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Transcript |
I would like first of all to call you attention to the entire series of which today's session is the first. They occur on 10th, 17th, and 24th of February and the same dates of March. This we have done of course to facilitate to remember to improvise. After today, Mr. Franco on philosophy, Edward Alby on the theater, Randy Kounuts on poetry, Nelson Babbitt on music, and Neil Steinberg will succeed in that order. And I hope that you will come. I have also been asked to announce what some of you perhaps already know that there will be coffee served after the event this afternoon. The present speaker Marcel Duchamp is known to everyone here. If the choice of saying a very great deal about him or nothing at all. Each one is presumptuous and the other is assumptions I think. His biography runs from 1887 to the present and he states in an attorney's office in 1910, 11, 12, 13 as you got this note and that his own personal history has been run are extreme merits to all people not just artist ever since. Of his work, a great deal can be set about his interest in changing contours and arts in this century. It operates on more than one level of meaning in his painting and more than one dimension of form and finds the esoteric mind, it opens up hidden perspectives beyond the merely visible and him sometimes the irrelevant becomes relevant and others have spoken of the logical development of robotism, which he has made in his own work. Some have felt that philosophically that his work has marked a very deep return to an almost Buddhist religion in a difference. However that may be his character, his friends among which are numbered who are great collectors, great artist, and some great thinkers. And in place the modern art are certainly fixed. He played a major role in what has been recently spoken of as the dismantling of the past, a form of discomposing of the normative renaissance tradition and his art has always dealt with problem central in the work of modern works of painters and their concern for self-definition, of self-discovery, of self-affirmation over and against the hovering profession and perhaps a disintegrating world. His most famous works are most famous and in each its own ways as the painting perhaps the Nude Descending the Staircase has become a classic title of the classic pictures. Although I think it is the finest as the painting passage from virgin to Bride of 1912 and plastic work, the Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors even and in literature, the composite Green Box are perhaps the most famous. I think as an inventor, his pun, his propensity and his field at the contaminated pun with metallic perfection as has been said is the great art too. Speaking of the art and his greater convention perhaps in some respect is termed the ARCH coefficients, which he qualified as the relationship between the unexpressed but the intended and the unintentionally expressed in art. And of course his most famous comment, I of course myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conform with my own taste. And so I give you as a speaker in this first of these series Marcel Duchamp. Good afternoon. Do you hear me now? Fifty years ago to the day on February 15, 1913, the first important manifestation of modern art in America the armory show was open to the public in New York City. The armory show is regarded today as America's awakening to modern art. This spring there will be two celebrations of the 50th anniversary, first in Utica at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute opening next week and then in April in New York City in the original armory where it took place at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. The few of you in this audience, few surely who saw the show in 1913 and we certainly remember the different reactions pro and con of the American Press which stirred the public opinion to a scandals pitch. Even though I wasn't that much involved in the polemic around the show, I had not yet come to America and therefore I never saw the show. My great friend Picabia was there and he stayed a month and then reported to me in Paris. I finally came to New York two years later in June 1915. Today I hope to recreate the atmosphere of my most productive years from 1902 to 1925. Born as I was in an artistic family and having before me the example of my two brothers 10 or more years old than me, it was natural at the age of 15 that I should be attracted by an artistic career. My oldest brother had changed his name to Jack Villon partly I suppose because of infinitive what he felt Francois Villon, the poet of the 15th century. My second brother followed soon by hyphenating the two names, Raymond Duchamp-Villon. When I came on the scene 10 years later, I decided to stick with my own name. The very majority of the paintings you would see on the screen belonged to the Arnsberg collection, which Walter and Lewis Arnsberg gave to the Philadelphia Museum of Arts in 1950, a few years before they died. We have the first picture. This is called a church at Blainville. We begin with one of my first, the church at Blainville is a village in Normandy where I was born and this painting was done in 1902 when I was only 15 years old. I was still attending school in Rouen and the Lycee and two