• Sofia Arsenal – Museum for Contemporary Art • 8 March – 1 April 2012, opening March 8, 6 pm•

Curator: Maria Vassileva

Artists: Adelina Popnedeleva, Alla Georgieva, Bora Petkova, HR-Stamenov, Ivan Moudov, Kiril Prashkov, Krassimir Terziev, Kosta Tonev, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Mina Minov, Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova, Nestor Kovachev, Nina Kovacheva, Peter Tzanev, Pravdoliub Ivanov, Rada Boukova, Samuil Stoyanov, Sasho Stoitzov, Stefan Nikolaev, Stefania Batoeva, Valentin Stefanoff, Valio Tchenkov, Vassil Simittchiev, Vikenti Komitski, Vladimir Ivanov

Marcel Duchamp had an ambiguous attitude to exhibitions and That is why the project “Why Duchamp?” belongs here – in the museums1. He never had a one-artist show and participated in few half-finished as a building but not quite existing as a museum group shows. He took on curating and designing several shows institution new space. This is where we have to ask – when does of the Surrealists. As the founder of the Société Anonyme, Inc. he contemporaneity start for us from the point of view of today? was responsible for many others. For his project “Boîte-en-valise” Are there the notions of “here” and “there” in the logic of such a Duchamp made scale models of 69 of his works in an edition of countdown? Is Duchamp the dividing threshold (for Kosta Tonev 350. Since the beginning of the 1960’s numerous retrospectives artists are only those who have heard of Duchamp)? Are there any of Duchamp’s works were organized in Europe and the USA. He fields left unexplored but suggested by Duchamp? What is art? conceded to the production of replicas of his ready-mades and What is the difference between an original and a copy? Is there art these are now in a lot of museums. without institutions? Ultimately – what kind of a museum do we Such a practice of both participation and withdrawal prescribes a need? variety of interpretative possibilities. Just like his works Duchamp’s The debate on such issues, as seen through the prism of worldly gestures are at the same time simple and full of meanings. Duchamp’s legacy, started long before the intention to have such Each “transfer” into a concrete context seems to simplify the a museum was even “born” here – from Luchezar Boyadjiev’s problem. At the same time we are tempted to make such transfers “Simultaneous séance on 9 chess boards. Homage to Marcel all the time. We are using the 125 anniversary of Duchamp’s birth Duchamp” (1995) to the cycle “Natural Modernism” (2004) by Kiril in order to once again discuss with him and about him. Prashkov. There is a necessity to expand the debate through both Pravdoliub Ivanov. Untitled (Curly Brush), 2009 When in 2003 Ivan Moudov started compiling his collection of art works and texts. The participating artists were asked to answer “Fragments” it was impossible not to associate this work with either – “Why Duchamp?” We wanted to focus on the personal attitudes Duchamp or the non-existent museum of contemporary art – as opposed to the uniformed use of the Duchamp label. Today the fragments of art works arranged in boxes that look like suitcases… reference to his name is often routine and sometimes a simplistic Naturally, the differences are obvious as well. By making copies of assumption. his own works Duchamp is diluting the notion of the original. That is I was surprised by the answer given by Sasho Stoitzov: “The radical a provocative challenge for the existing museums. Moudov insists thinking of Duchamp had a direct influence in Bulgaria at the on the originality of the work, though fragmented, as a substitute end of the 1980’s. The ‘ready-made’ works were the strongest of the missing museum. challenge presented to the formalism of the imposed notions of The dialogue with Duchamp in Bulgaria started long before this ‘plasticity’ in art”. I doubt however that at the end of the 1980’s in exhibition and it involves the subject of the museum as well. Bulgaria there were all that many people who had even heard of the name Marcel Duchamp. It is a fact though that the transformation of visual arts here did go through the purifying power of the found object. In the beginning there were the objects related to the old traditional Bulgarian folklore way of life – wheel from horse driven carriages, wooden fences, shovels and pitchforks. They had a potential for ritualistic refusal of worn-out formulas and a return to unpolluted sources. The chronology of contemporary Bulgarian art is full of ‘ready-mades’2. I suspect that happened unconsciously. The Duchamp ‘bug’ caught on with us… Duchamp has influenced generations of artists – in a hard to define way but forcefully and lastingly. He was a combination of contradictory elements – responsible and negligent, precise and absent, consistent and compromising. Maybe that is why there is not one single text on his work that would exhaust the subject. There is always something more to say. We are offering here more statements on this elusive figure. The works in the show demonstrate a parallel of diversity and contradiction – they in turn adore, repeat, analyze, comment, and reject. Some works remain within Duchamp’s aesthetics; others are referencing it while insisting on its ethical legacy. We get a narrative in result – from the urinal to the water fountain, and from the object to the museum. Maria Vassileva Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova. Figaro, 2012 1 “All exhibitions of painting or sculpture make me ill. And I’d rather not be involved in them.” Quoted after: Elena Filipovic. A Museum That is Not, e-flux journal, #4, 2009/3 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/a-museum-that-is-not/ Stefan Nikolaev. Candélabre, 2010 2 In 1993 the exhibition “Object Bulgarian Style” was organized by the Courtesy the artist and Gallery Michel Rein, Paris. „Holy Spirit Rain Down”, 2010, Club of (eternally) Young Artists. 6 Shipka St. Gallery, Sofia, Curators: Iara Les Eglises, Contemporary art center, Chelles, France Boubnova, Maria Vassileva, Diana Popova.

