Marcel Duchamp's the Large Glass As Negation of Women

Home , Anemic Cinema, Arturo Schwarz, Jean Crotti, Suzanne Duchamp, The Spring

MARCEL DUCHAMP'S THE LARGE GLASS

AS NEGATION OF WOMEN

APPROVED:

aj or of essor

' lJ

Chairman of the Department of Art

Dean of the Graduate School 3 Q

,Ya$

MARCEL DUCHAMP'S THE LARGE GLASS

AS "NEGATION OF WOMEN"

THESIS

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

North Texas State University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Karen M. Olvera, B.A., M.S.Ed.

Denton, Texas

August 1986 Olvera, Karen M., Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass as

"Negation of Women." Master of Arts (Art History), August

1986, 127 pp., 21 illustrations, bibliography, 88 titles.

Marcel Duchamp stated in an interview in 1966 that his magnum opus, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even

(The Large Glass) was, "above all, a negation of women."

The purpose of this study was to determine whether The

Large Glass was a negation of women for Duchamp. The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter I is the introduction to the thesis. Chapter II includes a synopsis of the major interpretations of The Large Glass. Duchamp's statements in regard to The Large Glass are also included in Chapter

II. Chapter III explains how The Large Glass works through the use of Duchamp's notes. Chapter IV investigates

Duchamp's negation of women statement in several ways.

His personal relationships with relatives including his wives and other women, and his early paintings of women were examined. His idea of indifference was seen within the context of the Dandy and his alter ego, Rrose Selavy as a Femme Fatale. His machine paintings are also seen as a part of his idea of detachment and negation of women.

Detachment as an intellectual pursuit was probed with his life-long interest in chess. The Large Glass was then seen as not only showing iconographically a negation of women but also as being an intrinsic component of his life and his work. Copyright by

Karen M. Olvera

1986

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page LIST OF'ILLUSTRATIONSI...... V

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION ......

Statement of the Problem Methodology

II. INTERPRETATIONS ...... 13

Alchemy Alchemy and the Cabal The Occult "Novelty" Biographical Perspective and the Nth Dimension Duchamp and Mallarme Esthetic "Machine" Duchamp's Statements

III. THE LARGE GLASS1...... 53

IV. NEGATION OF WOMEN ...... 69

Duchamp and Relatives Duchamp and Suzanne Duchamp and His Wives Duchamp and Other Women Duchamp as Dandy and Femme Fatale Human as Machine Detachment Through Chess

V. CONCLUSION ...... 115

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 121

iv- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure Page

1. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2...... 2

2. The Bicycle Wheel ...... 3

3. Pharmacy ...... * . . 4

4. The Three Standard Stoppages ...... 6

5, The Large Glass ...... 7

6. The Large Glass ...... 8

7. The Passage from the Virgin to the Bride . . 14

8. The Bride ...... 15

9. Alchemical Furnace ...... 18

10. The Coffee Mill ...... 22

11. L .H.O.O.Q...... 25

12. Abraham Bosse's Perspective Plates of 1648 . 37

13. Sonata ...... 72

14. Dulcinea or Portrait ...... 74

15. Yvonne and Iagdeliene (Torn) in Tatters . . . 76

16. Apropos of Little Sister ...... 78

17. The King and Queen Surrounded Lty Swift Nudes 80

18. Sad Young Man on a Train ...... 82

19. Young Man and Girl in Spring ...... 84

V Figure Page

20. Marcel's Unhappy Readymade ...... 87

21. Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette ...... 97 (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water)

vi CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Considered by some people a remarkably original artist and by others as an eccentric, Marcel Duchamp

(1887-1968) pursued his own unique way of creating art.

The son of a notary, Duchamp grew up with two brothers and three sisters near Rouen, France. At the beginning of his career in art, he produced paintings conforming to

current French Modernism. In 1910, he made Fauve-

influenced oils and by the end of 1912, he had passed

through experiments with Cubism and had done numerous

studies of figures in motion. Although the painting Nude

Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Fig. 1) won him widespread

fame in the 1913 Armory Show, Duchamp later abandoned all

accepted forms of painting and drawing. Instead, he

produced Readymades such as a bicycle wheel mounted

upside down on a kitchen stool (Fig. 2) or he added

touches of color to a commercial print and called it

Pharmacy (Fig. 3).

Duchamp also delighted in playing games; these games

included chess, word games, and creating puns. He became

1 2

Fig. 1--Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. December 1911. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 3

S14

Fig 2--Marcel Duchamp. The Bicycle Wheel. 1913. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 4

Fig. 3--Marcel Duchamp. Pharmacy. January 1914. Private Collection. 5 infamous for his contradictions and use of irony. "Irony is a playful way of accepting something, Duchamp once remarked, "mine is the irony of indifference. It is a

'meta-irony.'. He referred to his artistic experiments as being precise, but inexact. For instance, The Three

Standard Stoppages (Fig. 4) parodies scientific exactitude.2 He created a door that was both open and shut at the same time.3 He once said, "I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." 4

Many of the objects Duchamp created were preparatory studies for his two major projects: The Bride Stripped

Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (Figs. 5 and 6), which occupied him from 1915 to 1923; and Being

Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas, which gradually evolved between 1946 and 1966. The Large

Glass, which is an assemblage of mixed media suspended

between two surfaces of glass, is not easily understood

by simply viewing it at the Philadelphia Museum of Art or

looking at reproductions of it because The Glass is not

"retinal painting," a phrase which Duchamp coined in

reference to easel painting as an activity which he

despised.5 He rejected retinal painting as anti-

intellectual, and he wanted to put painting "at the

service of the mind," that is, to get away from the 6

.r. . ,. ,.«,,,, . , .. ,...... , . . w...... :.,

-VA

Fig. 4--Marcel Duchamp. Three Standard Stoppages. 1913-1914. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 7

Fig. 5--Marcel Duchamp. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) . 1915-1923. Philadelphia Museum of Art 8

m a CINEMATIC BLOSSOMING HALO OF THE BRIDE TITLE TOP INSCRIPTION MILKY WAY m~ n Z 1ApEI2 [ 3 Alphabetic units

LETTER BOXLL (ALPHABET) DRAFT PISTONS TRIPLE CIPHER NETS govern alph abet and terms of the Pendu female's commands

BRIDE ARBOR-TYPE WASP controls atmospheric pressure SHOTS STEAM ENGINE dew (I SEX CYLINDER secretes love gasoline from y osmoss) PULLS SKELETON S N SEcontrols spark of desire magneto PENDU FEMELLE 0 VIRGIN "" -" -""' -"" "" S CAGE I contains filament material A MOTOR WITH , QUITE FEEBLE CYLINDERS controls arbor-type '4,

i RESERVOIR emits artificial sparks

of love gasoline f1

I HANDLER TRAINER OF GRAVITY I BRIDE'S CLOTHES HORIZON I JUGGLER'I ,..___

GILLED COOLER ISOLATING PLATES WILSON NCOLN LIA SYSTEM BOXING MATCH I

geared system p i r L------J1 A

r C n as x SCISSORS control splsas D rrrr rr. rr r rrrrw r r i.ns rrri r rr rrii r. I

Z n. w. ARCHITECTONIC BASE FOR THE BRIDE DRAINAGE SLOPES C7; OCULIST CHARTS O OCULIST WITNESSES 3 CAPILLARY TUBES J h ro soliduty and cutIlluminating gas lets spangles spangles converted Into liquid scattered suspension

WATERFALL CEMETERY OF UNIFORMS AND LIVERIES W TRFl PUMP MALC MOULDS mould Illuminating Gas* * EROS MATRIX CHUTE WEIGHT WITH HOLES L~ . J I... - -- -..... Priest Department-store delivery boy CHARIOT r AY Gendarme - - r iilA I Cuirassier SLEIGH CHOCOL .ATE MACHINE Policeman S SLIDE la I PLANES OF FLOW Undertaker * CHOCOL ATEE GRINDER Flunkey GLIDER l SPLASH Busboy a Bayonet I FALLS Station-master a recites litanies m aNecktie DINS I Rollers CRASHES I opens scissors Louis XV chaissIs L.i

I n0-I i RUNNERS L - .I of variable density

Fig. 6--A typographic version by Richard Hamilton of Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. 9

physical aspect of painting.6 Duchamp did not want to appeal to the spectator's retinal sense, or formal approach to art. Rather he wanted art to appeal to the intellect, the mind. In fact, Duchamp used the late nineteenth century expression, bete comme un peintre (as stupid as a painter), and remarked "it was true; that kind of painter who just puts down what he sees is stupid". 7

According to Duchamp's notes, The Large Glass has two principal realms: the Bride and the Bachelors; the

Bride's domain is above with the Bachelor apparatus below, which serves as an architectonic base for the

Bride section. The Large Glass is a love-making machine that does not work and cannot work. In part, The Large

Glass represents a tragi-comedy of frustrated physical love, with the Bride left literally hanging in the air.8

If sexual contact is to take place between the Bride and her Bachelors, it must be done conceptually by the spectator. As Duchamp remarked, the spectator must complete the picture himself; he must complete the creative act the artist began. The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.9 10

There has been nothing like The Large Glass in the history of art, and there are no usual standards by which it can be judged. In The Large Glass, Duchamp was not imitating nature, or interpreting reality rather, he was creating a piece of reality itself. Unfinished, complex, shattered, and repaired, The Glass has been discussed and interpreted in many ways, and all have added to the body of knowledge concerning the work. Duchamp once stated that each of its interpretations gives its own particular shade to that interpretation, "which isn't necessarily true or false, which is interesting, but only interesting when you consider the man who wrote the interpretation . . ."l® That is, the "definitive" interpretation is definitive to the individual commentator. Jean Clair, a Duchamp scholar, worried: "What if Duchamp was somewhere else? What if his importance was not where we put it?""1 Despite all the literature concerning The

Glass, new research is necessary into an important aspect of its enigma.

Duchamp has stated that The Glass is neither autobiographical nor even self-expressive.12 In spite of these disclaimers, Duchamp's psyche and personality have played a major role in the creation of his art. Duchamp has been quoted as saying that The Large Glass is 11

above all a negation of women in the social sense of the word, that is to say, fe woman--wife, the mother, the children, etc.

None of the major interpretations of The Large Glass has considered Duchamp's negation of women statement.

Statement of the Problem

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether

The Large Glass is a symbol and a manifestation of

Duchamp's statement that The Glass is a negation of women.

Methodology

The Thesis is composed of five chapters. The order includes Chapter I as the Introduction. Chapter II includes a synopsis of the major interpretations of The

Large Glass. Chapter III discusses Duchamp and The Large

Glass. Chapter IV discusses Duchamp and the negation of women. Chapter V consists of the conclusion.

The significance of the negation of women and its relation to Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass has been determined by the following means:

1. Review of literature about Marcel Duchamp.

2. Review of his life and his statements concerning women.

3. Examining The Large Glass at The Philadelphia Museum of Art. NOTES FOR CHAPTER I

'Harriet and Sidney Janis, "Marcel Duchamp, Anti- Artist," in Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, ed. Joseph Masheck (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975), p. 36.

2 See Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, eds., Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), p. 273, catalog no. 101.

3See Ibid., p. 301, catalog no. 153.

4Lawrence D. Steefel, Jr., The Position of 'La Marine Misea_ Nupar Ses C6libataires, Meme' (1915-1923) in the Stylistic and Iconographic Development of the Art of Marcel Duchamp (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1960), p. 298.

5 Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors; the Heretical Courtship in Modern Art (New York: Viking Press, 1965), p. 13.

6Ibid.

7lbid.

8John Golding, Marcel Duchamp: The Bride Stripped Bare bt Her Bachelors, Even (New York: Viking Press, 1972), p. 81.

9 Marcel Duchamp, "The Creative Act," in Marcel Duchamp, ed. Robert Lebel (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 78.

10 Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. 42.

"Charles F. Stuckey, "Duchampiana," Art in America 64 (November/December): 41.

'2 Tomkins, p. 57.

13 Cabanne, p. 76.

12 CHAPTER II

INTERPRETATIONS

There are many interpretations of The Large Glass, and all are somewhat different from each other. This chapter includes a brief synopsis of the major interpretations of Duchamp's major work, The Bride

Stripped Bare B Her Bachelors, Even. The interpretations which have similar orientations are placed together, but not all interpretations fit into any particular category.

Alchemy

In his book, Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare

B Her Bachelors, Even, John Golding discussed alchemy as an influence for Duchamp, and as a general theme in The

Large Glass. If Duchamp became interested in alchemy, it may have been during his stay in Munich in 1912,1 the year of his most important oil-on-canvas works, 2 During his two-month visit in Munich, he painted The Passage from the Virgin to the Bride (Fig. 7) and the Bride (Fig.

8), and he executed the first drawing on the theme The

Bride Stripped Bare li the Bachelors, 3 which appears to

13 14

Fig. 7--Marcel Duchamp. The Passage from Virgin to Bride. July-August 1912. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 15

Fig. 8--Marcel Duchamp. The Bride. August 1912. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 16 have been derived both iconographically and compositionally from an illustration of the stripping of a virgin (or a young bride) reproduced in a treatise by the philosopher Solidonius and later used in other alchemical manuals.4 Duchamp may have realized that through the symbolism of alchemy he could achieve "the more abstract, more hermetic and more intellectual art towards which he was striving."5 For Duchamp, alchemy held exciting possibilities. The mixture of science and the irrational involved in alchemical thought greatly appealed to him. During the great period of alchemy in western Europe, especially during the tenth and eleventh centuries, "there was no 'either-or' for that age, but there did exist an intermediate realm between mind and matter .. 6 Such a proposal describes the condition to which Duchamp's art was striving. The alchemists had always made use of sexual symbolism in the description of their methods of work and during the fourteenth century, pictorial illustrations, in which the sexual symbolism was made visually very blatant, began to proliferate.7

The idea of the stripping of the virgin or bride in alchemical literature is symbolic of the purification of the stone.8 The virgin is stripped of her bridal garments on the night of her marriage in order to appear before her husband in all her "transparent virginity," 17

just as the stone abandons one by one the colors which it assumed in the "various processes to which it had been

submitted, until it reaches a state of transparency which

is the symbol of revelations and of true knowledge." 9

Images of machines used in alchemy also could have amused Duchamp and stimulated his imagination. 0 Golding

found a similarity between the layout of the lower half of The Large Glass (the Bachelors) and the depiction of alchemical furnaces (Fig. 9). Golding also discovered parallels between the language of alchemy and the iconography of The Large Glass in respect to Duchamp's use of the number seven, which was the most important number for alchemy in ancient times, although it was later expanded to the number nine. There are seven sieves and nine bachelors in The Large Glass. The four stages of alchemy were symbolized by black, white, yellow, and red. The Glass is described as being a

"world in yellow", the Bride is drawn in grisaille, and the Bachelors in red. In alchemy, red symbolizes the king, and white signifies the queen at the stage at which both are ready to consummate their symbolic union.1'

Duchamp used machine imagery for some aspects of The

Large Glass, including the chariot, the chocolate grinder, the scissors, and the sieves. In his notes, 18

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' titvW

it.

