2025.12.14
There were people who found encoded alchemical symbolism in his work, especially The Bride Stripped Bare. But Lee was only able to locate one quote on the subject from Duchamp himself: "If I have ever practiced alchemy, it was in the only way it can be done now, that is to say, without knowing it.." (Rose, 159)
Given a man who surrounds himself with secrecy, who obviously follows a rule, who sets himself exhausting tasks which he makes certain shall bring him neither glory nor profit and which he suddenly abandons for no apparent reason, would we not be justified in looking for some connection with alchemy? Signs are not lacking, from the incontestably initiatory character of his thought and works, based on the consistent use of a secret language, a symbolism of forms and a system of numbers. Need we mention, among other instances, the [Three] Standard Stoppages, the three rollers of the [Chocolate] Grinder, the labyrinth of the three directions...the three Draught [Draft] Pistons, etc...? When we asked him Duchamp merely replied: "If I have practised alchemy, it was in the only way it can be done now, that is to say without knowing it." For some this is an insufficiently conclusive answer, since it does not exclude the possibility that he might have rediscovered alchemy. If we grant that this could be a forgotten technique, or one which had become inaccessible to those in search of it today because the serious-minded have discredited it, humor (in its most outrageous form) would then be the only means of attaining the sublime... (Lebel, 1959, 73)
LG: It seems that almost from the beginning of your work as an artist, you have had a philosophical attitude toward what being an artist is. In one of your interviews with Sweeney, for example..., you describe Dada as a "metaphysical attitude." What you have talked about and written is permeated with the thought-feelings of a philosopher. At the end of your 1956 interview with Sweeney, you spoke of art as a path "toward regions which are not ruled by time and space."
MD: Was that the one filmed in Philadelphia?
LG: It was.
MD:Yes. Perhaps that is about as much as you can say in a film being made for wide consumption. If one says too much more, the result is simply a great deal of misunderstanding. Understanding can only emerge from a co-experience, a non-verbal experience which the artist and the onlooker can share by means of aesthetic experience. So I leave the interpretation of my work to others.
LG: Nevertheless, I think it would be correct to say that you regard the practice of art as a philosophical path toward that which is beyond time and space.
MD: That is correct. That is my view, but only part of my view. My view is beyond and back. Some get lost "out there." My frame of reference is out of the frame and back again.
LG: That sounds like the dance of the finite and infinite, stepping back and forth between three dimensions and four dimensions, as Apollinaire or Mallarmé would say.
MD: So it does. No one says it better than Mallarmé!
LG: May we call your perspective Alchemical?
MD: We may. It is an Alchemical understanding. But don't stop there! If we do, some will think I'll be trying to turn lead into gold back in the kitchen (laughing). Alchemy is a kind of philosophy, a kind of thinking that leads to a way of understanding.
We may also call this perspective Tantric (as Brancusi would say), or (as you like to say) Perennial. The Androgyne is not limited to any one religion or philosophy. The symbol is universal. The Androgyne is above philosophy. If one has become the Androgyne one no longer has a need for philosophy.
Duchamp in conversation with Lanier Graham. Quoted in Graham, Marcel Duchamp: Conversations with the Grand Master (New York: Handmade Press, 1968) 2-3.
2024.12.14
451 Rhawn Gallery
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