Kiril Prashkov Samuil Stoyanov. Large small glass, 2012 Natural Bicycle Wheel, 2004 Luchezar Boyadjiev. Descending Body, 2012 Everything that an artist appropriates becomes art because of object for these lands here and the bicycle wheel presupposes its interpretation in a particular context. Duchamp invented the some sort of an effort in any case… There were obviously not concept of open art where the viewer is on equal terms with the enough words available to us to renounce the anti-art – it was author as far as the interpretation of the work goes. Hi cleared the playing on rejection anyways on its own. There was also the road for understanding art as communication. sweeping, as I thought of it, Duchamp irony there which was a However, in order for a work to be recognized as art it has to counterpoint to the numerous, otherwise exceptional artworks be acknowledged by the institutions – museums, galleries, art without moustache, that I was already exposed to. So, I was critics, curators. The liberal; idea of Duchamp is a new utopia wondering if this irony was not actually the reason why his brothers, which is clashing with the oppositions between individual and a sculptor and a painter, choose different version of the family collective, nature and culture. The non-material understanding of name – to dissociate from Marcel, the mutt… art is clashing with the material context which is embodied by the Kiril Prashkov institutions. Boris Groys compares Duchamp’s revolution in art with the communist revolution1. Once a long time ago (at least 7 years back) I was asked how can Both these revolutions are aiming at the expropriation and I tell if somebody is or isn’t an artist. Why is it that somebody is an collectivization of private property either real or symbolic. In this artist and somebody else who is also drawing and “creating” is not? sense one can claim that some forms of contemporary art and (I must admit that I was quite zealous in my views) Or why such practice in Internet are now functioning as a symbolic communist things as, let’s say, the paintings sold at the sea cost are not art? I collectivization within the environment of capitalist economy. remember (although I do not like to quote myself) that my answer Bora Petkova. Nail, Ribbon and Hook, 2012. Photo: HR-Stamenov According to Groys the liberal software is clashing with the capitalist was that I have only one criteria to make a judgment – only those hardware. who have heard of Duchamp could be artists. If you do not know The role of the artist is changing too. The institutions of today no about Duchamp it does not matter how “creative” you are; you are longer need the artist as a traditional author-producer. On the something else. contrary, today the artist is more often hired for a period of time as a Kosta Tonev worker in order to realize this or that institutional project. My contribution to this show is the video „C’est la vie” not only In the high school for fine art I went to our perspective teacher because it is made via an “appropriation” of a fragment from real life, claimed that there are only two questions confronting the artist: or because it was already produced, or because it was already titled how and why. At 14 years of age together with a group of school “C’est la vie” thus coinciding with the name of Duchamp’s alter ego friends we were exercising Renaissance techniques – layers in Rrose Sélavy. It is mainly because it reveals human nature that is grisaille, over painting, etc. At 16 we were copying the methods of manifested in every cultural context and across all social strata. Abstract Expressionism – we were totally possessed by the question To appropriate something made by somebody else seems like a of how. The why was left for the indeterminate future; and the necessary condition for survival. This is inherent in both human future as we know, was renounced by year 1989 and the collapse nature and our culture. Contemporary art is related to the real of the profession which was but a part of the total collapse. Maybe life; beyond the sphere of the transcendental is the world of it was this collapse indeed that posed the question of why with the contradictions, the world which we inhabit. One of the ironies of life is kind of weight and urgency that threw out the question of how into that no matter what you do, it will be bad for somebody else; to stay some senseless periphery. Naturally, this is where Duchamp walked alive means that you have to eat something that is alive. This fact in to split my artist’s body in two halves. The first half insists on its cannot be either disregarded or solved by the new technologies. uniqueness while referring to the history of art. The second half is Vassil Simittchiev. Intermission, 2008 At least for now. submerged in various kinds of otherness while trying to overcome Is it possible to unite opposites? Is this the goal of human its shadow by constantly changing its place and form. Why? I do not development? know but I still hear the question: Is this Art?. However, the really And why is it that at the end of his life Duchamp was only interested relevant question would be: Isn’t this art? in the game of chess? Krassimir Terziev Adelina Popnedeleva 1 I am paraphrasing here the title of the essay: Boris Groys, Marx After 1 Boris Groys, Marx After Duchamp, or The Artist’s Two Bodies, e-flux Duchamp, or The Artist’s Two Bodies, e-flux journal, #19, 2010/10, journal, #19, 2011/10 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/marx-after-duchamp-or-the-artist%e2%80%99s-two-bodies/

