Duchamp
Love and Death, even
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- 29,99 €
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- 29,99 €
Publisher Description
Marcel Duchamp’s stature in the history of art has grown steadily since the 1950s, as several artistic movements have embraced him as their founding father. But although his influence is comparable only to Picasso’s, Duchamp continues to be relatively unknown outside his narrow circle of followers. This book seeks to explain his oeuvre, which has been shrouded with mystery.
Duchamp’s two great preoccupations were the nature of scientific truth and a feeling for love with its natural limit, death. His works all speak of eroticism in a way that pushes the socially acceptable to its outer limits. Juan Antonio Ramirez addresses such questions as the meaning of the artist’s ground-breaking ready-mades and his famous installation Etant donnés; his passionate essay reproduces all of Duchamp’s important works, in addition to numerous previously unpublished visual sources. Duchamp: Love and Death, even is a seminal monograph for understanding this crucial figure of modern art.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A virtual Duchamp industry has arisen over the last decade or so, as the chameleonlike art provocateur has been canonized as a primal postmodern. While there are plenty of explications of his oeuvre available (Thierry De Duve's philosophical explorations being among the best), this sumptuous, illustration- packed study is one of the most systematic and clear, if not the most comprehensive. Ram rez, a professor of art history at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, devotes nearly the entire book to what he sees as Duchamp's major works: The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (hence the book's subtitle) and Etant Donn es (a work Duchamp spent the last 30 years of his career planning and assembling), carefully analyzing each component of their complicated "mechanisms." He finds a plethora of sources in popular material and print culture for them both--the first, a sort of flattened mobile structure captured between two panes of (now cracked) glass; the second, a notorious macabre peep show-like installation. These sources are reproduced on nearly every page, along with details of the works themselves. Ram rez's tight focus will not suit readers seeking an overview of the career or life, and his somewhat clinical presentation will turn off others. But those looking for a way into the intricacies of two arguable masterpieces of 20th-century art will find few better avenues than this meticulous and devoted study.
