STEFFEN BOGEN Munich 1912. AMuseum of Technology Writes Art History
' gt• • The Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der •„ Naturwissenschaft und Technik (German Mu seum of Masterworks in the Natural Sciences and Technology) in Munich was established in 1906. lts very name is indicative: unlike muse ums of industry, an older type, the new institu tion sought not only to foster the public's interest in technology and the sciences, but also to spur the creation of new masterworks. The museum thus repatriated a concept the aesthetics of genius 1 General view of the mechanics ensemble, Munich, Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissen had reserved for the flne arts to the realm of schaft und Technik, exhibition room at the former National technology and craftsmanship.1 Instruments and Museum on Maximilianstraße, 1907 machines were set up like sculptures in the exhibition halls and associated with the names of individual inventors. Charts and annotations explained related topics in technology. If we assume that Marcel Duchamp visited this museum in the summer of 1912, then t.he specific manner in which the museum displayed machinery and technological inventions must have had far-reaching consequences for twentieth-century art history. 2 A hundred years have passed, however, and so the retrospective reconstruction of this encounter cannot be more than an intellectual experiment; the following remarks will conduct this experiment with a view to its systematic implications. The aim is to bring out the intersec tions, but importantly also the divergences between a presentation of the history of tech nology that celebrates scientiflc progress, and the ideas and interests behind Duchamp's art, whose fundamental thrust was ultimately a very different one.3 In the summer of 1912, the museum of science and technology was still housed in its flrst temporary exhibition rooms at the former Bavarian National Museum on Maximi lianstraße. A photograph from the mechanics hall illustrates the imposing exhibition ar chitecture (flg. 1). Smaller instruments and devices were presented in glass cases. The ensemble in front and to the left, for instance, is devoted to ''the laws of central force motion and their application." Set up in front of the case is a mechanical centrifuge from 17 42. Otto von Guericke's Magdeburg hemispheres are on display as a sort of relic of science in the glass case on the right. The museum's initial collection consisted of ca. 7,000 objects that were grouped into forty-five subject areas. During the foundation phase, ''wish lists'' were compiled for the individual subject areas in order to close gaps in series of historical development the con-
69
r ception called for. The letters in which the museum so licited donations of exhibits repeatedly emphasized the no tion of the masterwork; see, for instance, a missive the museum's founder, Oskar von Miller, penned in 1904: ''The aim is to represent the course of development of the various industries as completely as possible, with par ticular regard to the influence the sciences have exerted ___,, over this development. To this end, we intend to include in our collections flrst and foremost eminent masterworks, such as Huygens's first pendulum clocks, Peter Henlein's flrst spring-driven clocks, etc., in originals, replicas, or models. In addition to these masterworks, which would
1.' Ir be particularly distinguished as such by the manner of 2 Cylinder (cut open) of the four-stroke high their installation and by descriptions, we of course also in pressure gasoline engine by Donat Banki, 1894, tend to represent the various typical evolutionary stages, Munich, Deutsches Museum von Meister werken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik including them in the museum between the masterworks according to the historical development."4 The concept of the image, too, already comes up in discussions as the museum is flrst conceived, and appears in the flrst exhibition catalogues. In 1903, for instance, the scientiflc committee notes with enthusiasm that the ''ingenious construction'' of a water-column ma chine built by Georg von Reichenbach in 1817 which the committee's members have in spected ''presents quite the image of a masterwork."5 Displayed in the former National Museum, the machines are from the very outset s.urrounded by ''frames'' that transpose them into a conceptual apparatus of presentation. The forms of framing and distancing are manifold: machines are prepared and partially opened (flg. 2), set on pedestals, or placed in glass cases. Plates give them names, date them, and credit them to individual inventors. Wall charts and models likewise serve to transform the artifacts into spectacular exhibits charged with imaginary import (flg. 3). Machines and engines whose operation, while unleashing tremendous powers, also makes noise and poses dangers are brought back into the silent imagination of the visitor, bolstering the museum's postulate that the machine has its true origin in the mind of the engineer. The world of tech nology sometimes seems extraordinarily forbidding due to the profusion of incom prehensible detail and the impersonal qual ity of constructive elements; the museum 3 Electrical engineering section in the exhibition room s at aims to transform it into an assortment the former National Museum on Maximilianstraße, ca. 1912
70 of transparent procedures and familiar individual components and images. Ensemble effects play a role in this transformation as weil: an early visitor writing for the Journal für Gasbeleuchtung, a gas lighting trade journal, explicitly mentions that the section on lighting presents a ''most appealing and attractive image," and looks forward to its installation in the museum's permanent exhibition rooms.6 In the summer of 1912, which Marcel Duchamp spent in Munich, the museum waged an aggressive public relations campaign to keep the buzz going. 7 Munich's newspapers rou tinely reported about new acquisitions and visiting delegations from distant places. The program of guided tours was advertised every week. Duchamp's arrival in town coincided almost to the day with the announcement, in the June 18, 1912 issue of the Münchner Zeitung, that the tower of the museum's new building was structurally complete, 8 marking the new museum's presence in the cityscape. Multiple guided tours every week explored the new building, even though it still stood empty. On June 20, 1912, the museum was described as ''the renowned Deutsches Museum in Munich, which no visitor to the city should miss."9 With a little over 315,000 visitors, 1912 was the most successful among the museum's early yea1·s. 10 In August 1912, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten detailed the program scheduled for English students visiting Munich, which included an excursion. to the Alte Pinakothek as weil as ''tours guided by experts'' of the Deutsches Museum at its two temporary locations and the museum's new home.11 lt seems almost absurd to assume that Marcel Duchamp, who stayed in Munich for three months, failed to complete the tour of Munich's museums, limiting himself to the art-historical part. 12 We need not be confused by the fact that Duchamp did not mention this visit in an official statement at any time in his life. A deliberate and tightly controlled information politics was no doubt part of his self-staging as an artist. His widow, Alexina "Teeny'' Duchamp, did explicitly point to the museum. 13 But the central question is not whether Duchamp in fact visited the museum, even if it is fairly safe to say that he did. More importantly, we need to examine the significance and relative importance such a visit would have had for him.
