![]() Picabia, who had established a close friendship with Alfred Stieglitz and his associates during the Armory Show, gravitated toward that sphere of influence and participated actively in the Modern Gallery and the magazine 291, activities supported by Stieglitz but directed by Marius de Zayas. ĭuchamp and Picabia lost no time in enlivening the New York art scene - Picabia with his radically new mechanomorphic portraits and Duchamp with his even more unusual work on the Large Glass and readymade sculptures that inhabited his apartment but were also exhibited for the first time. ![]() ![]() They had all arrived in New Yor k in 1915, each in his way a refugee from the devastating war in Europe, each discovering that New York was a stimulating city where he could work again. ![]() Duchamp was chief among those French artists, but Francis Picabia, Albert Gleizes and Jean Crotti played lesser roles. From the outset, however, the Society of Independent Artists was distinguished by a contingent of French artists and the intent to be an ongoing organization modeled after the French Societe des Artistes Independants. To a considerable extent the Society was a direct descendant of such organizations as the Eight, the 1910 Independents Group and the Armory Show - all were formed to provide exhibitions of American art outside the structure of the National Academy of Design and the offerings of conventional art galleries. Conditions regarding the organization of that Society are germane to the story. įountain entered the history of art in April 1917 on the occasion of the first exhibition of the American Society of Independent Artists. a masterpiece in his oeuvre, rather than the amusing or offensive anti-art object It was often portrayed as at that time. Indeed, this study is the long-suppressed gratification of a desire which arose in the late 1960s when, as a young teacher, I found myself fascinated with the formal properties of Fountain and convinced that Duchamp had achieved a fusion of visual and intellectual properties which made It. Some of the information and ideas to be presented here are not new, but I have expanded that information, ordered, focused, and flavored it with a personal bias. I am indebted to many individuals and earlier studies. However, Fountain will not be entirely isolated from the rest of his oeuvre, and the results of this more narrowly focused study will contribute to the whole. Given the remarkable interrelationships in Duchamp's work from beginning to end, an obvious risk is involved in any study that focuses on a single object. In light of these diverse viewpoints I shall attempt to reconstruct what we know about Fountain based on documents at the time of its appearance in 1917 and consideration of relevant historical circumstances. 1 - Marcel Duchamp Fountain, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, copy negative from The Blind Man, no. To complete the circle, some insist Fountain is neither art nor an object of historical consequence, while a few assert that it is both art and significant-though for utterly incompatible reasons.įig. Others accept it grudgingly as art but deny that is significant. Some deny that Fountain is art but believe it is significant for the history of art and aesthetics. But most critics have not been troubled by these conflicting comments from Duchamp or by the lacunae in our knowledge. We do not even know with absolute certainty that Duchamp was the artist-he himself once attributed it to a female friend-and some of his comments raise fundamental questions regarding his intentions in this readymade. Clark Marlor, author of recent publications on the Society of Independent Artists, claims it was broken by William Glackens. Duchamp said Walter Arensberg purchased Fountain and later lost it. We are not even able to consult the object itself, since it disappeared early on, and we have no idea what happened to it. But an examination of this literature reveals that our knowledge of this readymade sculpture and its history is riddled with gaps and extraordinary conflicts of memory, interpretation, and criticism. The literature on it-counting references imbedded in broader considerations of Duchamp's work-is staggering in quantity, and one might suppose that little more of consequence could be discovered. Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917 (Part 1)*ĭuchamp's Fountain has become one of the most famous/infamous objects in the history of modern art (Fig.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |