in Riemannian geometry… There is further evidence of his ceaseless fascination with topology: when he met François Le Lionnais in the early 1960s, the first questions he asked of him concerned the Mobius Strip and the Klein Bottle. ⁽¹¹⁾

What is more, Dart-Object suggests something else: the genitals, seen as truncated, like the division of the being from itself-like something is missing-is not merely the effect of three-dimensional space. That we are sometimes allocated a vagina-and that designates a “woman”-virgin, bride, etc.-and sometimes a penis-and that indicates a “man”-bachelor, groom, etc.-this chance physiological event was never anything more than the effect of an assuredly ironic causality: the laws of Euclidian geometry. In a four-dimensional study-the place of erotic fulfillment, according to Duchamp-in keeping with an anamorphic illusion, vagina and penis would lose all distinctive character. It is the same object that we would sometimes see as “male” and sometimes as “female,” in this perfect mirrorical return of the body that presupposes, because it takes place, the existence of a fourth dimension.

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Figure 14
Marcel Duchamp Couple of Laundress’
Aprons, 1959.

Schwarz is therefore right, in a sense, to insist on hermaphroditism as an essential theme in Duchamp’s oeuvre. But he is wrong to look for an explanation in Jungian archetypes and primitive religions. The model comes from Non-Euclidean geometry and the issues raised around 1900 by analysis situs. Transexuality, with Duchamp-his play on the transvestite, which goes from Rrose Sélavy to (in a more minor but also significant way)Couple of Laundress’s Aprons of 1959 (Fig. 14) (mittens that can reverse gender like the finger of a glove)-is a kind of naïve ontological experience of a mathematical ideal that abolishes sexual differentiation.
To those who wish to pursue this further, one will recall the analyses marked out by Jacques Lacan in his Séminaire concerning “la schize du sujet,” “l’optique des aveugles,” and “phallus dans le tableau ⁽¹²⁾

Going back to the phenomenological studies of Merleau-Ponty in Le Visible et l’Invisible, he recalls that “ce qui nous fait conscience nous institue du meme coup comme Speculum mundi” and he develops these lines, in which one cannot help but see the emerging shadow of Étant Donnés: “Le spectacle du monde, en ce sens, nous apparaît comme omnivoyeur. C’est bien là le fantasme que nous trouvons dans la perspective platonicienne, d’une être absolu à qui est transférée la qualité de l’omnivoyant. Au niveau même de l’expérience phénoménale de la contemplation, ce côté omnivoyeur se pointe dans la satisfaction d’une femme à se savoir regardée, à condition qu’on ne le lui montre pas.” ⁽¹³⁾

Such is this perfect circularity of glance that transforms the voyeur into the seen object and makes the voyeur of the seen object, that makes prey of the hunter and catches the hunter in a snare, traps
him in the spokes of an open eye. ⁽¹⁴⁾ A reversal like the glove of a finger in which the consciousness, Lacan says once more, this time citing a poet more than a bit close to Duchamp, “dans son illusion de se voir se voir ⁽¹⁵⁾, trouve son fondement dans la structure retournee du regard.⁽¹⁶⁾ “

Figs. 1, 2, 4, 7-10, 14 ©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

A Laboratory for Exploring Marcel Duchamp’s Optical Works
Created by Stephen Lewis, Architectronics, Inc.
Java coding by Carl Muckenhoupt.

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Marcel Duchamp, Rotoreliefs
(1 of 12), 1935

Figure
Marcel Duchamp, Rotoreliefs
(1 of 12), 1935

This project provides an active virtual laboratory for the exploration of the optical ideas and works of Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs (Fig. 1 and 2) are painted disks which were meant to be displayed while rotating, generating the illusion of three-dimensional dynamic objects. Art is exhaustively described, critiqued and reproduced, but rarely is a viewer given the chance to “become” the artist. The Rotorelief Interactief project attempts to provide viewers with the tools to experiment with the same ideas which Duchamp worked with in the Rotoreliefs.