Because he is a player. A man for whom playing is the meaning of - Why Duchamp? life. The substance of playing is the pleasure to discover the new - And why not…?!? manifestations of the world. Playing is creating imaginary worlds, the joy of sharing, a contest of skills, and emanation of freedom. Playing is the substance of life for the creative individual. Playing is the only acceptable alternative to the endless repetition of life’s ritual with its eternal battle for survival. Duchamp is totally free from any enslaving dependencies on society such as possessions, admiration, respect for hierarchies, and search for commercial Intervention in a effect; from ideological and nationalistic dogma. Of all kinds of photograph by the playing Duchamp selected the most superior – the plays of the Transformers Group from Kiril Prashkov. Natural fountaine, 2006 mind. By establishing the priority of the idea (the concept) over the participation in their execution (the craft) he transformed once and for all the traditional action in front of SAMCA notion of art as a blind copy of life. By opening up the limits of the (Sofia Arsenal - Museum imagination and by mixing analysis with provocation and humor, of Contemporary Art) on he transformed caricature with its typically humorous and satirical the occasion of 40 days content accompanied by text into a new visual form; while enriching since the opening of the the means of expression. Duchamp absorbed and juggled all place. July 2011, Sofia contemporary styles thus escaping from their restrictive effects. Luchezar Boyadjiev He put his creative freedom and ironical view above all else thus anticipating the later art of post-modernism. Alla Georgieva, 1/02/12

Maria, hello, In spite of the delay and thinking about it I would not want to answer the question “Why Duchamp?” If giving an answer is the pre-condition for taking part in the project than it follows that I should not take part; if not – I will send material for the newsletter before February 10th. Greetings, Bora, 3.02.2012, 12:13 am

