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Contents/lnhalt
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Contents/lnhalt
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Contents/lnhalt
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Section 16
The Gendered Object/
Das geschlechtsbezogene Objekt
Chair /Sektionsleiter
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Objecthood. Modernist and Contemporary Perspectives/Dinglichkeit. Moderne und zeitgeniissische Perspektiven 17
Sebastian Egenhofer
The Becoming of the Readymade
The Concept of the Work of Art after Duchamp
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17 Objecthood. Modernist and Contemporary Perspectives/Dinglichkeit. Moderne und zeitgenossische Perspektiven
highly individualized production process. The production of the on which for us, its belated beholders, the image of the 11Bride(( and
Readymade is instead concentrated in that very moment of choos- the 11Bachelor apparatUS(( appears.
ing and inscribing a date in one of so many objects, making it into Some of them - I can only hint to this in passing - were integrat-
the catalyst of its process of !!exposition.(( Only after this singu- ed in a photograph of cast shadows that remarkably resembles the
larization can the Readymade, now a work of art, be multiplied by !!Bride,(( 14 so that we might conclude they are parts of her body.
inscribing more of the same type of object or similar objects with, others, as Ulf Linde has shown, 15 are iconographically related to the
naturally, the selfsame, original date. 11Large Glass,(( sometimes, as in the case of the 11Bicycle Wheel(( or
This is obviously a decisive point. The production of the Ready- the 11Monte Carlo Bonds,(( substituting for a non-realized part of the
made has nothing to do with the production of the material thing, !!GlasS.(( But aside from these semantic and morphological connec-
which is 11already made(( when the Readymade's existence as a work tions, the Readymades - by the very structure of their temporality
begins. This beginning does not blend with a material process as - relate to the main subject and problem of the Glass, that is, to the
when one writes a book or polishes a piece of steel to make it into conception of a four-dimensional perspective in its difficult analogy
a sculpture. The beginning of the Readymade's existence as a work to the 11ordinary perspective(( controlling the work's lower part.
is sharpened into this unrepeatable point in time, a point that can The living !!Bride,(( herself a 11powen( and not the machine moved
be fixed in advance- as a note about the 11[s]pecification for IReady- by that power, 16 is four-dimensional. What we see in the upper half
mades((( 11 makes explicit. One can assign a future date for a ~~rendez of the picture is the 11Bride's(( projection on our three-dimensional
vous,(( and, in the meantime, one can look for a Readymade, since it space represented by means of 11ordinary perspective(( 17 on a two-
might not be easy to find something so tasteless as to give one no dimensional plane. I already outlined a formal idea of that four-
conscious reason to choose it. At the given moment, one buys and dimensional continuum, through which synchronous space has
inscribes this object of disinterest, as Duchamp did with the dog's to be considered a cut. The 11Large GlasS,(( though, gives some
comb on 17 February 1916 at 11 a.m. (fig. 1). sensuality to the idea of a non-synchronous temporal depth. The
The production of the Readymade is this act of authorship stripp- 11dust breeding,(( for example, is a projection of the dust 11of 3 or
ed bare: the inscription of a date and signature in an already given 4 months(( - abiding by the law of gravity - on the backside of the
thing. 12 But this inscription is only the beginning of the Readymade's glass. From the viewpoint of the belated beholder this sediment
becoming, a process that is always only provisionally limited by the appears as the so-called sieves through which the !!illuminating
fleeting present of its beholders. So the Readymade as work is not gas(( - the bachelor's ephemeral consciousness - has to pass: the
the object as such, the object of an aesthetic experience, or within sieves are thus 11a reversed image of porosity,(( 18 an image in terms
the grasp of an institution's power-effects. The object as such is of four-dimensional perspective and its temporal shortening- of the
always only in the plane or cut of a present. In this plane alone is the whole volume of breathable air that had carried the dust while it
Readymade llgiven(( - as form, as material thing, even as the hero settled upon the pane of glass.
of a history of reception that would multiply such temporal cuts and The 11Stoppages Etalon(( are supposed to be such projections, too:
list them in the space of a book - as Duchamp's 11Nude Descend- projections of the fall of an evenly stretched string a meter in length
ing a Staircase(( does with respect to the nude's past movement by from a meter high on a horizontal plane. 19 The curve that the string
folding its sequence back into the picture plane. produced in falling is the bottom line of this curtain made of space,
The shape of the Readymade's becoming is the shape of temporal time, air resistance, and gravity: they appear projected into the
depth as such that stretches from the point of its origin to the imaginary space of the bachelor apparatus as the 11Capillary TubeS.((
always more distant present. Clearly this non-synchronous shape The Glass as a whole is a cut not only in the space of 110rdinary
can neither be seen, nor objectified; it can only be misrepresented perspective,(( but also through the time of these meticulously de-
in the treacherous form of a diagram (fig. 2). regulated production processes that condense as the crust on its
backside. In this time and space of production the Readymades
4. The Readymades and the »Large Glass« emerged - each at its own moment in time. And it is precisely
The Readymades, though, belong to Duchamp's work following through the !!suddenness(( of their emergence that they relate to the
his 11complete liberation,(( 13 marked by the painting of the !!Bride,(( problem of a four-dimensional perspective. Since, basically, this is
in which he gave up the technique of cubist multiple foci and fu- the problem of how to mark, in the three-dimensional space in which
turist sequentiality. With the !!Bride(( began the adventure of the we live, that it is nothing but a cut through non-synchronicity, which
11Large GlasS(( - the chef-d'oeuvre that he declared definitively un- is the essence of time.
