46 used & new from $4.81

See All Buying Options

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

Duchamp: A Biography Paperback – March 15, 1998

by Calvin Tomkins (Author)

10 customer reviews

See all 4 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$47.70

$5.89

Paperback

"Please retry"

—

$39.59

$4.81

Hardcover
from $5.89 34 Used from $5.89 11 New from $47.70 4 Collectible from $47.70
Paperback
from $4.81 35 Used from $4.81 10 New from $39.59 1 Collectible from $50.00

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.

Duchamp: A Biography

Available from these sellers.

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Dawn Ades

2

Paperback
Lewis Kachur

5

Paperback
$19.93
Calvin Tomkins

24

Paperback
$13.31
Brian O'Doherty

5

Paperback
$28.40
Marcel Duchamp

4

Paperback
$15.54
Pierre Cabanne

4

Paperback
$14.01

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Paperback: 560 pages
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; Reprint edition (March 15, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805057897
ISBN-13: 978-0805057898
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.4 x 9.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #944,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1908 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Artists, Architects & Photographers
- #9066 in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > History

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars

5 star		90%
4 star		10%
3 star		0%
2 star		0%
1 star		0%

See all 10 customer reviews

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Top Customer Reviews

BRILLIANT!

By A Customer on January 25, 2000

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.

Comment 30 of 30 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

A wonderful, though-provoking biography

By A Customer on June 9, 1999

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.

Comment 7 of 7 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

I've read most of the books on MD and this one really helps!

By A Customer on March 19, 1997

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.Read more ›

Comment 6 of 6 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

You Don't Have to Like Modern Art!

By Borden B. Burns on June 23, 1998

Format: Hardcover

You don't have to like modern art to enjoy this remarkable biography about the most influention and controversial artists of the twentieth century. Tompkins explores the various interpretations of the art of Marcel Duchamp, most amusing of which is that of the artist himself (he was very laissez-fair when it came to expounding upon his own art). If the reader is not a fan of modern art (least of all the Dada movement) he or she will still find pleasure in reading about the life and times of this man of extreme wit and humor. The book reads like a who's-who of the pre and post world war II art world. Dealers, artists, and collectors who filled Duchamps world are just as amusing as characters in a comical work of fiction. The day to day life of people like Peggy Guggenheim and Max Ernst, Francis Picabia and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, Katherine Dryer, and Andre Breton, and the ever popular and exclusive members of the surrealist group is explored in comical detail. This book can also be looked at as a crash course in twentieth art history. Duchamp is explored in the most scholarly manner, but Tompkins keeps his study on a level that makes it easy to read.

Comment 3 of 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

See all 10 customer reviews (newest first)

Write a customer review

Most Recent Customer Reviews

... of this movement - this book is a very good place to start

If you are remotely interested in learning about the beginning of conceptual art - and Duchamp - the father of this movement - this book is a very good place to start. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Candice

Nicely written with LOTS of detail and background.

VOLUMES of detail but so well written it's still an "easy read". Tompkins sets the context well and drops in many insights on Modern art in general. Read more

Published 10 months ago by D. Aarons

A terrific read by Calvin Tomkins

Duchamp was at the center of a storm cloud of creativity. In addition to being an incredible artist in his own right, he also created some incredible (modern) solutions for... Read more

Published 13 months ago by Patrick S Hanlon

The best book about Duchamp (Rrose Sélavy) I've ever read

This is the most thorough book I've ever read on Duchamp. And I think I have some idea, as I've been doing research for a film about Marcel Duchamp, and this is the best, most... Read more

Published on October 21, 2013 by Karl P.

MARCEL DUCHAMP

Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp; A Biography, 1996.
A John Macrae Book, Henry Holt & Company
ISBN: 91012444195
465 pages
$32. Read more

Published on August 25, 2010 by G. Donahue

A fascinating, well-written, accessable biography.

As an artist interested in Marcel Duchamp and his works, I foud this book to be very informative. It's a book that will fascinate even those who have little interest in modern art.

Published on December 8, 1998