The French art historian Jean Clair1 is directing us to Duchamp’s work “La Mariée mise а nu par ses célibataires, même” while offering an esoteric reading of its symbolism and relating it to the “Voyage au pays de la quatrième dimension” by Gaston de Pawlowski. It is possible that in fact it is there where the brilliant chess player Vladimir Ivanov. The silence of Duchamp is Duchamp is constructing a logical hypothesis about the fourth not to be underestimated, 2001. dimension. SGHG, 2002 Kosta Tonev. Gasoline Fountain, 2008 Years later visual experimentation is still going on and attempts are still made to define what might happen if we move the sun where we want it to be2 if we were to travel in time3 or if we capture a thunder storm in a room4. HR-Stamenov 1 Jean Clair, “Marcel Duchamp ou le Grand Fictif” 2 Nikola Uzunovski, “My Sunshine” 3 Susan MacWilliam, “The Only Way To Travel” 4 HR-Stamenov, “Space 0 Space”

Because he was lazy! Ivan Moudov

Why Duchamp? Well, I prefer not to answer through the prism of my current belief that this is the main artist from the beginning of the 20th c. who made it into the 21st c. without being “renounced”. I will answer through where my belief stood, let’s say 40 years ago. When we were in high school we heard the judgment “even my daughter can do that” (usually applied to Picasso). However, a statement like “even my daughter can pick up a urinal” was never heard. For sure it would not have been appropriate if little girls were Nina Kovacheva interested in urinals; the bottle rack is a rather abstract looking Alla Georgieva. The Last Supper, 2012 Lady’s Fountain, 2012 HR-Stamenov. Space 0 Space, 2011 Documentary video from installation. Courtesy the author

Mina Minov. Go and Se, 2012 Krassimir Teziev. Space Enlargement Tool, 2010 “Museum Souvenirs”, ICA-Sofia Gallery, 2010

