Kant after Duchamp (October Books) [Hardcover]

Thierry de Duve (Author)

Book Description

Series: October Books | Publication Date: May 10, 1996

Kant after Duchamp brings together eight essays around a central thesis with many implications for the history of avant-gardes. Although Duchamp's readymades broke with all previously known styles, de Duve observes that he made the logic of modernist art practice the subject matter of his work, a shift in aesthetic judgment that replaced the classical "this is beautiful" with "this is art." De Duve employs this shift (replacing the word "beauty" by the word "art") in a rereading of Kant's Critique of Judgment that reveals the hidden links between the radical experiments of Duchamp and the Dadaists and mainstream pictorial modernism.

Part I of the book revolves around Duchamp's famous/infamous Fountain. Part II explores his passage from painting to the readymades, from art in particular to art in general. Part III looks at the aesthetic and ethical consequences of the replacement of "beauty" with "art" in Kant's Third Critique. Finally, part IV attempts to reconstruct an "archaeology" of modernism that paves the way for a renewed understanding of our postmodern condition.



The essays: Art Was a Proper Name. Given the Richard Mutt Case. The Readymade and the Tube of Paint. The Monochrome and the Blank Canvas. Kant after Duchamp. Do Whatever. Archaeology of Pure Modernism. Archaeology of Practical Modernism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"You don't have to agree with all of Thierry de Duve's premises and arguments (needless to say I don't) in order to recognize that he has written a remarkable book. The essays gathered in Kant After Duchamp mount the most formidable case yet made for Duchamp's importance, and what makes de Duve's achievement all the more unexpected is that this is done by way of an intense engagement with the writings of Duchamp's seeming opposite, the critic Clement Greenberg. A third constant presence in these pages is Kant's Critique of Judgement, which at once governs de Duve's understanding of Greenberg's "formalism" and is itself brilliantly reinterpreted in the light of Duchamp's readymades. De Duve has always been an independent thinker. Now he has produced an indispensable book, a brilliant and learned "archaeology" of Duchampian modernism that is also a highly original contribution to philosophical aesthetics."
—Michael Fried, Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities, The Johns Hopkins University

About the Author

Thierry de Duve is Director of Studies, Association de préfiguration de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 500 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (May 10, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262041510
• ISBN-13: 978-0262041515
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,221,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For the French Post-Structuralist Lover, January 11, 2007

By 

Contemporary Art Lover - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kant after Duchamp (October Books) (Paperback)

If you have a background in French critical theory, arising from the 1970's, this book will be a totally fascinating one. If not...you may be baffled, find the book not what you expected, and get angry that you've spent this much money on a work you can't understand. Be forewarned. That having been said, Thierry de Duve is one of the most outstanding contemporary art theoriticians writing today. His slant on Duchamp and Duchamp's impact on subsequent modern/contemporary art is without parallel.

6 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Subliminal, November 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Kant after Duchamp (October Books) (Paperback)

A difficult question posed and a difficult answer given. In struggling with two of the most influential personnas in our culture, De Duve does himself, and aesthetics good. Long and convoluted (to the extreme of working out a symbolic logic of Duchamp?) this is nonetheless a great book

8 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kant was a Lutheran, September 7, 2002

By 

Bob Swain "Seattle" (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kant after Duchamp (October Books) (Hardcover)

What's missing in this marvelous book is a discussion of Kant's Lutheran religious aspect. Most philosophers treat him as a secular philosopher, but he wasn't. The assault on Christianity by the entire left has seemingly eclipsed the fact that all of the great 19th century thinkers were Lutherans: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, of course, but also Nietzsche (who was raised as a Lutheran and whose seventeen prior generations of father, grandfather, etc., had been Lutheran pastors), Marx raised in a Lutheran household, and so on.

What Duchamp does is knock out the otherworldly purposiveness that Kant claimed for art. Thierry de Duve aborts the seriousness of his discussion by neglecting the theological dimension of Kant's inquiry.

However, this is still a great book albeit a limited one, as he could have gone further to the heart of the culture wars by contrasting the Sadean nature of the surrealist enterprise with the Christian nature of the Kantian.