Duchamp: A Biography [Paperback]

Calvin Tomkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1998

A New York Times Notable Book of 1996
Booklist Editor's Choice, 1996

The celebrated, full-scale life of the century's most influential artist. One of the giants of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp changed the course of modern art. Visual arts, music, dance, performance--nothing was ever the same again because he had shifted art's focus from the retinal to the mental. Duchamp sidestepped the banal and sentimental to find the relationship between symbol and object and to unearth the concepts underlying art itself. The author's intimacy with the subject and glorious prose style, wit, and deep sense of irony--"the only antidote to despair"--make him the perfect writer to bring this stunning life story to intelligent readers everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Marcel Duchamp, born into an artistic middle-class French family in 1887, first gained recognition as an artist in 1913 when he submitted his painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 to the Armory Show in New York. The newspapers latched onto it after discovering that there was no trace of a nude, or even a real figure, in the painting, which came to symbolize the movement of modern art toward absurdity, humor, and avant-garde disregard for expectations. As an artist, Duchamp never matched the success and recognition of his most well-known work; later in his career, his works of "art" consisted of signed ceramic urinals. Calvin Tomkins, a writer for The New Yorker who befriended Duchamp in New York in the 1960s, has written the first full-length biography of the enigmatic Dadaist. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Regarded by many in the art world as the most influential artist of the century, Duchamp's work has been the the object of scholarly study and intense art world scrutiny for decades. Duchamp's personal life, however, has largely been neglected, due in part to the artist's legendary disdain for publicity. Here, in addition to an adept analysis of the works and Duchamp's greater impact, Tomkins reconstructs the relationships and everyday life that envelop the well-documented high points on the Duchamp time line. The longtime art critic for the New Yorker, a friend of Duchamp and his wife, and author of The Bride and the Bachelors (1965), Tomkins is uniquely qualified to undertake such a study. The analysis and conclusions are perceptive and never digress into mere voyeurism or dubious psychological speculation. Although the author clearly respects Duchamp, he offers critics' opinions freely, and the narrative moves apace free of the personal adulation for the subject or bile for detractors that bogs down so many current art biographies. Add to these distinctions the fact that Tomkins's writing style is uniquely affable, and Duchamp may be offered both as the most accesible introduction for lay readers and as an exceptionally well-researched, nonspeculative treatise for scholars. Highly recommended for all libraries.
Douglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (March 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805057897
• ISBN-13: 978-0805057898
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #860,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars BRILLIANT! January 25, 2000

By "leper2000"

Format:Hardcover

I wholeheartedly recommend this wonderful book to everyone who knows how to read English. Marcel Duchamp was perhaps the premier iconclast of the twentieth century, and the runners up might be Buckminster Fuller & Le Corbusier. The book is NOT a boring monograph; it is a lot of fun to read. Tompkins is a Duchamp enthusiast but manages to wade through the mythology and bull to present the reader with the rosetta stone of Duchamp's life and art. Whether you took a twentieth century art survey in college and only know Duchamp as the guy who wrote R. Mutt on an upside-down urinal or you have read any number of books about the artist you should read this book! Tompkins sucks the reader right into the mind of Duchamp on the first page with a discussion and analysis of The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, one the the greatest and most misunderstood and unappreciated works of the last century. I was an Art History major in college and hence suffered through so many authoritative, pretentious, dry, bland, misinformed, prejudiced and yawn-inducing books that it was such a pleasure to stumble onto Tompkin's Duchamp, which is a reader's book, totally apt since Duchamp was a man's man, a genius, not a theorizing weasal. This book is important because it inspires everyone to question everything you take for granted, and enjoy puns and jokes and the lighter side of life, and that art is there for everyone, not for patrons and the elite, for you and me, and that the contrary notion is absurd.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, though-provoking biography June 9, 1999

By "sgutman3"

Format:Paperback

DUCHAMP: A BIOGRAPHY is a wonderful biography of the artist whom, Tompkins argues persuasively, is the most influential of our almost-completed century. That the art work must be a mental act (a 'cosa mentale,' Leonardo da Vinci had argued many years before); that to be truly creative we need to work AGAINST our esthetic expectations; that art should aspire to be 'non-retinal': these are only some of Duchamp's major perceptions included in this book. What is particularly enjoyable is the way in which Tompkins meshes DuChamps' remarkable life -- one of the most sexually attractive of men, a chess player at the highest levels, an extraordinarily charming and easy person (yet a man who, not matter how much he tried to avoid the repetitive patterns involved in 'art,' was always the consummate artist)with the works of art and 'readymades' which emerged in and from that life. Duchamp's life makes for wonderful reading. What I most recommend about the book is that it stimulates one's own thinking, challenging so much of our conventional beliefs -- in art, in convention, in the concepts of both accomplishment and genius.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I've read most of the books on MD and this one really helps! March 19, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

It's probably best for beginners to read about MD's art instead of his life. So for that try one of the other titles. But if you already HAVE read those, as I have, then this book is indispensable because it gives the information behind the information.

Alot of it could be considered gossip but when a guy's entire oeurve is about humor and eroticism, why not read the stories behind the jokes and the love affairs that inspired the work? When a person is as indifferent as MD, why not understand where that attitude came from and which of his many love affairs was able to cut through the detachment?

This book paints a real vivid portrait of MD the person as opposed to the comic book charcter you've all been instructed to adore. The bad news is Duchamp is a bit opaque, even here, so the legend lives on. There are some things we'll never know about him. And some things that I wouldn't have minded if he had elaborated EVEN MORE on. (For instance- we finally get the details behind MD's first bizarre marriage and we are informed that Man Ray shot a film of the wedding but there is no explanation or follow through on THAT. Which sent me scurrying through the citations. Tompkins could have been a bit more scholarly about those.)(Maybe he should write another book about how he wrote this one. In the world of Duchampiana that wouldn't be unreasonable.) But the good news is that all the stories available are compiled in one easy-to-curl-up-with biography that reveals the real history of 20th Century Art in a straightforward manner. No more jumping from book to book to find out who this one or that one is, who thinks what, which gossip is here, which is there. It's all collected HERE. With deep background. No more Buick-sized coffee table books or 70 pound upside-down tomes to wrestle with. It's a book. A biography. With a few pictures. With a story line you can dance to.

Occasionally Tompkins veers off into the same pontiferiffic BS he accuses Arturo Schwartz and Jack Burnham of. So I just ignore those parts. But what I like about this book is that, for the most part, his point of view is down-to-earth and reasonable. There doesn't seem to be a hidden agenda. The alchemy and supernatural deification is mentioned but only in the context of other writers (when he gives a useful run-down of them and what they have written about MD). He mostly focuses on the man and the people he met along the way. And he explains it all very well. I loved that. If I want to make leaps of faith I'll do it on my own, thank you.
He mentions damn near every work MD ever did but he doesn't dwell on that aspect of it. He just puts each piece in the context of a life. It made me want to pull out a Buick-sized coffee table monster and appreciate it. But it was not mandatory and therefore refreshing.

Tompkins obviously did alot of research for this book. He says he worked on it for decades. Bravo! I read it back to back twice. The second time I took notes.

If it's the information you are after, write to me and I'll send em to ya then you won't have to read it all. Because even though you CAN curl up with this one, there must be something better to curl up with.