of my classmates were also starting to paint. We exchanged view on impressionism, which was art revolution at the moment and still I meet him in official art schools. However, my contact with impressionism at that early date was only by way of reproductions and books since there were few or no shows of impressionist painters in Rouen until much later. Even though one of my colleagues painting is impressionistic, it really shows only few, a very remote influence of Rouen, my first impressionist at the time. This one is done in 1904 called portrait of Marcel Lefran'ois. Painting two years later, and this portrait of a young friend of mine was already a reaction against impressionism and this painting I wanted to try out the technique of renaissance painters consisting in painting first a very precise black and white oil and then after it was thoroughly dry adding thin layers of transparent colors, but it was my only attempt of this kind immediately followed by period of research marked by indecision and finally by my discovery of Suzanne. This is the portrait of my father. After completing my studies at the Lycee in Rouen I went to Paris to live for a while with my brother Jack Villon and entered the academy Academie Julian a freelance arts school where I only learned to dispraise all academic training. In 1909 and 1910 were the years of my discovery of Suzanne, who was then acclaimed the only by minority. This portrait of my father was done in 1910 and is a typical illustration of my coach for Suzanne mixed up with feeling of love. Robert Labelle in his book describing my father says the kindly gentleman who discreetly provided for his artistically minded stayed until his death and all the work keeping an exact account of the sums expanded, which were then deducted from the inheritance. My brothers and myself certainly enjoyed this pertinent wisdom. This is called chess players, another example of the influence of Suzanne, is this game of chess between my two brothers painted in the summer of 1910 in the garden of Puteaux where they lived. It was shown at summer of 1910 in October of the same year. The jury of the Salon are going to award me the title of associate which gave me from then on the privilege to exhibit without passing through the jury. Curiously enough I never took advantage of this distinction and never showed again at the summer of 1910. In spite of my successful results and the session influence Suzanne, I felt always there is a danger to continue indefinite in that direction and if you think of it, I was 23 and I was fortunate enough to find in the full, the wild beasts Juan Matiz Barak, a new outlet for my development. This portrait of shovel was done in 1910 under the influence of the full with the characteristics of that school. Intentional distortion in the drawing and a timid rehabilitation of the color black, which had been completely banished from the pallet of the impressionists. Now next is Dr. Dumouchel. Here we have the portrait of a medical student who is a friend of mine. He was a student then but now he is a doctor and it is also showing my interest in the 1910. He reminds one doing this violent coloring and at the same time details like the hello the hand indicate my different intention to at a touch of distorted lyricism. The composition completely elaborated from serving copy of the model and becomes almost a caricature. This is a Karla Bush, then at the same time as the two portraits you have just seen late 1910, this painting called the Bush, shows a turn towards another form of lyricism. The figures are stylized in their design and the colors are deliberately contrasted and blended at the same time. The presence of a non descriptive title is shown here for the first time and in fact from then on I always gave an important role to the title which I treated like an invisible color. This is called Sonata. It is called Sonata, this is family scene, my mother and my three sisters was painted in 1911 when I began to use a technique closer to Cubism. The pale intend tonalities of this picture in which the angular contours are based in an everlasting atmosphere and make it a definite turning point in my evolution. Cubism was still in its childhood in 1911 and the theory of cubism attracted me by its intellectual approach. This painting was my first attempt to exteriorize my conception of cubism at that time. This is called portrait and also painted in 1911. This is imaginary portrait of a woman in series of five monochromatic superimposed silhouettes. The five silhouettes are grouped together like a bouquet of flowers and then two nude figures and three dressed ones, but all five have the same pattern. In this painting, instead of showing at the same time all the sides of an object as it was practiced by most cubist painters, I repeated the subject five times as though it were moving. It is just opposition of the successive phases of the movement was already announcing the technique I used the few months later in the Nude Descending a Staircase. It is called Yvonne and Magdeleine Torn in Tatters. Yvonne and Magdeleine were my two sisters still are and are living in France. Introducing humor for the first time in my paintings. I sort of speak throughout the profile and placed them at random in the canvas. You can see four profiles, each one in different scale and