Feature: and metrology physicsworld.com Surely you’re joking, Mr Duchamp! Almost a century ago the French artist created a that, he later said, was a “joke about the metre”. What’s so funny? Robert P Crease investigates

Robert P Crease If you wander through the warren of galleries on the French revolutionaries who viewed it as scientifically is chairman of the fifth floor of the Museum of (MoMA) in and politically liberating? Or is this work a Duchamp- Department of New York, you encounter some of the most famous ian gag, the irony of which the label misses? The casual Philosophy, Stony artworks of the late 19th and early 20th century. visitor might even wonder what science is doing in the Brook University, and Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night hangs in one room, artist’s work at all. What did Duchamp know about sci- historian at the Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory in another, ence and what motivated him to produce this object? Brookhaven National ’s in a third. You will walk For an answer, we have to go back to the turn of the Laboratory, e-mail rcrease@ through a roomful of compositions, last century – to a time when the scientific world was notes.cc.sunysb.edu including Broadway Boogie Woogie, and it seems like in turmoil. every other painting is by , including his Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Science angst Off in one corner, however, at the top of a staircase, Duchamp grew up at the turn of the 20th century, when there is a small room containing works that were com- startling scientific discoveries (X-rays, radioactivity, the posed quite differently and with different subject mat- electron) and powerful new technologies (electrifica- ters. In the room’s centre is Bicycle Wheel, consisting tion, wireless telegraphy) were radically transforming simply of a bike wheel mounted by its fork upside down human life and our perception of nature. Although he on a kitchen stool. It was created by the French artist was an artist by training – the young Marcel followed Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), who is most famous for his two elder brothers in moving to Paris at the age of controversial works such as – a porcelain uri- 17 to become an artist – Duchamp and other non-sci- nal that the artist signed with an assumed name – and entists were able to keep abreast of the scientific world L.H.O.O.Q., a reproduction of the on which thanks to the many high-quality science popularizations he drew a moustache and goatee beard. Bicycle Wheel of the day. Scientists like Marie Curie and Ernest is what Duchamp called a “readymade”, or an ordinary Rutherford wrote summaries of their research in popu- object that he had selected, assigned a title and de- lar magazines, while others, such as Jean Perrin and clared to be art. Henri Poincaré, wrote best-selling books. Along one wall, behind a glass case, there is another Poincaré’s books included his 1902 work Science and intriguing Duchamp work called 3 stoppages étalon (or, Hypothesis, which by 1912 had gone through 20 edi- in English, 3 Standard Stoppages). It consists of an old tions. In it he wrote eloquently of how recent develop- wooden croquet box with its top open. Inside are not ments were shaking the foundations of Newtonian mallets but what look like two long and thin glass mechanics, and generating doubts about the very “slides”, with the specimen of each being a long, sna- notion of scientific objectivity. Poincaré advocated a king piece of thread mounted on canvas. The box also philosophical position known as “conventionalism”, contains two broken wooden slats. Above it hangs a which conceived of geometries, and indeed all scien- third thread-bearing slide and a third broken slat. The tific laws, as mere conveniences – mental projections – museum label next to the glass case states the follow- rather than actual descriptions of nature, an idea that ing: “It is a ‘joke about the metre’, Duchamp glibly would profoundly influence artists such as Duchamp. noted about this piece, but his premise for it reads like The rapidly changing developments, conveyed by a theorem: ‘If a straight horizontal thread one metre such books, provoked a cultural anxiety. On the one long falls from a height of one metre onto a horizontal hand, science seemed to promise stability – an orderly plane twisting as it pleases [it] creates a new image of mechanical picture of the world, controlling technol- the unit of length’.” ogies and increasing material comforts – and a way to The description dates the piece as being from 1913– restructure global society thanks to an expanding inter- 1914, and continues with the following statement: “Duchamp dropped three threads one metre long from Does 3 Standard Stoppages the height of one metre onto three stretched canvases. The threads were then adhered to the canvases to pre- really sabotage the rationality serve the random curves they assumed upon landing. The canvases were cut along the threads’ profiles, cre- ating a template of their curves creating new units of of the metre – the SI unit measure that retain the length of the metre but under- mine its rational basis.” that was created by French The Stoppages, as it is nicknamed, is a strange piece and the accompanying label makes an alarming claim. revolutionaries – or is the Does this artwork really sabotage the rationality of the metre – the fundamental SI unit that was created by work a Duchamp gag?