Adelina Popnedeleva. C’est la vie, 2011

The “Fountain” is restored and exhibited again in 1996. At the same time the expert of the AHA insurance company reaches the conclusion that the artwork has lost approximately 60 % of its value while in the view of a staff member of the National Museum Stefania Batoeva. Light, 2012 of Modern Art it has mainly lost its status of a ready-made – a new object without a past; and its function of a found object ready to be used by art. Pinoncelli is put to trail and convicted once again, this time he is sentenced to pay for the restoration and for the lost 60% from the value of the artwork. It is necessary to remember that the “original” of the work from 1917 was lost and in 1964 Duchamp makes “reproductions” of it. Sasho Stoitzov. Urinal in Puck Fair Bar, New York, 2012 From a legal point of view the case may have only one of the two verdicts – either the presented object is not an artwork and the only damage is equal to the cost of the urinal; or the presented object is an artwork and what Pinoncelli should pay is the 100% of People like Marcel Duchamp who are ahead of their time, remain the estimated value of the “Fountain”. Ever since 1917 the law is important for generations to come (although this is already a confused on this matter.2 cliché). So much has already been written about Duchamp that Duchamp insists that we should stop making judgments; that whatever I might write will be in some way a repetition, something the search for the correct or the mistaken is nonsense. As such I would not allow myself. contemporaries are lacking intuition for the merit of their epoch. This text should not be related to the concrete work participating in To be a judge of one’s own time is a huge mistake; an epoch the show, I know - it must answer the question “Why Duchamp?” acquires significance only depending on the way other epochs are (is still so important even today). However, I will offer a short appreciating it. description and a phrase that I think are answering the question. The unpleasant thing about life, according to Duchamp, is that you In 1917 Marcel Duchamp submitted the “Fountain” for the do not know what actually is going on; those who think they know exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. are framing themselves up into a dangerous place (at least in his In 1918 Edyth Lacy introduced the “female urination device”. own view). In 2012 Nina Kovacheva exhibited the “Lady’s Fountain” in While some are offering Presleyburger3 from the corpse4 of the Stefania Batoeva. Shades, 2012 SAMCA-Sofia (the Sofia Arsenal Museum of Contemporary Art) as King in order to feed on his genius, others are ritualistically an art object in homage and as a comment on Marcel Duchamp’s covering Duchamp’s grave with objects in the hope that his spirit “Fountain”. will come back.5 Prière de laisser cette œuvre d`art aussi propre que vous l`avez Rada Bukova trouvée en entrant (Please, leave this work of art as clean as you 1 Greil Marcus. Dead Еlvis: a chronicle of a cultural obsession. 1991 found it when you came here). 2 Agnès Tricoire. L’épreuve de droit retour sur «l’affaire Pinoncelli», Vacarme 15 The last time I thought of Duchamp was when I saw a phone booth Nina Kovacheva 3 In: Greil Marcus, ibid. with cracked glass sides – I wanted to write a note for somebody to 4“Art is dead – do not consume its corpse!” anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968. look at it with one closed eye. This is something important for me Why am I attracted to the ephemeral practice of Duchamp where 5 Duchamp is buried with his family in Rouen; the inscription on his grave – the first prescribing rather than describing tile. the secret of the objects and the notion of their material presence reads: “Besides, it’s always other people who die.” I read in a Duchamp biography that he was trying to sell his in reality is just the starting point? Everything created by Duchamp rotoreliefs on a stand and how only the one-eyed people like after 1912 can be seen as multifaceted, multilayered manifestations “Sometimes I make things that I do not understand myself”. them because they would be able to see in 3D (right after WW I). that are in substance intricately encrypted devices. Their evolution This statement of Marcel Duchamp awards him some special Besides, if you are looking through a tiny hole on a door you can leads to the introduction of the ready-made as an “encrypted” eminence that is typical for the kind of art, which he himself only use one eye. I read in the same biography how together with object. Duchamp has been praised as the “one-man movement” and was trying to renounce with his works where the main method is Man Rey they made the first 3D film in which a certain baroness at the same time stigmatized as the “black hole” of the avant-garde. “singling out”. He is asking people to trust him in the choice he was shaving. I have not seen the film but I guess it looked like the I would suggest the following metaphor for Duchamp – after 1945 makes as an artist, and at the same time he is acknowledging that Étant donnés. Duchamp started functioning as a kind of a secret tunnel through there is something beyond, which is not conceptual because it And so with a lot of his works I feel misled and cheated just like in which his numerous followers are attempting to leave the “illusion” cannot be clearly defined. some kind of chess traps and situations… of the artwork while ultimately ending up even more absorbed I was attracted to this lack of responsibility. But what inspire me Mina Minov and submerged into the superstitions surrounding its presence. about the ready-made in general are the consequences that we Indeed, the strange position that Duchamp has taken regarding the have now. Namely this is the possibility to use the language of Being a convenient example when developing various theories, psychological threshold between the internal and external elements “selection” (singling out) in order to make meaningful changes the works of Marcel Duchamp are quoted by art theoreticians of the space of an artwork that is one of the greatest unresolved not only in the way people relate to each other but in their lives as well as by other writers in their attempts to relate or explain mysteries of art from the 20th century. as well. That is – because of the specifics and the power of this contemporary art. Easy to spot and remember these works have Peter Tsanev language to transmit, share and to install socially relevant ideas turned into kind of a “matrix” through which one can “squeeze” that are reaching more people. In this way what the “art world” is a lot of contemporary works. …maybe because he opened up a few doors where nobody appropriating from everyday life of people will be given back with a Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova suspected there were any. He did not say how far and where certain surplus value. exactly you are supposed to get to if you go through those doors; I think that the new things in contemporary life that could be Duchamp – because of the Ready-mades, because of “Portrait but he left them open so that you can go back any time you want created on the basis of Duchamp’s innovations and the new of Dr. R. Dumouche”, “Sonata”, “Portrai (Dulcinea)”, “Portrait of – however, just like in the “Alice” books, you always go back to a language for communication which he (as well as others) is Gustave Candel’s Mother”, “Portrait of Chess Players”, “Nude different place. creating could also be refuted, transgressed and improved Descending a Staircase”, “Coffee Mill”, “The Passage from P.I. January 2012 precisely by the addition of meaningful content which brings about Virgin to Bride”, “Sad Young Man in a Train”, “Bride”, “Paradise”, real change. I think that would be a “step forward” worthy of the “L.H.O.O.Q.”, “Chocolate Grinder 1 & 2”, “Self-Portrait in Profile”, John Lennon is not dead; he is living on a deserted island with Elvis steps he took with regard to the art of the past. “In Advance of the Broken Arm”, “The Brawl in Austerlitz”, “Large Presley.1 Samuil Stoyanov Glass”, “Rotary Glass Plates”, “Comb”, “Fountain”, “Fresh Widow”, On August 25th 1993 in Nimes (France) the artist Pierre Pinoncelli “Sketches for chess figures”, “Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Sélavy?”, stood in front of Duchamp’s “Fountain”, urinated in it then took The reversal of the urinal is something that had to happen. It is on “Bicycle Wheel”, “Bottle Rack”, “50 cc of Paris Air”, “The Green a hammer out of his pocket and smashed it to pieces. This act the other side of “making”. A very big world. Box”, “Spirale blanche (White Spiral)”, “With Hidden Noise”, “Box started a long and convoluted lawsuit which presented numerous The radical thinking of Duchamp had a direct influence in Bulgaria in a Valise”, “Please Touch”, “Female Fig Leaf”, “Dart-Object”, questions of legal nature. Is it possible to legally consider a at the end of the 1980’s. The ‘ready-made’ works were the “Chastity Wedge”, “Pocket Chess Set”, “Pharmacy”, “Sink Stopper”, ready-made an artwork? Pinoncelli insists that he is actually strongest challenge presented to the formalism of the imposed “The Deconstructed Painting”. finishing Duchamp’s work but this argument is rejected by the notions of ‘plasticity’ in art. Nestor Kovachev tribunal, which gave him a one month jail sentence on probation. Sasho Stoitzov Valio Tchenkov. Imagination with holes, 2011

