Half-Naked Thursday: Eve Babitz with Marcel Duchamp
Posted by Kathleen Benton on Sep 17, 2009
Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz posing for the photographer Julian Wasser during the Duchamp Retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, 1963
At the end of my first Elegantly Dressed Wednesday post (see EWD: Georgia O’Keeffe) I considered the possibility of adding the feature, Half-Naked Thursday, using art and artists as my consortium. This feature is inspired by yet not to be confused with Half-Nekkid Thursday, a practice of exposure which has been going on at other sites for years. The rules there request that subject be of the participants themselves or someone known to them. Since my purposes here are to highlight art and artists, I’m going to borrow the theme and do just that.
Since I chose Marcel Duchamp as my subject for yesterday’s Elegantly Dressed Wednesday article I thought I would follow it with this example which includes Duchamp for my first installment.
The photograph’s subject is a fully clothed Marcel Duchamp and a naked Eve Babitz sitting at a table playing chess in a gallery filled with Duchamp’s artwork. The room is a gallery at the Pasadena Museum of Art in 1963.
The concept is attributed to the photographer Julian Wasser, although it seems inspired by the Dada playfulness and incongruity of Marcel Duchamp’s own work. As the title states, the subjects were posed. This means it was not presented as a performance, nor was the photography session open to the public. So, in line with many of Duchamp’s pieces, what seems to be documentation is actually fiction. As a photograph, the juxtaposition of fully-clothed and nude figures still shocks even today, as did Édouard Manet’s composition Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), painted one hundred years prior in 1863.
A little bit on Eve Babitz: She is an author, artist, and former model. She has several book titles to her credit- Eve’s Hollywood, Slow days, fast company: The world, the flesh, and L.A. : tales and Fiorucci, the book.
In an interview conducted in the year 2000 with Paul Karlstrom, Babitz seems intent on making the claim that the set-up was her idea. You can judge that for yourself. Here is a link to the transcript of that interview: Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Kathleen Benton
(Click on images to enlarge and read details. Click again to return to page.)
Julian Wasser (American), Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz posing for the photographer Julian Wasser during the Duchamp Retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, 1963, © 2000 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris
© 2009 All rights reserved Kathleen Benton | You Can Hire an Artist
All comments are moderated. Only comments expressed in English will be considered. Please allow twenty-four hours for your comment to appear.
Elegantly Dressed Wednesday: Marcel Duchamp
Posted by Kathleen Benton on Sep 16, 2009
It has occurred to me that by considering artists born prior to the 1920s (as I’ve done so far) the subjects for Elegantly Dressed Wednesdays will look elegant simply because people did not appear in public as casually dressed as we do today. It is a great deal of fun to look back, but not much of a challenge to always be digging up the elegant past. I promise in future to find some elegantly dressed contemporary models to feature.
However we must give Marcel Duchamp and his band of merry-Dada-makers a great deal of credit for shaking things up a bit, bringing art, thought, and life very much into the future. It is perhaps through their approach to art and life that we have the more irreverent and relaxed world we now know. Playfulness in art and life was their trademark. Dada influenced not only the visual arts but writing, music, politics, and culture in general. It can be credited with influencing work that goes on today (Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg to name two visual artists). There were many members working in different cities. But maybe the most elegant of the pack was Duchamp’s beautiful mind.
Duchamp did not spend his entire career making art. While in his thirties Duchamp decided to become a chess player. The reason he gave was:
“Chess creates such beautiful problems”.
I don’t think there’s a big shift from art to chess. Compostion is quite similar to chess. One asks, “ What’s going on here?” and “If I do this what will happen?” Duchamp is quoted as understanding the similarities in life:
“If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him – as if anyone could – but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.”
Duchamp’s innovative art - paintings, collages, ready-mades, sculptures and performances - were all completed early on in his life. If considered in progression, one can see the shift from visual thought to the intellectual game-playing that would herald Duchamp’s absorption into chess.
Despite having given up making artwork, Duchamp continued to associate with artists and collectors often influencing and advising them. The photo of Duchamp playing chess with a nude Eve Babitz (to be featured tomorrow in my first Half-Naked Thursday post), was the idea of Julian Wasser, the photographer. It was taken at the Pasadena Art Museum where a retrospective of Duchamps’ work was exhibited in 1963. It was not a performance piece nor was the event open to public scrutiny. But the photo was very much à la Duchamp in staging, similar to Rrose Selavy or his “Wanted” poster.
Duchamp’s final artwork, Etant donnés, was worked on for twenty years in secret, long after even his closest friends had thought he had abandoned the creation of art. It was completed in 1966, two years before his death.
Kathleen Benton
(Click on images to enlarge and read details. Click again to return to page.)
For an additional consideration on the life and work of Marcel Duchamp don’t miss this post: Half-Naked Thursday: Eve Babitz with Marcel Duchamp
Image titles and credits:
Marcel Duchamp at wall-mounted chess board, Photograph (I have followed all search results and found no credit for this photograph.)
Marcel Duchamp aboard the Paris, February 26, 1927, Photograph (Likewise I have found no credits for this photo.)