28 Physics World December 2009 physicsworld.com Feature: Art and metrology Arnold Newman/Getty Images

national network of institutions and treaties. Yet as would be after the confirmation in 1919 of the predic- Serious stuff Europe slid slowly towards the Great War, signs ap- tions of general relativity). Many novelists, musicians The artist Marcel peared that this promise might be unfulfilled – that the and painters found this idea stimulating, even liber- Duchamp (1887– mechanical picture was not as free of chaos, the tech- ating. For some, it suggested a new space in which the 1968) took a keen nologies not as innocent, and the comforts not as secure world could be seen, for others the existence of a multi- interest in the cultural as it seemed. plicity of perspectives, and for yet others the existence implications of new scientific discoveries. The French cultural critic Paul Valéry (1871–1945) of orders of reality that artists alone could understand expressed this ambivalence in paradoxical language. and reveal. Much of the influence of the fourth dimen- Our passion for order, he wrote, was creating chaos, sion was due to the discovery of X-rays, which made the our virtues were promoting horrors, our rationality was existence of invisible structures of reality outside our fostering irrationality. Valéry did not give a specific vision no longer a philosopher’s metaphysical concern example, but he may well have been referring to the or an occultist’s fantasy but scientific fact. concept of “the quantum” having emerged from the Another popular scientific topic was the role of drive to tidy up the fine details of thermodynamics. He chance in the world. Still another was metrology, which wrote that the “rage for precision” was leading to the was current because of the recent establishment of opposite, to a state in which “the universe is breaking national standards labs – in Germany in 1887, in the up, losing all hope of a single design, to the ultramicro- UK in 1900 and in the US in 1901 – that promoted and scopic being much different from the everyday world, pursued ideal measurement. Meanwhile, the Interna- and to determinism causing a crisis in causality”. tional Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), which Even more bold was Valéry’s claim that “unpre- had been set up in 1875, was looking for new materials dictability in every field is the result of the conquest of for standards. In 1902 it recruited the Swiss scientist the whole of the present world by scientific power”. In Charles Edouard Guillaume, who later served as its his eyes, the impact of science was being felt in all areas director and who won the 1920 Nobel Prize for Physics of human life, and he predicted “an amazing change in for his in 1896 of the highly rigid nickel–iron our very notion of art”. As it turned out, many artists alloy Invar, which does not expand much on heating of the time did indeed find an acquaintance with sci- and is therefore ideal for use as a standard. But while ence indispensable, for its provocative discoveries were the metric system was finally officially adopted in challenging deeply held notions of reality. France after decades of struggle, fierce battles were One hot topic was the fourth dimension, conceived being waged in the UK and US over its promotion, thus as another spatial dimension rather than as time (as it keeping metrology in the public eye.

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Box of tricks? 3 stoppages étalon (above and opposite). Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), 3 Standard Stoppages (3 stoppages étalon), Paris 1913–1914, New York, (MoMA). : wood box 28.2 × 129.2 × 22.7 cm, three threads 100 cm glued to three painted canvas strips each 13.3 × 120 cm, each mounted on a glass panel 18.4 × 125.4 × 0.6 cm, three wood slats 6.2 × 109.2 × 2.0 cm, 6.1 × 119.4 × 2.0 cm and 6.3 × 109.7 × 2.0 cm shaped along one edge to match the curves of the threads. Katherine S Dreier bequest. Digital image: © 2009 The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. Succession: © 2009 Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London.

