Mar­cel Duchamp: Étant don­nés

L. Bran­don Krall

Mar­cel Duchamp: Étant don­nés, August 15 — Novem­ber 29, 2009

Philadel­phia Museum of Art, 26th St. / Ben­jamin Franklin Park­way, Philadel­phia, PA 19130

Two major sub­jects for Ducham­pi­ons [sic] are Mar­cel Duchamp’s final work, Étant don­nés: 1. La chute d’eau, 2. Le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Water­fall, 2. The Illu­mi­nat­ing Gas), posthu­mously revealed to the pub­lic in 1969, and Duchamp’s life­long devo­tion to chess.  Two acutely rel­e­vant exhi­bi­tions opened within a month of each other early this sea­son in Philadel­phia and New York.  Both are de rigueur to see and they are aug­mented by three asso­ci­ated pub­li­ca­tions, which are impres­sive and present impor­tant new mate­r­ial to the field.

The Philadel­phia Museum of Art is archi­tec­turally Neo­clas­si­cal, designed on the plan and with the attrib­utes of a Greek tem­ple built on a promon­tory over­look­ing the Schuylkill River.  If you have not been there yet you absolutely must go!  The museum can now be reached by train, via 30th Street Sta­tion and by tak­ing a very pleas­ant 20 minute walk along a newly opened river side park called Schuylkill Banks [http://www.schuylkillbanks.org].

The Mod­ern and Con­tem­po­rary gal­leries include many superla­tive works by among oth­ers Picasso, Gris, Morton Scham­berg, Kelly, Twombly and Johns, and it includes a divine col­lec­tion of Bran­cu­sis and Mon­dri­ans, with a small gallery devoted to Duchamp-Villon, and Gallery 182 where Duchamp’s major works are usu­ally on dis­play assem­bled around The Large Glass.  It is a small dark­ened gallery just off this space where a brick façade frames an old weath­ered Span­ish door, and that is where Étant don­nés can be dis­cov­ered. The art in the halls of this wing have been recon­fig­ured for this exhi­bi­tion in a thought­ful and note­wor­thy way.  When you arrive at the south wing you see down rows of arches reced­ing in per­spec­tive, that extra­or­di­nary object framed in green vel­vet and orig­i­nally given to Maria Mar­tins, Study for Étant don­nés…. It was first shown pub­licly in 1963 at the Pasadena ret­ro­spec­tive orga­nized by Wal­ter Hopps and it is the pre­cur­sor to the 4-dimensional envi­ron­ment that Duchamp took 20 years to com­plete, with all kinds of delays. Both of the Choco­late Grinder paint­ings, No. 1 and No. 2 from 1913 and 14 respec­tively, were re-hung at the entrance to the wing, afford­ing a curi­ous oppor­tu­nity to look at them right next to each other.  It is likely that the choco­late grinder in a shop win­dow in Rouen that inspired them was a large elec­tri­cally pow­ered machine. It is not known to what extent it was repro­duced in Duchamp’s inven­tion with Louis VI legs.  Even­tu­ally the broyeuse du choco­lat became a source of impor­tant male energy in The Large Glass.  That “the bach­e­lor grinds his choco­late him­self,” does not reflect any French slang of the period or of the present, per­mit­ting one to ask who grinds choco­late for the bride, if not the groom?

Excep­tional to dis­cover in this show is the full-scale fac­sim­ile of Nude Descend­ing a Stair­case No.2, that Duchamp made on paper from an enlarged Armory Show post­card. Duchamp had made a trip to see the orig­i­nal oil paint­ing in the Tor­rey col­lec­tion, when he trav­eled to Cal­i­for­nia and he checked the col­oration with care, tak­ing exact notes.  Then, for the fac­sim­ile, he turned the orig­i­nal ochres and earth tones into a range of greys and blues! This can be seen as an exam­ple of his work that presages the age of dig­i­tal image manip­u­la­tion.  The work is so frag­ile that it can be shown for only 3 months every 5 years, which in itself is a good rea­son to make a pil­grim­age to Philadel­phia; to see this work installed in an arch, directly across from the orig­i­nal oil painting!

