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The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp

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I don't know much about Marcel Duchamp yet I'm always eager to learn more, as with every passing year he seems to become, more and more, the central art figure of the last century, well, he and Andy Warhol. That's just one man's opinion of course, but I take it from T J Demos and his absorbing new look at Duchamp, that I'm not the only one who thinks so. To tell you the truth, I sort of bow down to Demos, whose book seems like a very model for cultural and visual criticism of a high order. It begins simply enough with a recitation, and little by little develops, with the stirring in or more material, and a careful sifting based on an ideological reading of history, into a complex and moving argument, responsive to change, responsive to our very moment. And incidentally it is another step in providing that comprehensive Duchamp biography we all hope is coming, for he examines in ways I haven't seen before some obscure alleys of Duchamp's life, and in doing so turns upside down some received wisdom that, until I read this book, I just accepted as a given, for that is my nature.

(There must be a connection between the conceit of "received wisdom" and the Duchampian "readymade" lurking under the surface, but I haven't worked it all out yet. My dad it was who pointed out to me that if one used Duchamp's famous "Fountain" piece as a urinal one would come a cropper, and the moral was, one must lay on one's side, one knee lifted toward's one chest, if one hopes to avoid the gleeful, sardonic, sorrowful goose of the master.

Anyhow, Demos explores at great length the aesthetic and socio political strategies that lurk behind the creation of Duchamp's "portable museum," the "dick-in-a-box" precursor subsequently developed by Justin Timberlake, our own great appropriator. Not only the nomadism of the 20th century, but a resistance to Fascist and Nazi ideology, lay behind this work. I have never seen critical attention of much worth paid to Duchamp's participation in the 1938 Surrealism Exposition, but it's fascinating to see it read as Duchamp's saying no to a raft of opposing and delimiting political positions. The readymade, slick, new and shiny, was hereafter to be rendered made "dirty," to use one of Demos' key words; no steel shovel now, but a forest of burlap and cotton sacks still filthy from having had coal in them (the way the bad child might find coal in his stocking in USA Christmas customs of the first half of the 20th century)--real coal, and real coal dust choking the air like our modern sterile office suddenly made all Hogwarts when the temp drops the open tube of toner at the Xerox machine. Demos considers the ways in which Duchamp's suitcase served to accelerate existing trends within the art world towards miniaturization and compression, again, when you're on the run you want to gather no moss, only your diamonds. An admirable openness to phenomena of all types characterizes Demos' bold, yet careful analyses. He sees what I imagine might be the big picture, some of the air in which our hero walked, something of the troubled sleep he longed to escape from.

Wonderful book with new insights and information not found in other books. If you are interested in Duchamp and think you have run out of reading material then take a look you will not be disappointed