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THE BLIND MAN 33 WEST 67Ih STREET, NEW YORK LilÌÌ-ÌLÌÌB— fi«'™ — • • ..1...«. »».¿¡4— ., r^r- P B T THE BLIND MAN 33 WEST 67ih STREET, NEW YORK BROYEUSE DE CHOCOLAT Marcel Duchamp MAY, 1917 No. 2 P • B • T THE BLIND MAN 33 WEST 67th STREET, NEW YORK BROYEUSE DE CHOCOLAT Marcel Duchamp MAY, 1917 No. 2 2 THE BLIND MAN The Blind Man's Ball VERY reader of this magazine is invited to E the BLIND MAN'S BALL, a new-fashioned hop, skip, and jump, to be held on Friday, May 25th at Prehistoric, ultra-Bohemian Webster Hall. The Ball is given for THE BLIND MAN, a magazine of Vers Art. Axioms du Bal The dance will not end till the dawn. The Blind Man must see the sun. Romantic rags are requested. There is a differ- ence between a tuxedo and a Turk and guests not in costume must sit in bought-and-paid-for boxes. Continuous Syncopations Tickets, in advance, are $1.50 each; boxes, not including admission, $10, and may be obtained ONLY from THE BLIND MAN'S BALL 61 Washington Square Telephone, Spring 5827 All tickets at the door, $2 PUBLISHED BY BEATRICE WOOD Q & £ r My / le UJ- 6 ô ¿f y c/X. YTIaL T^W/ vr/i// jt s & 6 /P6 ¿X, (f/rr^- a ' A RESOLUTION MADE AT BRONX TALE BY ERIK SATIE PARK I had once a marble staircase which was Robert Carlton Brown so beautiful, so beautiful, that I had it I'M GOING TO GET stuffed and used only my window for get- A GREAT BIG ting in and out. FEATHER-BED OF A PELICAN AND KEEP HIM Elle avait des yeux sans tain IN THE HOUSE TO CATCH THE Et pour que ca n'se voie pas FLIES, MOSQUITOES AND MICE, Elle avait mis par-dessus LAY EGGS FOR ME Des lunettes a verres d'écaillé. TO MAKE OMELETTES OF, AND BE MY DOWNY COUCH AT NIGHT. S. T., E. K. THE EXHIBIT REFUSED BY THE INDEPENDENTS The Richard Mutt Case They say any artist paying Now Mr. Mutt's fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than six dollars may exhibit. a bath tub is immoral. It is a fixture that Mr. Richard Mutt sent in a you see every day in plumbers' show windows. fountain. JVithout discussion Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. this article disappeared and He CHOSE it. He took an oi'dinary article never was exhibited. of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of IVhat were the grounds for refusing view—created a new thought for that object. Mr. Mutt's fomitain :— 1. Some contended it was im- As for plumbing, that is absurd. moral, vulgar. The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and 2. Othersy it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing. her bridges. "Buddha of the Bathroom" I suppose monkeys hated to lose their ing thing about our human institution is tail. Necessary, useful and an ornament, that although a man marry he can never monkey imagination could not stretch to a be only a husband. Besides being a money- tailless existence (and frankly, do you see making device and the one man that one the biological beauty of our loss of them?), woman can sleep with in legal purity with- yet now that we are used to it, we get on out sin he may even be as well some other pretty well without them. But evolution woman's very personification of her ab- is not pleasing to the monkey race; "there stract idea. Sin, while to his employees he is a death in every change" and we monkeys is nothing but their "Boss," to his children do not love death as we should. We are only their "Father," and to himself cer- like those philosophers whom Dante placed tainly something more complex. in his Inferno with their heads set the But with objects and ideas it is different. wrong way on their shoulders. We walk Recently we have had a chance to observe forward looking backward, each with more their meticulous monogomy. of his predecessors' personality than his When the jurors of The Society of In- own. Our eyes are not ours. dependent Artists fairly rushed to remove The ideas that our ancestors have joined the bit of sculpture called the Fountain together let no man put asunder! In La sent in by Richard Mutt, because the object Dissociation des Idees, Remy de Gour- was irrevocably associated in their atavistic mont, quietly analytic, shows how sacred is minds with a certain natural function of a the marriage of ideas. At least one charm- secretive sort. Yet to anv "innocent" eve how pleasant is its chaste simplicity of line is a