. J

14f 4

Yz44 z'l %:w r ' wi ...>.;,,... tr1 yr 3 Ta :- ... ,.4yy

Fig. 9--Alchemical furnaces. 19

Duchamp referred to the Bride as an "agricultural

1 2 machine" and an "instrument for farming."

If alchemy did interest Duchamp, it was because he saw in it a system of speculative thought, half science, half philosophy, "in which ideas were constantly being formulated which by definition could never reach a definite or positive conclusion."13 The problem of the union of irreconcilables, of aboveness with belowness, of air and earth, of fire and water, were basic to alchemy.

Although Duchamp denied knowing alchemy (being an extraordinarily honest man),14 he was attracted, according to Golding, to forms with cosmic implications,

15 in particular, the circle and spiral in rotation.

Examples of a circular or rotative motif can be found in

Duchamp's readymades such as The Bicycle Wheel (Fig. 2),

The Bottle Rack,16 and his Roto-Reliefs.17 He may have been unconsciously attracted to alchemy because its basic tenets are archetypal in character.1 8

It may well be that any parallels that exist between

Duchamp's images and those of alchemy are accidental or

perhaps due to an unconscious attraction towards "images

9 that are atavistic or archetypal in nature."' If

Duchamp did use alchemy, it is deeply ironic and is

typical of his "playful physics." 2 0 But also, it is

possible that Duchamp denied knowledge of alchemy because 20

he did not want to have too much read into his art.

Because his art is of an extraordinary depth and subtlety, he was concerned that spectators should extract from it what they wished and that any definitive explanation of The Large Glass was not "only impossible but that an attempt to produce one could only serve to kill any true contact between himself and his viewer." 2 1

In the first Duchamp catalogue raisonne of 1959,

Robert Lebel discovered symbols in The Large Glass that relate to alchemy. Lebel believed that The Large Glass suggested aestheticism and the great work of the alchemists in projections of platonic ideals. He found references to water (the Bride) and gas (the Bachelors) that were "like emanations transmitted by spiritualists,

. . . which like-wise assume ready-made human forms." 2 2

Duchamp's system of numbers and his use of a secret language point to his interest in alchemy. Duchamp used the number three or its multiple in The Large Glass to denote the Bride's Triple Blossoming, the three rolls of the Chocolate Grinder, the Three Stoppages, the nine malic moulds, and the nine shots. The role of metals in

The Large Glass is another example of alchemical influence. He used lead to color the malic moulds, and the chariot is made of emancipated metal. The use of puns and plays on words follows the principles of 21

cabalistic phonetics. Duchamp's arrangements of the colors, black, white, and red also refer to alchemy, as was also seen in Golding's interpretation of The Large

Glass.

Lebel specifically pointed out the similarity of

Duchamp's use of circles with the mandala.23 According to the psychologist Carl Jung, the mandala is a

"representation, common both to Indo-Tibetan mystics and to neurotics, of a struggle against psychic dissociation and of an effort toward unification in the attempt to organize forms around a common center.,24 In 1911,

Duchamp executed his first machine painting, that of The

Coffee Mill (Fig. 10). He indicated with an arrow, the

movement of the handle. The rotation of the handle was

only partially indicated, without reaching its

completion. At the time (1911), Duchamp was breaking

away from the Cubist works by his older brothers and was

also having 'second-thoughts' about an artistic life.

This was the beginning of a crisis for Duchamp, and The

Coffee Mill is expressive of the difficulties which beset

him.

In 1959, Lebel asked Duchamp if he had ever

practiced alchemy, and Duchamp replied that if he had

practiced alchemy, it was without knowing it. However,

Lebel determined that Duchamp's answer was inconclusive 22

Fig. 10--Marcel Duchamp. The Coffee Mill. 1911. Private Collection. 23 and typical of his contrary propositions, and Lebel did

not exclude the possibility that Duchamp might have

rediscovered alchemy. 2 5 In 1965, at a gallery exhibiting

Duchamp's work, the late artist Robert Smithson met

Duchamp and said to him: "I see that you are into

alchemy." Duchamp replied with a simple, "Yes." 26

According to Arturo Schwarz, the study of alchemy,

which he defines as an "esoteric and exoteric adventure;

. . . a symbolic operation," influenced Duchamp in the

creation of The Large Glass. Alchemy has a double-face:

on one hand alchemy can be practical, such as the attempt

to change baser metals into gold, and on the other a

psychological process, "in part consciously psychic, in

part unconsciously projected and seen in the various

transformations of matter." In Schwarz's words alchemy

is an "instrument of knowledge of the total knowledge

that aims to open the way toward total liberation."27

By acquiring total liberation, one can succeed in

achieving the higher consciousness that is the first step

toward the "reconstitution . . . of the unity of his

divided self." This psychological process has been

termed "individuation" by Jung. Individuation, in the

alchemical sense, involves abolishing the conflicting

male-female duality within the integrated personality of 24

the "reconstituted Gnostic Anthropos, i.e., the original androgyne."28

The main prototype of the alchemical marriage is the

Brother-Sister incest.29 Androgyny and incest between siblings are found in many myths, and these themes have much in common. When one becomes aware of this,

Duchamp's oeuvre takes on a new dimension, and it is easier to understand "the importance of Duchamp's lack of

for dogmatism as expressed in his often-avowed preference

3 0 the suspension of judgment." The "undifferentiated psychic" of the androgyne is the mythical model for

Duchamp's ethics and aesthetics, as seen in The Large

Glass and in some of his Readymades, such as the bearded

Mona Lisa of L.H.0.0.Q. (Fig. 11).31 Bisexuality is the

archetypal quality of the creator, while the alchemical

incest is the ideal mythical model for the state in which

individuation is achieved and creation becomes

possible.32

According to Schwarz, The Large Glass is the

mythical account of an unrealizable love affair between

siblings. The Large Glass is an esoteric projection of

an unconscious train of thought, Marcel's for his sister

Suzanne. In a lecture which Duchamp delivered in 1957,

entitled "The Creative Act," he stated, "We must then

deny him (the artist) the state of consciousness on the 25

Fig. 11--Marcel Duchamp. L.H.O.O.Q. 1919. Private Collection. 26

aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it."33 Jung confirms that "one can paint very

complicated pictures without having the least idea of

their real meaning," and that the alchemist's quest is a

"psychological projection at the unconscious level," and

that this unconscious process works only as long as it 34 stays unconscious.

In contrast to Duchamp's remaining oeuvre, Schwarz

has found the greatest number of alchemical references in

The Large Glass.35 The subtitle of The Large Glass

concerns an agricultural machine, a revealing reference

having to do with the "mythical concept of agriculture as

a symbolic wedding of Earth and Sky, and plowing being

3 6 associated with semination and the sexual act."

Duchamp also described The Large Glass as "a world in

yellow," yellow symbolizing Revelation, but also as an

3 7 ambivalent symbol for both guilt and the devil. Yellow

is the color of both marriage and cuckoldry, wisdom and

betrayal, and the hermaphrodite.3 The number three was

of great significance to Duchamp. In the alchemical

tradition, the number three is the symbol of Hermes, the

hermaprodite.39

Duchamp denied, as mentioned, that he consciously

used the imagery and symbolism of alchemy and that if he

did practice alchemy, "it was in the only way it can be 27

done now, that is to say, without knowing it." Jung once remarked, "We like to imagine that something which we do not understand does not help us in any way but that

is not always so . . . Because of its numinosity the myth has a direct effect on the unconscious, no matter whether it is understood or not." 4 '

Alchemy and the Cabal

Jack Burnham deduced that Duchamp was an

accomplished cabalist and alchemist. Burnham did not

repeat any of the other interpreters' research, but

rather he moved beyond those interpretations and proposed

that Duchamp had mastered the "creative powers of the

Hebrew letters as they are determined in the Sepher

Yetzirah, the ancient key to cabalistic knowledge." 4 2

Like a true hermeticist, Duchamp prepared The Large Glass

with several ruses, the most popular of which is the idea

that The Large Glass portrays "modern unrequited

sexuality and mechanical sexuality."43 If the goal of

every skilled hermeticist is not to lie but to obscure

his messages, then Duchamp never denied, according to

Burnham, this interpretation.

The Glass's two-part structure (the Bride's Domain

and the Bachelor's Domain) repeats the single most

important law of occultism: from the Emerald Tables of 28

Hermes Tismegistus one reads: "what is below is similar

(NOT EQUAL) to what is above, and what is above is

similar to what is below in order to insure the

perpetuation of the miracle of the Unique Thing." 4 4

Burnham believed that the mechanism of the Bachelor

Machine and their interrelations are interpretations of

the Tree of Knowledge of the Cabala. Burnham then

proceeded to give copious examples of Duchamp's use of

the cabalistic Tree of Knowledge and of the Arcana of the

Tarot.45 Burnham's examination of Duchamp's notes

indicated obscure clues of mathematical, neurological,

physiological, and historical, symbols representing

"mature activities" of "hermetic preparations for an

incipient crisis in Western culture . . ."46 This is not

to say that Duchamp prophesied the death of art, rather

he anticipated, according to Burnham, the "inevitable

demise of art which takes scientific rationalism and

post-rationalist methodology for its model, and this

includes nearly all the successful art of the present

century."4 That is, art cannot die, but human illusion

and the nature of aesthetic values do. Finally, The

Large Glass can only act "as a signpost reintroducing the

sacred and 'lived ritual' into the realm of everyday

existence, thus abolishing art as a separate facet of

life.,48 29

The Occult

In his lengthy essay on Duchamp and The Large Glass, entitled "The Castle of Purity," Octavio Paz compared The

Glass to Hindu and Tantric images. Paz described The

Glass as one of the most "hermetic works of the twentieth century."49 Because he did not want to repeat any of the previous researches into interpretations of The Large

Glass, he chose instead, to describe The Glass through the use of Duchamp's notes. He examined the title of The

Large Glass (in French) and concluded that the title contains irony and indifference. It is the "neither this nor that" of the Taoists. 50 Paz continually pointed out contradictions, ambiguities, and ambivalences found in the functioning of The Glass. Paz, as did other

interpreters, also mentioned the number three as being a magic number which produces an aura in The Glass. Three

is the number into which the Indo-Europeans concentrated

their vision of the universe, which has been the focal

point of their intellectual systems for thousands of

years, from the days of Vedic India to modern Europe.5 1

Paz's description of The Large Glass is that of a "mural

representing the Apotheosis of the Bride, . . . a satire

of the machine mentality . . . and a vision of love." 5 2

Paz criticized the psychoanalytic interpretations of The 30

Large Glass because the "realities of psychology and of art exist on different levels of meaning."53 As an example, Paz wrote: "Freud offers us a key to understanding Oedipus, but the Greek tragedy cannot be limited to the interpretations of psychoanalysis."54 The alchemical interpretations are also disregarded by Paz because Duchamp himself said if he did practice alchemy, it was without knowing it. For Paz, this is a complete and conclusive disavowal.5 5

Instead, The Large Glass is, according to Paz, "a version of the ancient myth of the great Goddess, Virgin,

Mother, Giver and Exterminator of life. It is not a modern myth: it is the modern version - or vision - of the Myth." 5 6 It is a scene from a family of myths related to the theme of the Virgin and the closed society of men.5 7 Duchamp's image of the Bride is related to

Kali, an Indian goddess, part of the Hindu tradition, while Kali's husband, Shiva, is related to the Bachelors.

If The Large Glass has a direct relation to Tantric

tradition, it is because both are responses to the

traditional images that both civilizations have made of

the phenomenon of creation and destruction, woman and

reality.5 8 While Duchamp is making fun of such a

traditional myth, he also makes fun of the "positivist

conception of love."59 The Large Glass is a "comic and 31

infernal portrayal of modern love or . . . of what modern man has made of love." 60

"Novelty"

In 1934, the Surrealist Andre Breton wrote a review of Duchamp's The Green Box entitled "Le Phare de la

Marine" ("The Lighthouse of the Bride") published in the

Surrealist magazine Minotaure, later translated into

English and published in VIEW magazine in a special

Duchamp issue in 1945. Breton listed Duchamp's works to date (1934) and analyzed the importance of the artist.

He considered Duchamp to be at the "spearhead of all

'modern' movements," and that the publication of the ninety-four notes in The Green Box was a "capital event

in the eyes of all who attach any importance to the

determination of the great intellectual motives of our

day." 6 1

Breton summarized The Large Glass as follows:

a * . we find ourselves here in the presence of mechanistic and cynical interpretation of the phenomenon of love: the passage of a woman from the state of virginity to that of non-virginity taken as a theme of a fundamentally a-sentimental speculation, almost that of an extra-human being training himself to consider this sort of operation. Here the rigorously logical and expected are married to the arbitrary and the gratuitous. And one very soon abandons oneself to the charm of a kind of great modg~n legend where everything is unified by lyricism. 32

Breton considered The Large Glass an "absolute novelty" and that it is assured an "important place among the most significant works of the twentieth century." 6 3

Biographical

In the only published biography of Duchamp, Alice

Marquis interpreted The Large Glass as a manifestation of

Duchamp's personal inner conflicts. Through a selective use of the notes, she described how Duchamp intended The

Glass to function, even though Duchamp left The Glass

"inacheve." Marquis related The Glass' unfinished state to Duchamp's attitude about art, which Marquis summed up with the artist's quote: "I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." 6 4 The Glass's incompleteness marked, according

to Marquis, the inner contradictions of the artist's

psyche which "immobilized" Duchamp's life. His attitude about working on The Glass is described as being his own attitude about his life, that of indifference.6 5

Like all great works of art, The Bride Stripped Bare

By Her Bachelors, Even has a multiplicity of meanings.