1. Duchamp's interest Duchamp repeatedly expressed the idea that art was the only possible way of not letting the sciences have the last word. As early as 1915, he describes a study for the Large Glass as a ''painting on glass'' intended as ''an irony on the feats of the modern engineer."14 We may accordingly presume that his early approach to issues related to technology and the sciences was already defined by a similar attitude, a blend of genuine insight with subversion. Duchamp's interest in technological topics and principles of representation arose even before his stay in Munich in the context of what he later described as the ''kinetic painting'' phase of his art. Duchamp hybridizes the representation of physical or mental movement with a seemingly technical recording of positions and changes of position. He had developed this idea as early as 1911, in the picture of the Coffee Mill [Moulin a Cafej he painted for
71 his brother's kitchen (ill. p. 116). The depiction ·shows .„• the crank in several positions linked by an arrow, as though in an operating manual.15 ' "t.·· ' .• Ir~ ~·lfc:',:'"t . ~·1 •;\ r_·' „ ,. \. '\ ;,. .4. .,.rt-· :. i The direction in which this flrst major rule of the .,,, „.„..' ' / game of his art the blending of artistic abstraction with diagrams illustrating positions develops in 1912 is demonstrated by a drawing signed and dated 1912 with out noting a place or a more speciflc time (flg. 4). The
ii: r title identifles it as a ''study'': 2 personnages et une auto •::. l"!l .~ ···f~·~. :·ti· . ~•., .. '.,'JO...•. • 16 •·( -- (etude) / Marcel Duchamp / 12. The drawing consists of
„ charcoal strokes arranged on the paper like arabesq ues. Still, a constellation emerges fairly clearly along an axis leading into the imaginary space at an oblique angle. In 4 Marcel Duchamp, 2 personnages et une front and to the left, we recognize the outlines of a nude auto (etude), 1912, Private Collection female; in the rear and to the right, a top hat and a mous tache serve as key markers identifying a man. Between them, hold charcoal strokes delineate an object. The ''auto'' of the title suggests that this is a car, though the prefix ''auto-," or ''self-," lends itself to a great number of associative complements, the more so since, upon closer inspection, all movements and shapes the drawing depicts carry sexual connotations. The genesis of form, however, remains ambivalent and reversible. Here and there, parallel charcoal strokes create the impressio11 that one and the same element has been drawn in multiple positions, a procedure that suggests not so much a groping for the definitive shape as rather an analytical disassembly of the phases of a depicted object's motion. Other lines, by contrast, immediately consolidate into a bodily form that entails a speciflc potential for motion. The female nude, for example, grows out of the sign stimulus of the shape of a derriere, to which a slender waist and (in imaginary contortions of the body) female breasts attach. The head looks as though crossed out or equipped with a turnstile. The repetitive S-shaped curves of the waist and the buttocks, too, may indicate a rotation of the body around its own axis. As with an optical illusion based on a reversible flgure, the beholder's imagination determines whether the charcoal strokes consolidate into something like a body or fall apart into displaced versions of a shape taking up various positions, to be connected by intellectual reflection as the phases 17 of a single movement. .• The flgure in the background can be read as an onlooker; standing very upright, he wears a top hat and sports an oversized mustache. In the general area of the head, in par ticular, this character disintegrates into figural arabesques; but we need not distrust our initial impression of looking at a unifled gestalt. The arm has been resolved into a bundle of parallel strokes. Some shape protrudes boldly upward from the center, and so upon closer inspection we cannot help imagining a voyeur 'at work.' With its circular shapes or wheels arranged in parallel series, the oily mass that hulks at
72 the center of the picture, identifiable by virtue of the title as an ''auto," evinces a certain analogy with the rotund outlines of the dancer. Yet the machine is at once also the phallus, the enlargement of what was merely hinted at in the background with a single charcoal strake. 18 Once again, the point is that the two modes of perception I have sketched con solidating strokes to form imagined bodies or regarding them as an analysis of defined po sitions can be applied in sequence. A technical gaze at machinery and a pornographic gaze at bodies interpenetrate and obstruct each other. The interrelation between the rotation of the woman's body and the movement of the masturbating arm lends itself to analytical resolution in the graphical form not unlike the rotation of an engine, the pounding of a cylinder, or the injection of fuel. Yet the crossing of these modes of perception leads to a moment of irritation. The drawing functions neither as a means of sexual stimulation, nor is it a scientifically or technically useful analysis of an engine or a sexual act. lt is instead suspended in an undefined interstitial domain that affords the be holder the freedom to reflect on the open-ended interplay between the themes it brings up, as well as the difflculty of defining the nature of such drawing. Duchamp will build on this approach over the following years: the li·terature has generally described the first series of drawings and pictures on the theme of virgin and bride as a cutaway view of an engine. 