here's some of my favorite quotations from
Philadelphia. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Etant Données: 1° la chute d'eau.
2° le gaz d'éclairage. Reflections on a new work by MARCEL DUCHAMP. Texts by
A. d'Harnoncourt and W. Hopps. (Bulletin. Vol. 64, No. 299/300.)
Philadelphia, 1969
so far:
"The timing of Duchamp's artistic activity always ranged between the
carefully planned and the chance creation, the long-drawn-out deliberate
process and the swift decision."
"Bored with the very practice of wielding a brush and deeply dissatisfied
with painting as the only means to "make" something, he not only decided to
stop being a painter in the conventional sense but set his mind to work on
the whole problem of the artist's engagement with the real world. Rejecting
established approached to art as well as the contemporary modes of the
Cubists and Furturists, and suspicious of the very concept of "reality"
which his colleagues still attempted to explore (in however radical a way),
he began to construct his own alternative version of reality: a mythic,
pseudoscientific system which brought the tools of chance, humor, and ironic
indifference into play."
"Not as explicit as water or gas, but equally present in Duchamp's "amusing
physics" is the invisible current of electricity. The potential connection
between Bride and Bachelors is an "electrical stripping" with all sorts of
eccentric fixtures: the "desire-magneto," the "motor with quite feeble
cylinders." The failure to connect is a short circuit. The same current runs
quite literally through Duchamp's rotating optical machines of 1920 and
1925, and the ROTORELIEFS of 1935. An early note in the BOX OF 1914
proposes: "L'electricite en large, Seule utilization possible de
l'electricite 'dans les arts.' Duchamp's metaphor to describe the encounter
between the spectator and a work of art is that of a "spark" which "gives
birth to something, like electricity."
Philadelphia. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Etant Données: 1° la chute d'eau.
2° le gaz d'éclairage. Reflections on a new work by MARCEL DUCHAMP. Texts by
A. d'Harnoncourt and W. Hopps. (Bulletin. Vol. 64, No. 299/300.)
Philadelphia, 1969
so far:
"The timing of Duchamp's artistic activity always ranged between the
carefully planned and the chance creation, the long-drawn-out deliberate
process and the swift decision."
"Bored with the very practice of wielding a brush and deeply dissatisfied
with painting as the only means to "make" something, he not only decided to
stop being a painter in the conventional sense but set his mind to work on
the whole problem of the artist's engagement with the real world. Rejecting
established approached to art as well as the contemporary modes of the
Cubists and Furturists, and suspicious of the very concept of "reality"
which his colleagues still attempted to explore (in however radical a way),
he began to construct his own alternative version of reality: a mythic,
pseudoscientific system which brought the tools of chance, humor, and ironic
indifference into play."
"Not as explicit as water or gas, but equally present in Duchamp's "amusing
physics" is the invisible current of electricity. The potential connection
between Bride and Bachelors is an "electrical stripping" with all sorts of
eccentric fixtures: the "desire-magneto," the "motor with quite feeble
cylinders." The failure to connect is a short circuit. The same current runs
quite literally through Duchamp's rotating optical machines of 1920 and
1925, and the ROTORELIEFS of 1935. An early note in the BOX OF 1914
proposes: "L'electricite en large, Seule utilization possible de
l'electricite 'dans les arts.' Duchamp's metaphor to describe the encounter
between the spectator and a work of art is that of a "spark" which "gives
birth to something, like electricity."