Marquis approached it in five ways. Technically, The

Glass is a daring experiment with modern materials:

glass, lead, varnish, and dust. Symbolically, it relates

man's most basic drive to the workings of a machine. 33

Aesthetically, "the glass' deliberate indifference to beauty heralds the twentieth-century's persistent confusion about visual pleasure."66 Philosophically, The

Glass depicted an effort "to go beyond [Ludwig]

Wittgenstein's assertation that 'the limits of my language are the limits of my world.'"6 7 Personally, The

Glass mapped out a graph of Duchamp's inner struggles, drawing heavily on his experiences with his sister

Suzanne and his mother.

Marquis' conception of The Large Glass depicted, first, the real-life "impasse" between Duchamp and his sister Suzanne as being portrayed iconographically in The

Glass and in the work's incompletion.8 That is, in The

Large Glass, Duchamp intended, according to Marquis, to depict an absurd, complicatedly baffling, and frustrating love-making machine. In his notes, he worked out the details of what Marquis called "his Fantasy machine."6 9

Duchamp, envisioned, therefore, an erotic-mechanical drama, an endless self-generating cycle of lust for his sister forever destined to frustration.7 0

Second, Marquis depicted Duchamp as not only a frustrated "lover" of his sister but also of his mother.

The Large Glass is likened to a secular and highly

personal crucifixion scene: the Bride or "the hanged woman" ("la pendu femelle") represents Duchamp's mother 34

being hung by her "neglected" son while the Bachelors of

The Large Glass are the mourners. Marquis felt that

Duchamp retreated into a machine metaphor of the work so that he would not "reveal" such an explicit Freudian psycho-drama.7

Duchamp once insisted that he intended a hilarious picture, and that The Large Glass is a spoof of science and technology.72 Consequently, Marquis drew on Freudian psychology to prove Freud's point that jokes have a deeper meaning, especially to those who devise them.

According to Marquis' reading of Freud, a joke is analogous to a dream in that it contains a message from the unconscious. Jokes, like dreams, hide this message by using psychological processes of displacement, condensation, and indirect representation. Using

Freudian terms, Marquis depicted Duchamp's "displaced conscious stimulus," as being the development of an internal combustion engine as a symbol for his frustrated erotic yearnings for his mother and Suzanne. In The

Large Glass fulfillment is never reached. Marquis cited passages of Duchamp's notes concerning the Bride's cylinders as being "feeble," her desire containing

"malice," and her harboring "timid power." The

"splashes" of the Sieves are, according to Marquis,

"dazzling" sperm failing to reach their mark.73 In The 35

Large Glass, Duchamp attempted to concentrate all such proposed feelings. Marquis concluded that the work represented: 1) his disappointment in his mother, 2) his frustration as one artist among many talented artists and as the much younger brother of two artists, 3) his vain search for personal identity, 4) his inability to achieve intimate relationships, 5) his "loss" of Suzanne, 6) his inability to communicate, and 7) his professional paralysis. Through such indirect representation in The

Large Glass, Duchamp fought, according to Marquis, to purge himself of these overwhelming inner conflicts.

Perspective and the Nth Dimension

Duchamp insisted also that The Large Glass was a consideration on perspective. In Pierre Cabanne's interviews with Duchamp shortly before the artist's death, the artist remarked that: "perspective was very important. The Large Glass constitutes a rehabilitation of perspective, which had then been completely ignored and disparaged. For me, perspective became absolutely scientific."75 Duchamp described his use of perspective to Cabanne as being mathematical and scientific, based on calculations and dimensions.7 6

Jean Clair studied Duchamp's use of perspective as well as his sources for using perspective. In late 1913 36 and 1914, Duchamp was employed at La Bibliotheque Sainte-

Genevieve in Paris as a librarian. This rare-book library is particularly rich in such works, including the major treatises concerning the subject. Because he was a librarian at Ste. Genevieve, Duchamp had access to the most complete body of works he could hope to find on the problem of perspective. In The White Box or A

L'Infinitif, there is a note that Duchamp wrote to remind himself to look at a particular perspective treatise located at the library.7 7

If The Large Glass takes the laws of perspective literally, it also seems, according to Clair, to illustrate them. The proportions of The Large Glass

(referring to the ratio of the Bride Domain to the

Bachelor Domain) are almost identical to the proportions of Abraham Bosse's plates of 1648 (Fig. 12) illustrating the treatises on perspective. The ratio of Bosse's plates is 1:1.60; Duchamp used 1:1.567, the ratio of the

Golden Section. Proportioned according to the Golden

Section, The Large Glass shows one "picture" above another, the respective proportions of which were well known to a painter such as Raphael or Rubens. Also, the

Bachelor Domain is divided from the Bride Domain by three horizontal lines, as are Bosse's perspective plates.7 8

Clair concluded that Duchamp's work may be seen as the 37

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"harbinger of contemporary iconoclasm," and that it is actually a project of restoration. That is, Duchamp's work attempted to:

give back to perspective some of the importance which the history of modern painting as a whole from Manet to Cezanne, onward, has been bent on denying; to make the (Partition of Glass) and its handling once more the conceptual tool par excellence of the art of painting, alone capable of reviving the intelligence which that art had lost (painters had become 'stupid' ever since they abandoned the perspective habits, and indulged only in the delights of a retinal surface and in physical delights) - so that it would automaticallj9 become as Leonardo had wanted, purely cosa mentale.

According to Clair, it is paradoxical to observe that while the major trend of modern art persisted in making the picture an a-focal flat area, Duchamp thought of going against the grain of "modernity" by asserting the notion of the picture as a transparent plane.8 0

In addition to Duchamp's keen interest in classical perspective, the artist also was interested in the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry. Linda Dalrymple

Henderson researched Duchamp's involvement with the

fourth dimension and investigated Duchamp's sources for his knowledge of the "new geometries" (Henderson's term

for the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry).

Through careful analysis of Duchamp's difficult and

complex notes, Henderson examined them in regard to such new geometries. 39

Typically Duchampian, the artist has denied knowing much about the fourth dimension; according to Henderson,

Duchamp's comment was ironic.81 Duchamp's ironical outlook on science and technology resulted in his playful use of physics which involved "slightly distending the laws of physics and chemistry." Duchamp was an irreverent artist for whom nothing was sacred, and, by delving into avant-garde mathematics and science, he could discredit longstanding beliefs that were held by the majority of the public.8 2

Henderson concluded that the notes published in A

L'Infinitif (The White Box) recorded the evolution behind the forms of The Large Glass. After examining all of

Duchamp's writings (The Box of 1914, The Green Box, The

White Box, and Marcel Duchamp, Notes), she divided the notes dealing with the new geometries into three

categories: "Appearance and Apparition," "Perspective," and "the Continuum."83 The notes under "Appearance and

Apparition" represent Duchamp's most basic thoughts on

the relationship of the world of three dimensions to the

two dimensions of art.84 The category "Perspective" must

be considered in two parts; first, the fourth dimensional

perspective, and, then, three dimensional perspective.

Using a tactile physical approach, Duchamp attempted to

represent the fourth dimension through a kind of "four- 40 dimensional perspective." He was forced to abandon this in favor of a visual illusion of the fourth dimension based on mirrors and virtual images.85 The other notes in this section are concerned with the three-dimensional perspective that Duchamp employed in the lower portion of

The Large Glass.86 Under "The Continuum" are Duchamp's notes on four-dimensional geometry (including four- dimensional vision) and his later thoughts on the way the fourth dimension might be represented.87 With a desire to create a four-dimensional Bride, Duchamp speculated on the problem of a four-dimension perspective or, at least, for more concrete ways in which a three dimension being might perceive the fourth dimension. His notes chronicle his exploration of these subjects, a study which finally led him to use the idea of a mirror as a symbol of the fourth dimensional continuum.88 Henderson remarks:

Four-dimensional geometry, . . ., provided the theoretical support for (Duchamp's) Bride to be the section or shadow of a four-dimensional Bride. Painted on glass with the three virtual dimensions of a mirror image or a photograph, the Bride was a testament to Duchamp's scholarly effort. He had indeed succeeded . . . and had creag5 ld a unique projection of the fourth dimension.

In another study, Craig E. Adcock examined Duchamp's notes, a substantial number of which are also his most difficult.9 0 These notes are scientific, subsumed under a system which Duchamp called "playful physics." This page has been inserted during digitization.

Either the original page was missing or the original pagination was incorrect. 42 and patterns of stars or shots. Personally they both assumed female pseudonyms92 and both men became legends within their own lifetimes primarily for what they refused to do. 9 3 In regard to The Large Glass, Hassold wrote:

The Glass is and remains a system of possibilities which will defy a single interpretation, and must be envisioned as deliberately constructed to project and deny meaning, above all a mac ne for the production of the possible, . . .

Esthetic "Machine"

Lawrence D. Steefel wrote a dissertation concerning

The Large Glass, specifically a stylistic and iconographic analysis of it. Steefel contended that the works of Duchamp are somehow based, led up to, or extended from The Large Glass, and that an understanding of Duchamp is largely dependent upon this work, which provides a key to all his artistic statements and works.

Steefel found four major topics of special interest or preoccupation in Duchamp's art. These topics are: 1) the machine and the mechanistic,

2) motion, 3) eros or the erotic, and 4) paradox as an inclusive way of characterizing the world and perceptions of it. 9 5

Steefel stated that "Duchamp created The Glass as a kind of 'time machine' of solipsistic isolation." 9 6 The crucial point of isolation would be an "esthetic 43

vanishing point," but this point must be maintained

against the environmental background of the larger work

seen through The Glass as a world of time.9 As a

perspective machine, The Glass asserted that the universe

is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and nowhere, and that man, who is frightened by the infinity of space and time, casts his thoughts like dice into an

abyss of space and time.98

Through The Glass, Duchamp was able to achieve distance on the world and on himself.99 Through distance came liberation for Duchamp. He strived to make esthetic freedom into an image of human freedom which is both in and out of time. Precious in its ephemerality, infinite in its perspective, human freedom is a pledge which only time can redeem. Because of this, Duchamp's art cannot be dismissed as the "eccentric joke of an anarchical freak, but assumes status as a major accomplishment of an important figure in the mainstream of modern art."'0 1

Duchamp's Statements

This chapter of interpretations of The Large Glass concludes with quotes from Duchamp on his magnum opus and excerpts from a speech he delivered in 1957, in Houston,

Texas, entitled "The Creative Act." From this address, 44

it is possible to understand partially Duchamp's creative

processes. Duchamp considered the spectator to have an

important aspect in the role of art.

In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the roof tops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posJ 65ity includes him in the primers of Art History

Duchamp contended that the artist does not perform alone,

because the "spectator brings the work in contact with

the external world by deciphering and interpreting its

inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to

the creative act." 1 0 3

Placing the artist in a "mediumistic" role, Duchamp denied the artist the "state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane" what he was doing or why he was doing it. All the reasons for executing the art work remain with "pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out."104

Perhaps because of Duchamp's inability or reluctance to analyze his own work, he has said little about The

Large Glass, and that, contradictory. Among all his oeuvre, he asserted that he did only one work, The Large

Glass.105 Duchamp has called The Large Glass a

"hilarious picture." He told Pierre Cabanne that the 45

Bride was a "projection of a fourth-dimensional object

. a bit of sophism."106 He told Calvin Tomkins that

The Large Glass symbolized the wooing of the Muse, which

"can never wholly succeed . . . this Bride, like life itself, can never truly be possessed, nor even stripped bare . . . the courtship is what matters" 107 To Robert

Lebel, he said "The Glass is not to be looked at for itself, but only as a function of a catalogue I never made."108 Golding was told it was "a wedding of mental and visual concepts." 1 0 9 He told Katherine Kuh that he wanted to get away from an idea of painting a picture and that he was expressing purely mental ideas, which were not related to any literary allusions.110 He protested that The Large Glass "is not my autobiography, nor is it even self-expression." 11 Another interviewer was told, that it was not a disclosure of his mental life, but that the inspiration for The Glass had come from "those dummies at local fairs, dressed as a bride and groom, who offered themselves for decapitation by people throwing balls at them." 1 2 He further explained that he was expressing "an attitude toward machines, by no means admiring, but ironic."' 3 When Cabanne asked him what his interpretation of his Large Glass was, he said that he did not have any, because he made it without an idea: 46

There were things that came along as I worked. The idea of the ensemble was purely and simply the execution, more than descriptions of each part , It was a renunciation of all aesthetics, in the ordinary sense of the word . . . not just another

manifesto of new painting . . . without the influence of the idea of creating another movement in painting, in the sense 1 ?t Impressionism, Fauvism, etc., any kind of 'ism'."

Also, Duchamp insisted that The Glass was "above-all a negation of woman in the social sense of the word, .

woman-wife, the mother, the children, etc."11 He mocked all interpretations, past, present and future with his statement: "there is no solution, because there is no problem.",116 NOTES FOR CHAPTER II

IGolding, p. 85.

2 Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, eds., Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), p. 13.

3bid., p. 14.

4 Golding, p. 85.

5Ibid., p. 86.

6 Ibid., p. 85.

7bid.

Ibid.

9 Ibid., p. 87.

0 1 Ibid., p. 88.

1 1 Ibid., p. 90. 1 2 Ibid

1 3Ibid.

14 Ibid., p. 92.

5 1 Ibid., p. 90. 6 1 See d'Harnoncourt, p. 270, catalogue no. 94.

1 7 See Ibid., p. 298, catalogue no, 148. 18 Golding, p. 91.

1 9 Ibid., p. 92.

47 48

2 1 Ibid

2 2 Robert Lebel, Marcel Duchamp (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 73.

2 3Lebel, p. 74.

24 Ibid., p. 75.

25 Ibid.

2 6 Moira Roth, "Robert Smithson on Duchamp, an Inter- view," in Marcel Duchamp in Perspective ed. Joseph Masheck (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975), p. 137.

2 7 Arturo Schwarz, "The Alchemist Stripped Bare in the Bachelor, Even," in Marcel Duchamp ed. Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine (New York: Museum of Modern Art; Phila-delphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), p. 82.

28 Ibid., p. 82.

29 Idem, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1969), p. 97.

30 Idem, "The Alchemist," p. 83.

31 Idem, Complete Works, p. 97.

32 Idem, "The Alchemist," p. 84.

33 Ibid., p. 84.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., p. 89.

36 Ibid., p. 90.

3 7Ibid.

38 Idem, Complete Works, p. 79.

3 9 Idem, "The Alchemist," p. 96. 49

40 Ibid., p. 81.

41 Idem, Complete Works, p. 189.

4 2 Jack Burnham, "Introduction," in Great Western Salt Works, Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art (New York: Braziller Press, 1974), p. 12.