19 At the thematic center of the Large Glass (ill. p. 145), which bears the title ''La mariee mise a nu par ses celibataires, meme'' (''The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even''), are the desires of a wedding night and the associated action, which originates in (one) ''bride'' and (several) ''bachelors'' and gets stuck in a sort of double self-gratiflcation. Woven into this ''modern allegory of love''20 or ''erotic carnival''21 are numerous problems of technology and natural science. As he works on the Large Glass, a process Duchamp will document in several ''Boxes," he imitates an engineer's a:pproach, 22 sketching the construction and mode of operation of large machines and drawing, for instance, scale elevations and sections of the so-called bachelor machine. He elaborates some details and components with rapid strokes of the pen and verbal mnemonic devices; see, for example, a study for the bride to which he gives the name Pendu femelle (Female Hanged Body; flg. 5). Regarding the letter A, Duchamp notes: ''a kind of mortice (look for the exact term), held by a bowl and permitting movement in all directions of the pole agitated by the air currents."23 More than anything else, expressions such as ''sex cylinder'' (cylindre sexe) or ''love gasoline intake tubes'' (tubes d' admission de l' essence d' amour)24 serve to defamiliarize the engineer's method. But they also lend a new quality to the forms and to our imagination of the sequences of movements: on the one hand, we may project erotic fantasies on the components; on the other hand, we may attempt to see in them, in a form of quasi-analysis, bodies and body parts that urge toward sexual exertion. For almost ten years, Duchamp does not tire of playing this game. The best ideas and experiments he transfers into the central work, made of glass, lead foil, lead wire, oil varnish, dust, and many other materials. As the technical preliminary studies for the
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5 Marcel Duchamp, Female Hanged 6 Marcel Duchamp, Richard 7 Marcel Duchamp, Standing Nude, Body, 1914, Facsimile in Green Box, Hamilton, Large Glass (Detail), 1910, Rauen, Musee des Beaux-Arts 1934, Staatliches Museum Schwerin Tate, London
Female Hanged Body suggest, the bride is a small flgure with a spherical pelvis, a floor length skirt, a swanlike neck, telescope eyes, and a headdress that suggests Napoleon's (flg. 6). At the same time, we can ''look up'' the fuel tank's ''skirt," shifted sideways like a narrow apron, while one leg is set forward at an angle. The projection of this pose with its connotations of voyeurism appears several times in Duchamp's oeuvre. One of its flrst re alizations is a drawing created in 1902, which shows his sister, Suzanne Duchamp, putting on or taking off her roller skates. 25 A similar posture appears in the 1910 brush drawing Woman Wearing a Hat. 26 That same year, Duchamp paints a small oil on cardboard Standing Nude (flg. 7) that can most clearly be read as a shape that also lends itself to pro jection onto the ''engine'' in the Large Glass. The bottom half, the sphere of the bachelors, stimulates the imagination in a different manner (flg. 8). Everything seems already deflned and distinct, captured in a clear per spective and ready for diagrammatic evaluation. If we take the depiction to be a diagram, our task is to shift the positions of the individual parts in accordance with their interde pendencies. A central example concerns the contraption on ''runners'' and the ''chocolate grinder'' with which the ''bachelor," as Duchamp writes in the Green Box (ill. p. 150/151), ''grinds his own chocolate." Taking a closer look, we can recognize even if we are not fa miliar with additional remarks contained in the notes in the Green Box that the rurnstile does not turn but in fact spreads open like a pair of scissors. The contraption it includes a waterwheel whose placement is another absurd feature moves forward and backward or, in the picture plane, left and right; rotating hinges attached to it open and close the scissors' limbs. An analysis of the technical processes gets caught up in paradoxes and easily slides, via a detour through the diagrammatic deduction of movements, into the imagination of sexual acts.
74 This brief sketch may sufflce to show that Duchamp's work can be understood as a play re fracted by irony with scientiflc forms of general ization and explanation. With the serious air of a technologically well-founded exposition, he elab orates a fantastic mechanics of love that makes us laugh. In fact, Duchamp, writing about the Large Glass, also expresses his intention to manu facture an ''hilarious picture'' (tableau hilarant). I The fairly inaccessible visual language of science and technology is deployed on the level of what 8 Marcel Duchamp, Richard HamHton, Large G/ass (Detail of lower part), Tate, London is ostensibly on display in order to ''explain'' erotic fantasies and sexual acts, generating a complex set of metaphors and weaving themes and planes of reflection into a tangle that is virtually impenetrable to rational analysis.
