About the Book
Between 1915 and 1923, Marcel Duchamp created one of the most mystifying art works of the early twentieth century: The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (also known as the Large Glass). The work is over nine feet tall, and on its glass surface Duchamp used such unorthodox materials as lead wire, lead foil, mirror silver, and dust, in addition to more conventional oil paint and varnish. Duchamp's declared subject is the relation between the sexes, but his protagonists are biomechanical creatures: a "Bride" in the upper panel hovers over a "Bachelor Apparatus" in the panel below, stimulating the "Bachelors" with "love gasoline" for an "electrical stripping." In preparation for the Large Glass, Duchamp wrote hundreds of notes, which he considered just as important as the work itself. He published 178 during his lifetime, but over 100 more notes relating to the Glass were discovered and published following his death. In this landmark book, Linda Henderson provides the first systematic study of the Large Glass in relation to the entire corpus of Duchamp's notes for the project.Since Duchamp declared his interest in creating a "Playful Physics," she focuses on the scientific and technological themes that pervade the notes and the imagery of the Large Glass.
In doing so, Henderson provides an unprecedented history of science as popularly known at the turn of the century, centered on late Victorian physics. In addition to electromagnetic waves, including X-rays and the Hertzian waves of wireless telegraphy, the areas of science to which Duchamp responded so creatively ranged from chemistry and classical mechanics to thermodynamics, Brownian movement, radioactivity, and atomic theory. Restored to its context and amplified by the information in the posthumously published notes, the Large Glass appears far richer and more multifaceted and witty than had ever been suspected. Henderson also includes a close examination of Duchamp's literary and artistic models for creative invention based on science, including Alfred Jarry, Raymond Roussel, Frantisek Kupka, and Guillaume Apollinaire. The book will not only redefine scholarship on Duchamp and the Large Glass, but will be a crucial resource for historians of literature, science, and modernism.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Duchamp and Invisible Reality, 1911-1912 1 Duchamp's First Quest for the Invisible: X-Rays, Transparency, and Internal Views of the Figure, X-Rays: History and Popularization Duchamp's Painting and X-Rays, 1911-1912 Picabia, Cubism, and X-Rays 2 The Invisible Reality of Matter Itself: Electrons, Radioactivity, and Even Alchemy, Spring and Summer Giving Form to Electrons Munich Works, Summer 1912: Radioactivity, Alchemy, and Chemistry Munich Works, Summer 1912: First Borrowings from the Language of Technology Part II: The Transition from Painter to Artist as Engineer-Scientist, Fall 3 From Painter to Engineer, I: Depersonalization of Drawing Style and Adoption of Human-Machine Analogies, Fall New Approaches to the Drawn Line Duchamp, the Machine, and Human-Machine Analogies The "Jura-Paris Road" Project 4 The Lure of Science: Imaginative Scientists (Crookes, Tesla) and Scientific Imaginations (Jarry, Roussel) Sir William Crookes (1832-1919): Science and the Unknown Nikola Tesla (1856-1943): Science as Spectacle Alfred Jarry (1873-1907): Themes of Electromagnetism and Electricity in "Docteur Faustroll" and "Le Surmale" Raymond Roussel (1877-1933): Scientific Machines in "Impressions d'Afrique" 5 From Painter to Engineer, II: A Rousselian Dialogue with the Equipment of Science and Technology Begins, "Painting of Precision": "Chocolate Grinder (No. 1)" and "Chocolate Grinder (No. 2)" "Beauty of Indifference": "Musical Erratum," the "3 Standard Stoppages," and the Early Readymades Part III: "Playful" Science and Technology in The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 6 Toward the Large Glass: The Box of 1914 and General Introduction to the Glass The "Box of 1914" and the Model of Leonardo's Science New York, 1915: Execution of the "Large Glass" Begins 7 First Conceptions of the Bride and Her Interaction with the Bachelors The Theme of Collision: From Popular Culture to Science and Beyond The Bride as Automobile The Bride as a Modern Automaton Descended from Villiers's "L'Eve future" 8 The Large Glass as a Painting of Electromagnetic Frequency Hertzian Waves and Wireless Telegraphy in French Culture and Avant-Grade Literature Communication via Electromagnetic Waves in the Art and Theory of Kupka Wireless Telegraphy, Telepathy, and Radio Control in the "Large Glass" "Appareils Enregistreurs" and Other Indexical Signs in the "Large Glass" 9 Other Scientific and Technological Dimensions of the Bride Meteorology and the Eiffel Tower The Bride as an Incandescent Lightbulb Biology and the Bride: J.-H. Fabre and Remy de Gourmont 10 Other Scientific and Technological Dimensions of the Bachelors, I: The Bachelor Apparatus as Playground of the Would-Be Physical Chemist Old and New Identities in the Bachelor Apparatus Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, the Liquefaction of Gases, and Jean Perrin's "Molecular Reality" 11 Other Scientific and Technological Dimensions of the Bachelors, II: The Unknown Mobile and Desire Dynamo, Playful Mechanics, and Agriculture in the Large Glass Rediscovering the Mobile, the Desire Dynamo, and Aspects of Energy and Power in the Bachelor Apparatus Playful Mechanics in the Chariot and the Juggler/Handler of Gravity The Chariot as the "Plow of Life" in Duchamp's "Machine Agricole" Part IV: Conclusion 12 Conclusion, I: New Thoughts on Style and Content in Relation to Science and Technology in Duchamp's Large Glass The Musee des Arts et Metiers, Roussel, and Duchamp's Humorous Invention of a "Plastically Imaged Mixture of Events" The "Large Glass" as a Scientific-Technological Allegory of Love and Life: The Virgin, Persephone, and the Eiffel Tower 13 Conclusion, II: An Overview of Duchamp's Playful Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Early Works From Bergsonian Cubism to Science and Invention: A "Continuum of... Magnetization or of Repulsion" A Review of Science, Technology, and Self-Fashioning in Duchamp's Early Works, the "Large Glass" Project, and the Readymades The "Large Glass" in the Context of Early Twentieth-Century Modernism 14 Coda: Extensions and Echoes of the Large Glass Electricity and Electromagnetism in Duchamp's Later Works The 1950s Legal Tablet Listings: Thoughts of Another "Box"? Appendix A: The Collection of Notes Duchamp Contemplated in His 1950s Legal Tablet Listings Appendix B: A Note on the Construction of Duchamp as Alchemist Notes Outline of Bibliography Bibliography Indexes
About the Author :
Linda Dalrymple Henderson is David Bruton, Jr., Centennial Professor in Art History and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas, Austin.
Review :
Winner of the 1999 Robert Hamilton Author Award, University of Texas Cooperative Society "A remarkable new study ... I greatly recommend Henderson's book as an exciting exploration of the borders between art and science, as they were traced at the dawn of Moderism by an elliptical genius."--Arthur C. Danto, The Nation
