My departure point will be Andre Breton's text, in 1922, consecrated to Duchamp in the fifth issue of the review Littérature. In this text, Breton writes: "Could it be
that Marcel Duchamp arrives more quickly than anyone else at the critical point of
ideas?" That says everything in a sense.
Synthetically, Breton attributes to Duchamp, once more, the quality that everyone has
attributed to him: an exceptional intelligence. This would be trivial if it was a
psychological remark: But it is much more than that. What is in question, in fact,
is a new relation between art and concept. That is, a form of transgression
of romanticism. Call "romanticism" the theory of a space between the quasi-divine or
sacred poetic intuition of the infinite, and the supposedly finite and sterile constraints
of calculating rationality. In a totally .explicit manner, Duchamp is the hero of an art
that ignores this space. Duchamp creates against the entire theory of inspiration and genius. He despises the category of taste that constitutes the unity of artistic action.
Two slogans are quite characteristic. Duchamp declares he made the "ready-
made" "with no other intention except to discharge ideas". And again: "I want to
contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste."
But Breton's statement must also be taken in detail. It can be analyzed as five
abstract moments.
1) Art has become a question of movement, of what we get to rather than the
abolition of this "getting to" in a result closed in the idolatrous cult of the
work of art. Art is only the trace of its own action.
2) As a result the count procedures of movement are internal to art; slowness
and speed of execution are pertinent parameters. There is an immanent link
between art and number.
3) Art treats a point of thought. The space-time it moves in, surfaces,
supports, speed of execution, references, all this is the envelope in which the point of thought is both exhibited and subtracted. It is the locus of the point.
The construction of the locus is toil, but this is so on order for the point to
fulgurate.
4) This point is critical in a dual sense. In the ordinary sense, because it
criticizes in thought the idolatrous theory of art, that is, ordinary
romanticism. Romanticism supposes the infinite transcendence as the
horizon and aim of the finitude of art, it rejects the number and science to the
outside of its sacred actiom, it intends to reveal, not one point, but the All.
But the point is critical in another sense, the sense it has in mathematics and
physics: a point at which there is a qualitative discontinuity, such that at this
same point, there is indiscemibility between one state and another, which
however differ absolutely every place else. Creating the locus at which
anyone can reproduce the experience of such a critical point, and so of such
an indiscemibility, would be the fundamental aim of art. At this point, we
can say that the virtues of the conception of the infinite and of chance are
exchanged.
5) This critical point is the visitation of the idea in its contemporary artistic
form. Art is pure idea. It is not, as in vitalism, corporal energy establishing
the embrace of percepts and affects. It is not the continuous and projective
passage from the experienced jouissance of becoming to living thought. It is
on the contrary the establishment of a locus, of course, material, spatial-
temporal, but at which the separation of the idea is experienced, and the fact
that it can only touch the surface, like a bird skims the sea.
I return now to these five points one by one.
1). Art has to become the trace of its own action. Art must be the place of its taking
place. So, the work of art is self-sufficient. We must have art without any artist. Duchamp
affirms the impersonality of artistic action. He argues against everything that brings into the
becoming of the work the trace of a perceptive passivity. Everything he calls retinian art,
which goes back according to him to Courbet, and includes the impressionists, the fauves and the cubists. He dreams of being totally absent from creation, of "cutting off his hands". On the
other hand, he gives detailed explanations of the process of the work. Fundamentally, he
accompanies the object by the something like a users7 manual, that is, of its modes of
fabrication. Information on the work. The year before his death, speaking of the "Grand
Verre" ("The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even"), he explains that, in order to
appreciate this work, it is absolutely necessary to follow the text he wrote, which is, he says,
"a sort of diagrammatic or programmatic explanation of what can be seen on the Glass".
2). On the question of relationship between art and number, we can see that
the fatal number, for Duchamp, is the 3. "The number three as three, for me is neither
unity nor duality, the three is everything, the final end of numeration". Or again: "One
is unity, two is the double, and three is the rest". Duchamp works on the relation
between the infinite and space or spaces, that is to say dimensions. But the final space
is always tridimensional. This is why he can say "millions do not count, the three fills
the same role for me."
3) On the point of thought, whose work of art is the envelope, or the place.
The correlation between the refusal of all post-romantic sensitivity and the
chance for a point of thought is strongly present in Duchamp. There is for him an
implacable rationalism turned against aesthetic idolatry. He goes so far as to say, in an
interview of 1953, that when we "do things for the pure idea of functional reasoning,
the idea of aesthetics disappears."
What is the ready-made after all? It is the exposed, although totally
commonplace, envelope of the pure thought of choice or selection, with no subjective
adherence. The point of thought here is that this choice, cut out of the commonplace,
creates a pure point of indistinction between the commonplace and the supreme. Of
course, there is a superior irony with respect to the envelope. The object that envelops
the point is particularly without particularity.
("Fontaine" seems to me with respect to this less convincing than the snow
shovel or the bottle stand.)
Seeing it today hang from the ceiling of a museum and surrounded by pious
reverence is comical. But the ascesis of Duchamp is there. Because the choice must be
made without adhesion, it is not easy. Duchamp says he must find, in choosing the object, a "point of indifference of his own gaze". The ready-made is the envelope of
the point where thought is reduced to a choice where we must find nothing, except
choosing itself. The ready-made exposes the choice of the choice as a cut out of the
commonplace. That is why its title is itself, its common name, and its situation a
signature.
