'Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés' @ Philadelphia Museum of Art

PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present the first exhibition to examine the genesis, construction, and reception of Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1° The Waterfall, 2° The Illuminating Gas), Marcel Duchamp’s enigmatic final masterwork. Duchamp (1887-1968) constructed Étant donnés in complete secrecy over a period of twenty years, from 1946 to 1966, during which he publicly claimed to have gone “underground” and given up art for chess. It was not until after his death on October 2, 1968 that the work was discovered in his studio. The multi-media assemblage surprised the art world and perplexed the public when, as a gift to the Museum and in accordance with the artist’s wishes, it was permanently installed in July 1969, joining the world’s largest collection of his works, including Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 (1912); The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915-23), to which it closely relates, and readymades such as With Hidden Noise (1916) and Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy?(1921).

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of its public unveiling, Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés will situate the extraordinary assemblage within the context of almost 100 related works of art, including all of its known studies and related materials, including books, photographs, and works on paper. Duchamp also made a number of “erotic objects,” small-scale sculptures that directly relate to the casting process of the female nude in Étant donnés. This exhibition brings these known works together with more than twenty previously unknown sculptures and studies. These unpublished works include erotic objects, body casts, prints, and notes, as well as over seventy Polaroid photographs taken by Duchamp of Étant donnés in his New York studio that provide the missing link in our understanding of the origins and evolution of Duchamp’s final masterwork. These Polaroids will be shown alongside a series of photographs of the artist’s final studio at 80 East 11th Street, taken by a friend, Denise Brown Hare, following Duchamp’s death in 1968, which document Étant donnés before it was disassembled and moved to Philadelphia. The exhibition is drawn largely from the collections and archives of the Museum, and supplemented by loans from public and private collections in the United States, France, Germany, Sweden, Israel and Japan. (Image: Cover by Marcel Duchamp. Text by André Breton, with illustrations by Arshile Gorky,  Cover of Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares, 1946, Hardbound book with paper cover design by Duchamp. Book: 9 3/8 x 6 3/8 inches (23.8 x 16.2 cm). Gift of an anonymous donor, 1988. Inv. 1988-8-2. Philadelphia Museum of Art © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp)

Marcel Duchamp, Bouche-evier (Sink Stopper, Shower Medal), Bronze, 1967 cast of 1964 lead, /8 x 2 1/2 inches (1 x 6.4 cm) Gift of Carl Steele, 1981. Inv. 1981-85-5. Philadelphia Museum of Art © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp

No photograph can ever communicate the intensity of the unique visual experience of seeing Duchamp’s Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage, of 1946-66, which has been described by Jasper Johns as “the strangest work of art any museum has ever had in it.” This elaborate three-dimensional assemblage offers an unforgettable and untranslatable experience to those who look through the two small holes in the solid wooden door, which is set into a brick archway in a roughly stuccoed wall. The rustic door has no handle, and only by peering through the holes does the unsuspecting viewer encounter within the spectacular sight of a realistically constructed simulacrum of a naked woman lying spread-eagled on a bed of dead twigs and fallen leaves. In her left hand, this life-size mannequin holds aloft an old-fashioned illuminated gas lamp of the Bec Auer type, while behind her, in the far distance, a lush wooded landscape rises toward the horizon. This brightly illuminated backdrop consists of a retouched photographic collage of a hilly landscape with a dense cluster of trees outlined against a hazy turquoise sky, replete with fluffy cotton clouds. The only movement in the otherwise eerily still grotto is a sparkling waterfall, powered by an unseen motor, which pours into a mist-laden lake on the right. (Image: Marcel Duchamp, Moonlight on the Bay at Basswood, 1953. Black ink, graphite, crayon, talcum powder, and chocolate on blue blotting paper. Sheet: 10 3/8 x 7 1/4 inches (26.4 x 18.4 cm) Made in Basswood, Minnesota, United States, 1953. Gift of Frank Brookes Hubachek, 1974. Inv. 1974-176-1. Philadelphia Museum of Art © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp)

Marcel Duchamp, Étant donnés: 1. La chute d’eau, 2. Le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas), 1946-66, Mixed-media assemblage: wooden door, bricks, velvet, wood, leather stretched over an armature of metal, twigs, aluminum, iron, glass, Plexiglas, linoleum, cotton, electric lights, gas lamp (Bec Auer type), motor, etc., 7 feet 11 1/2 inches x 70 inches (242.6 x 177.8 cm). Gift of the Cassandra Foundation, 1969. Inv. 1969-41-1. Philadelphia Museum of Art © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp

