2026.06.25
Alte Pinakothek :: Philadelphia Museum of Art
 
Stephen Lauf Open and Shut: Brief Case in Point 2026.06.25
and more from Monique Fong, etc.
from Thomas Grist, "Marcel Duchamp, Munich 1912, Miscellanea" in Marcel Duchamp in Munich 1912, p. 89:
"To all the reasons why Marcel Duchamp left Paris for Munich in middle of 1912--the birth of an illegitimate daughter, the unequivocal rejection of his Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) by his own brothers and the Cubists, his desperate love for Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, the invitation of his German artist friend Max Bergmann--we can add yet another. In the early 1950s in New York, Duchamp told young artist Monique Fong that he had traveled to Munich because it was the only place he could have access to special paints that were not available in Paris."
And, in one of my many dreams last night, Duchamp told me that after using up those special paints, painting for him was thus used up as well. Simultaneously then, we said, "So the question, so the answer--go figure."
List of unbekannt works within Duchamp After Unbekannt
1040. Sounds Virtually There: A Quasi Rainer Werner Fassbinder Collection
1041. notes on 'creativity' in Kant After Duchamp, etc.
1042. Restroom Readymade
1043. II Box: Gold is Gold
1044. page painting 175
1045. Mary Boone's 180 hours of community service hours 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103
1046. Gracefully Andy
1047. gene-splicing queens, etc.
1048. queen alexander portraits
1049. vibe stills
1050. Bombs Away Bubbles, As Is Condition
1051. v80 collage 007
1052. A souvenir of the Brooklyn Rail's New Social Environment #1367, Marcel Duchamp...
1053. Ancient Circuses
1054. [Felix's Light Bulbs]
1055. The History of Art Volume 6715
1056. [Perfins Galore]
1057. Chris Top Her Wool
1058. 129 Die in Jet
1059. Kaleidoscopic Lacunae
1060. [Velázquez]
1061. Walking around the local farm
1062. The Advertising of Art 31
1063. The Advertising of Art 34
1064. The Advertising of Art 42
1065. The Advertising of Art 47
1066. The Advertising of Art 55
1067. 06060905.db House of Shadows Bye axonometrics and perspectives
1068. still alives
1069. something something art something
1070. Mary Boone's 180 hours of community service hours 104 105
1071. Mary Boone's 180 hours of community service hours 107 108
1072. The revised and expanded Complete Works says Present location unknown, even.
1073. Back Door Neighborhood through the Baroque Looking Glass
1074. bifocal eyeglasses or contact lenses
1075. going crackers 008
1076. going crackers 009
1077. going crackers 010
1078. going crackers 011
1079. Richard Réti vs. Alexander Alekhine: most beautiful . . . . . .
2026.06.25
451 Rhawn Gallery
Stephen Lauf Too Close for Comfort? 2025.06.23
Stephen Lauf End of Plot 2025.06.25 2025.06.25
2020.06.25
Mary Boone's 180 hours of community service hours 121 122
Mary Boone's 180 hours of community service hours 123 124
Virtual Painting 559
Virtual Painting 560
2015.06.25
inspirational mix
 