finished in 1923 -before it was smashed and had to be repaired. The To make this explicit, though, one can simply inscribe the date of
Readymades all emerged in the climate behind this pane of glass its actual present on it. For this one will need a material support, a
Fig. 1
Marcel Duchamp, Peigne, 1916
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Objecthood. Modernist and Contemporary Perspectives/Dinglichkeit. Moderne und zeitgenossische Perspektiven 17
Notes
1 Marcel Duchamp: Interview with Jeanne Siegel, 1967. In: Marcel Duchamp: Duchamp in Munich 1912/Marcel Duchamp in Munchen. Exhb.cat. Stadtische
Interviews und Statements. Ed. and transl. by Serge Stauffer. Stuttgart 1992, Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munchen. Ed. by Helmut Friedel et al.
pp. 212-220, esp. 216 (in the published version of the interview [Arts, Summer Munich 2012, pp. 11-35, esp. 13.
1969] the quote is eliminated; I (re-)translate from Stauffers transcription of the 14 The Cast 11shadows11 and the 11Bride« are mirror reversed, consistent with a reading
tape). that understands the shadows as projections on the backside of the glass, whereas
2 Duchamp 1992 (note 1), p. 216. the painting shows the 11Bride1< from the front-side, the bachelors side.
3 Donald Judd: Specific Objects. In: Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959-1975. 15 Ulf Linde: MARiee CELibataires. In: Ulf Linde/Walter Hopps/ Arturo Schwarz:
Halifax/New York 1975, pp. 181-189, esp. 183. Marcel Duchamp. Ready-mades, etc. (1913-1964). Paris 1964, pp. 39-68.- Ulf
4 judd 1975 (note 3), p. 182 and passim. Linde: CYCLE. La Roue de Bicyclette, val. 3: Abecedaire: approches critiques. In:
5 Robert Morris: Notes on Sculpture. In: Robert Morris: Continuous Project Altered Marcel Duchamp, Exhb.cat. Musee National d'Art Moderne Paris 1977. Ed. by Jean
Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris. Cambridge (Mass.)/London 1993, pp. 1-39, Clair. Paris 1977, pp. 35-41.
esp. 7 and passim. a
16 ))La Mariee sa base es tun moteur. Mais avant d'etre an moteur que transmet sa
6 Marcel Duchamp: The Creative Act. In: Robert Lebel: Marcel Duchamp. New York puissance tim ide - elle est cette pussance tim ide meme. Cette puissance timide
1959, pp. 77-78. est und sorte d'automobiline, essence d'amour.« (Duchamp 2008 (note 10), p. 78).
7 For a detailed account of the relation of the Ready-made's 11exposition« to the 17 Duchamp 1960 (note 11), n.p.
topology of the "Large Glass11 and the terminology of the Green Box see Sebastian 18 Duchamp 1960 (note 11), n.p.
Egenhofer: Abstraktion - Kapitalismus - Subjektivitat. Die Wahrheitsfunktion des 19 About the discrepancy between this manifest conception (announced in the "Idea
Werks in der Moderne. Munich 2008, p. 163-164. -Sebastian Egenhofer: Produkti- of Fabrication,« Duchamp 1960 (note 11 ), n.p.) and the realized work see: Rhonda
onsasthetik. Zurich 2010, p. 84, note 11. Roland Shearer /Stephen Jay Gould: Hidden in Plain Sight: Duchamp's 3 ))Standard
8 Donald Judd: A long discussion not about masterpieces but why there are so few Stoppages,11 More Truly a ))Stoppage« (An Invisible Mending) Than We Ever Realized.
of them, Part 2. In: Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1975-1986. Eindhoven 1987, In: toutfait, 1, 1999, URL: www.toutfait.comjissues/issue_1 /News/stoppages.
pp. 70-86, esp. 70. html (29.08.2012).
9 Judd 1975 (note 3), p. 187. 20 For a more general account of this "disease« in twentieth century art see Sebastian
10 Marcel Duchamp: Duchamp du Signe suivi de Notes. Paris 2008, p. 279 (no. 7), Egenhofer: Passages of the Object in the Art of Modernity. In: Re-Object. Exhb.cat.
282 (no. 18), 290 (no. 35rv). Kunsthaus Bregenz. Ed. by Eckhard Schneider. Koln 2007, pp. 162-168.
11 Marcel Duchamp: The Brides Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, a typographic 21 Letter to Suzanne Duchamp and jean Crotti, 17th August 1952. In: Marcel
version by Richard Hamilton. New York 1960, n.p. Duchamp: Affectionately, Marcel. The Selected Correspondance of Marcel
12 See Thierry de Duve: Authorship Stripped Bare, Even, in: RES: Anthropology and Duchamp. Ed. by Francis Nauman/ Hector Obalk. Ghent 2000, p. 321.
Aesthetics, 19/20, 1990/1991, pp. 234-241. 22 Duchamp 1960 (note 11), n.p.
13 Marcel Duchamp: A Propos of Myself, slide lecture delievered at the City Art
Museum of St. Louis, Missouri, November 24, 1964, quoted in: Herbert Molderings: Photo credits
The Discovery of the Mind's Eye. Marcel Duchamp in Munich 1912. In: Marcel Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art: 1.- Archive of the author: 2.
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