In Rotorelief Interactief, viewers can design, place and modify objects on a rotating turntable. Two versions have been created in Java, best viewed using Internet Explorer on a PC. Click on these links to run the programs:

http://www.elasticmind.com/arch/roto/

This version provides tools which constrain the activities only to those which Duchamp had the ability to control–colored objects drawn upon a colored circular field whose speed of revolution can be adjusted.

http://www.elasticmind.com/ElasticMind/Roto/rotorelief.php

This second version implements an extension of the original idea where objects “painted” on the turntable can be given individual movements and characteristics which physical painted disks could not permit. This second version envisions a laboratory for the development of Duchamp’s ideas making use of the virtual digital medium. In this version, it’s possible to create and email a Rotorelief Interactief composition. The www.elasticmind.com website, created by Architectronics, Inc., hosts a number of customizable and emailable activities.

This is a work in progress. The interface is experimental; the code may be a bit buggy, and the documentation is not adequate. Architectronics, Inc. invites collaborators who might want to work to develop this into a robust online activity, CD or kiosk project. In addition to the Rotorelief Interactief software laboratory for viewer experimentation, the project might include onscreen replicas of Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs so that viewers could see these objects as they might appear spinning on a turntable. These artworks are rarely seen in this fashion, as they were meant to be viewed. A CD version might also include physical replicas of the artworks and a spinning mechanism to view them in motion. An accompanying text from a Duchamp scholar might be appropriate. The project can be hosted from an Internet location, a CD, or a site installation

Figs. 1,2
©2003 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris. All rights reserved.

click to enlarge

Photograph
of Charles Henry
Ford by Penny Arcade,
early 1990s

Charles Henri Ford (1913-2002) was a 20th century Renaissance man, admired for his literary criticism, editing and publishing, poetry, photography, film making, and visual art. “Flag of Ecstasy”, written for Duchamp, was the title poem of his 1972 poetry collection for Black Sparrow Press.

Ford was at the epicenter of the art world co-authored and influenced by Duchamp. Nurtured and encouraged from a young age by the likes of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams, Charles’s contemporaries and collaborators later included Djuna Barnes, Parker Tyler, Pavel Tchelitchew, Man Ray, Peggy Guggenheim, Andre Breton, Cecil Beaton, Salvadore Dali, Jean Cocteau, William Burroughs, Ned Rorem, Joseph Cornell… the list goes on.

Charles did not consent to recite his poetry often. This recording (2000) is one of the few that exist. When Charles agreed to record, I asked him to include “Flag of Ecstasy” because of my personal interest in Duchamp. I was fascinated by Charles’s words written specifically for the amusement of Duchamp, whom Charles greatly admired. At 92, his speech in the recording is slightly slurred, but his voice carries the dignity and depth that characterize all of his work, regardless of medium.

The music behind Charles’s recitation is an atonal soundscape, my impressionistic reaction to the poem. There is nothing “Duchampian” in the logic or construction of this piece; it is simply a contemporary reaction to Duchamp as an individual (Charles’s poem) accompanied by my abstract composition, which is designed to provoke but not distract the listener from the poem. To collaborate with Charles, a genuine living Surrealist, was an honor and a thrill indeed.

click to enlarge

Charles Henri Ford,
“Flag of Ecstasy,”
published in View, vol.
5, no. 1 (March
1945), p. 4

FLAG OF ECSTASY
(For Marcel Duchamp)
by Charles Henri Ford

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

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

Over the voix celeste
Over vomito negro

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

Over the spirit of uprisings
Over the bodies of tragediennes

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

Over ambivalent virginity
Over unfathomable succubi

Over the tormentors of Negresses
Over openhearted sans-culottes

Over a stactometer for the tears of France
Over unmanageable hermaphrodites

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

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

Over the saints of debauchery
Over criminals made of gold

Over the princes of delirium
Over the paupers of peace

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

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

Marcel, wave!

I.

click to enlarge

Figure 1
Front view of
Duchamp’s postcard
to Katherine Dreier, 1933

There is a Tout-Fait article, dated May 2000 by Hans de Wolf. He thinks Duchamp appears in a postcard sent from Duchamp to Katherine Dreier (Fig. 1). There are 2 men behind the Duchamp figure that look an awful lot like Man Ray and Andre Breton. At least in my opinion. Could this be possible?

II.