Eliot Elisofon (American, 1911-1973) Duchamp descending a staircase, 1952, Photograph, © Time, Inc.
Marcel Duchamp (American, born France, 1887-1968), Wanted: $ 2000 Reward, 1923, Lithograph, 1961 (replica of 1923 original), Frances Beatty and Allen Adler, © 2009 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris / Succession Marcel Duchamp
Man Ray (American, 1890-1976) and Marcel Duchamp (American, born France, 1887-1968), Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp), 1921, Gelatin silver print, hand-retouched by Duchamp in black ink and pencil, 5 7/8 x 3 7/8 in., Philadelphia Museum of Art
Man Ray (American, 1890-1976), Photograph for Marcel Duchamp’s Monte Carlo Bond (No. 12), 1924, Photograph
Marcel Duchamp (American, born France, 1887-1968), Monte Carlo Bond (No. 12), Cut-and-paste gelatin silver print on lithograph with letterpress, 12¼ x 7½ in., Museum of Modern Art
Julian Wasser (American), Marcel Duchamp with his Ready-made, 1963, gelatin silver print, 19.8 x 15.9 in.
Marcel Duchamp (American, 1887-1968), Etant donné (exterior view), 1946-1966, installed at the Philadelphia Musuem of Art.
© 2009 All rights reserved Kathleen Benton | You Can Hire an Artist
All comments are moderated. Only comments expressed in English will be considered. Please allow twenty-four hours for your comment to appear.
Elegantly Dressed Wednesday: Salvador Dali
Posted by Kathleen Benton on Sep 9, 2009
Salvador Dali is known around the world for his surrealistic art, but he is probably equally as well known for his larger-than-life style. Not only for the super mustache, which grew in length and animation as he aged, but for his dapper dress and shocking antics. Most photos show him mugging for the camera with high drama and flair. Dali lived and played to the extreme. His activity was well documented, and it is most likely that he had arranged for the self-promotion. A self-proclaimed genius, all aspects of Dali’s activity seemed geared towards creating fame for himself and he succeeded. As a result, during his lifetime his celebrity perhaps upstaged his art work. Or maybe they were one in the same for him.
Dali often chose accessories for added effect. Often over the top, still he managed to maintain an aura of elegance. But perhaps that is easily done with a full head of hair and a tie; pets and walking sticks may be secondary. No sloppy tee shirts here.
Dali’s wife Gala also got into the act and was often his muse. It is said that she was the driving force behind the international acclaim of Dali. They often appeared together as an attraction and she knew how to dress the part.
When I began research for this article my idea of Dali was more as a celebrity and show-off, whose life and bizarre subject matter were the attraction rather than his abilities as a artist. I soon realized however what limited knowledge I had of his work. And the more I learned the more impressed I became.
Dali was a prolific artist who throughout his career remained true to his surrealist title. He was able to express himself in many different ways – drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, performance art, and jewels. The unconventional and sometimes scandalous nature of his subject matter with its nightmarish atmosphere was a part of the surrealist cutting edge at the time. But just like fashion, cutting edge art soon looks dated and then we must judge the work for its historical importance, intellectual, and artistic merits. I was not a big fan of Dali, but I had always realized his importance in the scope of art history. It is in having viewed his drawings and paintings afresh that I have found a new respect for Salvador Dali.
There is no denying Dali was an adept draftsman. His style is very much likened to classical art. We also immediately recognize the work as modern because of its content and composition. As for the content, much of it is identifiable and perhaps still shocking to some. There is also a psychoanalytical iconography that I cannot be bothered with understanding. For that reason sometimes the work just makes me impatient and want to be done with it. (I supposed I’ve been around too long to be impressed by the bizarre.)
Dali’s imagination had no bounds or censor. Perhaps that was his ticket to success in a world that has become difficult to shock. He certainly worked hard at it and enjoyed his life. No matter what I think, Dali had his fame, fortune, and has his place in art history. He was one of a kind.
-Kathleen Benton
(Click on images to enlarge and read details. Click again to return to page.)
Salvador Dali, photograph. Still looking for credits…possibly Carl Van Vetchen?
Martha Holmes (American, 1923-2006), Salvador Dali and Wife Gala in a Garden, 1945, Photograph, 17.8 x 14.4 inches, Life Magazine
Roger Higgins, Salvador Dali with Ocelot and Cane, 1965, Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection
Philippe Halsman (Latvian, 1906-1979), from “Dali’s Moustache”, 1954, Photograph
André Caillet Fils, Paris (French, active 1930s), Gala wearing the shoe-hat created by Elsa Schiaparelli from a Salvador Dali design, 1938, gelatin silver photograph, 23.0 x 28.6 cm, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, © Salvador Dali, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989), The Broken Bridge and the Dream, 1945, Oil on canvas, 26¼ x 34 3/16, Salvador Dali Museum, Florida
Salvador Dali, Ascension, 1958, Oil on canvas, 115 x 123 cm., Private collection
© 2009 All rights reserved Kathleen Benton | You Can Hire an Artist
All comments are moderated. Only comments expressed in English will be considered. Please allow twenty-four hours for your comment to appear.