floating in mid air. Cubist chess players 1911, using again the technique of the multiplication in my interpretation offers a cubist theory. I painted the heads of my two brothers playing chess, not in a garden this time but in an indefinite space. On the right, Jack Villon and on the left Raymond Duchamp-Villon the sculptor. Each head indicated by several successive profiles. In the center of the canvas if you simplified forms of chess pieces placed at random and another characteristic of this painting is the gray tonality. Generally speaking the first reaction of Cubism against Fauvism was to abandon violent color and replace it by subdued tones. This particular canvas was painted by gas light to obtain the subdued effect, but you can see it on this even if it is not true. It is still black and white. Next Coffee Mill, towards the end of 1911, my brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon had the idea of decorating his kitchen with oil paintings. He asked about six or seven of his friends, McGlaze, Mitzazi and others to give him a small painting. I made this old fashioned Coffee Mill for him. He chose the different facets of the grinding operation and the handle on top is seen simultaneously in several positions as it revolves. Nude Descending a Staircase. If you please sketch. It was done in 1911 probably the most productive year of my life. They attracted by the problem of motion in painting and I made several sketches on that same. This one is the first study for the Nude Descending a Staircase. You can see a number of anatomy of the nude, which are repeated in several static position of the moving body compared with the final version you will see on the next slide is only a rough sketch in my search for a technique to treat the subject of motion. This final version, this is the final version of the Nude Descending the Staircase painted in January 1912. It was the convergence in my mind of various interests among which the cinema still in its infancy and the separation of movements in the photo chronographs of Man Ray in France and Elkins and Muybridge in America painted as it is severe wood colors. The anatomical nude does not exist or at least cannot be seen. Since I discarded completely the naturalistic appearance of the nude keeping only the abstract lines of some 20 different positions in the successive action of descending. The flight was shown at the armory show in 1913. I had sent it to the Paris Independence in February 1912, but my fellow Cubists did not like it and asked me to at least change the title. In stead I withdrew it and showed in October of the same year at the Salon without any opposition this time. The futurist also were interested in the problem of movement at that time and when they exhibited for the first time in Paris in January 12, it was quite exciting for me to see the painting dog on the leash by Bela showing also the successive static position of a dog's legs and leash, nevertheless as much more like a Cubist than a Futurist in this abstraction of a Nude Descending a Staircase. The King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes. This water color is done very soon after the Nude Descending the Staircase is a study for a larger painting which will follow immediately. Therefore the title the King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes. My intention was to oppose the movement of the swift nudes to the static condition of the king and queen. The king and queen the king and queen are on the list, no the king is on the right and then queen is on the left and in between the traversed by lines of giving the interpretation of swift nudes. We don't have the big painting is much more interesting. This is the same thing but in oil. King and Queen surrounded this time not traversed, surrounded by swift nudes done immediately after the nude descending a staircase in the spring of 1912. This oil paint of King and Queen surrounded by Swift Nude is an enlargement and development of the water color you just saw. The title king and queen was once again taken from chess, but this time but the players of 1911, my two brothers have been eliminated and replaced by the chess figures of a king and queen, nobody think it at all. The swift nudes are a flight of imagination introduced to satisfy my preoccupation of movement still present in this painting. Unfortunately, this picture has not stood time as well as my other paintings and there is lots of cracks as you can even see on the screen. That's the only one I got. Of course I didn't make so many. It is called the Bride. I spent the summer of 1912 in Germany. In Munich where I stayed months, I painted this oil called Bride, abandoning my association with Cubism and having exhaust of my interest in kinetic painting, I found myself turning towards a form of expression completely divorced from straight realism. This painting belongs a serial of studies that were made for the Large Glass began three years later in New York replacing the free hand by very precise technique I embarked on in adventure, which was no more attributed to already existing schools. This is not the realistic interpretation of a bride but my concept of a bride expressed by the Jack's deposition of mechanical elements and visceral forms. So I was completely gone Cubism. This one is not a painting. It look like one but