Marcel Duchamp and Eroticism

FROM THE SAME WRITER

2007 : Marcel Duchamp et lrotisme. Dijon, Les presses du rel (http// : www.lespressesdureel.com), collection lcart absolu. 2007 : Les Jardins de lart brut . Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection Chantiers, 2007. 2006 : Maurice Princet, le mathmaticien du cubisme , Paris, Lchoppe. 2005 : Catalogue de lexposition Marcel Duchamp R Rose Slavy (Muse des Beaux-Arts dOrlans, 28 novembre 2005-29 janvier 2006). 2005 : Marie Le Masson Le Golft (1749-1826) : Balance de la Nature (1784). Prface : La femme qui notait la Nature , Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection Lcart absolu poche, 128 p. 2005 : Le Diable au dsert. Anank Hel ! suivi de Paul Tisseyre Anank : Rires et Larmes dans larme, Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection lcart absolu. 2005 : Le Duchamp facile. Dijon, Les Presses du rel, collection Lcart absolu poche. 2004 : Marcel Duchamp, mis nu. propos du processus cratif , Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection Chantiers. 2004 : Lydie Fischer Sarazin-Levassor : Un chec matrimonial. Le cur de la marie mis nu par son clibataire, mme. Prface : Marcel Duchamp et Lydie Sarazin-Levassor. Un colloque sentimental Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection Lcart absolu. A Marriage in Check. The Heart of the Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelor, Even. Preface :A Sentimental Conversation: Marcel Duchamp and Lydie Sarazin-Levassor, Dijon, Les Presses du rel, 2007. 2002 : La bibliothque de Marcel Duchamp, peut-tre, Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection Relectures. 2002, Jean-Pierre Brisset : Les uvres natatoires. Prface : La natation mne tout , Postface : Brisset et la natation , Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection lcart absolu poche. 2001 : Jean-Pierre Brisset Prince des penseurs, inventeur, grammairien et prophte, Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection lcart absolu. 2001 (1e dition) : Jean-Pierre Brisset : uvres compltes, Dijon, Les presses du rel, collection lcart absolu, 2004 : 2e dition. 1997 : Catalogue de lexposition Michel Bral (1832-1915) et les linguistes de son temps, Orlans, Centre Charles Pguy. 1990-1991 : Des Espces de lOrigine, vol.1, Monitoires n18, vol.2, Monitoires n20, Cymbalum Pataphysicum. 1986 : Jean-Pierre Brisset, Prince des Penseurs, Paris, ditions Ramsay.

Marcel Duchamp and Eroticism

Edited by

Marc Dcimo

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING

Marcel Duchamp and Eroticism, edited by Marc Dcimo This book first published 2007 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright 2007 by Marc Dcimo and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN 1-84718-118-X

FOR MY PARENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF IMAGES ............................................................................................... x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................. xiv PRELIMINARIES Marc Dcimo .................................................................................................. 1 PART ONE: MECHANICALS EROTICISM, EXOTISM, BOVARYISM Marc Dcimo ................................................................................................ 18 SPIRALING Jean Suquet ................................................................................................... 26 BODY MATTERS: MARCEL DUCHAMPS TANT DONNS REVISITED Michael R. Taylor ......................................................................................... 33 EROTIC OPTICS, ANEMIC MECHANICALS Patrick De Haas............................................................................................. 43 RROSE SLAVY: MACHINIST/EROTATON James W. McManus...................................................................................... 56 FOURTH-DIMENSIONAL SEX: DUCHAMP BETWEEN THE SCOPIC AND TACTILE Julian Bourg .................................................................................................. 71 PART TWO: ENCOUNTERS DUCHAMP, DU POIL & CIE Sbastien Rongier ......................................................................................... 82

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Table of Contents

MARCEL DUCHAMPS RROSE SLAVY MANNEQUIN AT THE 1938 EXPOSITION INTERNATIONALE DU SURRALISME Lewis Kachur ................................................................................................ 96 QUEER TURNS: THE CINEMATIC FRIENDSHIP OF MARCEL DUCHAMP AND CHARLES DEMUTH David A. Gerstner ....................................................................................... 105 WHY NOT AGAPISM INSTEAD? MANIFESTO Tania Lorandi.............................................................................................. 116 RATIONALIZING EROS: THE PLAGUE OF ONAN, THE PROCREATIVE IMPERATIVE AND DUCHAMPS SEXUAL AUTOMATONS Fae Brauer................................................................................................... 126 THE LAUGHTER AND TEARS OF EROS Gavin Parkinson.......................................................................................... 149 CECI NEST PAS UN CON: DUCHAMP, LACAN, AND LORIGINE DU MONDE Derek Sayer................................................................................................. 160 TANT DONN PICASSO: NOTES ON A BLIND CONVERGENCE. Philippe Dagen............................................................................................ 173 PART THREE: HORIZONS FUSION AND ROT: THE EROTICISM OF THE COLOR BROWN IN MARCEL DUCHAMPS WORK Elfriede Dreyer............................................................................................ 184 AN EROTIC PARADIGM: JOSEPH BEUYS THE SILENCE OF MARCEL DUCHAMP IS OVERRATED Leah Sweet.................................................................................................. 195 DUCHAMP AT DALS MERCY Frdrique Joseph-Lowery.......................................................................... 208 CONCERNING RROSE SLAVY Ornella Volta............................................................................................... 221