4 3 Ibid., "Duchamp's Bride Stripped Bare: The Meaning of The Large Glass," in Great Western Salt Works, p. 89.

4 4 Ibid., "Duchamp's Bride."

5Ibid.,p. 93.

46 Ibid., "Introduction," p. 12.

4 7 Ibid., "Duchamp's Bride," p. 116. 4 8 Ibid.

4 9 Octavio Paz, Marcel Duchamp, Appearance Stripped Bare (New York: Viking Press, 1978), p. 29.

50 Ibid., p. 33.

51 Ibid., p. 34.

52 Ibid., p. 61. 5 3Ibid.

54 Ibid.

5 5 Ibid., p. 155.

56 Ibid., pp. 61-62.

5Ibid.,p. 63.

58 Ibid., p. 66.

59 Ibid., p. 70. 60 Ibid.

6 1 Andre Breton, ""The Lighthouse of the Bride," in Marcel Duchamp ed. Robert Lebel (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 88. 50

62 Ibid., p. 92.

63 Ibid., p. 94.

64 Steefel, p. 298.

6 5 Alice Goldfarb Marquis, Marcel Duchamp: Eros, C'est La Vie (Troy, New York: Whitson Publishing Co., 1983), p. 196.

66 Ibid.

6 7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, quoted in Alice Marquis, Marcel Duchamp: Eros, C'est La Vie (Troy, New York: Whitson Publishing Co., 1983), p. 196. According to Wittgenstein, ordinary discourse, as in everyday conversation, is, in fact, limited in communicating generalized or abstract ideas because, in part, what one person may think he means by a word, such as "good," most likely does not have an exactly corresponding abstract equivalent to another person. That is, Wittgenstein posited that ordinary discourse is not real communication but a language game limited by language itself, as ordinarily used.

68 Marquis, p. 196. 6 9Ibid., p. 197. 7 0 Ibid., p. 198. 7 fIbid., p. 199.

72 Ibid., p. 200.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid., p. 199.

75 Cabanne, p. 38.

76 Ibid. 77 Jean Clair, "Duchamp and the Classical Perspecti- vists," Artforum 16 (March 1978): 40.

78 Clair, p. 41.

79 Ibid., p. 48. 51

80 Ibid., p. 48.

8 1 Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983): p. 119.

2Ibid.,p. 121.

83 Ibid., p. 136.

84 Ibid., p. 137. 8 5 Ibid., p. 141.

86 Ibid., p. 144.

87 Ibid., p. 145.

88 Ibid., p. 137.

89 Ibid., p. 157.

9 0Craig E. Adcock, Marcel Duchamp's Notes from The Large Glass, an N-Dimensional Analysis (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1983), p. 2.

9 1 Cris Hassold, "The Possibilities of Chance, a Comparative Study of Stephane Mallarme and Marcel Duchamp" (Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State University, 1972), pp. 160-161.

9 2 Ibid., pp. 154-156.

9 3 Ibid., pp. 148-149. Mallarme refused to be a leader of an artistic cause. Duchamp refused to repeat himself.

94 Ibid., p. 183.

95 Steefel, p. 27.

9 6 Ibid., p. 237.

9 7 Ibid.

9 8 Ibid., p. 238.

9 9 Ibid., P. 241. 52

10 0 Ibid., p. 264.

1 0 1 Ibid., no page number.

1 0 2 Marcel Duchamp, "The Creative Act," in Marcel Duchamp, ed. Robert Lebel (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 77. 10 3 Ibid., p. 78.

pIbid.,P.77.

10 5Schwarz, "Complete Works," p. 140.

10 6 Cabanne, p. 40.

10 7Tomkins., pp. 6-7. 10867 1 Lebel, p. 67.

1 0 9 Golding, p. 12.

1 0 1 Katherine Kuh, The Artist's Voice, Talks with Seventeen Artists (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 81.

1 1 1 Tomkins, p. 57. 11 2 Jean Schuster, "Marcel Duchamp, Vite," Le Surrealisme, Mame 2 (Spring 1957): 143.

1 13 Marquis., p. 201. 114 1 Cabanne, p. 42.

1 1 5 Ibid., p. 76.

11 6 Janis, p. 37. CHAPTER III

THE LARGE GLASS

The iconography of traditional art is largely based on familiar mythological, religious, or historical symbols. The work of Marcel Duchamp, however, appears not to be based on traditional symbols which can be found in standard signs and symbols reference books. Visually, the icons or symbols in Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare

By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) are not at once recognizable or plainly understood. In part, this is due to The Large Glass not being what Duchamp called "retinal painting."

Duchamp described The Large Glass in his notes, also titled The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even or

The Green Box of 1934, because he placed these notes eventually in a green box.1 The Green Box contained ninety-four notes pertaining to The Large Glass. A

L'Infinitif or The White Box of 1967, contained seventy-

2 nine more notes regarding The Large Glass. Some 287 notes were also published after his death, simply titled

Marcel Duchamp, Notes. 3 Some of these notes deal with

The Large Glass, although there are also references to

53 54

Readymades and a wealth of puns included in these publications.4 By a careful scrutiny of Duchamp's notes, one can determine how The Glass is intended to be "read" because simply viewing The Glass will leave the spectator in total and utter confusion and bewilderment. Duchamp once stated that The Glass was not to be looked at for itself but only as a function of a catalogue of explaining notes of which the published notes are fragments for such a catalogue.5 Instead, the serious viewer of The Glass must make an arduous and laborious journey through Duchamp's cryptic and polemical notes.

Although the forms in The Large Glass are literally static, a conceptual movement within The Glass is supplied by means of ideas in the notes.6 That is, in viewing The Large Glass the various parts move conceptually, as opposed to kinetically as in the

Readymade, The Bicycle Wheel (Fig. 2).

Because The Bride Stripped Bare fr Her Bachelors,

Even was executed on glass, the design of The Glass can never be seen by itself, apart from its surroundings,

"but it is inscribed, as it were, like the other image of a double exposure, ceaselessly transformed by a background of reflections in which that of the spectator himself is included." The transparency of the glass has 55 turned the background into a "ready-made continually in motion.'8

Due to Duchamp's precision in the planning of The

Glass, he saw any structural arrangement as arbitrary.

It is one fixed state in a flux of time and space. The images of The Glass are a "delay in Glass . . . not so much in the different meanings in which delay can be taken, but rather in their indecisive reunion."9 It was the poetic aspect of "delay in glass" that Duchamp liked, and did not or would not explain. He wanted to avoid saying "a glass painting" or a "glass drawing." The word

"delay" pleased him at the time, he said.1 0

Before beginning a description of the intricacies of his master work, the title of The Large Glass, specifically the title in French, must be examined.

Duchamp entitled his magnum opus La Mari~e Mise a Nu Par

Ses Celibataires, Meme. Duchamp has remarked many times that titles were very important for him, and he usually gave his works very cryptic and provocative titles.'1

"There is a tension set up between my titles and the pictures, " Duchamp has said, "the titles are not the pictures nor vice versa, but they work on each other."12

He probably unconsciously included his name in the title of the work: La MARiee Mise a Nu par Ses CELibataires. 56

The title for The Large Glass is not a complete

sentence but a dependent clause because it is missing the verb: what happens with the stripped bare bride?'3

Duchamp once remarked that he added the word meme (even

or same) because it made no sense. He also stated that

he never wanted to repeat himself; however, the word

"meme dances across his work, thrown out of the title by

the separating comma."1 5 He delighted in nonsense, and

he also liked the sound of the word "mme" coming at the

end of the title.16 It has been speculated that the word

"meme"can also be the homophone "m'aime", which means

"the bride stripped bare loves me," an inference to the

perhaps unconscious and unrealized longing Duchamp had

for his sister Suzanne. 7 One Duchamp scholar has

remarked that Duchamp considered his sister Suzanne as

being the Bride and that he had incestuous longings for

her, and even that he hoped she in return would

reciprocate.18 Duchamp has denied this interpretation of

the title' 9 and once stated in an interview:

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good. I use it beguse I have to, but I don't put any trust in it.

The phrase, misee a nu," literally means "stripped

bare." It is stronger than "denuded" or "unclothed" and

may be linked with a public act of stripping.21 The use 57

of the word "celibataire" instead of "fiance" indicates that there really is no Bride because there is no suitor.

Celibataire has a connotation of a celibate living a monk-like existence.

The following discussion pertaining to the work's

"moving" iconography is based on Duchamp's writings, as published in The Salt Seller and The Green Box (See Fig.

5 and 6). Duchamp frequently referred to The Large Glass as "a machine." In particular, the Bachelors are described as being the "bachelor machine" and "bachelor apparatus" and the Bride as being a "motor."22 The

"bachelor machine" is one half of The Large Glass, the

Bride being the other half. The Glass is divided into the Bride and the Bachelor "domains." The Bride is above, and the Bachelors are below her and serve as an architectonic base for the Bride who "later becomes a sort of apotheosis of virginity": "a ready maid .,23

"Basically the Bride," according to Duchamp, "is a motor," an "internal combustion" engine, a "sort of automobile" but a "very timid power."24 Duchamp compares

the Bride's orgasm to the image of a motorcar climbing a

slope in low gear. She has a reservoir of "love

gasoline,"25 which she secretes from her wasp-like sex

cylinder, the top of which is toward the "arbor-type,"

the bottom toward the reservoir, which holds the love 58 gasoline. The love gasoline is used for the "cinematic blossoming" of the virgin who has reached the goal of her desire. 2 6 The blossoming is presented as a sort of flesh-colored "milky-way" which surrounds the three draft pistons.2 7 The cinematic blossoming is the most important part of The Glass. It is the "halo" of the

Bride, "the sum total of her splendid vibrations." The

Bride reveals herself nude in two appearances: the first, by being stripped by the Bachelors; the second in the

Bride's imagination in that she voluntarily imagines herself to be nude. The combination of these two appearances is the upper part, the "crown" of The Glass.

The combination of these two appearances is "unanalyzable

by logic."28 The Bride does not refuse the stripping by

the Bachelors. She even accepts it since she furnishes

the love gasoline and goes so far as to help being

completely nude by developing in a sparkling fashion

because of her "intense desire for the orgasm.'"29 Hence,

the Bride is both active and passive.

Above the line indicating the horizon that separates

The Large Glass into the two domains (Bride and

Bachelors) are the Bride's invisible clothes. Jean Clair

has shown that this line separating the Bride from the

Bachelors may be traced back to early studies of

perspective and that Duchamp consciously patterned parts 59 of The Large Glass on such studies when he was a

librarian at the Ste. Genevieve in Paris, and the artist

once remarked that he employed classical perspective

because the Cubists rejected it. 3 0

The lower panel of The Glass is the Bachelor domain.

At first glance, the Bachelors may resemble chessmen.

Chess was very important to Duchamp. He claimed to have

stopped painting in 1923-25 to play chess.31 Duchamp described the principal forms of the Bachelor Machine as imperfect-"rectangle, circle, parallelpiped, symmetrical handle, demi-sphere = i.e. they are mensurable."3 2 The

Bachelor forms are described in Duchamp's notes as being

"malic moulds," malic "presumably, an 'adjustment' of the word 'phallic.'" 3 3 These malic moulds are hollow

"liveries" destined to receive the "Illuminating Gas" which takes eight malic forms.34 Duchamp added the ninth malic mould later, which supposedly represented himself.3 5 The area of the nine malic moulds is referred to as the "cemetery of uniforms or liveries."36 The nine malic moulds are identified by occupation: priest, department store delivery boy, gendarme,3 cuirassier,3 8 policeman, undertaker's assistant, flunky, busboy, and stationmaster. These nine professions do not have

"female" counterparts.39 The malic moulds are drawn in vanishing-point perspective, outlined in lead wire and 60

painted with red lead. "They are provisionally painted with red lead while waiting for each one to receive its color, like croquet mallets." The nine malic moulds are joined to the seven sieves by means of a system of capillary tubes which are the contours of The Three

4 1 Standard Stoppages, a previous work of Duchamp's.

There were supposed to be three tubes coming from each mould, but only one is depicted in The Glass. The sieves of the Bachelor Apparatus are "a reversed image of porosity." But Duchamp hermetically sealed the last four sieves by letting dust breed for "four-six" months on The

Glass.42 Between the nine malic moulds and the sieves is the chariot, a little wagon on runners, equipped with a water wheel, which is set in motion by an invisible waterfall. The chariot recites endless litanies: "Slow

life, Vicious circle, Onanism, Horizontal, Buffer of

life, Bach. life regarded as an alternating rebounding

on this buffer, Rebounding=junk of life, Cheap

construction, Tin, Cords, Iron wire, Crude wooden

pulleys, Eccentrics, Monotonous fly wheel."43 The

chariot moves at a jerky pace, and it appears in the

"costume of emancipation." In the center of the lower

panel is the Chocolate Grinder which represents the

genitals of the Bachelors. It is mounted on a Louis XV

chassis, and has a bayonet (bayonet is a French slang 61 word for penis) which supports large scissors. The grinder operates independently of the other elements in the Bachelor machine, illustrating his adage of spontaneity as the Bachelor grinds his chocolate himself, the chocolate coming from one knows not where.45 Because of the litanies of the Bachelors, the illuminating gas flows through the capillary tubes, and changes form, by first being frozen, then cut into "spangles," and subsequently converted into a semi-solid fog. The semi- solid fog then enters the sieves, and condenses into a

"liquid scattered suspension," which ascends vertically through the "Oculist Witnesses," and into the Bride's half of The Glass. The area of the Oculist Witnesses, which resembles oculist charts for astigmatism, is where the Bachelor's journey comes to an end. From the Oculist

Witnesses the gas can "witness" the Bride stripped bare and eventually reach her domain, even though it will do so only as a reflected image of the "Wilson-Lincoln effect."4' The "liquid scattered suspension" or the

"Shots" which they are called after passing through the

Oculist Witnesses and into the Bride's domain were placed at random by Duchamp by shooting painted matches from a toy canon. At the points of contact, The Glass was drilled in correspondence with the nine traces of paint left by each match. The area of the nine shots is where 62 the Bride's desires meet the expression of the

Bachelors'.

When the "splashes" enter the Bride's domain, they become subject to the commands of the pendu femelle, transmitted by the draft pistons. The pendu femelle

(literally, "hanged female" or "hanged bitch") is the skeleton of the Bride herself and the seat of the ruling

Bridal imagination.

