Les Transformateurs Duchamp/Duchamp's TRANS/formers: (Jean-Francois Lyotard: Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists)

This book is the third of a series of five volumes that exhaustively brings together the writings of Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) on contemporary art and artists. This collection of essays, written between 1974 and 1977 in the midst of Duchamp's rediscovery in France, was published by Editions Galilee, Paris, in 1977 and in English translation by the Lapis Press, Los Angeles, in 1990. This volume republishes the two versions face-to-face, including the drawings, diagrams, and images of the original edition. Herman Parret presents the text in a substantial introduction, and Dalia Judovitz situates it in the more general framework of Lyotardian philosophical reflection. Duchamp's TRANS/formers reconstructs Large Glass and Given, Duchamp's two major works that glorify the body in its topological conceptuality. The book introduces the question of the advent and the event of art and invites us further to consider the debt that philosophical commentary owes to the artistic gesture.

Table of Contents:
Herman Parret: Préface / Preface Jean-François Lyotard: Les Transformateurs Duchamp Duchamp's TRANS/formers Dalia Judovitz: Postface / Epilogue

About the Author :
The philosopher and literary theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) was Woodruff Professor of Philosophy and French at Emory University. Herman Parret is Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Language at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven. Dalia Judovitz is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of French and Italian, Emory University. She is the author of Drawing on Art: Duchamp, Dada, & Co.; Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes: The Origins of Modernity; Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit; and The Culture of the Body: Genealogies of Modernity; and she is the coeditor of Dialectics and Narrative.

Review :
Herman Parret donne une bonne introduction, à la fois ponctuelle et éclairante des enjeux esthétiques touchés par l'auteur, et encourage le lecteur à se faire emporter par la séduction de l'art de Duchamp, à laquelle lui, pas plus que Jean-François Lyotard, ne semble pouvoir résister. Stefania Caliandro. Nouveaux Actes Sémiotiques. Comptes rendus, 2011.