Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (October Books) [Paperback]

David Joselit (Author)

Book Description

Series: October Books | Publication Date: February 19, 2001

There is not one Marcel Duchamp, but several. Within his oeuvre Duchamp practiced a variety of modernist idioms and invented an array of contradictory personas: artist and art dealer, conceptualist and craftsman, chess champion and dreamer, dandy and recluse.

In Infinite Regress, David Joselit considers the plurality of identities and practices within Duchamp's life and art between 1910 and 1941, conducting a synthetic reading of his early and middle career. Taking into account underacknowledged works and focusing on the conjunction of the machine and the commodity in Duchamp's art, Joselit notes a consistent opposition between the material world and various forms of measurement, inscription, and quantification. Challenging conventional accounts, he describes the readymade strategy not merely as a rejection of painting, but as a means of producing new models of the modern self.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Two art historians contribute these most recent additions to the greatly expanding library of Duchamp literature. The more far-reaching of the two is Joselit (Univ. of California, Irvine), who ambitiously attempts to find a "center" for Duchamp's multifarious oeuvre. No other artist of such great influence and importance produced a body of work that is so complex (so constantly turning in on itself), and Joselit feels scholars have too often focused only on one theme, period, or medium. Simply put, Joselit argues that Duchamp's transformations are that center and are "organized around a consistent dynamic or interplay between materiality and its measure or the body and its (self) identification." Along the way he does touch on virtually all periods; his analysis of Duchamp's often neglected linguistic readymades is especially fresh and elucidating. Joselit makes good use of a good deal of recent scholarship, but most of all his achievement is tying a string around Duchamp's plurality. By contrast, Henderson (Univ. of Texas at Austin) focuses on a specific theme, albeit one that Duchamp himself found endlessly fascinating. The author of The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (1975), she seems particularly well qualified to examine how the discussions and discoveries of the early 20th centuryAfrom X-rays, wave theory, and optics to notions of the fourth dimensionAaffected Duchamp's art. While not the first to touch on these matters, Henderson rightly argues that too many previous scholars have ignored the humor in the artist's relation to "playful physics." She also makes use of all the notes on the large glass (including those posthumously published) and brings a broad understanding of turn-of-the-century science to the work. Joselit's work belongs in all art and academic libraries; Henderson deserves a place in larger academic art or history of science collections.ADouglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Duchamp's oeuvre is a kind of labyrinth through which few art historians have managed to come out with all their sanity: Joselit's work provides a remarkably original guide for it, and demonstrates, with radically new means, the centrality of Duchamp's oeuvre in this century."

—Yve-Alain Bois, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art, Harvard University

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Product Details

• Paperback: 262 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (February 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262600382
• ISBN-13: 978-0262600385
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,514,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For the Academics, September 30, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (October Books) (Hardcover)

Joselit's study of Duchamp is a top-notch academic book and for the non art history buffs, it will certainly be a challenging read. Joselit's vocabulary is immense and sophisticated and without direct references to the reproductions included in the text (ie. Nude Decending a Staircase, figure 1, p. 33) his assertations can be hard to follow. For those already familiar with Duchamp and his art, this book will take your knowledge to the next level. Joselit is an incredible modern scholar.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A work of impeccable scholarship, March 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (October Books) (Hardcover)

Thorough, rigorous and provocative. Joselit provides fresh insight into the intellectual basis of Duchamp's work and arrives at some startling conclusions, but never makes any flying leaps of his own-- his results stem from careful research and solid analysis. Jammin'!