The "Juggler of Gravity," whose three legs rest on the Bride's garments has his balance upset by the Bride's disrobing and finds difficulty in stopping the fall of a ball which is resting in equilibrium on a tray he is 48 holding. Also when the nine shots reach the Bridal garments, a clockwork machine called the "Boxing Match" is activated, and moves up and down and unfastens the

Bride's clothes.4 However, the "Juggler of Gravity" and the "Boxing Match" were never realized on The Glass itself, leaving the Bride, therefore, not stripped bare by the Bachelors. She remains desirous and desirable, yet chaste and aloof. The Bachelors will continue to

"grind" their "chocolate" themselves.

Even if Duchamp had completed The Glass, it may not have "worked." Fulfillment for the Bride might bring about her downfall.50 The Bachelors grind their 63

chocolate themselves, an obvious indication of autoeroticism. One of the litanies emitted by the malic moulds is "onanism," an act which does not require a partner and is incomplete. The Bride is an "apotheosis of virginity," hence she is not to be touched. The notes also mention a "short-circuit if necessary." As if there needed to be additional impedimenta, there is also a

"cooler (air or water)" which separates the two domains of The Glass.5 1

Duchamp remarked that the spectator must complete the creative act the artist has begun, and must go beyond what he knows and take all kinds of risks to complete the work of art, "to transmute the work from a material thing

5 2 into an esthetic event by completing the creative act."

The spectator must complete the odyssey begun in The

Large Glass. If sexual contact is to take place between the Bride and the Bachelors, it must be consummated in the mind of the spectator. The spectator must accomplish what the Bride and the Bachelors cannot, and what Duchamp did not.

On the surface, The Large Glass represents a tragi- comedy of frustrated physical love, with the Bride left literally hanging in the air.53 The Surrealist Andre

Breton said The Large Glass is a 'mechanical and cynical

4 interpretation of the phenomenon of love." 5 Breton also 64

said The Large Glass is "at least the trophy of a fabulous hunt through virgin territory at the frontiers of eroticism, of philosophical speculation, of the spirit of sporting competition, of the most recent data of science, of lyricism, and of humor." 5 5 In The Green Box

5 6 is the note "General notes for a Hilarious picture."

Duchamp saw humor as an escape from engaging in very serious considerations. It seems logical then that he saw detachment as the greatest human virtue. He protested that The Large Glass "is not my autobiography, nor is it even self-expression."57 His mocking statement

"there is no solution because there is no problem" exemplifies his detachment and his affirmation that the

5 8 spectator must complete the picture for himself. NOTES FOR CHAPTER III

1 Marcel Duchamp, Salt Seller, The Writings of Marcel Duchama (Marchand du Sel) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). 2 Also published in Salt Seller.

3 Paul Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, Notes (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1983).

4 Two examples of Duchamp's puns are: "My niece is cold because my knees are cold," and "abominable abdominal furs." Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, pp. 222, 106.

5 Lebel, p. 67.

6 Joan Veronice Messenger, "Marcel Duchamp: Alchemical Symbolism in and Relationships Between The Large Glass and the Etant Donnes" (M.A. thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 1977), p. 69.

7 Lebel p. 68. 8 Lebel, p. 69.

9 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 26.

0 1 Cabanne, p. 40.

1 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 19. 1279 I2 dem, p. 79.

1 3 Similarly, Duchamp's 1918 painting Tu m' (You . . me) omits a verb.

1 4 Cabanne, p. 40.

1 5 Carol Lee Plyley James, "The Writings of Marcel Duchamp in the Development of His Poetics" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1978), p. 77.

65 66

16 Cabanne, p. 40.

1 Paz, p. 33.

1 8 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 98.

Idem, "The Alchemist," p. 90.

2 0Tomkins, p. 31. 21 Paz, p. 32.

22 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 39. 23 Ulf Linde, unpublished notes, Philadelphia Museum of Art. 24 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 42.

25 Ibid.,p. 43.

2 6 Ibid., p. 42.

27 Ibid., p. 36.

28 Ibid., p. 42. 29 Ibid., p. 43.

3 Cabanne, p. 38.

3 1 d'Harnoncourt, p. 16. Duchamp participated in international chess tournaments and co-authored a book about the game, Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled with Vitaly Halberstadt in 1932. 32 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 44.

33Golding, p. 65.

3 4Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 51.

3 5 Jack Burnham, "Duchamp's Bride Stripped Bare: The Meaning of The Large Glass, Part II," Arts Magazine 46 (April 1972): 42.

36 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 51. 67

A gendarme is a French cavalryman commanding a squad.

A cuirassier is a cavalryman wearing a cuirass, which is a piece of close-fitting armor for protecting the breast and back.

3 9 Marcel Jean, The History of Surrealist Painting (New York: Grove, 1960), p. 102.

40Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 70. 41 Duchamp cut three one-meter-long lengths of white thread of the type used for invisible mending (stoppage in French, hence the title of this item). Standing over a canvas, and stretching the thread, he let it fall on the canvas from the height of one meter. The shape which the thread took on touching the canvas was preserved by fixing it with varnish. The experiment was repeated three times. Duchamp then cut the canvas into three rectangular strips each with its thread, and glued the strips to three plates of glass. Duchamp then placed The Three Standard Stoppages in a croquet box in place of mallets.

4 2 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 53. Duchamp allowed the back of the Bachelor Apparatus to collect dust for a few months in his New York studio. Man Ray photographed the glass "decked out in her bridal finery of dust and debris". Once the photo was shot, the dust was carefully wiped away from the glass, except for the region of the sieves, where varnish was put over the dust to fix it and perpetuate the color effect it had on the other side of the glass.

43 Ibid., pp. 56-57.

4"Ibid., p. 57. i.e., "it has a weight but a force acting horizontally on the chariot does not have to support this weight (the weight of the metal does not impede a horizontal traction . . . . The chariot is emancipated horizontally, it is free of all gravity in the horizontal plane (property of the metal of the rods which compose the chariot."

4.5Ibid.,p. 68. 68

4 6 The Wilson-Lincoln effect refers to the image of Lincoln that is seen when viewed from the right, and Wilson when viewed from the left.

4 7 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 176.

4 8 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 65.

494 Ibid., p. 66.

5 0 Ibid., p. 43. 51 Ibid., p. 39.

5 2 Steefel, p. 161.

5 3 Golding, p. 81.

5 4 Lebel, p. 92.

5 5 Ibid., p. 90.

56Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 30.

5 7Tomkins, p. 57.

58 Janis, p. 37. CHAPTER IV

NEGATION OF WOMEN

Duchamp remarked to Pierre Cabanne that The Lage

Glass was for him a negation of women in the social sense of the word, that is, in not taking on the encumbrance of a wife and family. This statement will be investigated in this chapter in several ways. First, his personal relationships with relatives, expressly his mother and sisters will be examined, along with his early paintings of women. Second, his personal relationships with women other than relatives but including his two wives will be examined. Third, Duchamp's idea of indifference will be seen within the context of the Dandy and his alter ego,

Rrose Selavy as a Femme Fatale. Fourth, his Nude

Descending a Staircase, No. 2 and machine paintings will be seen as a part of his idea of detachment and negation of women. Fifth, such a detachment as an intellectual exercise will be probed with his life-long interest in chess. Finally, The Large Glass may then be seen as not only showing iconographically a negation of women, but

69 70

also as being an intrinsic component of his life and his work.

Duchamp and His Relatives

Duchamp's personal relationships, especially those with women, are ambiguous and vague. His relationship with his parents, especially his mother will be examined first. His father, Eugene Duchamp, was a notaire, an advisor in financial matters, and a tax collector. He was a good-natured and liberal patriarch, 2 and described by the artist as "kindly and indulgent."3 When Duchamp's two older brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-

Villon decided to pursue artistic careers, they had the support of their father, including his financial support. 4 Duchamp's mother, Lucie Nicolle married Eugene

Duchamp on November 5, 1874. The eldest child, Gaston, who in adulthood changed his name to Jacques Villon, was born July 31, 1875. The next child, Raymond was born

November 5, 1876. In July of 1883, a daughter was born,

Jeanne who died December 29, 1886. Marcel was born July

28, 1887, Suzanne, October 20, 1889, Yvonne, March 14,

1895, and Magdeleine, July 22, 1898. Mme Duchamp was described by her son, Marcel as distant, cold, placid and indifferent.5 He had learned to assume a "haughty detachment" due to loneliness during his child-hood.6 71

Marcel intensely disliked her, as did his two older brothers, Jacques and Raymond, and his sister Suzanne. 7

Mme Duchamp was an occasional painter, and today some

fifty of her watercolors are owned by Musee des Beaux-

Arts de Rouen. When Duchamp died, his wife found them among his effects, and not knowing what to do with them,

sent them to Rouen. Duchamp once said that she "never

denied her preference for the last two" children born

into the family, Yvonne and Magdeleine. Even though her

indifference may have hurt him, indifference became a

goal for him to attain in later life.8 It is difficult

to conjecture how his mother's cold, aloof manner

affected him, but her detachment from her older children

and her decided preference for her younger children, may

have stimulated the boy Marcel to become distant and

aloof in personal relationships later in his adult life.

His later aversion to marriage and children was probably

due to his mother's cold, indifferent manner towards

him.9 Hence, there was both closeness and alienation in

the nucleus of the family. Mme Duchamp may have been the

first source of harsh reality from which he sought

distance. 10

Duchamp also expressed distance and detachment in

his artistic pursuits. Sonata (Fig.13) is a portrait of

his mother and his three sisters. His three sisters, or 72

Fig. 13--Marcel Duchamp. Sonata. January-October 1911. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 73

at least two of them, Yvonne and Magdeleine, are playing musical instruments. It is unclear what Suzanne is doing, although she is seated and gazing downward at what may be a nude female form.1 1 The mother dominates the scene while staring outward with large eyes. At the time of the painting, January-October 1911, Mme Duchamp was deaf and was presiding over a concert which she could not hear.2 This fact seems ironic and Duchamp may have intended it to be so. Duchamp employed the color yellow, subdued yet dominant in this painting and it may be related to his statement in The Green Box that The Large

Glass is "a world in yellow."13 Duchamp may have expressed his feelings in regard to his mother's rejection of him, hence the maternal figure is distorted, but the distortion may also be stylistic.1 There is also a haunting quality of loneliness, isolation, and the inability of the family members to communicate with one another even when they share an activity such as music- making.15

Dulcinea or Portrait (Fig. 14) of October 1911 is a depiction of a woman Duchamp did not know, but whom he saw walking through a park occasionally, and whom he desired. He never approached her or met her, instead, he mentally stripped her (although she keeps on her hat), and she appears nude several times. According to 74

Fig. 14--Marcel Duchamp. Portrait or Dulcinea. October 1911. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 75

Lawrence Steefel, this painting may be Duchamp's comment on the repressed life of the woman or his own fantasies and daydreams.16 It is an "image of frustrated desire and imaginary action."1 7 The painting may be a precursor to The Large Glass, in that both women in both works are stripped by bachelors.18 Duchamp's love object is unattainable and he finds fulfillment in voyeurism, which for him is the substitute for sexual intercourse. 9In

The Large Glass the Bride is also unattainable and the

Bachelors must substitute voyeurism and onanism for sexual contact with the Bride.

In Yvonne and Magdeleine (Torn) in Tatters (Fig. 15) of September 1911, Duchamp shows four heads, his two sisters in double profile, one in youth, the other in old age. The French title of this painting is Yvonne et

Magdeleine Dechiguetees. Dechiquetees means to slash or shred, and the word lends ambiguity to the title and is significantly impersonal, "holding an undertone of anxiety and sadistic aggressiveness."20 Duchamp executed this painting after Suzanne's first marriage and he may be saying "to hell with Yvonne and Magdeleine."2 1 The faces of the two sisters have a "death mask quality," 2 2 and the "mouthless face with accented nose confronts the more ghostly, eyeless profile on the right which has no nostrils." 2 3 According to Steefel, it is possible that 76

Fig. 15--Marcel Duchamp. Yvonne and Magdeleine Torn in Tatters. 1911. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 77

Duchamp's sense of loss is perhaps greater than his sense of gain in this painting.24 Duchamp said he was attempting to add humor into this painting by tearing up their profiles and placing them randomly on the canvas.25

Even so, there still remains a sense of tragedy about this painting.

In October 1911, Duchamp executed his last overt painting of the women in his family, titled Apropos of

Little Sister. (Fig. 16). It is generally thought to be a portrait of his youngest sister Magdeleine.26 On the back of the painting, Duchamp wrote the caption: "Une etude de femme/Merde. Schwarz writes that in 1911,

Magdeleine was only thirteen, not a woman, and that conceptually the caption fits Suzanne, although physically it is Magdeleine who is represented.27 It has also been suggested that Magdeleine is sitting on a toilet, hence the caption "une etude de femme/Merde." 2 8

The word merde could be a noun or verb, so the phrase could read, "woman as shit," or "woman, shitting."

Although these paintings are portraits of family members, except for Dulcinea, Duchamp depicted the women in a cold, impersonal, and mechanistic manner. He employed the mechanistic subject as a theme throughout his artistic career and delighted in the dehumanization of a work of art.29 Because he failed to inject emotion 78

Fig. 16--Marcel Duchamp. Apropos of Little Sister. October 1911. Guggenheim Museum, New York. 79 and feeling into his paintings of people, he then attempted to inject emotion into his machines. For

Duchamp, machines are more safe. "It was better to do it to machines than to people," he once said, "or doing it to me.130 1His machines deride the reproductive family unit.31 In fact, none of Duchamp's sisters or brothers have "reproduced," and the Duchamp line will cease to be.32

Duchamp's painting The King and Queen Surrounded fl

Swift Nudes (Fig. 17) is an anti-family picture. The

King and Queen represent his parents who are stripped and humiliated.33 According to Duchamp, the title came from chess. The King and Queen are robots riveted to each other, and they are father and mother machines "whose totemic stability is attacked by their turbulent offspring," who are in turn the issue of original sin.

Lebel considered this painting to be an "'Gedipean' painting if ever there were one," and detected a

"deliberate sinister atmosphere" in the work.3 5

Duchamp and Suzanne

Duchamp's relationship with his sister Suzanne, who was born two years after his own birth, has been written about in great length. Arturo Schwarz has always held the belief that Duchamp had incestuous longings for 80

Fig. 17--Marcel Duchamp. The King and Queen Surrounded b Swift Nudes. May 1912. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 81

Suzanne, albeit unconscious, and he based his beliefs on finding alchemical references in all of Duchamp's oeuvre.

