Another View

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Bruce Hainley Essay from Tom Friedman, by Bruce Hainley, Dennis Cooper and Adriane Searle.

The eminences grises are down on Duchamp. Even though they might not agree on much, they do agree on how disastrous Duchamp's influence has been on, well, just about everything. They are really down on him. Why? I think it has something to do with Duchamp's supposedly abandoning the retinal and his pranks, his bad puns. Or it might have to do with a perceived elitism, a Frenchman lording it over bohemian Americans. But even Duchamp didn't always listen to himself. his objects object; his paintings tell a different story, as does his indifference.

He loved art so much he stripped it bare and left it in the woods. It died of frostbite and hypothermia. he was said to be in mourning by playing chess, by being just a breather, but in his dust breeder's dusty studio he built a remarkable stand-in. he tinkered on it for twenty years. It was an invasion into a thickety scene of givens: given the waterfall, given the green light, given the body stripped down to its strangeness, given the brambles, given the peepholes, given it's hard to see.

It's hard to see how he abandoned anything except what was abandoning him. He saw the technology of 'art' and the technology of 'self' in need of a mechanic, in need of a scientist, in need of someone to play with the technology of seeing. It was his train set. He liked when the engine tunnelled into the dark.