it is not. The three long narrow strips on the left on the screen are called 3 Standard Stoppages from the French 3 stoppages talon. Etalon means standard and standard in the sense of standard measure. Each one shows a straight horizontal line in the middle of each one, a piece of sewing thread one meter long after it was dropped from a height of 1 meter without controlling the distortion during the fall. The three rulers on the right of the screen repeat the same shapes and can be used to trace these three curved lines. It was an experiment may be in 1913 to imprison and preserve forms of pain through chance, so my chance. From 1939, I concentrated all my activities on the planning of The Large Glass and made a study of every detail like this one, the oil painting which is called Chocolate Grinder 1914. It was actually suggested by a chocolate grinding machine I saw in the window of a confectionary shop in Cologne through the introduction of straight perspective and the geometrical design of a definite grinding machine like this one are felt definitely liberated from the Cubist to reject it. The lines of the three rollers are made of threads sawn into the canvas. As another study for a big section of the Large Glass, it is called Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries painted directly on one side of the glass and to be seen from the other side is called a Cemetery of Uniform and Liveries. It represents nine molds, or nine external containers of the moldings of nine different uniforms and liveries. If I am not clear, in other words you can't see the actual form of the policeman or the bell boy or the undertaker because each of these precise forms is inside it's particular the mold done in Paris in 1914 and I didn't have it painted because it was inside, done in Paris in 1914-15 and the design is made with lead wires fixed onto the glass by drops of varnish and the colors are ordinary oil paints. The breaks that occurred in 1916 did not disturb the design and it is now framed between two plate glasses. Now we come to the Large Glass. This is a black and white slider and have other later. The Large Glass also called The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors even. When I came to New York in 1915, I started this painting repeating and grouping together in their final position, the different details you have already seen in the last slides. Nine feet high, the landscape back of it give you an idea of the scale more or less. Nine feet high the painting is made of two large pieces of plate glass. As I said before, I began the work on it in 1915, but it was not finished in 1923 when I finally abandoned in the stage you see it today. All along while painting it, I wrote a number of notes which were to complement the visual experience like a guidebook, like a blueback books. We now see two colors lies showing the glass as it stands in Philadelphia Museum with the Arnsberg collection. It has the same glass but it would be better framed and so forth and I think it is different. The first color slide of the Large Glass shows now more clearly the different details, at the bottom, in the center the Chocolate Grinder, at the left in red the Cemetery of Uniforms and liveries and at the top on the left the Bride. In 1926, it was at the Brooklyn Museum in an international exhibition organized by the association and it was broken in the track, which was taking it back to Katherine Brier to whom it belonged. You can see the breaks, can you see the breaks here very well? Yeah, sure. You can see them better in natural position there and the light through it mix it I like them anyway. In 1936 I came again to America and repaired it by putting the pieces between the two dots paints of plate glass to hold them together as it is now. And then the second, last year at the international art show a motion in Stockholm enabled to have the original transported to Sweden, the whole things bears weight of 400 pounds plus the fragility. One of the organizers, a young art critic from Stockholm named Linda undertook to copy this glass in its original size 9 feet with exactly the same technique I used myself and I was so impressed by the result when I saw it that I signed the copy on the back with a mention (inaudible 34:59), everything was there except the break and she did that in three months if you please. Now we have the light from it because I went to speak without any -- now Readymades. From 1913 in Paris through my stay in New York in 1915, while working on the Large Glass, I also played with an idea with crystallized later into the word Readymade. According to that word for Readymade objects, which I designated as works a lot by simply signing them as early as 1913, I had the happy idea to fasten the bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn. A few months later, a bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called pharmacy. After adding two small ducts, one red and one yellow in the horizon in New York in 1915, I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote in advance of the Broken Arm. It was around that time that the word Readymade came to my mind to designate this form of manifestation, a point that I want them to establish is that the choice of these Readymades was never dictated by static delectation. The choice was based on the reaction of