garruolus and gullible old man, neither and color! Someone said, "Like a lovely safe nor scientific, who on the same subject Buddha"; someone said, "Like the legs of seriously cites by way of illustration, how the ladies by Cezanne"; but have they not, by the strength simply of her imagination, a those ladies, in their long, round nudity al- white woman gave birth to a "black-a- ways recalled to your mind the calm curves moor"! So you see how he is good for of decadent plumbers' porcelains? nothing but quotation, M. Montaigne. At least as a touchstone of Art how valu- Then again, there are those who anx- able it might have been! If it be true, as iously ask, "Is he serious or is he joking?" Gertrude Stein says, that pictures that are Perhaps he is both! Is it not possible? In right stay right, consider, please, on one this connection I think it would be well to side of a work of art with excellent refer- remember that the sense of the ridiculous ences from the Past, the Fountain, and on as well as "the sense of the tragic increases the other almost anyone of the majority of and declines with sensuousness." It puts it pictures now blushing along the miles of rather up to you. And there is among us wall in the Grand Central Palace of ART. to-day a spirit of "blague" arising out of Do you see what I mean? the artist's bitter vision of an over-institu- tionalized world of stagnant statistics and Like Mr. Mutt, many of us had quite antique axioms. With a frank creed of im- an exhorbitant notion of the independence mutability the Chinese worshipped their of the Independents. It was a sad surprise ancestors and dignity took the place of un- to learn of a Board of Censors sitting upon derstanding; but we who worship Progress, the ambiguous question, What is ART? Speed and Efficiency are like a little dog To those who say that Mr. Mutt's ex- chasing after his own wagging tail that has hibit may be Art, but is it the art of Mr. dazzled him. Our ancestor-worship is Mutt since a plumber made it? I reply without grace and it is because of our con- simply that the Fountain was not made by ceited hypocracy that our artists are some- a plumber but by the force of an imagina- times sad, and if there is a shade of bitter tion; and of imagination it has been said, mockery in some of them it is only there "All men are shocked by it and some over- because they know that the joyful spirit of thrown by it." There are those of my in- their work is to this age a hidden treasure. timate acquaintance who pretending to ad- mit the imaginative vigor of Mr. Mutt and But pardon my praise for, sayeth Nietz- his porcelain, slyly quoted to me a story sche, "In praise there is more obtrusiveness told by Montaigne in his Force of the than in blame"; and so as not to seem Imagination of a man, whose Latin name officiously sincere or subtly serious, I shall I can by no means remember, who so write in above, with a perverse pen, a studied the very "essence and motion of neutral title that will please none; and as folly" as to unsettle his initial judgment did Remy de Gourmont, that gentle cynic forevermore; so that through overmuch and monkey without a tail, I, too, conclude wisdom he became a fool. It is a pretty with the most profound word in language story, but in defense of Mr. Mutt I must in and one which cannot be argued—a pacific justice point out that our merry Montaigne Perhaps! LOUISE NORTON. FOR RICHARD MUTT One must say every thing',— When they stop they make then no one will know. a convention. To know nothing is to say That is their end. a great deal. For the going every thing- So many say that they say has an idea. nothing,—but these never really send. The going run right along. For some there is no stopping. The going just keep going. Most stop or get a style. C. DEMUTH. Recharge, please, recharge avec la chimie de ta salive l'accumulateur démon coeur S. T. E. K. Axiom From a determinable horizon absent spectacularly from a midnight which has yet to make public a midnight in the first place incompatibly copied the other in observance of the necessary end guarantees the simultaneous insularity of a structure self-contained a little longer than the general direction of goods opposed tangentically. WALTER CONRAD ARENSBERG. Letter from a Mother I have never been in Europe.
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