2. Thematic ideas to be found in the museum In the following, I will show that a visit to the Deutsches Museum in the summer of 1912 could have been an important stage in the development of Duchamp's artistic conceptions. Drawing on old exhibition catalogues, I want to indicate several themes on display there that would presumably have been of particular interest to him.27
Hall 10 ''This section contains originals and replicas of road vehicles and means of rail transport of historical importance. lt illustrates, in particular, the development of the bicycle as it evolved, through gradual improvement, out of the old Draisian dandy-horse; the develop ment of the automobile, represented by the cars built by the most important inventors, flrst-generation models of some of which are on display [ ... ] ''28 In this room, the former National Museum's largest, a wall extending for more than thirty-three feet was reserved for bicycles. In addition to the general information, the mu seum guidebook notes the following: ''A. Development of the bicycle from the earliest models to the most recent designs. These include: an old dandy-horse as designed by Drais without foot treadles; a replica of the flrst bicycle built by the musical instrument maker Fischer, Schweinfurt, in 1850; a wooden velocipede built by Michaux in 1871; penny-farthings made of wood and of steel; a Cangeroo bicycle, the flrst to feature a chain sprocket transmission; the historically im portant types of low-saddle safety bicycles with cross and pentagonal frames, including one of the earliest original Dunlop bicycles with pneumatic tires."29 Unfortunately, the oldest known photograph of the bicycle section shows the exhibition as installed in the new rooms of the permanent home the museum moved into starting in 1925 (flg. 9). There, at least, the presentation included not only entire bicycles set on a
75 „ .~~-M'.r'~ - if;..~. ~·,· 0'\_1 1
,.. „...... „ . 4' ~„·~ 1 ' *-i I~.: =· I 1~: ' 1 ' ·/'\(t " 1:p 9 Alcove featuring bicycles with view of modern wheels, 10 Marcel Duchamp's studio in New York, photograph, Munich, Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der 1917 or 1918 Naturwissenschaft und Technik, permanent building on Museum Island, before 1945 floor base but also bicycle wheels featuring a variety of tires held by fork-like brackets on a wall-mounted base. lt would lend particular punch to our assumption that Duchamp visited the museum if he had already seen a display of individual bicycle wheels in the ex hibition on Maximilianstraße. This would further dilute his ''copyright'' to the readymades (flg. 10): Duchamp would have found not just the object ''bicycle wheel," but also the idea of presenting the same object as a ''masterwork." In the garden east of hall 10 'rumor plates from the Dillinger Hüttenwerke iron and steel works that have been flred at, including a section from the armor of the battleship 'Wittelsbach'''30 a bizarre exhibit demonstrating a materials experiment conducted by the German navy reminiscent of the experiments with randomness Duchamp integrates into the Large Glass. For example, he flred matches whose heads were freshly dipped in paint onto a piece of cardboard. The ''impact patterns'' generated by his dexterity (or lack thereof) were translated into ''bullet holes'' drilled by a glazing expert. Hall 13: Hot air and gas engines, engines for liquid fuels The general plan in the museum catalogue indicates two hot air engines, eight gas engines, various petroleum engines, a gasoline engine by Banki, the first Diesel engine, as well as several explanatory models and charts.31 This room must have been among the most stim ulating experiences the museum had to offer Duchamp. Compare, for instance, the fol lowing entry from the museum guide with Duchamp's remarks about the sphere of the virgin and the bachelors quoted above: ''M. Gasoline engine by Banki. This is the flrst Banki engine built by Ganz & Co. en gineering works, in which coolant water is injected into the engine cylinder to prevent pre-ignition."32 Some of the engines, including the ''gasoline engine by Banki," had been cut open in order to offer the viewer insight into the internal structure of the cylinders (fig. 2). The first 76 engine designed by Rudolf Diesel (fig. 11) was set in front of the passage to the room devoted to wind engines like a freestanding sculpture. Of particular relevance for the Large Glass is the functional diagram accompanying the Diesel engine (fig. 12). As the museum guide notes, the exhibition complemented the first Diesel engine with a sectional draw ing and diagrams illustrating the engine's operation. 33 The plates highlight the fact that Rudolf Diesel himself designed the charts: ''These wall charts were used by Mr. Diesel in 1898 during his first public lectures about the Diesel engine. The labels match those on the original engine." The iden tifying lette1·s are a hinge that serves to mediate between the explanatory remarks, the diagram, and the ''original engine'' on display. 11 First Diesel engine, 1897, Munich, I will quote the text included on the plate in full be- Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken cause it shares many qualities of the literary writings der Naturwissenschaft und Technik Duchamp penned as he worked on the Large Glassand published in various ''Boxes." If we read it with Duchamp's fundamental idea in mind that the technic.al explanation of an en gine can be related to the description of sexual arousal, Rudolf Diesel's chart yields a literary and graphical readymade: ''Operating cycle inside the Diesel engine. The Diesel engine performs the following four-stroke cycle: 1s r strake. Descent of the piston P. Fresh air is sucked in through the open valve V. 2nd stroke. Ascent of the piston P. With the valves closed, the air is compressed to a red-heat temperature (30-35 atm.). 