Ivan Moudov. Already Made, 2008 Nestor Kovachev. Untitled (I want to amuse myself), 2011 Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Photo: Åsa Lunden HEAVENLY JEST You are in despair you are in turmoil you mate Art trends are spinning ‘round all your head. You come up with something for now and ahead Like turning the garbage to honey-filled plate! Rada Boukova. Colour Blue, 2011 Let your ideas enjoy recognition Be shown and admired and full of ignition! Let puzzle they all with all that you do Be liked and feared and great as they do! To artist discarding brushes and paint Who painted no more people nor saint Provide him with tips on how to succeed And seeing the light for how to proceed! To have the success without overwork Supply ready-made not canvas to rig For Capital’s waiting outside to embark For art is a prey awaiting as pig… Marcel Duchamp replying: If only I knew that goes it like that That there are the hungry and many they are… So feed them I will with what I do have With fountain, a glass, with bicycle bliss… Peter Tzanev. Gray Matter, 2012. Vikenti Komitski. Permanent, 2011 With paintings I found stuff them I will For years to come all mouths to fulfill… Valio Tchenkov Few are those who did not let the current drag them into the mud while under the illusion that they are making progress and gaining recognition. M.D. does not make art out of things. HE is making NOTHING out of them. He is turning them into nothings. He walked up to the SOURCE, he took a sip of pure water and he waved us good bye. But he stayed. Vassil Simitchiev

