Marcel Duchamp: the artist stripped bare

 

Syllabus: 

This seminar will introduce the art and ideas of Marcel Duchamp, focusing in particular on the reception of the artist’s work, along with its theoretical implications and historical consequences. The course will be broken down into four core components: 

 

1. “From Impressionism to the Readymade, 1902-1913” – Weeks 1-3

 

This section will focus on Duchamp’s transit through Monet, Cézanne, Symbolism, and Cubism in his early paintings, leading up to the scandal of the Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2, at the Armory Show of 1913. It will examine Duchamp’s artistic development, beginning with his newspaper caricatures, the first exhibition of his paintings in the Salon des Independents in 1909, and his working relationship with his brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon at Puteaux around 1910. We will also look at Duchamp’s friendships with such luminaries of the Parisian art world as Apollinaire and Picabia, with whom he attended a performance of Raymond Roussel’s Impressions d’Afrique in 1912. This was a seminal year in the artist’s life, in which he would come to grips with the structural and spatial implications of Cubism. The rejection of the Nude Descending by the Salon Cubists Gleizes and Metzinger in that year would lead to the artist’s break with the Puteaux Circle and his abandonment of painting in favor of the readymade. 

 

2. “Through the Large Glass, 1913-1926” – Weeks 4-8

 

This section will introduce the The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) through Duchamp’s notes and related paintings. It will explore the critical reception and hermeneutics of the work, including the impact of Jarry and Roussel, the erotic implications of the human-machine analogy, the role of Science and the Fourth Dimension, and the “readymade talk” of the Glass. Duchamp’s move to the United States in 1915 and his subsequent friendships with Louise and Walter Arensberg, Katherine Dreier, Man Ray, Joseph Stella, the Stettheimer sisters, and other artists, writers, and musicians associated with New York Dada will also be addressed here. Another aspect will be the artist’s adoption of a female alter-ego, Rrose Selavy. Finally, the reception of the artist’s readymades, theFountain scandal, and the artist’s abandonment of painting in 1923 will be examined – notion of “retinal” painting, before ending with the first public exhibition of the Large Glass at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926, after which the work was smashed in transit to Katherine Dreier’s house.

 

 

 

3. “Duchamp and Surrealism, 1927-1945” – Weeks 9-10

 

This section will look at Duchamp’s complicated relationship with the Surrealist movement, especially his role as an installation designer and “generator-arbitrator” of group exhibitions in both Europe and the United States. The artist’s friendships with Breton, Ernst, Matta, Donati, and other members of the group will be discussed, especially during the Second World War years, when many Surrealist artists and writers found themselves in New York. Another aspect will be Duchamp’s refusal to condemn former Surrealists and close friends Dali and De Chirico, who he publicly defended against Breton’s wishes. Important works from this period include the Boite-en-valise, which will be scrutinized in minute detail, along with the artist’s increasing interest in chess. Other topics will include Duchamp’s experiments with film and optics. 

4. “Etant Donnes and the Reception of Marcel Duchamp, 1946-1968” – Weeks 11-12

 

The irony of the last two decades, when the artist was discovered and revered by a generation of American and European artists, including Johns, Rauschenberg, Cage, Hamilton, Warhol, Broodthaers, Nauman, and Kaprow, while all the time working in secret on “the final piece.” This section will explore the critical and artistic reception of the artist’s work in the 1950s and 1960s, focusing in particular on the retrospective exhibitions in Pasadena (1963) and London (1966), as well as the publications of Robert Lebel’s monograph (1959) and the interviews with Pierre Cabanne (1967). Also up for discussion will be Duchamp’s installation of the Arensberg Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1954, which gave him the dimensions of the Etant donnes “room,” along with other important events in the artist’s life such as his relationship with the Brazilian sculptor Maria Martins, the first model for Etant donnes, and his marriage to Alexina “Teeny” Matisse in 1954.  The final session will explore the artist’s important role in the theoretical formulation of Postmodernism in the field of Art History.