3rd strake. Descent of the piston P. Power strake proper. Liquid fuel is injected through the valve D, whose valve stem is opened by the control N. Self-ignition and gradual slow combus tion of this fuel in the red-heat hot air drives 12 Wall chart explaining the Diesel engine, produced in 1898 by Rudolf Diesel for public lectures, on display in the piston P downward, performing work. the exhibition rooms at the former Nationalmuseum on After the injection of fuel ceases, the gases Maximilianstraße, photograph taken in 1941, original presumably destroyed in 1945 or 1946 resulting from combustion expand, driving the piston further downward. 4th strake. Ascent of the piston P. 77 The combustion gases are expelled through the opened valve V2. ' The four-stroke cycle then recommences."34 I Hall 16: Geodesy ''A historical overview of the natural, invariant, and recurring units of length used at different times and by different peoples illustrates the evolution of measures of length. The exhibition also includes a collection of older standard measures, including the Standards of the Viennese foot, the Bavarian foot, the toise, several meter standards made of glass and metal, as well as a copy of the prototype meter, followed by types of measu1·ement rods, chains, and tapes for geodetic purposes."35 Among the most important works leading up to the Large Glass are the 3 stoppages etalon or 3 Standard Stoppages. 36 In retrospect, Duchamp described this experiment as the decisive breakthrough toward a new conception of art. The museum in Munich offered a striking visual demonstration of the historical relativity of units of length as well as the sig niflcance of their standardization. Hall 17: Mathematics, kinematics, scales ''The evolution of the theory of perspective and its application. Drawings and models rep resent the most important methods of perspective. Photographs of famous paintings by Leonardo, Dürer, and Raph.ael illustrate the gradual advancements in the application of perspective in art."37 By addressing optics and perspective, the Deutsches Museum, as a museum of science and technology, seeks to build a connection to the established art-historical museums. Duchamp, too, will take up the question of mathematically constructed perspective, gen erally regarded as a thing of the past in twentieth-century painting, and examine it from an angle that blends self-reflection with speculation. Hall 29: Drawing, painting This exhibition room laid out the history of drawing and painting in a technological per spective; it was part of the sections on chemistry. ''These sections are introduced by an en semble on painting techniques, in which different kinds of paints, binder agents, etc., as weil as pictures created using the most important methods illustrate how paintings on wood, canvas, glass, porcelain, etc. were produced at different times."38 Duchamp will always emphasize the technological aspect of the Large Glass, pointing out that there were ''all sorts of new technical problems to be worked out."39 Hall 29 of the museum also outlined a history of technical drawing. On display were drawing instruments ''from the earliest times to the most modern precision drawing sets;'' a series of historic examples illustrated the practice of technical design drawing. Visitors who wished to study these matters further would find materials in the museum's library and collection of plans. An impersonal ''precision painting'' dependent on instruments 78 and techniques will be a defining characteristic of Duchamp's works surrounding the Large Glass. 3. Adifferent perspective on technological and scientific imagery The selection of examples illustrates numerous points of intersection and overlap between the museum's exhibits and themes that draw Duchamp's interest from his stay in Munich until the end of his life, as evidenced by numerous works. He is looking for novel materials, studies engines and issues in mechanics and optics, and, starting in 1911, transfers technical drawing styles, from sketches illustrating ideas to precise engineering drawings, into the a.rt context. Another element that appears in his oeuvre from 1913 on are the para scientific experiments; for instance, he defines singular ''standards of measure," or conducts ballistics experiments in which he ''fires'' at the glass. With these innovations, he added a completely new conceptual dimension to the process of formal invention. Not least im portantly, he also furnished his studio with industrially produced everyday objects he treated as though they were his own works and experiments (this aspect of his art, too, first appears in 1913). A not insignificant result of the present considerations is that what may at flrst glance seem divergent aspects of Duchamp's work are shown to have a shared horizon of reflection in the Munich museum of science and technology.40 We should note, however, that neither the Deutsches Museum nor Duchamp have a monopoly on the abovementioned objects and themes. To conclude my reflections, I will therefore return from my historical speculation about what Duchamp saw at the Munich museum to the decisive question of how we must conceive an encounter of this sort in a systematic perspective. I have already attempted in my introductory remarks to reconstruct this visit to the museum as an aesthetic event in which Duchamp's distinctive perspec tive different from what the museum's organizers had envisioned encountered a partic ular way of presenting machinery. The museum of technology enabled Duchamp to gain new insight into the genuine visual and tactile dimensions of scientillc and technological thinking, as manifest in artifacts, diagrams, and imagery. His imagination, as productive as it was subversive, made itself at home in this sphere of technological