2026.07.22
two more pages of Duchamp & Ich
2025.07.22
451 Rhawn Gallery
Stephen Lauf PRF Complete 2025.07.22 2025.07.22
2024.07.22
The Motherboard of Dementia
1951.07.22
1951. Sunday, New York City
Walter Arensberg has written to Marcel announcing the arrival [15.2.1951] of Portrait du Dr R. Dumouchel. Though filthy it is in excellent condition, and they are "quite bowled over" by it.
"I am so happy," replies Marcel, "that Dumouchel arrived in good health, although very dirty." He tells them that Miss Adler, who has been restoring a number of his pictures [2.5.1951], "will have no difficulty" cleaning it; the oil paint--which she already knows was by Behrendt--was recommended to him by his German friend Max Bergmann [1.3.1910].
In response to the Arensbergs' puzzlement at "the curious mit-like aura or halo about the hand", Marcel explains that although "it is a definite 1910 painting in technique, yet the 'halo' around the hand... is a sign of my subconscious preoccupation towards a metarealism. ... It has no definite meaning or explanation," he continues, "except the satisfaction of a need for the 'miraculous' that preceded the Cubist period."
After studying it alongside other paintings of the period 1910-11 in their collection, Portrait de Joueurs d'Echecs [15.6.1912], Portrait de M. Duchamp père, assis [6.5.1911] and Peau Brune [19.1.1915], ~alter declares: "It certainly suggests a very strange relationship... It makes us feel that 1910--taken altogether in relationship to the Chess Players of 1911 [15.6.1912]--corresponds in some way or other to a great divide."
To Walter's remark that "from the point of view of chronological sequence" it gives him the impression of "successive moves in a game of chess", Marcel says that his comparison "is absolutely right, but when will I administer checkmate or will I be mated?" he wonders...
Ephemerides
1947.07.22
1947. Tuesday, New York City
Maria Martins invites Stefi Kiesler and Marcel to dine at her house.
Ephemerides
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