Whether one accepts Schwarz's opinions or not, Duchamp did have an unusual and ambiguous relationship with

Suzanne. For six years they were the only children living at home, as the two older brothers were away at school, and the younger two sisters were yet to be born.36 The majority of his very early extant work is of

Suzanne.37

In 1911, Suzanne married a Rouen pharmacist. That same year in December, Duchamp was taking the train home to Rouen for the annual Christmas visit, and also he would see Suzanne for the first time, since her marriage.

This train ride stimulated Duchamp to put his feelings down on a canvas which he titled Sad Young Man on a Train

(Fig.18). On the reverse of the canvas, Duchamp wrote

"Marcel Duchamp nu (esquisse) Jeune homme triste dans un train/Marcel Duchamp." The sad young man is Duchamp, nude and is a sketch. Duchamp has admitted that it is a sketch of himself, and that, "it was autobiographical, a trip I took from Paris to Rouen, alone in a compartment.

My pipe was there to identify me." 3 8 He has also remarked in his usual noncommittal manner, that the "tr"

in the title was very important. It was his attempt at

"introducing humor into painting, or, in any case, the 82

Fig. 18--Marcel Duchamp. Sad Young Man on a Train. December 1911. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. 83

humor of word play 'triste, train.,"39 But there may be more here than is first apparent. The title can be both revealing and concealing on the subject matter. "Triste" also means a "bad lot" or an unsavory character; while

"train" can mean mood and is part of the idiom "etre en train de", "to be in the act of doing something."4 One observer noted that "the young man may well be masturbating; his penis occupies a prominent place in the center . . . and an arc of dots trails down from the organ. "41

Upon her marriage to the pharmacist, Duchamp presented to Suzanne, the painting Young Man and Girl in

Spring, (Fig. 19) dated 1911. On the back of the canvas is Duchamp's dedication which reads: A toi ma chere

Suzanne. Schwarz, keeping in mind Duchamp's love of puns, suggested that chere could be replaced with the homophone chair (flesh). Duchamp was hoping that he and

Suzanne could literally become one flesh.42 Schwarz decided that the theme of this painting is suggested in

the title; two young people are in the spring of their

life and are sexually attracted to each other. He

further stated that this painting is a forerunner of The

Large Glass.4 3

In 1914, Duchamp chose his first Rectified

Readymade, Pharmacy, (Fig. 3) which consists of an 84

{IC-

- - s

Fig. 19 -Marcel Duchamp. Young Man and Girl in Spring. 1911. Scwarz Collection, Milan. 85

inexpensive print of a vapid landscape on which he added a dot of green paint and a dot of red paint. This work was also executed on a train ride to Rouen to visit his parents.4 In 1914 Suzanne divorced the pharmacist, and the Readymade perhaps is an allusion to the pharmacist growing cold. 4 5 Appropriately enough, Pharmacy is a winter landscape. The red and green dots may refer, according to the artist's biographer, to the traditional bottles found in drugstore windows, or red and green may refer to the stop and go of traffic signals in a "cryptic

reference to ambivalent incestuous strivings directed at

Suzanne."46 Duchamp scoffed at this interpretation of

Pharmacy, and replied that it was "a distortion of the

visual idea to execute an intellectual idea," something

arbitrarily taken out of context and placed in a new and

unfamiliar one.47

After divorcing the Rouen pharmacist in 1914,

Suzanne married Jean Crotti, a painter, in 1919. Upon

hearing of her marriage, Duchamp created a wedding

present for the couple. Jean and Suzanne were to hang a

geometry book by strings on the balcony of their

apartment to let the wind "go through the book, choose

4 8 its own problems, turn and tear out the pages." After

carrying out Duchamp's instruc-tions, Suzanne painted a

small canvas after it, and titled it Marcel's Unhappy 86

Readymade (Fig. 20). Again, Duchamp expressed ambivalent feelings about Suzanne's marriage, through the destructive process of The Unhappy Readymade. Duchamp told an interviewer much later that he had the idea for

this Readymade with no intention other than humor, "to

disparage the seriousness of a book full of principles"

and to make Readymades with no motivating idea other than

indifference.4 9 In spite of any "incestuous" strivings

for Suzanne, Duchamp maintained a particularly close and

lasting friendship with Crotti.50

Duchamp and His Wives

On June 8, 1927, at the age of forty, Duchamp

suddenly married. In corresponding with his patron and

friend, Katherine Dreier, he wrote that he was going to

marry and that it was "so sudden, it is hard to explain."

He went on to describe his bride, Lydie Levassor-

Sarrazin, the daughter of a wealthy French automobile

manufacturer, as "not especially beautiful nor

attractive, but seems to have rather a mind which might

understand how I can stand marriage."51 Apparently, he

was wrong in his estimation of his bride because the

marriage did not "take" in that he thought marriage was

"boring." 52 According to Schwarz, the marriage might be

considered a Dadaist joke schemed by Francis Picabia, who 87

TL4kLLItAYNMAE Allc MALEVR EUX -t~ ~ 14 MEL'

Fig. 20--Suzanne Duchamp. Marcel's Unhappy Readymade. Private Collection, Milan. 88

had introduced Duchamp to Lydie.53 Duchamp confided to an interviewer that the marriage was half made by

Picabia, who knew the bride's family.54 The suddenness of Duchamp's marriage and the fact that he was marrying

5 5 at all, left his friends dumbfounded. At the age of twenty-five, he already was known as "the bachelor" and had, according to Pierre Cabanne, a well-known "anti- feminist" attitude.56 Duchamp's friends barely had time to react to the news of the marriage before Duchamp informed them, quite happily, that the marriage was over.

Even before Lydie filed for divorce in December of 1927,

he wrote to Alfred Stieglitz that he would never see him

married, as he was going to the south for a couple of

months to recover.57 It is not surprising that the

marriage was not successful. He told friends before the

marriage that his plan was to have two apartments, that

his life would essentially remain unchanged, and that he

did not feel "too responsible for the upkeep of a

household." 5 8 After a week's honeymoon, the couple

returned to Paris, and much to Man Ray's surprise, he saw

no noticeable difference or change in his friends's life-

style. Duchamp slept in his studio while his wife stayed

with her family. Picabia told Man Ray that while Duchamp

and his wife were honeymooning, Duchamp, without Lydie,

played chess every night. She became so distraught that 89

one morning she arose early, while Duchamp slept, and

5 9 glued the chess pieces to the board.

In January 1954, at the age of sixty-seven, Duchamp married again. His second wife is Alexina ("Teeny")

Sattler Matisse, the former wife of art dealer Pierre

Matisse, son of the famous French Fauve. The marriage

brought him a Ready-made family as she already had three

children. Duchamp informed Cabanne that he carefully

avoided marriage and children until he was sixty-seven,

and then he married a "woman who, because of her age,

couldn't have children. I personally never wanted to

have any, simply to keep expenses down." Apparently,

Duchamp particularly disliked the idea of having a family

because a "family forces you to abandon your real ideas,

to swap them for things it believes in, society and all

that paraphernalia!" 6 0 Schwarz does not accept Duchamp's

explanation of keeping down expenses, but stated that

Duchamp was "more interested in defending himself against

the servitude of a family."6 1 Cabanne queried Duchamp

about his feelings for women in regard to his paintings

of 1910-12. Cabanne detected a "kind of restlessness

when it comes to women. They are always disjointed or

torn to pieces. Wasn't that revenge for an unhappy love

affair?" Duchamp emphatically denied there was any ill-

feeling towards women. He described his attitude as 90

"anti-marriage," not "anti-feminist." Cabanne pursued this further and asked him if he was "anti-conjugal," and

Duchamp replied, "yes, anti all that." 6 2 In 1921, in response to a request to submit work for an exhibit, he wrote to Jean Crotti, "you know very well that I have nothing to exhibit -that the word exhibit (exposer) is like the word espouse (eposer). So don't expect anything, ... 063

For all appearances, Duchamp's second marriage was harmonious, and they adored each other very much. As a person, Duchamp did not change, he still kept his studio on 14th Street, and they lived in an apartment on East

59th Street. However, his life-style did change, according to friends. From the time he married, he had a

"comfortable house, a telephone, a comfortable life."

Marriage "was his form of retirement." He played chess with her and even took her with him to his chess club

once or twice a week.6 4

Duchamp and Other Women

As was stated earlier, Duchamp's sudden first

marriage in 1927 shocked many of his friends. From 1923

to 1927 he had been close to Mary Reynolds, an American

widow who lived in Paris. Duchamp occasionally stayed

over at her house. Until his second marriage to Teeny, 91

his longest and most devoted attachment was to Mrs.

Reynolds, "who obviously adored him but just as obviously was his equal in the relationship." Their liaison, which lasted until her death in 1950, was thought to be happier than most marriages.6 5 Man Ray recalled that she worshipped Duchamp and that he with his usual sang-froid and amiability accepted the homage.6 6 His relationship with her was warm but characteristically ambiguous.

Until the Second World War separated them, Duchamp and

Reynolds lived casually together, yet apart.67 Duchamp described his relationship with her to Cabanne as that of a great friendship. "Mary was a very independent woman .

. . It was a very agreeable liaison indeed." According

to Duchamp, he met Reynolds in Paris in 1923. "She was

living near the Eiffel Tower; I went to see her often.

But I had my hotel room. It was a true liaison, over

many, many years, and very agreeable; but we weren't

6 8 glued together, in the "married" sense of the word.

She chose Duchamp to be the executor of her will, and

when she died in 1950, Duchamp sifted through her

correspondence and destroyed all personal data, much to

the chagrin of biographers.6 9

Another life-long friend of Duchamp's, was Beatrice

Wood, the American potter. She met Duchamp in 1916, and

they became good friends. She recalled, sixty years 92

later, that they immediately began to "tu-toi" each other. He had "the angelic charm of an angel who spoke slang." 7 0 She enjoyed his presence and confessed to being "in love with him, in the way everybody who knew him." She recalled that everyone "fell for him,"

7 2 although he was "definitely not an emotional person."

Even though his smile was entrancing, she thought him to be "dead" from the nose down, and wondered if he had had a "childhood shock." 73 She described his face as still and as empty as death.74 When they parted as lovers, she

7 5 confessed that "it didn't break my heart." Duchamp then introduced Beatrice to his friend Henri-Pierre

Roche, who then became enamored with her.

Some people thought Duchamp was a dilettante who collected rich beautiful women.76 He had numerous love affairs with such women, and he never discussed such relationships.7 7 He taught French lessons to the three

Stettheimer sisters, Carrie, Florine, and Ettie, who were wealthy self-avowed spinsters. Florine, a painter, depicted Duchamp several times on her canvases. Her

sister Ettie had a close, yet impeccably distant

friendship with Duchamp.78 Ettie wrote a 1923 best-

seller, Love Days, and wrote about Duchamp fictitiously

under the name Pierre Delaire. She wrote that the name

fit him well, "stone of air . . . hard and light; like 93

stone, dependable and definite, and immaterial and imponderable and cool like air, and as mysterious as their paradoxical combinations." She sensed there was something missing in him and was wary of his distance.

She was alarmed by his complete rejection of

"convention," in regard to language, logic, and all forms of culture.79 Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, the former wife

of the artist Francis Picabia, commented on "the pitiless

pessimism of his mind;" that some kind of conflict was

eating at his soul. 8 0 When the writer Anais INin saw

Duchamp in August of 1935, she wrote that he looked like

a "man who died long ago. He plays chess instead of

painting because that is the nearest to complete

mobility, the most natural pose for a man who died. His

8 1 skin seems made of parchment, and his eyes of glass."

Earlier when Nin met Duchamp in September of 1934, she

compared him to the carved wood of chess pieces. She

sensed his "great stylized detachment," as if everyone

were pawns and how he could move them.82 He was

described as a "cold-blooded fish, who can lose his head

over no one and doesn't pretend to.83]because he had a

tendency to be neutral in relationships, he met demands

as little as he made them.84 At the same time, he was in

the midst of life, and yet completely unapproachable,

"not the least of his peculiarities was his ability to 94

resist, apparently without effort, the devotion of his female admirers." Innumerable women aspired to be the one woman in his life, and, astonishingly, he managed to avoid estranging any of them.85 Throughout his entire life, Duchamp retreated from the "effects of loving too much." 8 6 He had married once for a period of less than six months, almost as a Dada-like joke, and he married again late in life, both times marrying women "who were content with being the wives of a symbol rather than a warm, flesh-and-blood man." 8 7

Duchamp as Dandy and Femme Fatale

Duchamp has been characterized as having the psychological traits of the Dandy and the Femme Fatale, both in appearance and temperament. Common to both the Dandy and the Femme Fatale are psychological traits of distancing, mystery, and moral indifference, traits Duchamp possessed.88 It is uncertain whether these characteristics are innate, or assumed for self-

preservation or self-presentation to the public. Duchamp

can also be compared to the flaneur, an observer but not

a participant, who preserves his psychological distance

and protects his intellectual superiority. Qualities in

Duchamp which are repeatedly mentioned are his seductive

charm, his physical beauty, and his psychological 95

distance and indifference.89 These qualities are key to the phenomenon of the Femme Fatale, who is involved in the seduction of others, but never submits herself to seduction. In a contrived photo of 1917, Duchamp appeared surrounded only by himself, a tribute to the

Dandy's cult of self. The Readymades are acts of a

"Dandy's arrogance."9 Only he can point to an object and make it art. Duchamp made Readymades, other people could not. The innate pessimism of private fears of life behind the Dandy's mask is seen in Duchamp's failure to finish The Large Glass. If the mask slips, the Dandy is

9 1 confronted and haunted by his despairs.

In 1920, Duchamp assumed a pseudonym, that of Rose

Selavy. Later he changed the spelling to Rrose. "The

double R, it amused me," Duchamp once remarked, "very few words are started with two L's and I thought it would be

amusing to start a word with two R's." 9 2 As he told

Cabanne:

.I wanted to change my identity, and the first idea that came to me was to take a Jewish name. I was Catholic, and it was a change to go from one religion to another! I didn't find a Jewish name that I especially liked, or that tempted me, and suddenly I had an idea: why not change sex? It was mp5h simpler. . . . Rose was an awful name in 1920.