thinking, invention, and presentation. Rather than having to begin with scientific problems couched in verbal descriptions and then coming up with ostensibly secondary ''visualizations,"41 this imagi nation enabled Duchamp to bring a specific perspective and set of interests to bear on the museum of technology, transfiguring it into a quasi-artistic installation. The interests that shaped Duchamp's visit are far from identical with the aims the mu seum's organizers had set themselves: the establishment of the museum elevated instruments, machines, and obsolete devices to the rank of artifacts of high culture it attributed to prominent engineers and assigned a place in the construction of an overarching history of technological and scientific progress. The visitor is supposed to remember individual exhibits and ensembles as imposing manifestations of the pioneering spirit animating the engineers. This entails a transformation of artifacts into images that unites at least two 79 complementary aspects. On the one hand, the visitor is to learn a standardized form of imagination that foresees the effects of a given movement or force, which enables him or her to gain a vivid understanding or anticipation of how a machine, as a technological construction, wo~ks. On the other hand, the visitor is to retrace the path of technological invention that connects the abstract diagrammatic representation of the technical operation to the imagination of its real-world application and implementation. Diesel's engine, for instance, may be imagined as a component of very different machines, enabling the con ception of new forms of propulsion and means of transportation. The double movement of the imagination between abstraction and practical realization seems to have been purged of all personal preferences and preserved in the scientiflcally correct and technologically feasible. In the works leading up to the Large Glass, Duchamp adopts this double perspective· he practices it in positively exemplary fashion, abstracting sequences of the transmission • of force and drafting possible speciflc applications. The thematic emphasis, however, shifts toward the ccreconstruction'' of a love that is very physical and yet fueled by emotion as well as the imagination. The aim, it seems, is to attain scientiflc measurements and expla nation of as well as control over sexual desire and the acts and processes associated with it. The complementary technological aim might be a sort of machine that would reenact (or support) the courtship and love-making berween bride and bachelors, or again a technical automatism in which a combustion engine as weil as mechanical and optical experiments that operate in accordance with sometimes fantastical physics and chemistry symbolize love and arousal. 42 The museum, in other words, did not just ccinfluence'' Duchamp; driven by a speciflc interest and based on his distinctive perception and imagination, he appropriated it for himself, adapting the exhibition of the mechanistic natural sciences to his own playfully refracted purposes. Duchamp's pose of the scientific engineer who seeks to give a mechanistic explanation of desire and bring it under technological control is at heart a farce or satire refracted by irony. The scientific-technological utopia of erotic pleasure quantifled and controlled turns into its opposite, a sublimated erotic pleasure of spontaneity and the loss of control. Eros returns not as what can be analyzed and controlled by logos, but as what sets the personal and individual aims logos pursues.43 Not least importantly, the ironic hy bridization with a ccmasterstroke'' of technology and science places the notion of the mas terwork of art in an entirely novel and open frame of reflection. Duchamp did not by any means stage inappropriate play and laughter in what were, in 1912, still the solemn halls of art, science, and technology. 44 As works of art, however, his creations do not offer definitive answers, neither to the question regarding the relation between eros and logos nor to that regarding the relation between art and technology. lnstead of giving general answers to the q uestions he raises, he gives them a twist toward the concrete, in an art that elaborates them in practical rather than theoretical ways. Any perspective motivated by a specific interest may give new life to these questions, changing 80 modes of perception and revealing interconnections that are elsewhere easily overlooked. Duchamp's work is open and subtle enough to challenge the beholder to get involved in a variety of ways, a strategy that has borne extraordinarily rich fruit in the system of art to this day. 1 Hans-Liudger Diene!, "Ideologie der Girst, Sabine Kampmann , Christiane Trischler, eds., Circa 1903 (see note 1), Artefakte. Die ideologische Botschaft des Kruse, Dorothee Messerschmid, Herbert 33-54. Deutschen Museums 1903-1945," in Molderings, Marius Ri mmele, Jürgen 8 Münchner Zeitung, no. 140, June 18, Ideologie der Objekte - Objekte der Ide Stoehr, and Felix Thürlemann for read ing 1912 . . ologie. Naturwissenschaft, Medizin und several versions and contributing va luable 9 Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, no. Technik in Museen des 20. Jahrhunderts, observations. 