Enter Duchamp “Make a painting of frequency” reads one note, while Having shown an early aptitude for drawing and ma- another refers to a “painting of precision” and another thematics, Duchamp’s scientific interests were appar- to a quest for “playful physics”. Elsewhere he talks ent even in his earliest works. For example, his Nude about the desire to create “a reality which would be Descending a Staircase #2 (1912) represented a mov- possible by slightly distending the laws of physics and ing body by abstractly decomposing the form into a suc- chemistry”. These and other notes show Duchamp’s cession of plane surfaces. But Duchamp was shocked fascination with the clear, spare prose of science, with when his more well-connected siblings asked him to the experimental method, with chance, with the bi- withdraw the work from an independent art show at valent character of precision mentioned by Valéry, and which they were to be exhibiting together. “[A]s a reac- with Poincaré’s conventionalist philosophy. tion against such behaviour coming from artists whom Conventionalist philosophy helped Duchamp break I had believed to be free, I got a job,” he told one inter- free of traditional – or what he would dismis- viewer. “I became a librarian at the Sainte-Geneviève sively refer to as “retinal art”, “taste” and “arty handi- Library in Paris.” work” – encouraging him to regard its principles not as During his stint as library assistant from late 1912 to fundamentals but as choices, and to seek alternatives. 1915, Duchamp read extensively about art and popular After a visit to the Salon de la Locomotion Aérienne at science, and visited the Musée des et Métiers, a the Grand Palais in 1912 in the company of fellow artists popular destination for those interested in science and Fernand Léger and Constantin Brancusi, Duchamp technology. “I had no intention of having shows, or cre- remarked that “Painting’s washed up. Who’ll do any ating an oeuvre, or living a painter’s life,” he recalled better than that propeller?” Duchamp moved to an much later. Duchamp ruminated about how to make apartment near the library, where he conducted experi- art meaningful in a science-rich cultural environment. ments in putting lines on canvas in different “dry” ways, He began making hundreds of notes, later published, such as by mechanical means and chance effects. which reveal careful readings of scientific literature on These ideas culminated in 1923 in what art historians the fourth dimension, non-Euclidean geometry, elec- regard as Duchamp’s masterpiece, The Bride Stripped tricity, phase transitions, thermodynamics, radioactivity, Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (commonly known as atomic structure, biology and more. The Large Glass) – a brilliant and iconoclastic work that

30 Physics World December 2009 physicsworld.com Feature: Art and metrology

owes much to Duchamp’s meditations about science. seemingly sacred agreements that structure the world En route to this intellectual-artistic project, Duchamp – intersect in The Stoppages. But Duchamp was not performed experiments and composed works that the first to spoof standards. The writer employed chance, the fourth dimension and elements (1873–1907), a progenitor of and , of science playfully wielded in a way that provocatively and a prankster like Duchamp, read and often referred sought to blur the difference between art and every- to contemporary physicists in his works, including day objects. C V Boys, William Crookes, Lord Kelvin, and James Erratum Musical (1913) was a vocal piece in which Clerk Maxwell. In 1893 Jarry coined the term ’pata- Duchamp’s sisters sung notes pulled randomly from a physics (the initial apostrophe is intentional) to des- hat. Duchamp’s “readymades” (or tout fait in French) cribe his own playful treatment of science, which were ordinary objects that had been taken from their included the spoofing of what he saw as an obsession functional context, assigned a name and placed along- with measurement standards. For instance, Doctor side other art objects to become works of art in their Faustroll, the protagonist of Jarry’s novel Exploits and own right. Other works mocked the concealed codes Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, ’Pataphysician (published and networks that structure the world, making them 1911), carries in his coat pocket a centimetre that is “an visible and revealing them to be not permanent fixtures authentic copy in brass of the traditional standard”. but mere conventions. Duchamp’s spoof of standards was richer, wittier, For example, Tzank Check (1919), a playful compo- more deeply engaged with science and more centrally sition used to pay his New York dentist Daniel Tzank, connected with his own artistic concerns. He began was a sketch of a $115 cheque drawn on the fictional to create what would become The Stoppages in about “Teeth’s Loan & Trust Company”. Monte Carlo Bond 1913–1914. In one of his notes, Duchamp writes that (1924) was a drawing based on a traditional bond “if a straight horizontal thread one metre long falls Duchamp design, which Duchamp copied and sold as part of a from a height of one metre onto a horizontal plane mathematical scheme to win at Monte Carlo’s roulette twisting as it pleases”, it creates “a new image of the unit performed tables. These two pieces showed, through parody, how of length”. Another note called it “canned chance”. In experiments bits of paper, given the proper conventions, became 1914, again according to the notes, Duchamp repeated that employed structurally important in exchange for services. this experiment three times, fastening the threads to chance, pieces of canvas. the fourth Metre made Duchamp took the three canvases with him when he Many of these impulses – especially the playful ap- left Paris for New York in 1915. In 1918, while working dimension proach to science, the conventionalist stance, the irrev- on his last oil painting, Tu M’, he had wooden templates and elements erent approach to precision and the desire to parody cut to the shape of the curves, creating what amounted of science