001 002
 
003 004
2007.06.25
For the pleasure of sharing ideas, through the poetry of the printed word
My predominate style is 'letter writing' style. Honest, easy and personal.
What I'd like to do more of is 'fictitious historical dialogue'.
As of yesterday, reading Duboy (again) along with ongoing Montesquieu and spotty Foucault--bricolage plus letters plus Las Meninas etc. Mix that with 'fictitious historical dialogue' and you have my next book project.
It's a book about all kinds of style. The working title is über œuvred e suicidal. Piranesi hires a Quaker lawyer to fix historical inaccuracies while the Quaker lawyer hires Piranesi to design an historically accurate house. Neither knew of the other's true propensity--playful double-meaning meets good-natured honesty--yet they discover themselves to be a formidable team. You'll think you're laughing and you'll laugh about thinking.
Everyday Urbanism - Design and/or Default
And I'm sure it's that time of year again.
2006.06.25
what value does art have in the world?
Sure art has the power to change people. For example, I've executed several artworks that have changed people from liking me to disliking me.
what value does art have in the world?
Wednesday, July 30, 1980
They were having a costume auction at Sotheby's at 1:00 and one of the things in the auction was a costume I'd done in the sixties for the Dalton twins--the "This Side Up" dress. Sotheby's just had it thrown in with the other clothes, they didn't realize I'd done it. If someone had put it in a frame it could have sold for $10,000 but somebody's probably going to get it for $25. It's the last thing in the auction.
--The Andy Warhol Diaries
I guess art in a frame changes everything!
2005.06.25
Dear Abra
What is "design in perspective?" Is it a building? Is it an interior design? Are there any historical examples?
If "design in perspective is design in non-Euclidean space," then does that mean it is indeed possible for something man-made to be non-Euclidean and at the same time exist in the overall near-Euclidean space that is our world to begin with? Or could/should the statement read "design in perspective is design OF non-Euclidean space?"
Could it be that human perception of space may be non-Euclidean, but that human imagination has evolved (so far) in a very Euclidean manner?
2003.06.25
top 5 movies with great architecture or regarding architecture
Did you know that when a depiction of Boullée is shown in The Belly of the Architect, the image is actually that of Piranesi?
Just over a year ago there was a display within "Theatrics Times Two" at www.quondam.com that compared the symmetry of The Ruling Class with the symmetry of The Belly of the Architect. I think Greenaway was much influenced by The Ruling Class.
2002.06.25
Re: WTC Excavation Panorama
John wrote:
We were in the area yesterday looking for studio space with an intention to get in on the only NYC action that counts in avant-garde and putrid architecture, er, real estate.
Once we get set up with a view overlooking the sacred site, we'll be issuing a manifesto per week, tear-stained and lurid, so set your spam-eliminator on high alert.
Steve asks:
John, how long do you anticipate the whole 'exploitation' will take (seriously)? I imagine work at the WTC site will last several years. I'm also wondering how long it will take for the 'hole' to be filled and more or less covered (although there will still be much building activity underneath and above). It will be interesting to see how wider (ie, pieces in the press, etc.) 'perception' of the site changes as the site gets filled.
Kind of ironic that those visiting the site now often say there is nothing to see, when in fact they are seeing things that haven't been seen in years.
I'm reminded of a very nice aerial photo of lower Manhattan when the towers were almost complete that appeared in Life magazine (probably sometime 1970 or 71 or 72). I have the pages, but I used them within one of a series (a dozen I think) of artworks (1993) that 'reenacted' Duchamp's The Large Glass (The Bride Striped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even). In The Large Glass the lower section represents the male (sex appetite) while the upper section represents the female (sex appetite). In the one where I utilized the Life magazine WTC Towers photo, I placed it alongside an image of the (in)famous Space Shuttle toilet (that didn't always work properly)--these were in the lower section depicting erections and beyond. The top section has an actual but cloud-like female nude. Once the images were in place (acrylicly transferred onto mylar), then the 'cracks' of The Large Glass were pen plotted onto the mylar.
John, you use the word manifesto to describe the forthcoming 'exploitation.' Do you see this project as perhaps a 'reenactment' of Delirious New York? (Remember I do admire reenactment.)
A week or so ago R and I were talking a little about Delirious New York. We remembered how the original cover was an image of the Empire State Building in bed with the Chrysler Building. Last Saturday night I remembered a line from the poem "I Balls" (which is an integral part of Hey, Art Picasso, How's Your Brother Dick?) that reads: "If sex isn't something to talk about you can always think of the Empire State Building in the Holland Tunnel..." Upon (an almost 20 years later reflection) I think that line is very likely, albeit subconsciously, related to the cover of Delirious New York, and making that connection now is what prompted me to think of the Dick Manifestos.
Koolhass has over the last couple of years discussed manifestos, mostly in relation to Learning From Las Vegas. He concludes that architecture manifestos are no longer written, that it is all about urbanism now. I wonder if this is true.
manifesto 1 obscure : DEMONSTRATION, EVIDENCE 2 : a public declaration of intentions, motives, or views : a public statement of policy or opinion
2001.06.25
Philadelphia Museum of Art/Sacred and Profane Love
Directly below the North Wing Pediment of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a small glassed opening that connects to a gallery within the museum. This aperture was not part of the building as originally executed. Rather its creation occurred in 1954, and is the manifestation of a Marcel Duchamp intention, for immediately behind the opening is The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, which stands as the centerpiece of the Philadelphia Museum's Duchamp gallery.
"As soon as he was well enough, Duchamp resumed his frequent trips to Philadelphia, where the Arensberg collection was being installed under his supervision in ten spacious, high-ceilinged galleries that had been specially designed for it. One of the largest rooms was devoted to his own work. The Arenbergs had kept right on adding to their Duchamp holdings. The bought The Chess Game from Walter Pach in 1950, and in 1951 Duchamp's old school chum, Raymond Dumouchel, who had retired from medical practice and was living in the south of France, agreed to sell them the portrait that Duchamp had done of him in 1910, with the luminous aura surrounding his hand. Thanks to Katherine Dreier their collection had regained its centerpiece, The Large Glass, the great "delay" that held in suspension the nonretinal ideas of its making. Duchamp was on hand when the Glass was installed in the middle of the room, facing a doorlike window that had been cut into the wall on his instructions. The window [looks onto] a courtyard. There [is] a large fountain in the center of the courtyard, and on the other side of the fountain there were two monumental pieces of sculpture. One of them, a nude female in bronze called Yara, was by Maria Martins. (Its title referred to a river in Cuba.) Whether by accident or design (and everything we know about Duchamp suggests that it was not by accident), the sculpture was sited in such a way that you could look through the Glider element of The Large Glass. through the window, through the outdoor fountain (la chute d'eau). and see it in the background."
Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), p. 389.
Yara has since been removed from its former position within the museum courtyard, thus the visual connection representing the love affair, as intimated by Tomkins, between Duchamp and Martins can no longer be experienced by the gallery visitor. Nonetheless, it is worth further noting that not only is Tomkins's visual connection identical to the experience of viewing Étant donnés: 1. la chute d'eau/ 2. le gaz d'éclairage (a Duchamp work also now in Philadelphia, yet kept secret until his death in 1968), but the Tomkin's Duchamp-Martins connection at Philadelphia also reenacts the "sacred and profane love" theme of Jennewein's Western Civilization. That all these love themes should have occurred along the same exact axis is perhaps the greatest chance happening in 20th century art.
In any case, a clear, sunny day in Philadelphia offers one the opportunity to stand in the museum courtyard and catch a faint glimpse of The Large Glass, especially the Sieves or Parasols elements. Again, one finds oneself peering through yet another Duchamp aperture.
1991.06.25
(so-called) Birth of Venus in a Dream 3
1951.06.25
1951. Monday, New York City
After learning that his suspicions were justified and that his brother has not received any payment from the museum, Duchamp writes to thank Alfred Barr for investigating the question of royalties for the reproduction of Jacques Villon's engraving of Mariée. The original print, a limited edition co-signed by Duchamp, was one of a series of reproductions or interpretations of famous pictures made by Villon for Bernheim-Jeune during the 1920s.
*
After being detained at work, Monique Fong arrives late at 210 West 14th Street. In the studio they start talking about the Place Blanche, the celebrated haunt of the Surrealists in Paris, and then Duchamp takes Monique to dine in "a very attractive restaurant on 13th Street which could have been in Montmartre". Breton and the Surrealists continues to be their subject of conversation. "Duchamp himself has such a very rare, very free intelligence," observes Monique, "more free certainly than Breton because he aims at nothing. He is extremely kind too and one doesn't feel uncomfortable at all to be with him." For Monique it is "a very good, precious evening" which, happily for her, Duchamp invites her to repeat.
Ephemerides
1937.06.25
1937. Friday, Paris
"What a surprise you gave me!" writes Duchamp to Frederick Kiesler who has written on the Large Glass [5.2.1923] in the May issue of the Architectural Record. "It gave me very great pleasure to read your article... First the spirit of the article, then your interpretation
and the presentation of your ideas! Thank you for having wanted to look at the glass with such attention and to have clarified points that few
people know about."
 
