You Can Hire an Artist

It has occurred to me that by considering artists born prior to the 1920s  (as I’ve done so far) the subjects  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 friend’s had thought he had abandoned creating art.  It was completed in 1966, two years before his death.

 

Kathleen Benton

(Click on the images to enlarge them.  Click again to return to page.)

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.