Physics World December 2009 31 Feature: Art and metrology physicsworld.com

etry and contemporary metrology. “In subverting the standard metre by generating three new inconsistent standards of measure,” Henderson wrote in her 1998 book Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in The Large Glass and Related Works, “Duchamp had moved beyond traditional definitions of art itself.” About a decade ago, the story of 3 stoppages étalon took a bizarre twist. New York artist Rhonda Shearer and her late husband Stephen J Gould – the Harvard paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and author – were tracking down the exact sources of Duchamp’s ready- mades and other works. When they came to 3 stoppages étalon, they dropped metre-long threads to the ground but found that their threads twisted and kinked, land- ing in anything but smooth curves. Examining the work at MoMA, they noticed that the threads are not exactly a metre long, and are stuck through pinholes to the other side of the canvas, where they continue for a few centimetres and are sewn in place. Shearer and Gould concluded that, thanks to their experiments, they had uncovered Duchamp’s real mo- tive. This, they claimed, was to deceive people about how he manufactured the work, knowing that the deception would eventually be exposed by those who used the scientific method, thus teaching us a lesson about perception. They created an online journal devoted to Duchamp (toutfait.com), and founded the Art Science Research Laboratory to explore the use of “scientific method in the humanities” and promote the idea that “methods, not people, are objective”. Art historians were unimpressed. They found it un- surprising that Duchamp, who was irreverent about standards to begin with and who had spoken of his desire to “distend” the laws of physics, had used threads of un- even length. Nor were they perturbed that the threads Try this at home to spoofs of “metre sticks” and objectifying the stan- passed through holes and were sewn to the canvas on Art historian dardization of measurement in graphic form. In 1936, the other side, for Duchamp used a similar method to Jim McManus’s further revising what he had done two decades earlier, fix lines to canvases in other works, and may have plan- “Do-it-Yourself he affixed the canvases bearing the threads to three ned to fix the threads this way from the start (for which Home 3 Standard glass plates and put them in a wooden box along with purpose, furthermore, he would have needed to use Stoppages Starter Kit” contains thread, the three wooden rulers. The work was first shown at threads a little longer than a metre). The art historians wax and these MoMA in an exhibition in 1936–1937, and first illus- found the philosophical issue behind The Stoppages instructions on how trated in an art journal in 1937. more relevant to understanding it than the length of to make your own A “stoppage” is something stopped or brought to a its threads. version of Duchamp’s halt; 3 stoppages étalon is three stopped thread-stan- As for the question of how Duchamp had got the famous work. dards. Over the years, Duchamp told interviewers that threads to curve smoothly, Jim McManus, an emeritus the work was his first use of chance, a step away from professor of art history at California State University, artistic technique and a “forgetting of the hand”. It was Chico, asked an elderly German tailor who had been an important effort, he said he had come to realize, in trained in traditional European methods about threads “liberating me from the past”. In response to a ques- and techniques. The tailor mentioned that it had been tionnaire that Duchamp filled out when the work common practice to use buttonhole-twist thread as the entered MoMA’s collection in 1953, he wrote, “A joke foundation for suits and garments – and to wax it to pro- about the metre – a humorous application of Rie- vide additional strength. McManus therefore bought mann’s post-Euclidean geometry which was devoid of some threads and wax, experimented with Naumann straight lines”. and found that he was able to produce the kind of Art historians have charted the influence of elements results Duchamp obtained, concluding that it was likely of this work on Duchamp’s later compositions, and in that Duchamp had indeed created the work in the way particular the role it played in his separation from tra- he had said. ditional art. Art historian Frances Naumann contribu- McManus then concocted a spoof of his own. He cre- ted a pioneering study of The Stoppages in The Mary ated a “Do-It-Yourself Home 3 Standard Stoppages and William Sisler Collection, published by MOMA in Starter Kit”, containing thread, wax and some instruc- 1984. In the 1990s University of Texas art historian tions. He issued it under the pseudonym “Rrose Sé- Linda Henderson explored the connection between the lavy”, which Duchamp used as his female alter ego (a work and Duchamp’s interests in non-Euclidean geom- pun of its own, sounding like “Eros, c’est la vie”). The