The exhibition, organized by Michael R. Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated 450-page catalogue written by Dr. Taylor that will be published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in conjunction with Yale University Press. This catalogue will present new scholarship on the history and construction of the piece, as well as the scandalous critical reception of the work after it went on public display in 1969, and its legacy for contemporary artists, such as Ray Johnson, Hannah Wilke, Robert Gober, and Marcel Dzama. It will also provide a comprehensive bibliography for the piece, as well as color plates for every work of art in the exhibition. The catalogue will publish for the first time an important cache of 35 letters that Duchamp wrote in the 1940s and early 1950s to his then lover, the Brazilian sculptor Maria Martins, who was the model for the recumbent figure in his environmental tableau construction. Dr. Taylor stated that: “these letters, which will be published in the original French as well as in an English translation, provide crucial insights into the making of the work, as well as the complex ideas behind Duchamp’s endlessly enigmatic construction.” (Image: Marcel Duchamp, Manual of instructions for the assembly of Étant donnés..., 1966. Black vinyl binder with gelatin silver photographs, drawings, and manuscript notes in graphite and colored inks on paper in clear vinyl sheet protectors- Binder: 11 5/8 x 9 13/16 x 1 3/4 inches (29.5 x 25 x 4.5 cm). Made in New York, New York, United States. Gift of the Cassandra Foundation, 1969. Inv. 1969-41-2. Philadelphia Museum of Art © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp)

Marcel Duchamp, Le Surréalisme en 1947, catalogue of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Galerie Maeght, Paris, July - August 1947, with Please Touch (Prière de Toucher) 1947. Book with cover made of collage of foam rubber and velvet on cardboard. Cover: 9 1/4 x 8 1/16 inches (23.5 x 20.5 cm)Made in New York, New York, United States-Printed in Paris, France. Purchased with the Gertrud A. White Memorial Fund, 1995. Inv. 1995-56-1. Philadelphia Museum of Art © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp

The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s late director, Anne d’Harnoncourt, oversaw the installation of the work at the Museum in 1969 as a 25-year old curatorial assistant, along with the artist’s widow, Alexina “Teeny” Duchamp and her son Paul Matisse. d’Harnoncourt described Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage as a work that “bristles with cross-references, visual and conceptual, to many other objects and verbal constructs by Duchamp, and was created within the same highly personal, logical, and poetic system for subverting our assumptions about reality.” Dr. Taylor, who has over the last decade meticulously researched the piece and interviewed Duchamp’s friends, colleagues, and family members, added: “as the first exhibition and catalogue to be devoted to Duchamp’s subversive final masterpiece, this presentation will offer our visitors a unique opportunity to view his tableau assemblage within the context of its related studies, including a large number of works of art that have not been exhibited or published before.”   (Image: Marcel Duchamp, Study for "Prière de toucher (Please Touch)", 1947. Plaster mounted on velvet in wood and glass frame, 16 x 16 x 4 inches (40.6 x 40.6 x 10.2 cm). Gift of Enrico Donati, 1997. Inv. 1997-33-1. Philadelphia Museum of Art © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp)

Comments

[George Sakkal]

If you wish to seriously "Peer Into" Marcel Duchamp I give you the chance to see the man in a wholely new and accurate light. I refer to the just released summer edition of the journal, American Arts Quarterly, that contains my essay, "The Problem with Post Modern Art Theory: The Visual versus the Conceptual". While you may not review essays, you may want to consider featuring this one on your web site along with what I have to say in this cover letter.

As you are aware, no other individual is considered to have had a greater influence on contemporary art than Marcel Duchamp. By 1968, the year of his death, Duchamp had advanced a theoretic foundation for art creativity that would influence a series of art movements. Beginning with Pop Art this series of art “isms” would collectively come to be named “Post Modern” and replace the previous period of “modern” art. Still, the modernists question whether Duchampian theory really provides a valid foundation for the creation of art. Is there more to the true nature of human creativity than what we have been told, they ask? Has American culture been mislead by a near fifty year post modern camouflage of the truth; a distortion that prevents an honest depiction of the factual nature of artistic creativity? The modernists firmly hold to the contention that, we are indeed, being deceived.

The modernists who dominated art until the 1960’s believe the valid approach to creativity involves intuitive search; one in which a work is visually configured and discovered by a compositional methodology that draws upon the enormous resources available within the unconscious mind and fashioned by the eye’s retina. For them art is a visual, compositional undertaking. Duchamp, however, maintained this method was folly and resulted in wasting the artist’s time and creative resources. He reasoned that artists who used the “visual” approach to creativity avoided their “cerebral” powers by being simplistically “retinal”. Duchamp advanced the theory that art creation depended first on envisioning the idea of the finished work in the artist’s conscious mind and then simply creating what was seen. Searching for the composition was confining. He insisted that the path way to intellectual freedom and creativity was attained by conceptualization formed by the conscious mind.

Since the 1960s the modernist school of art has vigorously opposed Duchamp’s theories of art creativity. Their numerous criticisms challenging the validity of post modern art theory, expressed in standard art genre, have as you well know, had little consequence. However, here is where things get interesting. When a body of recent research findings from the fields of scientific psychology and neuron physiology is referenced and applied as evidence to make the case (as I do in the essay), it overwhelmingly invalidates Duchampian post modern art theory. Scientific facts when applied prove conclusively that Duchamp was not conversant in the theoretical subjects he advocated.