visual indifference with a total absence of good or bad taste in fact a complete anesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which are occasionally inscribed on the Readymade. That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal. Sometimes I would add to the Readymade a graphic detail of presentation, which in order to satisfy my craving for alliterations made be call it Readymade Aided. Another time wanting to expose the basic antinomy between art and readymades, I imagined reciprocal readymade, use a Rembrandt as an ironing board. I realized very soon the dangers of repeating indiscriminately as form of expression and decided to limit the protection of Readymades to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time that for the spectator even more than for the artist. Art is a habit forming drug and wanted to protect my readymades against such contamination. Another aspect of the Readymades is lack of uniqueness. The replica of Readymade delivering the same message. In fact, nearly everyone of the Readymades existing today is not an original in the conventional sense. It is replica generally and a final remark to this vicious circle seems the tubes of paint used by an artist are manufactured and readymade products. We must conclude that all the paintings in the world are readymades aided. Now I will show you some from the Dada period of 1916-24, this one dated 1916 in another a metal dog comb on which I inscribe a nonsensical phrase, trois ou quatre gouttes de hauteur n'ont rien voir avec la sauvagerie, which might be translated as follows. Three or four drops of height have nothing to do with savageness. Nonsense. This is called With the Hidden Noise is the title for this assisted readymade. A ball of twine between two brass plates joined by four long screws. Inside the ball of twine Walter Arensberg added secretly a small object that makes a noise when you shake it. And to this day I don't know what it is, nor, I imagine does anyone else. I could open it but I don't. This is Apolin re Enameled. This is not assisted readymade dated 1916-17, I changed the lettering and advertisement for Apollinaire Paints. You can see the end of the letter is not the same color. Misspelling intentionally the name of Guillaume Apollinaire and also adding the reflection of the little girl's hair in the mirror. This one is Mona Lisa. In 1919, if you please I was back in Paris and the Dada movement had just made it's first appearance there, Tristan Tzara who had arrived from Switzerland where the movement had started in 1916 joined the group in Paris. Picabia had already shown in America our sympathy for Dada. This Mona Lisa with a moustache and goatee is a combination of readymade and iconoclastic Dadaism. He is humbling, saluting a twin at the metropolitan museum today. At the end of the same year 1919, I left again for America and wanting to bring back a present to my friends the Arensberg, I asked the provision pharmacist to empty a glass container full of serum and to seal it again. This is the precious pool of 50 cm3 of air of Paris, I brought back to the Arensberg in 1919. This is called French Window. This small model of a French Window was made by a carpenter in New York in 1920 to complete it and replace the glass plains made of leather, which I insisted should be shined every day like shoes. This French Window was called fresh widow and obvious enough. This little bird cage is filled with sugar lumps, but the sugar lumps are made of marble and when you lift it, you are surprised by the unexpected weight. The thermometer is to register the temperature of the marble. The title is why not sneeze to add little more nonsense. And now the last one is Monte Carlo 1924, this last slide is the reproduction of one of 30 bonds issued for the exploitation of a system to break the back in Monte Carlo. After working out the system for years, for two years at least, I issued these bonds which were to bring a 20% dividend taken from my eventual winnings. Unfortunately, the system was too slow to have any practical value and a few weeks I send in Monte Carlo was so boring that I soon gave up fortunately breaking even the photography of my head covered with shaving soap was made by Man Ray at that time. This is the end and I thank you very much. I mean that will be all with it discussion, but I don't think it had anything besides that I think I have an idea that art does not exist, artist yes, but not art. Artist in abstraction that the public has made, but the artist exist, an artist exist and then works, but art is an abstraction, a generalization of own mind, which is impossible to define for practical purpose anyway. Audience: How would define the artist? I don't know. A man who does something that the man doesn't do, I mean it doesn't have to be defined. It's a form of humanity. See it's not an abstraction and an artist is a reality full of blood and bones. (Audience) Yes, what I have always lacked it because it was sort of movement lack in my interest in kinetic painting at the time, but I did the first and the only movie I made was done without a machine, I mean without a regular machine, a movie machine. It was done one image by one image, but these things that you probably know about, we took a picture for 1 mm each time and in fact, we did that for, I don't know for several days to