32 Physics World December 2009 physicsworld.com Feature: Art and metrology kit promised to permit its purchaser to “Dazzle your friends and amaze art historians” by creating 3 Standard The story of The Stoppages not only Stoppages “in your very own home”. The impact of science on art in the early 20th cen- teaches us that the interaction tury is undeniable, but is difficult to talk about mean- ingfully. What is the true “scientific” and “objective” between science and art is much method for investigating this connection? What fac- tors must one consider, and what evidence must one more extensive than we thought, consult? In the past few years, art historians have made considerable strides in understanding the connection between science and art, in part by carefully examin- but also underlines the complexities ing the popular literature of the time and evaluating how artists reacted to it. Examples of this work, in ad- of investigating this connection dition to Henderson’s Duchamp in Context, include Gavin Parkinson’s Surrealism, Art, and Modern Science work of international scientific institutions, a fibre be- (2008) and Elizabeth Leane’s Reading Popular Physics comes a standard by declaration of an artist and a net- (2008), while Henderson’s extensively researched 1983 work of art institutions. Instead of the metric system book The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean being liberating to humanity – as its institutors, the Geometry in Modern Art is set to be re-issued with new French revolutionaries, saw it – it is a parody of the met- material next year. ric system that is liberating to an artist. 3 stoppages étalon does all this sparely and in a plea- ’Patametrology surable and whimsical way – the instant one turns lit- The Stoppages parodies – it playfully imitates charac- eral-minded one ceases to “get” it – while generating a teristic features out of context – the global metrological satisfyingly endless play of thoughts about conventions network. Instead of a stiff alloy, a thread. Instead of an and standards. What more could one hope for from invariant, a fluttery filament. Instead of stamping out art? The story of The Stoppages is particularly reveal- disturbances and contingencies, celebrating them. In- ing, for it not only teaches us that the interaction be- stead of a straight line curving in non-Euclidean space, tween science and art in the early 20th century is much a thread twists in an artist’s studio. Instead of an arte- more extensive than we thought, but also underlines fact morphing into a standard by a declaration of a net- the complexities of investigating this connection. ■ Next month in Physics World Biomechanics Probing the physics behind basic biological processes like walking and eating reveals some surprising facts about how Edward Kinsman/Science Photo Library people work

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