DESIGN -- CORRELATION
Frederick Kiesler
Architecture is control of space.
An Easel-painting is illusion of Space-Reality.
Duchamp’s Glass is the first x-ray-painting of space.
From brush-painted pictures of the middle ages to 1920s Structural painting on plate glass this Superior-Sane Iconoclast Marcel Duchamp, born 1887 at Blainville, Seine Inférieure, France. Its title is "La Mariée mis à ña par ses célibataires, 1915-1923 inachevé--cassé 1931--réparé 1936. Treasured by Miss Katherine S. Dreier in the living of a colonial house in the U.S.A.
[transcription of the rest of the article forthcoming.]
 
 
 
"I don't remember," Duchamp continues, "if you have a green box [16.10.1934] which, in fact, is the 'manuscript' of the glass. I am sending you a copy by the next post, hoping that in glancing through it you will see how right you are."
To reproduce the Large Glass in his "album" [5.3.1935], Duchamp is inspired by the celluloid print inserted in the Architectural Record, but he needs photographs of the glass viewed from the front without any perspective and asks Kiesler if Berenice Abbott can provide what he needs.
*
"I have started the reproduction in colour of 5 paintings of mine," Dee writes to Miss Dreier, referring to the work on his "album" which he
calculates will take him all summer. "Next winter I expect to attack the big glass and Tu m' [8.7.1918]."
Having telephoned the previous day for news, Dee tells Miss Dreier that the colourist's work on her lithographs [11.5.1937] will not be finished until August, and he encloses an up-to-date budget. "How is The Haven this year?" he enquires, "My regards to Mr Penny and Cocky [the parrot]."
*
In last week's column for Ce Soir [18.6.1937], Duchamp announced that today, to mark the centenary on 22 June, he would publish the biography of Paul Morphy.
Ephemerides
1912.06.25
1912. Tuesday, [Haimhausen]
With a card of the Rhine at Basel, Marcel writes to "Mesdames Nicolle", his aunt Ketty, his grandmother and her daughter Julia Bertrand [24.7.1900] in Neuilly: "Ideal weather. Voyage without incident, arrived in Munich Friday evening. I embrace the three of you very affectionately, Marcel."
Ephemerides
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