Several explanations for the meaning of Rrose Sclavy have

been offered. The most obvious is, of course, rose, 96

c'est la vie (rose, that's life.) It can also be arrose, c'est la vie (drink, that's life.) Another possibility for her name could be Eros, c'est la vie (eros that's life) or Eros, c'est l'avis (eros, that's the advice).94

Rrose Selavy was to "sign" several of Duchamp's works up to the end of his life. Most of the works "she" signed contain some sort of pun, such as "Fresh Widow" from 1920, and she inscribed puns on Duchamp's rotary demispheres. She also signed some of Duchamp's correspondence with his friends.95 While Rrose could take care of business, Duchamp could play chess and make machines.96 Although his alter ego has puzzled many people, there is nothing in Duchamp's personality or career to suggest "his inclinations" have ever been anything but "orthodox."97 In 1921, Man Ray photographed

Duchamp in the guise of Rrose Selavy, although Duchamp himself never appeared in drag in public. The ensuing photograph was used for "Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette"

(Beautiful Breath, Veil Water), (Fig. 21) an Imitated

Rectified Readymade.98 Lebel has noted that this image of Duchamp as Rrose Selavy "might suggest, in particular, the artist's inherent androgyny in the manner of Leonardo da Vinci, to whom Duchamp had paid homage in his own way

9 9 by providing the Mona Lisa with masculine attributes."

Lebel is referring to L.H.O.O.Q. (Fig. 11), a Rectified 97

Fig. 21--Marcel Duchamp. Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water). 1921. Private Collection. 98

Readymade, which Duchamp created by pencilling in a mustache and goatee on an inexpensive reproduction of the

Mona Lisa. With a few strokes of a pencil, Duchamp had emphasized the sexual ambiguity inherent in Leonardo's masterpiece. His addition of masculine hair to a woman's face, coupled with the caption, L.H.0.0.Q., made clear and vulgar reference to bisexuality. 00 In addition to underlining the bisexuality of the Mona Lisa, he also hinted at the reported homosexuality of the Mona Lisa's creator. Duchamp in his typically ambiguous and contradictory manner remarked that L.H.2.O.Q. had no significance other than the humor of reading the letters phonetically. The title is a double pun: pronounced as a word, it sounds in English like 'look.' If the title is read rapidly, letter by letter, it sounds in

French like 'elle a chaud au cul" (she has a hot ass).

That is, Leonardo's idealized vision of femininity is debased to a sign of a prostitute. In addition, Duchamp has said concerning L.H.0.0.Q., "The curious thing about

that mustache and goatee is that when you look at it the

Mona Lisa becomes a man. It is not a woman disguised as

a man; it is a real man, and that was my discovery without realizing it at the time."1 0 2 99

Human as Machine

Almost every painting, construction, and Readymade that Duchamp executed has some aspect which involves the machine and the mechanistic. Mechanomorphic forms, which are invented objects of a mechanistic character with anthropomorphic qualities, appear in The Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Fig. 1), King and Queen Surrounded _y

Swift Nudes (Fig. 17), The Passage of the Virgin to the

Bride (Fig. 7), The Bride (Fig. 8), and the upper panel

of The Large Glass (Fig. 5) in the configuration or

representation of the femelle pendu.13 It is not

surprising that Duchamp should subject the machine and

the mechanistic to ironic manipulation and visual puns.

In Duchamp's world, the human mechanism operates like a

machine and resembles a machine. Duchamp "animates the

machine, mechanizes the soul." 1 04 His machines seem full

of potential power yet are immobilized and useless.

In the famous Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

(Fig. 1) Duchamp was concerned with movement, and he

admitted to an interest in J. E. Marey's and Eadward

Muybridge's motion studies during the nineteenth

century.105 However, the Nude represents a process of

turning inward, although this process may have started

after the Nude's rejection at an exhibition in 1912 of

the Salon des Independants.1 0 6 The Nude is ambiguous and 100

androgynous, and it has been described as a "curiously sexless image - which is so provocatively erotic."107

The Nude is manifestly androgynous, especially in the painting's characteristic color. Duchamp said that he

purposely restricted the Nude to wood colorings. Wood may be a symbolic substitute for woman. Schwarz has

conjectured that the Nude is a self portrait in that

Duchamp painted himself in multiples just as he may have

done in the Nine Malic Moulds of 1914-15. Schwarz

considered the Nude to be a forerunner of the Nine Malic

Moulds. "The multi-plication of Duchamp's representation

in the series of nudes coming down the stairs is similar

to the multiplication of the Bachelors in the Nine Malic

Moulds where . . ., it is again Duchamp who is

represented."x,108

The title in French is Nu Descendant un Escalier.

The word nu is masculine, the female form is nue. The

gender of the nude may be unimportant, nevertheless,

sexual ambiguity is typical of Duchamp's work. The Nude

has been related to Jules Laforgue's poem Encore a cet

Astre, which is basically concerned with "the theme of

sterility and impotence," qualities which can also be

applied to The Large Glass.' 0 9

If Duchamp did have an obsession, "it would be the

distance, the separateness which exists between 101

individuals. This separateness is simultaneously necessary and intolerable."1 1 0 He distanced himself from his own feelings by depicting his most subjective themes in a coldly, objective manner, while lavishing personal feelings safely onto objects.i 1 1

Detachment Through Chess

In 1910, Duchamp executed a large painting including his two brothers playing chess titled The Chess Game.

The following year he completed six preliminary studies for two oil paintings, The Chess Players and Portrait of

Chess Players. From roughly 1923 to 1934, chess dominated Duchamp's life to such an extent that he called himself a "chessmaniac," and that he had no interest in life except playing chess.ll2 Duchamp was an international player and was on the French chess team four times.

Paradoxically Duchamp had claimed to forsake a career in art that promised him success. It is reputed that in 1923, Duchamp gave up art for chess.13 In the mid 1920's, the prominent New York dealer Alfred Knoedler had offered Duchamp an annual salary of ten thousand dollars to make one painting per year. Duchamp refused the offer saying he had accomplished what he had set out to do and did not care to repeat himself.1 1 4 102

While avoiding repetition in art, Duchamp was seemingly repeating himself over and over again in the game of chess. According to Freudian psychologist and chess grandmaster Reuben Fine, a chess player repeats

certain rituals while playing chess in that the "chess

pieces represent a mime of the Oedipal situation and the

player is forced to confront this mime every time he

looks at the board . . .*" Chess allows the player to

"play out the dramas . . . otherwise repressed . . . of

his early life.1115 The unconscious motive of the chess

player is not just competition but "father-murder." The

chess player silently plots "murderous campaigns of

patricide, matricide, fratricide, regicide and

mayhem."116 Perhaps Duchamp partially agreed with Fine's

interpretation when he described chess as a "violent

sport.

In tournament chess there is a taboo about touching

the opponent's chess pieces, except for purposes of

capture, when the piece must be removed from the board,

or when adjusting the pieces. According to Fine, the

taboo about touching has unconsciously two meanings: "the

ego wards off two threats. One is masturbation . . . the

other threat is homosexuality, or bodily contact between

two men, especially mutual masturbation." Duchamp

said he was "normal to the highest degree where women 103

were concerned" and no one has questioned his heterosexuality, and there has never been any suggestion

1 1 9 either that he was a homosexual, latent or otherwise.

Yet, there is almost no evidence of overt homosexuality among chess players.1 2 0 Duchamp took up correspondence

chess in which there is, of course, no taboo about

touching the opponent's pieces. Also, in correspondence

chess, there is the factor of literal distance. When the

players are engaged in a game, "indifference to the

outside world is the outstanding feature of the chess

player," and the chess player is looked upon as a

"withdrawn type of individual."1 2 1

Another trait of the chess player is, according to

Fine, excessive narcissism. The chess player may become

too immersed in himself and as a result his "capacity to

achieve true object relations, particularly to empathize

with women, is underdeveloped." The chess player gets

along well with men but "finds women a real stumbling

block. Tender feelings for women may be especially hard

to achieve, a difficulty which may be rationalized by

confining his association to men.,122 Another proposed

result of narcissism is indifference to organized

groups. 1 2 3 In fact, Duchamp did not join any organized

artist groups, and he held himself aloof and free from

any attempts to entice him to join an artistic cause.124 104

In examining the personality of the world chess champion Emanuel Lasker, this author made a comparison between several of Lasker's characteristics and those of

Duchamp. Both Lasker and Duchamp learned the game from a brother.*125 Both married late in life to women who were already mothers and grandmothers.126 Lasker was an

"independent spirit, and most of his life was spent as a free-lance intellectual. His interests were many and varied." As a person, Lasker has been described as being

"affable, courteous," and on the surface, "completely devoid of any kind of hostility. Those who knew him were impressed by his refusal to get into any kind of argument

... 127 Lasker could never finish many of his

"projects" because to do so meant carrying out an

"aggressive action."128 He would not commit himself to any "doctrinaire point of view,"129 All of these characteristics could have been written with Duchamp in mind. Reuben Fine has concluded that the average chess player is similar in personality to tournament champions.130 In some instances chess is used to gratify grandiose fantasies, while in others it is simply an intellectual outlet. Because Duchamp probably played chess simply for an intellectual outlet, he would fit into the latter category. It is doubtful that he played out "fantasies" while playing chess; rather for him it 105

was a very enjoyable pastime which required a minimum of

effort for him. Chess ranked high as an "artistic

activity" for him, and that may be the reason why he was

involved with chess until his death. Duchamp once

remarked, "a chess game is very plastic. You construct

it. It's mechanical sculpture and with chess one creates

beautiful problems and that beauty is made with the head

and hands." 1 3 1

It is not surprising that Duchamp enjoyed playing

chess. He had a reluctance to pursue the utilitarian

side of his activities. The professional or permanently

addicted chess player is not usually regarded as a

"socially useful" person but rather as one dedicated to

another nonproductive world.132 According to Alexander

Cockburn, Duchamp may have taken up chess due to its non-

utilitarian aspect, because it may have become a

"criticism of art as an activity."1 3 3 Also, chess

playing is congruous with Duchamp's belief that art

should be "at the service of the mind."134 Chess may

well have been a good example of what Duchamp called an

"intellectual expression. 135 WorkT that is not work in

the socially recognized form of that activity "must lead

to psychological pressures on the 'worker.'" An activity

where absolute expertise has no convenient slot in

society can produce angst and neurosis.136 Duchamp 106

himself called chess players "madmen of a certain quality."137 But Duchamp never made the final commitment to becoming a "madman." Alexander Cockburn, in his study of chess, proposed that "the leave of absence from reality" prescribed by chess was too much for Duchamp, whatever the "satisfactions the drama of the board may have offered. It was an aberration for the most aberrant of artists. Chess was a process of suicide that in the end he could not endure." 1 3 8

Duchamp seemed free of most of the Freudian neuroses that Reuben Fine attributed to chess players. Not only was chess an intellectual outlet for him, but also it furthered his need for distance and detachment.

Throughout his entire adult life, Duchamp shied away from close relationships with women or in other words, he negated women socially in the sense of marriage. As was seen in The Large Glass, the Bride was never a Bride, wife, or mother. She was denied the possibility of becoming any of these by Duchamp. He distanced the Bride from the Bachelors through detachment and through an intrinsic inability to perform otherwise. As the Bride,

so Duchamp.

Through the viewpoint of Duchamp's Bachelors in The

Large Glass, the viewer sees the idea of a woman as being

aloof and detached. Conversely, for a woman, bachelor 107

men churned themselves into a mechanized frenzy, watched by witnesses. Could, in part, Duchamp be the viewer's allusive desired object, as he was for his female companions and as suggested by Schwarz, his sister?

Or, ironically, is the viewer simply suspended in the air . . .? NOTES FOR CHAPTER IV

1 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 76.

2 Michel Sanouillet, "Marcel Duchamp and the French Intellectual Tradition," in Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. eds. Anne d'Harnoncourt and Knyaston McShine (New York: Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), p. 48.

3 Lebel, p. 3.

4 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 20.

5Marquis, p. 10.

6Cabanne, The Brothers, p. 18.

7 Marquis, p. 10.

8 Lebel, p. 2.

9Cabanne, The Brothers, p. 18.

1 0 Marquis, p. 16.

1 1 Ibid., p. 69.

2lbid, p. 71

3 1 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 44.

14Steefel, p. 352.

15William A. Camfield, "Francis Picabia (1879-1953), A Study of His Career from 1895 to 1918" (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1964), p. 217.

16871Steefel, p. 87.

1 7 Ibid., p. 88.

8 bid., p. 87.

108 109

1 9 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 105.

20 Steefel, p. 94.

2 1 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 106.

22 Golding, p. 35.

23 Steefel, p. 95.

24 Ibid., p. 96.

2 5 d'Harnoncourt, p. 251.

2 6 Ibid.

27 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 106.

28 Marquis, p. 72.

2 9 Ronald Warren Jones, "Temporal Metaphors and Endgame Theory: Samuel Beckett's 'Endgame' and Marcel Duchamp's 'Door, 11 Rue Larrey'" (Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio University, 1981), p. 139, 141.

3 0 Lawrence D. Steefel, Jr., "Marcel Duchamp and the Machine," in Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. eds. Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine (New York: Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), p. 71.

31 James, p. 112.

3 2 Cabanne, The Brothers, p. 101.

33 Ibid., p. 91.

34 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 114.

35 Lebel, p. 13.

36 Marquis, p. 16.

37Ibid., p. 27.

38 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 33.

39 Ibid., p. 29. 110

40Marquis, p. 73.

4 1 Robert Coates, "Art News," The New Yorker, November 11, 1968, p. 171.

42 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 98.

43 lbid., p. 89.

Marquis, p. 96.

4 5 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 99.

46 Marquis, p. 96.

47Tomkins, p. 27.

4 8 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 61.

4 9 Otto Hahn, "Passport No. 6255300," Art and Artists 1 (July-August 1966): 10.

5 0 William A. Camfield and Jean-Hubert Martin, Tabu Dada, Jean Crotti and Suzanne Duchamp, 1915-1922, exhib. cat. (Bern: Kunsthalle, January 22-February 27, 1983), p. 12.

5l Marquis, p. 228.

52Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 76. 53 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 61. 54 5 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 76.

55 fMarquis, p. 227.

5Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 33. 57 Marquis, p. 230.

5 8 Ibid, p. 228.

5 9 Man Ray, Self Portrait, (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1963), p. 237.

60 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 76.

6 1 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 199. 111

6 2Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 33.

6 3 Idem, The Brothers, p. 176.

64 Marquis, p. 318.

65 Tomkins, p. 53.

66 Man Ray, p. 236.

67 Marquis, p. 242.

6 8 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 68.

69 Marquis, p. 288.

7 0 Beatrice Wood, "I Shock Myself: Excerpts from the Autobiography of Beatrice Wood," Arts Magazine 51 (May 1977): 134.

71 Marquis, p. vii.

7 2lbid., p. 152. 73 Ibid., p. 151.

74 Wood, p. 134.

75 Marquis, p. 152.

76Cabanne, The Brothers, p. 188.

