Notes from 'Art in Context', edited by John Fleming and Hugh Honour
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, EvenDuchamp carefully created The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, working on the piece from 1915 to 1923. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship.
Does not flaunt its mechanical-technological nature
Large Glass revealed its mechanical associations, Etant Donnes conceals its own- ever ‘an orchid in the land of technology’
Close connection with the materials and processes normally associated with handicrafts
Observe painstaking and minute adjustments in Duchamp’s production of his last piece- as demonstrated in the Approximation Demontable.
There is also the manual, handmade quality of Etant Donnes- executed every step of the construction, placed every nut and bolt, brick and piece of wood
Emphasis on spatial relationships within the assemblage also suggests a continuation of Duchamp’s interest in (quasi-) scientific investigations of the fourth dimension
Art, machine, craft, science- Etant Donnes is all four, ironically incorporation their differences as well as their similarities, hinting provocatively at historical relationships while flaunting its own uniqueness within Duchamp’s oeuvre and the history of art, raising endless speculations about authenticity vs. reproducibility and the artist as specialist vs. the artist as bricoleur.
The questioning of traditional values associated with the artist’s ‘hand’, i.e. notions of authenticity and originality, seems to be reversed by Etant Donnes.
Apparent non-reproducibility, its observance of the established forms of originality and ritual constitute what Walter Benjamin called the ‘aura’ of the authentic work of art.
Utilised a compositional technique with strong mechanical and geometrical associations, which he termed ‘elementary parallelism’ and described as ‘linear elements following each other like parallels and distorting the object’.
Newfound interest in the mechanical, attached even more intimately to human aspects
An element of conflict
Earlier works had represented single figures or figures clearly not in conflict
Bride and her Bachelors in a drawing entitled, La Mariee mis a nu par ces celebrataires’- clearly three entities and the threat of conflict is unmistakeable; the Bride stands in the centre menaced by a Bachelor on each side armed with sharp, knife-like weapons.
Hostility he felt towards the artists he had trusted to understand and value his aesthetic risk-taking
Verbal images of abandonment, exhaustion and divorce
Duchamp was not just abandoning his association with Cubism but painting itself
Large-size work- all sorts of new technical problems to be worked out
Notions of ‘occupation’ and ‘technical problems’ were clearly associated- shifting his orientation from that of artist toward that of craftsman.
Tripartite division of sciences, arts and crafts dating back to the sixteenth century
Toward a particularly non-French construction of the artisanal function- pose as a bricoleur rather than a specialist
Large Glass revealed its mechanical associations, Etant Donnes conceals its own- ever ‘an orchid in the land of technology’
Close connection with the materials and processes normally associated with handicrafts
Observe painstaking and minute adjustments in Duchamp’s production of his last piece- as demonstrated in the Approximation Demontable.
There is also the manual, handmade quality of Etant Donnes- executed every step of the construction, placed every nut and bolt, brick and piece of wood
Emphasis on spatial relationships within the assemblage also suggests a continuation of Duchamp’s interest in (quasi-) scientific investigations of the fourth dimension
Art, machine, craft, science- Etant Donnes is all four, ironically incorporation their differences as well as their similarities, hinting provocatively at historical relationships while flaunting its own uniqueness within Duchamp’s oeuvre and the history of art, raising endless speculations about authenticity vs. reproducibility and the artist as specialist vs. the artist as bricoleur.
The questioning of traditional values associated with the artist’s ‘hand’, i.e. notions of authenticity and originality, seems to be reversed by Etant Donnes.
Apparent non-reproducibility, its observance of the established forms of originality and ritual constitute what Walter Benjamin called the ‘aura’ of the authentic work of art.
Utilised a compositional technique with strong mechanical and geometrical associations, which he termed ‘elementary parallelism’ and described as ‘linear elements following each other like parallels and distorting the object’.
Newfound interest in the mechanical, attached even more intimately to human aspects
An element of conflict
Earlier works had represented single figures or figures clearly not in conflict
Bride and her Bachelors in a drawing entitled, La Mariee mis a nu par ces celebrataires’- clearly three entities and the threat of conflict is unmistakeable; the Bride stands in the centre menaced by a Bachelor on each side armed with sharp, knife-like weapons.
Hostility he felt towards the artists he had trusted to understand and value his aesthetic risk-taking
Verbal images of abandonment, exhaustion and divorce
Duchamp was not just abandoning his association with Cubism but painting itself
Large-size work- all sorts of new technical problems to be worked out
Notions of ‘occupation’ and ‘technical problems’ were clearly associated- shifting his orientation from that of artist toward that of craftsman.
Tripartite division of sciences, arts and crafts dating back to the sixteenth century
Toward a particularly non-French construction of the artisanal function- pose as a bricoleur rather than a specialist
Deliberate reorientation of his work from painting to craft
Enormous industrial expositions- artistic milieu in Germany was divided by the artisan/engineer question
Enormous industrial expositions- artistic milieu in Germany was divided by the artisan/engineer question
The collective e semantics that functionalism found in the immanent aesthetics of the machine. Artisans became intellectualised, and for them this was a social elevation: they became conceivers more than makes, equals of engineers more than of workers. But this elevation took place to the detriment of the ‘human’ and individualist values that had been part of their production before division of labour had set in. In moving closer to the engineer, the artisan moved away from the artist. [….] In moving away from the artist the artist at the level of making, of craftsmanship, the artisan moved closer to the artist at the level of creation, of authorship’ –Pictorial Nominalism, pg. 56, de Duve
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