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Re: new Trumbauer fan (system)
2005.03.23 12:17
Saw this artwork last night as I continued to read Étant donnés... (by d'Harnoncourt and Hopps).
"Another "landscape" which Duchamp produced in 1959, forms a tantalizing link between The large Glass and Étant donnés... . The punning title Cols Alités, is amplified by a startling inscription: "Projet pour le modèle 1959 de 'La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même'" The drawing is more startling still. Duchamp has drawn a background for his Glass! The basic elements of the Glass, including three parallel lines across the middle representing the Bride's Clothes, are drawn in ink, and behind them, apparently lightly sketched in pencil, rise the irregular rolling forms of a hilly landscape. To the right, just tangent to on blade of the Scissors atop the chocolate Grinder, Duchamp has added an electrical pole, the common variety that punctuates the countryside everywhere, complete with glass insulating knobs and wires disappearing in the distance.
. . . . .
For it is impossible not to take the view of undulating hills and the explicit electrical pole, with the title pun to "Causalités," as a broad hint at the assemblage [i.e., Étant donnés] that was gradually nearing completion in the Fourteenth Street studio. The pole its wires reads in retrospect as a direct reference to the "electricity at large," which now performs a practical function in the new tableau."
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I can't read French, so I don't know what Duchamp's inscription says. Nonetheless, it's evident that Duchamp (too) thought about the presence of electricity everywhere.
I'm seeing this work as another link (albeit minuscule) between where Duchamp's work mostly is now (i.e., the Philadelphia Museum of Art) and the collection's prime location at the head of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
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Was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday taking pictures--was there Sunday as well, but only scoped out then what I'd rather photograph on a sunny day. Some very nice axial coincidences were there to be recorded, which is great because "Nudist Camp at the Philadelphia Museum of Art" centers on the axial coincidence of Jennewein's Sacred and Profane Love and the Duchamp collection, especially The Large Glass.
I haven't seen the Dali exhibit yet, put the public video gallery is now playing, along with Un Chien Andalou, Destino (a Dali - Disney 1945 'collaboration' completed 2003). Destino is a joy to watch, and, though I'm generally not crazy about Disney animation, the animated imagery is great via Dali's imagination. I took about 2 dozen still of the video and will post them soon.
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