2005.03.23 12:17
Re: new Trumbauer fan (system)
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Saw this artwork last night as I continued to read ETANT DONNES... (by d'Harnoncourt and Hopps).
"Another "landscape" which Duchamp produced in 1959, forms a tantalizing link between The Large Glass and ETANT DONNES... . The punning title Cols Alités, is amplified by a startling inscription: "Projet pour le modèle 1959 de 'La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même'" The drawing is more startling still. Duchamp has drawn a background for his Glass! The basic elements of the Glass, including three parallel lines across the middle representing the Bride's Clothes, are drawn in ink, and behind them, apparently lightly sketched in pencil, rise the irregular rolling forms of a hilly landscape. To the right, just tangent to on blade of the Scissors atop the chocolate Grinder, Duchamp has added an electrical pole, the common variety that punctuates the countryside everywhere, complete with glass insulating knobs and wires disappearing in the distance.
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For it is impossible not to take the view of undulating hills and the explicit electrical pole, with the title pun to "Causalités," as a broad hint at the assemblage [ie, ETANT DONNES] that was gradually nearing completion in the Fourteenth Street studio. The pole its wires reads in retrospect as a direct reference to the "electricity at large," which now performs a practical function in the new tableau."
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I can't read French, so I don't know what Duchamp's inscription says. Nonetheless, it's evident that Duchamp (too) thought about the presence of electricity everywhere. [Brian, I'd like to introduce this work to electronetwork, though perhaps you might better put it in context there.]
I'm seeing this work as another link (albeit minuscule) between where Duchamp's work mostly is now (ie, the Philadelphia Museum of Art) and the collection's prime location at the head of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
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Was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday taking pictures--was there Sunday as well, but only scoped out then what I'd rather photograph on a sunny day. Some very nice axial coincidences were there to be recorded, which is great because "Nudist Camp at the Philadelphia Museum of Art" centers on the axial coincidence of Jennewein's Sacred and Profane Love and the Duchamp collection, especially The Large Glass.
I haven't seen the Dali exhibit yet, put the public video gallery is now playing, along with Un Chien Andalou, Destino (a Dali - Disney 1945 'collaboration' completed 2003). Destino is a joy to watch, and, though I'm generally not crazy about Disney animation, the animated imagery is great via Dali's imagination. I took about 2 dozen still of the video and will post them soon.
2005.03.23
fallout from the confirmation
I can now begin to see all my work (almost whatever I do each day even) as the potential for some object or thing that constitutes a (sellable) work of art. The objects can have a Duchamp meets Cornell character, like Cornell with a teleology. I really do that already, and I’ve wanted to do that with the Artifacts of Ottopia all along, but now the concept is tighter because the narrative is now so much more real.
Perhaps the greatest conflict lies in me wanting to continue producing via whim or me producing very specifically and more intently. In the second approach some projects will surely fall by the wayside (as if a lot of projects don’t do that already). I like the notion of my work being an ongoing series of clues and manifestations of a deliberate system--that’s what I see as most Duchamp. Yet there is every possibility that my work will have the greatest impact on architecture. I guess what I really should do is compose works that are pseudo scientific, scholarly yet mysterious, hidden meaning and also mixing odd things up. The one thing I have that Duchamp and Cornell never had is cad, and all the drawings that go with that.
Should it be my aim to tackle the abundance?
2001.03.23
about today, etc.
...a set of Duchamp packages... ...some kind of artwork with the cracks, and some kind of oddball object maybe...
2000.03.23 12:30
teaching at its best
I said what I said because I saw some serious ignoring of intentions going on.
And because of ad hominums, it appears other flaws will also be ignored.
The notion of reenactment within architecture is indeed central to architectural aesthetics, especially in our time. With reenactment comes a clearer understanding of authenticity versus inauthenticity. Because of reenactment, what is most often deemed inauthentic, is more correctly an inversion of the authentic, and here Duchamp's urinal redux is a perfect example.
Even though Disney Land/World are enormous commercial/tourist successes, they nonetheless remain aesthetic quandaries, but they really should be understood aesthetically. Again, because of reenactment, I not only see answers to Disneyfication in the architecture of Ludwig II, but I also see in the architecture of Ludwig II the opportunity to study the "architecture of reenactment" at a scale and magnitude (and accessibility) quite uncommon. I want nothing more than to discuss architectural reenactment in a scholarly manner.
Stephen Lauf
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