The retina that Duchamp referred to as being "simplistic",(with the aid of the electron microscope) has been scientifically determined to be a miraculous instrument of visuality. It contains over 100 million photoreceptors that transfer within a fraction of a second one high resolution image after another to the brain unconsciously. Duchamp theorized that use of the retina would prevent utilizing the cerebral. Science corrects this nonsensical assumption. It confirms that what we see through the eye’s retina involves the use of one third of the entire human cerebral cortex of the brain or a billion nerve cells. It reveals a retina that receives and sends up to 10,000,000 signals to the brain each second while performing these functions unconsciously. By contrast, the conscious mind that Duchamp insisted artists should use to achieve intellectual freedom has been shown to have a minuscule capacity that can processes only forty pieces of information per second. Furthermore, much of what Duchamp claimed an artist could conceptually envision with the conscious mind has been determined to be unseeable.

The retina that Duchamp labeled “simplistic”, actually offers a seemingly near infinite scope and capacity for visual creativity. The near boundless aptitude of both an unconscious mind and a retina working in unison strongly suggest a visual range to art expression that is both unlimited and obsessive. To be visually obsessive is now artistically desirable, a positive consequence; an unfailing reflection of the magnificent attributes afforded the artist though eons of evolutionary development. On the other hand to be conceptual as Duchamp advised or minimal as his followers advocate imposes acute, restrictions upon the superior natural physiological endowments that govern the human creative response; restraints that severely limit artistic expression rather than free it as believed.

In all fairness to Duchamp, had he been aware of what science tells us today about our natural attributes and the functions they serve in governing our behavior and creativity, he probably would not have dismissed the important roles played by the retina of the eye and the unconscious mind in the creation of art. He would not have advised using the very limited capacity of a conscious mind to conceptualize art. And he probably would have had second thoughts about promoting “readymade” art. Nevertheless, ignorance does not excuse or lessen the profound damage and deception that has been perpetrated upon society. The modernists are correct. The duplicity of post modernism, based on fallacious Duchampian assertions, has resulted in a serious diminished understanding of and appreciation for the true forces and factors that govern and shape human creativity. This corruption of truth, as I point out in the essay, may well have driven society’s comprehension of visual art creativity backward into one of the darkest periods in art cultural understanding since the Middle Ages.

What is so troubling about this deplorable state of cultural regression is that since the 1970’s the academies aggressively sought to acquire post modern theorists to fill teaching positions in their institutions. Postmodern protagonists and academicians now speak with one voice. There is no meaningful, effective intellectual discussion in the United States today on the subject of art creativity to challenge the position of an entrenched post modern establishment. This consequence has resulted in a present day travesty in the field of art education. Young gifted creative minds are victimized by a narrowly defined, antediluvian educational systems dominated by ridged, seriously flawed post modern art instruction that insists upon conformity to (provenly diminished) conceptual approaches to art creativity.

Including students of art, those also intellectually aggrieved over the past half century are principals and contributors to art endowment foundations and museums, their respective board of directors, museum directors and their curatorial department heads, deans of art schools and their professorial and instructor staffs, art critics, journalists, analysts, historians, as well as artists themselves. As victimized parties to this deceit, willingly or otherwise, they may now wish to extend position statements of clarification. Teaching texts and curriculum must certainly be reviewed and revised to insure the mendacity and misrepresentation of postmodern theories are expunged. It is time to move away from this deplorable dark age period of artistic regression and clear a pathway toward enlightenment.

The essay provides scientific proof that conclusively lays bare the fraudulence of Duchampian art theory; a theory which has served as the foundation for the house of postmodernism. With a seriously weakened, unsubstantiated theoretical underpinning this conceptually built structure does not have a pillar to stand on. It collapses upon itself under the weight of its own misrepresentation. The fraudulent era of Postmodernism which in reality never really existed is now irrefutable dead. With its downfall we arrive at an important milestone: a demarcation line drawn across the annuals of art culture. For those made aware of the essay’s conclusions that choose willing to continue to champion postmodern theory, they need to understand that they can and should be held accountable for the cultural deception and damage they henceforth perpetrate upon humanity.

With the demise of post modernism and its conceptual approach to creativity it is time to move on. We are at the dawning of a new era of art…at the beginning of a cultural revolution. This is not the time for hesitation. In the sweep of epic forces that govern and shape revolution those that choose to closet themselves in the seemingly safe establishment havens of the uninvolved become the misbegotten in the annuals of history. The “truth” has been uncovered and is awaiting dissemination

Please accept my invitation to review the essay in conjunction with the context of this letter. Please join with me to celebrate and acknowledge the magnificence of the human retina and the unconscious mind and to restore them to the indispensable roles they play in the creation of art. I will thank you, history will thank you and maybe those who give out Pulitzers will thank you too. Visit my web site at: www.georgejesakkal.com and read an unedited version of the essay. Give credit to the American Arts Quarterly, summer, 2009 edition (vol. 26, No. 3). Good luck.


Sincerely,


George Sakkal,8714 Sage Brush Way,Columbia, MD 21045