77Ibid., pp. 183, 28.

78Marquis, p. 148.

79Ettie Stettheimer [Henrie Waste], Love Days, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923), pp. 106-110. 8 0 Andrew Forge, "The Silence of Marcel Duchamp," The Listener, November 5, 1959, pp. 775-776. 81 Anais Nin, Diary, Vol. II, (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1956), p. 56.

82 Idem, Diary, Vol. I, (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1956), p. 356.

3 Marquis, p. 149. 112

84 Ibid., p. 195.

8 5 Lebel, p. 41.

86 Marquis, p. 319.

87 Ibid., p. 320.

8 8 Moira Roth, "Marcel Duchamp in America: A Self Ready-Made," Arts Magazine 51 (May 1977): 92.

89See Charles Baudelaire's 1863 seminal essay, "The Painter of Modern Life."

#0 Ibid., p. 95.

9 1 Ibid., p. 96.

9 2 Belle Krasne, "A Marcel Duchamp Profile," The Art Digest: 26 (January 15, 1952): 11.

93 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 64.

94 Marquis, p. 189.

9 5 Archives of American Art, Papers of Henry McBride.

96Roth, Marcel Duchamp, p. 94.

97 Tomkins, p. 47.

9 8 The hands in the photograph are those of Francis Picabia's mistress, Germaine Everling, and not Duchamp's.

9 9 Lebel, p. 46.

1 0 0 Jack J. Spector, "Freud and Duchamp: The Mona Lisa Exposed," Artforum 6 (April 1968): 56. 1 1 C Gabanne, Dialogues, p. 63.

10 2 Theodore Reff, "Duchamp and Leonardo: L.H.O.O.Q. -Alikes," Art in America 65 (January-February 1977): 91.

103Steefel, "The Position," p. 28.

104 Janis, p. 34. 113

1 0 5 Golding, p. 22, and Dada Film. Futurism was not an influence for Duchamp in the Nude.

106Steefel, "The Position," p. 129.

107 Ibid., p. 131.

10 8 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 112.

10 9 Golding, p. 24-25.

" 0 Lebel, p. 30.

1 Marquis, p. 69.

2 Ibid., p. 173.

11 3 d'Harnoncourt, p. 18.

11 4 Man Ray, p. 234.

1 1 5 Reuben Fine, The Psychology of the Chess Player, (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), p. 14.

11 6 Harold C. Schonberg, Grandmasters of Chess, (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1973), p. 22-23.

1 1 7 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 70.

1 1 8 Fine, p. 14.

119 Cabanne, The Brothers, p. 92.

1 2 0 Alexander Cockburn, Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Life, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), p. 45.

12 1 Fine, pp. 15, 25.

12 2 Ibid., p. 24.

123 Ibid., p. 25.

1 2 4 Man Ray, p. 232. 125 Fine, p. 43 and Marquis, p. 21.

1 2 6 Fine, p. 44. 114

127 Ibid., p. 45. 128 Ibid., p. 46.

2 9 lbid.,I p. 47. 130 'Ibid., p. 69.9

3 1 1 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 68.

13 2 Cockburn, p. 98.

133Ibid .,p. 195.

1 3 4 James Johnson Sweeney, "Eleven Europeans in America," The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 13 (1946): 21. 135

13 6 Cockburn, p. 132. 7 13 Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 19.

138Cockburn, p. 196. CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

Marcel Duchamp may be considered to be one of the

most enigmatic personalities associated with twentieth

century art. While the work of other artists, such as

Picasso and Matisse has been thoroughly digested by the

public, the intricate veils of meaning that permeate

Duchamp's art are still being unraveled and debated. He has been described variously as a brilliant intellectual

and a charlatan. He craved ambiguity which left all

options open, and enjoyed playing the devil's advocate.

As has been seen earlier, he contradicted himself often,

practiced irony, and always gave several reasons for

doing something. One of the notes in The Green Box is

"always or nearly always give reasons for the choice

between two or more solutions (by ironical causality)."2

In 1962, Duchamp told an interviewer that he had a

general philosophy of never taking the world too

seriously. 3 His philosophy is also applicable to his own negation of women statement. Even though the statement can be substantiated, perhaps his remark should not be

115 116

taken too seriously either. Because he wanted to dispel

seriousness, humor was very important to Duchamp and his work is rife with it. The Large Glass was intended to be a "hilarious picture."4 Duchamp wanted art to be taken off its pedestal, and so too should Duchamp's work be

taken off its pedestal, and become part of everyday life.

Duchamp is like the chess king which is immortal and cannot really be captured, only checkmated. With

Duchamp, consummatory experience is always elusive and beyond attainment in any permanent way.

Although Duchamp accepted all interpretations, past, present, and future, he remained detached and aloof from them, as if The Large Glass had nothing to do with him any longer. However, the choice of glass as a material for The Large Glass is symptomatic. Glass is one of the hardest extant materials, as only diamond and hydrofluoric acid damage it. It is also one of the most fragile. According to Schwarz, Duchamp's choice of glass for a background reconciled two conflicting trends in his psyche: one that led him to make a work that would defy time, and another that led him to expose it to destruction in order to prevent the spectator from discovering its significance.5

Duchamp has left the spectator many options for deciphering The Large Glass. Above all, he left all his 117

notes for posterity to unravel and determine what The

Large Glass "means." His continual ambiguity and

contradiction allow his ideas to be masked in enough

mystery that they remain tantalizing puzzles to perplex

the academic mind. They are especially susceptible to

esoteric explanations. In Chapter II, the major

interpretations of The Large Glass were discussed, none

of which can fully and completely be considered to be the

definitive explanation. There are variations concerning

alchemical, occult, and cabal interpretations, as well as

investigations in the technical aspects of The Large

Glass, such as the use of classical perspective, the

fourth dimension, and N-Dimensional geometry. Also, The

Large Glass has been studied in terms of Duchamp's life.

There have been comparative studies of Duchamp and

literary figures and an analysis of The Large Glass and

the esthetic "machine."

Even considering all the interpretations together,

there still remains a gap between the artist's intention

and its realization. Because The Large Glass is

sufficiently complex and contradictory, a variety of

possibilities are present for anyone who wishes to make an interpretation. Duchamp's statement that The Large

Glass was a "negation of women" for him has been examined

by investigating his personal relationships, some of his 118

oeuvre, and his chess playing. In this investigation, it

has become evident that there is something mysterious

surrounding Duchamp and his life. His relationships with

people were enigmatic, and he always kept himself at a

distance, precluding overinvolvement. This distance was

a way for him to rid himself of problems. When personal

relationships became too difficult or complicated, he

abandoned conventional modes of art and produced instead

complex and contradictory art works. His "personal"

paintings, especially those of his family, were depicted

in a very impersonal manner. His friendships and associations with people were always conducted with

distance, coolness, and above all detachment. As was

seen in The Large Glass, the Bachelors were subjected to

the whims of the Bride in a sexual relationship of

subordination which inverted the "natural" relationship

between male and female where the male dominates. The

Bride gained little in her domination over the Bachelors.

She remained aloof, chaste, unstripped, and unfulfilled, as did the Bachelors.

In the opinion of this writer, the negation of women

statement was substantiated by Duchamp himself through his lifestyle and relationships with women. To reiterate, he married at the age of forty as perhaps a

Dada-like joke, and it still is unclear why he married at 119 all, since the usual reason for marrying, love, was never mentioned. Then at the age of sixty-seven, he married for the second and what would be the last time to a woman who provided him with a comfortable life. It seems typically Duchampian for him to describe The Large Glass as a "negation of women" in the sense of a wife and mother, when it is known that he did marry a woman who could have become a mother (she was already a wife) and then after extricating himself from the marriage, to marry again late in life, when the possibility of parenthood was no longer viable.

To conclude a study of Duchamp's The Large Glass is to "complete" it by interpretation of it. It has been shown conclusively that Duchamp's work is a negation of women. This notion has been substantiated by examining his life and works. In spite of Duchamp's attempt to remain allusive and mysterious, he is not as enigmatic as he has proposed. NOTES FOR CHAPTER V

Michael Aupting, Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. Sarasota, Florida: Ringling Museum of Art, September 9, 1983 - January 8, 1984, p. 7.

Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 30.

Kuh, p. 90. 4 Duchamp, Marchand du Sel, p. 30. 5 Schwarz, Complete Works, p. 124.

120 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Adcock, Craig E. Marcel Duchamp's Notes from 'The Large Glass', an N-Dimensional Analysis. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1983.

Alexandrian, Sarane. Marcel Duchamp. New York: Crown Publishers, 1977.

Apollinaire, Guillaume. Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews, 1902-1918. New York: Viking Press, 1972.

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Calvesi, Maurizio, Su Marcel Duchamp. Naples: Framart, 1975.

Cockburn, Alexander. Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.

Duchamp, Marcel. A L'Infinitif (The White Box). Translated by Cleve Gray. New York: Cordier and Ekstrom, 1967.

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. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. A typographic version by Richard Hamilton of Marcel Duchamp's The Green Box. Translated by George Heard Hamilton. New York: Wittenborn, 1960.

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Paz, Octavio. Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare. New York: Viking Press, 1978.

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Stettheimer, Ettie [Henrie Waste]. Love Days. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.

Tashjian, Dickran. Skyscraper Primitives: Dada and the American Avant-Garde, 1910-1925. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1975.

Tomkins, Calvin. The Bride and The Bachelors: The Heretical Courtship in Modern Art. New York: Viking Press, 1965.

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Zigrosser, Carl. A World of Art and Museums. Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1975.

Articles

"Art Was a Dream . . ." Newsweek 54 (November 9, 1959): 118-119.

Ashton, Dore. "An Interview with Marcel Duchamp." Studio International 171 (June 1966): 244-247. 124

Burnham, Jack. "Duchamp's Bride Stripped Bare: The Meaning of The Large Glass, Part II." Arts Magazine 46 (April 1972): 41-45.

Calas, Nicolas. "The Brothers Duchamp All At Once." Art News 55 (February 1957): 24-24, 56-58.

Clair, Jean. "Duchamp and the Classical Perspectivists." Artforum 16 (March 1978): 40-48.

Coates, Robert. "Art News." The New Yorker, November 11, 1968, pp.170-173.

"A Complete Reversal of Art Opinions by Marcel Duchamp." Arts and Decoration 5 (September 1915): 427-428.

Forge, Andrew. "The Silence of Marcel Duchamp." The Listener, November 5, 1959: pp. 775-776.

Gray, Cleve. "Speculations/Marcel Duchamp." Art In America 54 (March-April 1966): 72-75.

Hahn, Otto. "Passport No. 6255300." Art and Artists 1 (July-August 1966): 7-11. d'Harnoncourt, Anne, and Hopps, Walter. "Etant Donnes: 1. Ia chute d'eau, 2. le gaz d' eclairage, Reflections on a New Work by Marcel Duchamp." Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 64 (April-September 1969).

Hobhouse, Janet. "'A Private Joke Between Myself and Myself'." Artnews 76 (April 1977): 41-43.

Krasne, Belle. "A Marcel Duchamp Profile." Art Digest 26 (January 15, 1952): 11.

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Mussman, Toby. "Anemic Cinema." Art and Artists 1 (July 1966): 49-51.

Norman, Dorothy. "An Interview." Art in America 57 (July- August 1969): 38.

Parker, Robert Allerton. "America Discovers Marcel." VIEW 5 (March 1945): 32-33. 125

Ray, Man. "Bilingual Biography." VIEW 5 (March 1945): 32.

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Roberts, Colette. "Interview." Art in America 57 (July- August 1969): 39.

Roth, Moira. "The Aesthetic of Indifference." Artforum 16 (November 1977): 46-53.

"Marcel Duchamp in America: A Self Ready-Made." Arts Magazine 51 (May 1977): 92-96.

Schuster, Jean. "Marcel Duchamp, Vite." Le Surrealisme, Meme 2 (Spring 1957): 143-145.

Seitz, William C. "What's Happened to Art? . . ." Vogue 141 (February 15, 1963): 110-113.

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Wohl, Hellmut, "In Detail: Duchamp and The Large Glass." Portfolio 4 (July-August 1982): 70-75.

Wood, Beatrice. "I Shock Myself: Excerpts from the Autobiography of Beatrice Wood." Arts Magazine 51 (May 1977): 134-139.

. "Marcel's Mischief and Other Matters." Architectural Digest 41 (May 1984): 38.

Exhibition Catalogs

Aupting, Michael. Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. Sarasota, Florida: Ringling Museum of Art, September 9, 1983- January 8, 1984. 126

Camfield, William A., and Martin, Jean-Hubert. Tabu Dada, Jean Crotti and Suzanne Duchamp, 1915-1922, exhib. cat. Bern: Kunsthalle, January 22, 1983-February 27, 1983.

Clair, Jean. L'Oeuvre de Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. Paris: Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, January 31-May 2, 1977.

Guggenheim, Peggy, ed. Art of this Century, Objects, Drawings, Photographs, Paintings, Sculpture, Collage, 1910-1942, exhib. cat. New York: Art of This Century, 1942.

Hamilton, Richard. The Almost Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. London: The Tate Gallery, June 18-July 31, 1966.

d'Harnoncourt, Anne, and McShine, Kynaston, eds. Marcel Duchamp, exhib. cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973.

Hopps, Walter. By or Of Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Selavy, exhib. cat. Pasadena: Pasadena Art Museum, October 8-November 3, 1963.

Unpublished Materials

Archives of American Art. Papers of Henry McBride, Cleve Gray, Peggy Guggen-heim, and Beatrice Wood.

Camfield, William A. "Francis Picabia (1879-1953). A Study of His Career from 1895-1918." Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1964.

d'Harnoncourt, Anne. Interview. Philadelphia, July 24, 1985.

Hassold, Cris. "The Possibilities of Chance, a Comparative Study of Stephane Mallarme and Marcel Duchamp." Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State University, 1972.

James, Carol Lee Plyley. "The Writings of Marcel Duchamp in the Development of His Poetics." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1978. 127

Jones, Ronald Warren. "Temporal Metaphors and Endgame Theory: Samuel Beckett's 'Endgame' and Marcel Duchamp's 'Door, 11 Rue Larrey'." Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio University, 1981. Linden, Ulf. Unpublished Notes, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Messenger, Joan Veronice. "Marcel Duchamp: Alchemical Symbolism in andRelationships Between 'The Large Glass' and 'The Etant Donnes'." M.A. thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 1977.

Films

Deses, Greta, Dada. International Film Bureau, 1969.