Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Websites

Rocket science is complicated and so is Marcel Duchamp. Here are a few websites that simplify and reveal the granularity of intent and meaning in Duchamp's work:

http://www.understandingduchamp.com/
Andrew Stafford Web Projects

This excellent site presents a clear, linear artist chronology with highlights of more significant works. It is minimal and the style may not work for everyone. After reading most of the Dawn Ades, Neil Cox and David Hopkins work Marcel Duchamp, this site is a refreshing break from the minutia the book presents of his work. Written in clear, accessible language, the website provides step by step explanations of Duchamp's work, complete with interactive features central to revealing context and meaning. This site is a nice, easy introduction, a good way to find out if you even want a second date with Duchamp. Keep in mind he'll never marry you, no matter how many dates.

http://www.marcelduchamp.net/


The above site is self-described thusly:

The Marcel Duchamp World Community Web Site offers a neutral, unbiased, Internet location for the meeting and exchange of ideas among the international community of people interested in Marcel Duchamp studies. The site welcomes news, events, publications, papers -- anything related to Marcel Duchamp and his larger circle of friends in Dada and Surrealism.

Although the site offers more information streams, it is not visually pleasing or very engaging. It repeats a weakness (or strength depending on what you're after) of the Internet; rabbit holes in every direction to distract and impede forward momentum. Sometimes white noise masquerades as too many uninformed opinions.




The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (the Large Glass)

http://www.understandingduchamp.com/

After 1912, Duchamp would paint only a few more canvases. He was growing increasingly disillusioned with what he called “retinal” art — art that appealed only to the eye — and wanted to create a new kind of art, one which would engage the mind.

He began to make notes for a large-scale project unlike anything else, which would become his monumental work of 1923, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. In one of these notes Duchamp wonders cryptically “Can one make works of art which are not ‘of art’?”

His next work would take Duchamp far outside existing boundaries of art, into unnamed territory now called conceptual art.






A schematic overlay diagram of Duchamp’s Glass as outlined in the typography of the Green Book.

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