310, June 20, 1912. Vorstand der Deutschen Gesellschaft für 3 For another potential encounter with 10 Menzel, Die Musealisierung des Tech Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwis the presentation of technical artifacts in nischen (see note 1), 217. senschaft und Technik e.V., ed. (Kassel: Munich, at the 1912 Bavarian Trade Fair, 11 Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, no. Wenderoth, 1991), 105-13; Wilhelm Füßl see the materials Herbert Molderings has 388,Augustl, 1912. and Helmuth Trischler, eds., Geschichte co llected in his "The Munich Sources be 12 The following authors have shed light des Deutschen Museums. Akteure, Arte hind Duchamp's Large Glass," in Chris on additional aspects of Duchamp's stay fakte, Ausstellungen ( Munich: Prestel, tian Fuhrmeister, Hubertus Kohle, and in Munich: Thierry de Duve, "Reso 2003); Ulf Hashagen, Oskar Blumtritt, Veerle Thielemans, eds., American Artists nances of Duchamp's Visit to Munich," and Helmuth Trischler, eds., Circa 1903. in Munich. Artistic Migration and Cultural Dada/Surrealism 16 (1987), 41-63 (and Artefakte in der Gründungszeit des Deut Exchange Processes (Berlin and Munich: see his Pictorial Nominalism. On Marcel schen Museums (Munich: Deutsches Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009), 225 46, Duchamp's Passage from Pa1nting to the Museum, 2003); Ulrich Menzel, Oie esp. 236-42. The most extensive reflec Readymade, [M in neapolis: University of Musealisierung des Technischen. Die tions on the methods and interests that Minnesota, 1991] for the context of his Gründung des "Deutschen Museums von structure Duchamp's fusion of art and reflections); Herbert Molderings, "Rela Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft science can be found in Theo Steiner, tivismus und historischer Sinn. Duchamp und Technik" in München (PhD diss„ Duchamps Experiment. Zwischen Wis in München (und Basel ... )," in Marcel Technische Universität Braunschweig, senschaft und Kunst (Munich: Fink, Duchamp, exh. cat., Museum Jean 2001). Semina! reflections on Duchamp's 2006). Tinguely, Basel (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, exposition of the concept of the work and 4 Oskar von Miller in a letter to Martin 2002), 14-23; W. Bowdoin Davis, Jr., hls critical reflection on its problems, Göpel, director of the Württemberg Tech Duchamp. Domestic Patterns, Covers, which form an important framework for nical College of Precision Mechanics, and Threads (New York: Mid march Arts his integration of technological objects, 1904, quoted in Hartmut Petzold, "Werk Press, 2002), especially the chapter themes, and modes of representation, einer eisernen Turmuhr mit Spindelgang "Epiphany in Munich," ibid„ 101- 19; can already be found in Hans Belting, und Waag," Meisterwerke aus dem Molderings, "The Munich Sources" (see The Invisible Masterpiece (Chicago: Uni Deutschen Museum, vol. 5 (Munich: note 3). versity of Chicago Press, 2001), 281-90, Deutsches Museum, 2003), 54. 13 For instance, when Thomas Girst in 315-34. See also most recently Hans 5 Protocol of the meeting of the scientific terviewed Marcel Duchamp's second wife Belting, Der Blick hinter Duchamps Tür. committee, May 11, 1903, Deutsches in New York on November 1, 1991, a Kunst und Perspektive bei Duchamp, Museum Archiv, VA 3969, quoted in Füßl catalogue of the Deutsches Museum's Sugimoto, Jeff Wall (Cologne: Buchhand and Trischler, eds„ Geschichte des collections lay on the table. Asked about lung Walther König, 2009). Deutschen Museums (see note 1), 99. it, Alexina "Teeny" Duchamp noted that 2 The present contribution has been On this issue, see also Dorothee Messer she had repeatedly referred to the signif compiled and abridged before translation; schmid, "Kunst-Objekte. Technik in der icance the museum in Munich had had it is based on two previously published Plastik des 20. Jahrhunderts," Kultur und for Marcel Duchamp, and pointed out essays by the author: "Duchamp in Technik 2 (2002), 36- 39. that they had jointly visited the museum München. Ein Technikmuseum macht 6 E. Schilling, "Gastechnik und Beleuch in the 1960s; see Linda Dalrymple Hen Kunstgeschichte," in Alexander Gall, ed., tungswesen im Deutschen Museum," derson, Duchamp in Context. Science Konstruieren, kommunizieren, präsen• Journal für Gasbeleuchtung und Wasser and Technology in the Large Glass and tieren. Bilder von Wissenschaft und Tech versorgung 49, no. 50, December 15, Related Works (Princeton N.J.: Princeton nik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), 347-97, 1906, 1094. University Press, 1998), 18. 1 am grateful and "Imagin ierte Masch inen. Marcel 7 See Wilhelm Füßl, "Konstruktion tech to Thomas Girst for provid ing me with Duchamp und Rudolf Diesel," kritische nischer Kultur. Sammlungspolitik des this information, as weil as to Cheryce berichte 4 (2009), 43-53. 1 am grateful Deutschen Museum in den Aufbaujahren von Xylander for the initial reference. to Gerd Blum, Alexander Gall, Thomas 1903-1909," in Hashagen, Blumtritt, and 14 See the interview with Duchamp, New 81 York Tribune, October 24, 1915, its depiction of an erotic interaction- se aside, and the energy stored by the fly reprinted in Rudolf E. Kuenzli, ed., New riously. wheel is sufficient to initiate normal oper York Dada (New York: Willis, locker & 22 See the notes collected in The Writings ation. The air pump and the working Owens, 1986), 134, and cf. Steiner, of Marcel Duchamp, Michel Sanouillet cylinder are cooled by water jackets." Duchamps Experiment(see note 3), 248. and Eimer Peterson, eds. (New York: Da 35 Deutsches Museum von Meister Steiner, with whose fundamental ideas 1 Capo Press, 1973). werken der Naturwissenschaft und Tech agree, also has the most far-ranging re 23 lbid., 48. nik (see note 28), 52- 53. flections to date on Duchamp's interest 24 lbid., 45. See also the transcripts in 36 Molderings, Kunst als Experiment (see in science and technology. See also Her Arturo Schwarz, ed., The Complete Works note 14). bert Molderings, Kunst als Experiment. of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Delano 37 Deutsches Museum von Meister Marcel Duchamps "3 Kunststopf-Normal Greenidge, 2000), vol. 2, 587, no. 276. werken der Naturwissenschaft und Tech maße" (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 25 Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp nik (see note 28), 56. 2006), 147. Adjusting a Roller Skate, 1902, Wash on 38 lbid., 16-17. 