Among the works on view from the museum’s col­lec­tion and archives, most of which were assem­bled by Duchamp for the col­lec­tors Louise and Wal­ter Arens­berg, are the orig­i­nal pho­tographs by Duchamp taken in Switzer­land of the water­fall land­scape. Truly mar­velous is the study made from painted pho­tographs mounted on wood for the land­scape back­ground of Étant don­nés, with del­i­cately stip­pled paint­ing that is delight­ful to see close-up. This work, the col­laged pho­tographs and draw­ings and silk-screens made with Dali that were prepara­tory to the final land­scape, are all on view.  But really inter­est­ing is how pre­sciently they engaged in pho­to­graphic manip­u­la­tion prior to the dig­i­tal age. The pen­cil draw­ing that shows an elec­tric pole in a land­scape with ele­ments of The Large Glass, is titled Cols alités, which is trans­lated lit­er­ally as ‘bedrid­den hills’ but which could carry another enten­dre cross­ing to Eng­lish, ‘alighted hills.’  Duchamp’s own lus­cious color trans­paren­cies are on view, some in hand cut card­board mattes, and a pair of them set in a stere­o­scope, allow­ing us to view his opti­cal study as a 3d image of the inte­rior. This was prior to the 3 dimen­sional tech­nol­ogy that exists today and which would undoubt­edly have engaged Duchamp and Man Ray in new experiments.

The cura­tor, Michael R. Tay­lor, has placed spe­cial focus on the moulds and the processes of work­ing with them, and other late works from the col­lec­tion that relate to motifs in Étant don­nés.  Vit­rines are devoted to Wedge of Chastity, Objet dard and Boite Alerte among other fas­ci­nat­ing items. Duchamp per­sis­tently derided the imbe­cil­ity of war, hav­ing lived through World Wars I and II, and always protested against it in his way. I believe that Torture-morte, in this exhi­bi­tion, which was a cast from his own foot and embed­ded with arti­fi­cial flies, was a con­tem­po­rary protest against the war in Indochina in 1959, when it was made.

Much credit is due the cura­tor for putting a spot­light on the work of Denise Browne Hare.  She was a good friend of Teeny and Mar­cel, and Teeny com­mis­sioned her to record his stu­dio with Étant don­nés in it, after his death in 1968.  Browne Hare’s pho­tographs are in them­selves works of art, by an artist whose entire oeu­vre still remains to be known entirely today.  Some of Browne Hare’s pho­tographs were used by Duchamp in assem­bling the, Man­ual of Instruc­tions which has been reprinted with a trans­la­tion from a fac­sim­ile of 1987, for this occasion.

There used to be an open ter­race just off Gallery 182, where The Large Glass was installed inten­tion­ally adja­cent to the present sealed win­dow.  One has a view to the court­yard with its immense mar­ble foun­tain and tall jet of water. Imme­di­ately below the ter­race for years a sculp­ture by Maria Mar­tins had been installed.  Yara, has been brought inside, restored and this strange black per­son­age pre­sides near the entrance to the show, with a hand­ful of Mar­tins’ works on paper.  Mar­tins and Duchamp had a seri­ous love affair that lasted over a period of 6 years.  In the cat­a­log 35 inti­mate let­ters from Duchamp (none from Mar­tins), dat­ing from 1946 to 1952 are repro­duced for the first time with trans­la­tions.  It is dis­qui­et­ing to read this exposed per­sonal side of Duchamp, when he always made a care­ful point to guard him­self from pub­lic scrutiny.  One senses extremely ten­der emo­tions, and the pain of lov­ing and los­ing love that he expe­ri­enced many times in his life. Even so, what is inter­est­ing and cen­tral in these let­ters is the record of the devel­op­ment of Étant don­nésÉtant don­nés and a sug­ges­tion that Duchamp and Mar­tins might have revealed it in the 50s or 60s if they had been able to live together, which they could not.

A great deal remains to be explored in the Duchamp par­a­digm, among them his philo­soph­i­cal posi­tion, like a gad­fly to mod­ern soci­ety and his remark­able vision in advanc­ing toward future tech­nolo­gies. Étant don­nés is his last work and one of the great mas­ter­pieces of the 20th cen­tury that must be seen to be believed. A great deal has been writ­ten about this work, too often express­ing the received idea that it is a multi-dimensional ver­sion of The Large Glass; it is not.

    That busi­ness of my being influ­en­tial is very much exag­ger­ated… what­ever there is in it is prob­a­bly due to my Carte­sian mind. I refused to accept any­thing, doubted every­thing. So, doubt­ing every­thing, I had to find some­thing that had not existed before — some­thing I had not thought of before. What I did with any idea that came to me was to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses.  But I’m not so inter­ested in art per se, it’s only one occu­pa­tion, and it hasn’t been my whole life — far from it. M. Duchamp

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