I was deeply saddened by the news of Prof. Goulds death. I consider him one of my favorite authors. I didn’t always completely understand him, but I always enjoyed his sense of humor and his constant quest to understand the universe.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that he and Dr. Shearer have been analyzing my favorite artist, Marcel Duchamp. His “Readymades” finally made sense. I had previously thought of these items as his most boring work, but now they are my favorite.

Incidentally, Austrian violinist Fritz Kriesler deceived his fans by performing “Recently Found” compositions of famous 17th and 18th century composers, which he had in fact wrote himself, but in their style. He admitted his deception and probably did it out of a sense of modesty, rather than trying to change the ideas of what is and is not music.

c’est la vie,
Keith Sacra

Historians of art like to believe that they can solve the riddles of interpretation posed by masterpieces of old painting. Firm in the conviction that a great painting is endowed by its creator with a unique, unambiguous message, we struggle to recover that meaning through the use of textual and visual evidence. And, up to a point, the historical method can recover the forgotten aspects of works of art created centuries ago.

Las Hilanderas is proof of this assertion; for over two centuries, the subject was mistakenly identified as a view of women at work in a tapestry factory. Velazquez had painted the picture around 1658, for a friend named Pedro de Arce, a funcionario in the royal palace. By the early eighteenth century, the picture was believed to represent a scene from everyday life, “mugeres que trabajan en tapizeria.” With this description it is listed in the inventory of Luis de la Cerda, IX Duke of Medinaceli, who in 1711 surrendered it to the royal collection. By the end of the century, this interpretation of the subject had metamorphosed into an incontrovertible fact, as demonstrated by entries in the royal inventories, where it is called by the enduringly popular title, “Las Hilanderas“.

It was only in the twentieth century that the original and accurate identification of the subject began to be recovered, a process that required forty-five years to unfold. In 1903, the English critic C.R. Ricketts observed that the composition depicted on the tapestry hung on the rear wall was a partial copy of Titian’s Rape of Europa, now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, but formerly owned by Velazquez’ patron, Philip IV. (It had been acquired for the Spanish royal collection by Philip II.) Some years later, in 1940, Enriqueta Harris, the great English velazquista, identified the helmeted figure in the background as Minerva, who was gesturing toward Arachne. However, Harris believed that these two mythological figures were woven into the tapestry, a misapprehension corrected in 1948 by the American scholar Elizabeth DuGue Trapier, who pointed out that all the figures in the small background space were standing in front of the wall hanging. As it happened, 1948 was the culminating year in the recovery of the original subject. Maria Luisa Caturla, the renowned archival researcher, published an inventory of the original owner, Pedro de Arce, which was dated 1664. In this inventory, the title of the painting is listed as the “fabula de aragne.” Articles by Diego Angulo Iniguez (1948) and Charles de Tolnay (1949) definitively confirmed the identification of the subject as an illustration (a highly-original illustration) of a passage from Book VI of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. According to this venerable literary source, Arachne was a Lydian weaver who claimed that her skill exceeded that of Minerva. She was punished for her pride by being converted by Minerva into a spider, the scene that is about to occur in the background of Velazquez’ painting.

Far from ending discussion of the painting, the retrieval of the subject opened a new chapter in the historiography of Las Hilanderas. Velazquez’ composition is highly allusive and ambiguous. By virtue of his original conception of the antique text, the artist raises questions which both demand and frustrate attempts to answer them. Who are the women in the foreground? Who are the elegantly-dressed females who accompany Minerva and Arachne? Why did Velazquez reverse the logic of the composition, placing the climactic moment of the story in the distance instead of in the foreground? And what is the purpose of the quotation from Titian’s Rape of Europa? By a cruel paradox, the correct identification of the subject only obfuscated the significance of this masterpiece.