My work for this show is actually a tattoo on my pointing finger based on a quotation from Marcel Duchamp which goes like this: “The artist is no longer the hand that creates but the finger that is pointing out”. Or something to this effect. I could not find the correct quotation and I cannot even be sure that it belongs to him. Samuil Stoyanov. Rocket Descending a Staircase, 2011 Regardless - even if the quote is from Agatha Christi it still captures perfectly the change which Duchamp instigated in the very model of art making. I think the message of this quote is: do we really I choose these quotations: have to make new objects and images if every existing object or “What prompted Duchamp to develop this initially idly conceived image is already loaded with context as it is and all we need to do concept into a major part of his output, one he came to regard as is look closely in order to read through it? ‘the most important single idea to come out of my work’? The very In this sense I like another quotation by Jean-Luc Godard (this time difficulty in finding a single term to describe what is done to the I am sure) who says that it is not important where you take things readymade is instructive: choosing, designating, signing, inscribing, from but rather where you bring them to. encountering, exhibiting are all possible but incomplete to account Vikenti Komitski for the action whereby the object is ‘elevated’ or a ‘new thought’ given to it.” It is hard to add something to what has already been said about “There are perhaps three ideas behind the ready-mades in this genius artist. And yet (as Kenneth Clark would have said) here their various guises. Firstly, a concern to challenge by example is a personal point of view: contemporary assumptions about the nature of artistic creation, 1. Duchamp opened up an endless space for creation for the 20th especially the roles of conception, manual skill and accident or century artist; he gave him the richest possible set of tools to play chance in the making of art. Secondly, a desire to expose the role with – reality itself. 1:1 And he did so not on the retinal but on the Pravdoliub Ivanov from the series “Non-Works”, 2007- of institutions and social groups in defining what counts as art. intellectual level; although he preferred the notion of “faith” before Thirdly, a fascination with industrially manufactured, and therefore the notion of “intellect”. For good or for bad his church turned out usually anonymously produced, ‘objects of desire’”. to be very popular lately. One day Justin-Isidore (Eugene) Duchamp, Marcel’s father, said In: Marcel Duchamp, Dawn Ades, Neil Cox, David Hopkins, Thames 2. Chess. I love this game very much and I was overjoyed because to his six children (as related by Marcel Duchamp himself): “Well and Hudson Ltd, London 1999 of the way it was “introduced” into art, that is to say – how it is then, I will give you what you want but what I give you while I am The quotations were selected by Stefania Batoeva possible to make it part of the tool set of the contemporary artist. alive you will not get after my death”. And that’s what he did. “He 3. The name of this artist is identical with FREEDOM and in as had calculated all the money that we had meanwhile received iMarcel dimension 4S much as it is always and everywhere in short supply, his skeptical over the years and after he died these sums were taken out of our “J’ai pensé à l’idée d’une projection d’une quatrième dimension smile remains forever relevant. inheritance. That was not such a bad thing because in fact it was invisiblesqu’one peut pas la voir avec les yeux” / “I was thinking Vladimir Ivanov because of this money that each one of us was able to survive”*. about an idea to have a projection of the fourth dimension which is 29.01.2012 Unlike his father M.D. (who was also known for his endless invisible to our eyes”. contempt for money) left an inheritance with no accounts. This Marcel Duchamp … Valentin Stefanoff inheritance is used to this day by many artists, sometimes even by “Nu descendant un Escalier” / “Nude descending a Staircase”, Translation: Luchezar Boyadjiev myself, to get by… 1912 – Marcel Duchamp The thing that fascinates me in Marcel Duchamp’s life could be A hundred years later – 2012 – vibrations from the “Nude illustrated with the words of Dostoevsky: “The human being is a descending a Staircase” filled up with sound the space between Sofia Arsenal – Museum for Contemporary Art delicate and illogical creature: just like a chess player it loves the the fourth and the fifth dimensions of SAMCA (Sofia Arsenal 2, Cherni Vruh Blvd., Sofia / www.samcaproject.org process of getting to the goal, not the goal itself”**. Museum of Contemporary Art) in Sofia as realized by Valentin Stefan Nikolaev Stefanoff, after an invitation from Maria Vassileva, with the passive * Marcel Duchamp, Bernard Marcadé, Flammarion, Paris 2007 support of Marcel Duchamp. ** Quoted after: http://www.mjae.com/citations.html Valentin Stefanoff