get not even five minutes of film of it because at that time it was 1925 and the movies they didn't use 24 images a second, they used only 16 and 16 would have been much too tricky, so we tried by making it short, I mean more images mechanically to get a better result. It is not bad but it is not good either. (Audience) Well because I was always annoyed by the background of a canvas when you paint on canvas. You never know what to do, what are you going to do with the background unless you have composition that goes with it, but you feel at some corner because it is canvas, it is there. What are you going to do? To the white, black or? So the add of glass was to do away with the annoying part of it by being through and seeing through the glass and also to put on as a background anything I want but through that transparency. In other words, I can have a tree or anything through the glass instead of painting it. I mean, nothing at all even the wall that's over that, but at least it has got the mechanical idea of filling up a canvas, which every painter knows. We have to finish your painting in the corners because it's a canvas and that cannot be left virgin or except in cases like Suzanne. Is that all right? (Audience) No because nonsense has right to live. You have to accept the idea of nonsense as righteous existence, you know what I mean. Sense and nonsense are two aspects of the same things, and nonsense has the right to live. So it was no feeling about in other words. I was glad to decide it was nonsense and to be conscious of it, which is based already on something because some people are. So I give him to everybody to be sense full. (Audience) The idea I have already made was the thing it is very difficult to explain a bit like art you know. I have been trying to give a definition of it and it never satisfies me. In other words, it was done, made without knowing what I was doing. Finally, I have several experiences as I did, I finally found a common denominated through the four or five experiences I had done and the common denominator took the name of Readymade, but it was not constituted before and then done. It was done and it happen to be something that I did half by chance and half by imagination and then it took form in the word I called it. In other words, I don't know how to explain it but I don't want to give a definition of it. The word itself and the product of readymade objects is enough to make you talk and to make me speak about it, make you ask me questions and so forth and there must be something there. And you don't have to define it other words and the definition is very scholastic detail. Audience: Regarding the Nude Descending a Staircase, did you make any preliminary studies and did you use the model? No model at all. Yes studies. Audience: Did you do any trial and error arranging it in several ways? The very first drawing that I arranged was ascending instead of descending. It was really sketch drawing an illustration for a poem by LaForge and a series of poem and I had started making distribution for that book of poems by LaForge and one of them was a sketch of a nude ascending going upstairs and then when I had the idea of using it for painting, I turned it into ascending because I thought it was majestic or something. You see the majesty of the painting, I mean the oil it has be to majestic. (Audience) No, but I would like to say something sure. You see, that's again to add to the visual color and invisible color is also was an idea how to use written through a word or through a title, it's unliterary, it's mentor, but it's the reality of adding still color, not being literary. In other words, you can give a title to a painting and be very literary, it would be the crying of the poor mother of something that happened to a child or something, that's literary. I call it descriptive and literary, but a title especially in the sense of Readymade titles as Chess to be completely outside of the area of explanation or description and as such as it is away from description and explanation, you have a chance to add a completely out of the blue idea, which is the invisible color in that case. Do you understand what I mean? (Audience) No the title is also a grammatical error, but intentional don't forget that word even at the end in french as well as in English has absolutely no meaning at all and intentional, so at the same time it sounds so plausible or meaning something that you wonder and that wondering is already something I wanted to do and it exists in French as well with name as it with even in English especially after the comma. Because even is not quite the same translation of man but close enough for the English translation. (Audience) Well, chess is one thing that made too much important in my life according to other people because it is so important all that in my life at all. I played chess as you played bridge or poker or even bet gambling if you please, but I never was a champion. I never was a good player or anything like that, so I don't see why people take so much interest in my chess, but they do, so I will have to answer that I am not just the second great player and that's all. (Audience) You will have it. You have it already now in proper arts as it is full of humor. Don't you think so? Proper arts is not humorous enough? I think it is. (Applause) |