It would be tedious to review and analyze in detail the myriad of intepretations that have been inflicted on Las Hilanderas over the last six decades. One proposes that the painting is a political allegory, another that it symbolizes the virtue of prudence, another that it is Velazquez’ claim that painting is a liberal art not a manual craft and that he, therefore, is entitled to noble status. Although they differ one from another, these interpretations do share a common trait. Their authors assert with the absolute conviction, on the basis of the assembled evidence, that they have unlocked the “secret” of this masterpiece. Unconsciously, however, they make the opposite point–that no single interpretation can possibly be sufficient. Although ambiguity is the sworn enemy of the historical sciences, it is a precious resource of artistic creation. Las Hilanderas is the validation of reception theory, which holds that the meaning of art works is altered as the expectations and presuppositions of viewers change over time and through circumstance. It also proves that multiple meanings need not be self-contradictory. Indeed, I would argue that a great work of art demands a multiplicity of responses if it is not to become mere illustration.

Elena del Rivero clearly has arrived at the same conclusion. Her appropriation of Las Hilanderas is incredibly witty and perverse. Interpretations of her deconstruction of the painting could go in many directions, for it is a richly evocative work. Allow me to speak of Elena’s work in purely personal terms. I confess that when I first saw it, I nearly fell off my chair. My intense reaction exemplifies how meaning escapes the control of the artist, at least when the artist has not attempted to reduce significance to boring certainty. As my eyes scanned the image, I saw that Elena had invited an improbable intruder into the magical world of Las Hilanderas, none other than the most engimatic, elusive artist of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp. Velazquez and Duchamp in the same imaginary space! They had, in fact, inhabited the space between my ears for decades.

I encountered Velazquez and Duchamp at approximately the same time, in the late 1950s, a formative moment in my life. I had the good fortune of belonging to a family in which art was an obsession. My parents, Jean and Leonard Brown, were pioneering collectors of Dada and Surrealism, and Marcel Duchamp was a household god. My parents talked about him incessantly and in reverential tones. They regarded Duchamp as the most original artist of the twentieth century, and this at a time before his all-pervasive influence had become an acknowledged fact. My mother baptized him as “Leonardo Duchamp,” which was her way of expressing the belief that Duchamp and Leonardo da Vinci were extraordinary polymaths endowed with an ability to look into the future. Furthermore, each had essentially abandoned the practice of painting to pursue interests which can only be called extra-artistic. My mother also discovered a parallel between Duchamp’s Green Box, a strange assortment of sketches and writings related to his greatest work, the Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. In both cases, the workings of the artist’s mind were presented as pieces of something larger that was never fully revealed. Duchamp was very pleased with the compliment and signed his print, the Chessplayers, with a dedication to my father: “From Leonardo Duchamp to Leonardo Brown.” Chess was the obsession of Duchamp’s later life, and he appears in Elena’s version of Las Hilanderas in the midst of his most notorious game of chess, the one that took place in Pasadena on 18 October 1963, against his naked opponent, Eva Babitz. Marcel enters the world of Minerva and Arachne as a de-stabilizing presence. It is a move that Velazquez, the master of ambiguity, would have certainly approved.

Duchamp, of course, was still alive when his spirit possessed our household and my parents eventually came to know him in person. They would travel to New York from our home in the provincial city of Springfield, Massachusetts, and meet Duchamp at his gallery or in a restaurant. On one occasion sometime in the late fifites, I accompanied them and had the opportunity to shake his hand. I hardly knew what to say and therefore said nothing. This was a very impoverished response from someone who aspired to be a historian of art, and I have tried to do better in my innumerable encounters with Velazquez. The first of these occurred in 1958, when, as a young student in Madrid, that I started my regular visits to the Museo del Prado, that shrine to the art of Velazquez, which would soon lead me to a career as a student of the master and of the Spanish Golden Age.

As I have mentioned, Duchamp and Velazquez are a most unlikely couple but they have been beloved inhabitants of my mental world. I see them as reticent artists, as brilliant critics of accepted modes of art-making, as cryptic analysts of accepted systems of beliefs and as masters of ambiguity, too respectful of art to bind it with the shackles of certainty. With brilliant insight, Elena del Rivero has brought them together in a way that seems completely natural, although it is obviously highly artificial. By collapsing the twentieth century into the seventeenth or, if you like, propelling the seventeenth into the twentieth, Elena’s interpretation of Las Hilanderas invites us to ruminate on the art of two of the most subversive masters in the history of western art. As such, it claims a place of honor in the historiography of this masterpiece and the never-ending history of its reception.