15 In this respect, Duchamp was also paper, 31 x 19,5 cm, current location un 39 Marcel Duchamp, notes for the slide able to reactivate knowledge he had ac known; see Schwarz, ed., The Complete lecture "A propos of myself," q uoted in quired in drawing class: the education at Works of Marcel Duchamp (see note 24), D'Harnoncourt and McShine, eds., French schools included technical draw 451, no. 13. Duchamp, 263. ing. See Molly Nesbit, "The Language of 26 Marcel Duchamp, Woman Wearing a 4° For the chronology of Duchamp's lndustry," in Thierry de Duve, ed., The Hat, 1910, Pen and watercolor on paper, growing engagement with technical and Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp 59 x 41 cm, private collection, France; scientific themes and procedures, see (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), see ibid., 538, no. 202. Henderson, Duchamp in Context (see 350-84. 27 A first collection of thematic intersec note 13), 32-33, and Steiner, Duchamps 16 "lt is one of Duchamp's rare signs of tions amid these scattered observations Experiment (see note 3), 104- 22. See interest in a typically 'modern' machine, can be found in Henderson, Duchamp also the reading of the question of the as opposed to the old-fashioned mecha in Context (see note 13), 12, 18, 28, 32, readymade in the context of para-scien nisms of the bicycle wheel, chocolate 34, 66, and 241, n. 86. Henderson high tific experimentation in Molderings, "Äs grinder, and coffee mill." Quoted in: Anne lights in particular the subject of X-ray thetik des Möglichen" (see note 29). d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, photography and the aviation exhibition. 41 The most comprehensive list of source eds., Marcel Duchamp, exh. cat., Mu 28 Deutsches Museum von Meister materials Duchamp was able to work with seum of Modern Art, New York, and werken der Naturwissenschaft und Tech in addition to what he had seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia nik. Führer durch die Sammlungen der Deutsches Museum can still be found in (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973, Abteilung!: München, Maximilianstr. 26 Henderson, Duchamp in Context (see repr. 1989), 258. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1907), 36. note 13). 17 For this distinction, see Steffen Bogen, 29 lbid. Henderson, Duchamp in Context 42 On the tradition of drawings of ma "Schattenriss und Sonnenuhr. Überlegun• (see note 13), 66, points to the sus chinery, see Hans Holländer, ed., gen zu einer kunsthistorischen Diagram pended wheels in the aviation exhibition Erkenntnis, Erfindung, Konstruktion. Stu matik," Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte at the Deutsches Museum. For the gene dien zur Bildgeschichte von Naturwis 68 (2005), 153- 76. sis of the readymade, see also Herbert senschaften und Technik vom 16. bis 18 Molderings, "The Munich Sources" Molderings, "Ästhetik des Möglichen. Zur zum 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Gebr. (see note 3), 229, identifies a "self-por Erfindungsgeschichte der Readymades Mann, 2000); Jan Lazardzig, Theaterma trait as a car," a reading 1 find hard to fol Marce l Duchamps," in Gerd Mattenklott, schine und Festungsbau. Paradoxien der low. ed., Ästhetische Erfahrung im Zeichen Wissensproduktion im 17. Jahrhundert 19 Pontus Hulten, ed., Marcel Duchamp. der Entgrenzung der Künste. Epistemis (Berlin: Akademie, 2007); and Steffen Work and Life (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT che, ästhetische und religiöse Formen Bogen, "Gezeichnete Automaten. An Press, 1993); Henderson, Duchamp in der Erfahrung im Vergleich (Hamburg: leitung zur List oder Analyse des Lebendi Context (see note 13) who points out fur Meiner, 2004), 103- 36. gen?" in Ulrich Pfisterer and Anja ther analogies with X-ray images; Francis 30 Deutsches Museum von Meister Zimmermann, eds., Animationen/ Trans M. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp. The Art werken der Naturwissenschaft und Tech gressionen. Das Kunstwerk als Lebewe of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical nik (see note 28), 41. sen (Berlin: Akademie, 2005), 115-46. Reproduction (New York: Ludion Press, 31 1bid., 44 4 7. 43 Cf. Hans Ulrich Reck and Harald Szee 1999). 32 lbid., 47. mann, eds., Junggesellenmaschinen (Vi 2o Molderings, Kunst als Experiment (see 33 1bid. enna: Springer, 1999); Caroline A. Jones, note 14). 34 A second section of the document in ''The Sex of the Machine: Mechanomor 21 Jean Suquet, In vivo, in vitro. Le Grand cludes more detailed information: "The phic Art, New Women, and Francis P1- Verre a Venise (Paris: L'echoppe, 1994). injection of fuel du ring the third strake is cabia's Neurasthenie Cure,'' in Caroline For the current state of the debate, see effected by air compressed to a tension A. Jones and Peter L. Gallison, eds., Pic also auch Andreas Eckl, ed., Marcel of 50 to 60 atm., which i1s generated by turing Science, Producing Art, (New York: Duchamps "Großes Glas." Beiträge aus the air pump Q and stored in the steel Routledge, 1998), 145-80. Kunstgeschichte und philosophischer Äs bottle L, whence it moves through the 44 Steiner, Duchamps Experiment (see thetik (Cologne: Buchhandlung Walther pipes S into the nozzle D, into which a note 3) demonstrates the current rele König, 2000). Steiner, Duchamps Exper small petroleum tube E feeds liquid fuel. vance of Duchamp's reflections on art iment (see note 3), 220 ff., shows with The air from the bettle L also serves to and science, which defy simple assimila particular clarity how any approach to the start the machine, by means of a con tion to the position of postmodernist cog complex reflections the Glass holds re trolled starter valve Y. After several start nitive relativism. quires taking the first plane of meaning- ing rotations, this starter valve is moved 82