The complex works of Duchamp proceed on the contrary by learned
recollection, but with the same objective; there are only two of them : The "Grand
Verre", the great glass, whose the complete title is "la mariee mise a nue par ses
celibataires meme" "The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even" and "Étant
donné, un, la chute d'eau, et deux le gaz d'éclairage", soit "Given one the waterfall
and two the Gas Light"". They are in fact installations, which already re-produce
often, as elements, anterior productions. The envelope is here the result of an
immense, very technical, work, and in the opinion of Duchamp himself, it is very
boring. We have in them a sort of maniacal craftsmanship. But why? Let's say for the
moment: in order to exhibit a complexity whose exterior focal point is the point of the
gaze. Do not forget that "The Bride Stripped Bare" is a gigantesque transparent; and
on the contrary, "Given" is a baroque exhibition that is closed, and includes a terrible
quartered nude and a blinking landscape that is seen through a hole in a door. The
complexity is here the capture of the seeing, as the ready-made is the capture of the
indifferent decision. The point is that the simple stupefaction of the gaze is made with
respect to an envelope constituted by years of fastidious work. When Duchamp was
asked why all this toil, why this tour dc force, he answered: "Because I didn't want to
do something simple." As he explores the dimensions, Duchamp looks for the
envelope of the point of thought in the simplest, the ready-made, but also in the most
complicated, the synthetic installations, disposed in correspondence to the openness of
transparency or the enclosure of the fantasy.
4) On the critical aspect of the point. The center of thought is here discontinuity,
or the point at which the same and the other are indiscernible. The "plastic" concept of
this indiscemibility proposed by Duchamp in the 1930s is that of the infra thin. It is necessary, he says "to try to pass into the infra thin interval that separated two identical
things."
Obviously, we have here the foundation of the use of reduplication, of copies,
of multiples, which constituted a major part of Duchamp's reputation. The famous
gesture by which he signed a copy or a miniature or a multiplication of one of his
products, or even and above all when they were done by someone other than himself,
by apposing the famous inscription "certified true copy". The infra thin is the exercise
of the critical point as a point of minimal discontinuity; the point of discontinuity from
the same to the other same. The new productive and reproductive thought must pass by
this point.
5) That the idea not be embodied by a work, by an oeuvre, but given in a
separation that touches the surface. The idea is there, in the surface, but at the infra
thin point that separates that being-there from itself. For example, the idea of chance
is in the "Grand Verre" under the form of the impact of bullets made by a little cannon
that shoots matches with a bit of paint. Duchamp shot nine shots, three times three,
remark, and he then pierced the points of impact. The strategy here is to mark the
surface by the Idea forever, but that the surface be accountable for this idea, without its
becoming its generous body. It is touched by it, like one shouts "touche" in a game or
a shooting gallery.
So, yes, Duchamp went the fastest between 1912 and 1922, in ten years, in order
to attain in the order of art the critical point of the idea. In reality, making the critical
point of the idea the origin of art, in accordance with a de-romanticized and de-
subjectivized line. Duchamp's attempt is to reduce the work of art to the pure
anonymous action ("art does not mean doing but acting"). A communist dream in its
way, but indifferent to any politics. I quote Duchamp :"Art for me had died by the fact
that, instead of being a singularized entity, it would be universal, a human factor in the
life of people, each one would be an artist, but misrecognized as artist"." Duchamp
Rational form of the generic idea of the engulfment of art by ordinary life.
There we are. But everything must be taken up again starting from three points,
which are quite singular: These points work against the anonymous and democratic
concept of the work of art. These three points open the door, for a new aristocratic and
self-expressive notion of modern art.
1) The decisive function of the refusal opposed to his work in Duchamp's destiny.
First, in 1912, the refusal of the great cubist canvas "Nude descending a stairway" by
the Salon des Independants. This was the French refusal. Then, in 1917, the refusal or
the dissimulation of the urinal entitled "Fountain" and signed R. Mutt, by the counsel
of The Society of Independent Artists. This was the American refusal. These are
crucial episodes. In 1968, Duchamp was an artist practically idolized by his peers and
by the vanguard youth. But his rancor is still felt, when he declares: "Don't forget that
it never had any success until recently, very recently."
Behind his provocative and accomplished vision, Duchamp is a man.
2) The function, not only of his signature, now unfailing even for copies very far
off. But inscriptions or legends affected to ordinary objects as to complex
compositions, in vivid contrast with the redundant names of the type "bottle stand" or
"bicycle wheel" or even " The Big Glass".
Take for example "The Battle of Austerlitz", which is a glass door. "The Breeding
of Dust" (or: "The Dust Ranch"), "Why not Sneeze Rose Selavy" "Soigneur de
gravité", "In Advance of the Broken Arm", and many others.
All that is not at all abstract art. He projects the singularity of an art of poetic writing.
3) The function of eroticism, absolutely original and constant. The word "naked" is found everywhere. Or the thing... the three great
works, but also a great many other works. As well as the Virgin, the roguish puns
(LHOOQ), the use of sperm, etc.
These three questions seem to converge towards something else that would be that
any framing is polarized by a fantasized framing. And that eroticism is of the order of
art, as the necessary other side of calculation. But that would be another story. The story — in the work of Duchamp — of the struggle between the abstraction of indifferent choice and the seduction of desire and images. But it is probably the contradictory destiny of the most important part of modern art.
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