The grandfather of postmodernism and a consummate trickster, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) remains one of the most complicated characters in art history. In addition to an intellectually demanding oeuvre, he made public statements about his life and work that were often elusive, even contradictory. Journalist and historian Marquis (Alfred H. Barr, Jr.) sets out to present what she feels is a much-needed objective look at the artist, the man, and the conundrum. Though she doesn't attempt to discredit Duchamp or previous Duchamp scholarship, she doesn't take his Olympian stature at face value either. Even Duchamp enthusiasts who might bristle at statements like "Duchamp's art, like tripe, is an acquired taste" will likely thrill to the previously unpublished interviews, letters, and bits of gossip contained here. This alone makes the sure-to-be-controversial biography a noteworthy addition to Duchamp scholarship. The uninitiated may want to start with Calvin Tompkins's more admiring Duchamp: A Biography, but this work is recommended to anyone who wants to explore further. With color plates of major works and candid snapshots of the artist and his circle. In contrast to Marquis's fresh approach, the monograph Marcel Duchamp presents solid but typical essays on the master by Duchamp scholars. One of curator Szeeman's goals is to elucidate Duchampian ideas and their effect on other artists, specifically Jean Tinguely. The publisher hoped to have this supersede previous volumes by reproducing individual works in a larger scale and by including some more obscure artwork. But consequently every item is given more or less equal visual importance, which may cause confusion about the actual size of the original. Still, this handsome and fairly comprehensive volume would be useful to libraries that don't already own Anne D'Harnoncourt's Marcel Duchamp, the retrospective catalog by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Douglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
A one-time Fauvist, Cubist, Dadaist, and Surrealist, but an eternal chess player, Marcel Duchamp remains the avant-garde figure beyond all avant-garde figures of the past century. Provocative and brilliant, he radically challenged and changed accepted notions of art and its manufacture, and of the relationship between art and life. Marcel Duchamp, published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel under the curatorship of Harald Szeeman, endeavors to trace the different periods of Duchamp's oeuvre by means of a selection of his work focused mainly on those aspects that influenced Tinguely's own oeuvre. Additionally, the publication contains statements by Duchamp and essays by renowned Duchamp scholars on such topics as the emergence and development of the ready-made concept and its impact on the art of the 1960s.
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