Duchamp and Eroticism

ix

PASSING THROUGH E.R.O.S. MARCEL DUCHAMP AND THE 8TH EXPOSITION INTERNATIONALE DU SURRALISME (Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris, 15 December 1959-15 February 1960) Ccile Bargues ............................................................................................ 239 TO EACH HIS OWN: MARCEL DUCHAMP, DUCHAMPIANS,
AND VEIL GAMES

Sverine Gossart ......................................................................................... 255 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................... 266 INDEX .......................................................................................................... 287 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS ............................................................................ 295

LIST OF IMAGES

Fig.1: Coquelin-Cadet, Le Rire, Paul Ollendorf, Paris, 1887, 5: The first "assisted" Mona Lisa, by Sapeck. Fig. 2: Fantasio, n131, 1 January, 1912. Fig. 3: Le capitaine Lux , Le Rire, n472, 27 February, 1912. Fig. 4: Le Ministre des Joconds (Doumergue, Monis, Caillaux), Fantasio, n179, 1 January, 1914. Fig. 5: Guillaume II, Postcard, 1918. Fig. 6: Jean-Pierre Brisset, around 1913. Fig. 7: Le Bovarysme by Jules de Gaultier, cover. Fig. 8: Schema of Grand Verre. Fig. 9: Man Ray: Cover of the book Photographs by Man Ray 1920, Paris 1934. Fig. 10: Advertisement from Le Rire, n88, 9 October, 1920: Rigaud Perfume. Fig. 11: Optophone, Francis Picabia, 1922. Fig. 12: Le double monde, Francis Picabia, 1919. Fig. 13: Advertisement from Le Rire, n220, 20 April, 1907. Fig. 14: Photo of the Rrose Slavy mannequin, Raoul Ubac, 1938. Fig. 15: Detail. Fig. 16: Photo of Duchamp and Man Ray sitting in Los Angeles, 1949 under the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne. Photo: anonymous.

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xi

Fig. 17: Replica of the Door for Gradiva, Marcel Duchamp, Paris, 1968. Fig. 18: Two Sailors Urinating, Charles Demuth, 1930. Private Collection, Courtesy James Maroney, Inc., Leceister, Vermont. Fig. 19-24: Images by Tania Lorandi. Fig. 25: Sundays, Marcel Duchamp, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 26: Hermann-Paul, Repopulation Nous sommes comme M. Piot. Nous sommes pour la quantit! Drawing, LAssiette au beurre, n6, 9 May 1901, 104-105 (with the kind permission of Bibliothque Forney, Paris). Fig. 27: Pdagogie intensive, Drawing, H. Avelot, Le Rire, n400, 10 September 1910 (with the kind permission of Bibliothque Forney, Paris). Fig. 28: La femme apache. O le pre a pass. Tiens ! Le fils Fouettard ! L. Mirande, Le Rire, n413, 10 December 1910 (with the kind permission of Bibliothque Forney, Paris). Fig. 29: Catalogue with five outfits designed to be worn during a wedding ceremony, including a brides dress, 1900, Guide for weddings, Bibliothque Forney, Paris (with the kind permission of Bibliothque Forney, Paris). Fig. 30: La Broyeuse de chocolat (Chocolate Grinder) Marcel Duchamp, 1913. Fig. 31: The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated, Joseph Beuys, 1964, Museum Schloss Moyland. Fig. 32: Two Girls with Shining Bread, Joseph Beuys, 1966, Museum Schloss Moyland. Fig. 33: Salvador Dal: La Rois et Le Renne Traverses par de Nus en Vitesse View 1 (ink written on a printed broadside about Pope Pius XII). Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Jacqueline, Paul and Peter Matisse in Memory of their mother Alexina Duchamp). Fig. 34: Merderose, Guillaume Apollinaire. Fig. 35: Chapeau de paille, Francis Picabia, 1921.

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List of Images

Fig. 36: Three photos of the movie Le Sang dun pote, Jean Cocteau. (with the courtesy of Pierre Berg). Fig. 37: Le gardien du Louvre, Lucien Mtivet, Le Rire, n355, 20 November, 1909. Fig. 38: Detail. R reversed. Fig. 39: The Surrealist group listening to Robert Desnos during one of his waking dreams, Paris, December 1924. Photo: Man Ray. Fig. 40: Photo used for the exposition poster (hair in the form of a tie) realized by Mimi Parent). Photo : Pablo Volta. Fig. 41: Andr Breton and Jos Pierre at Daniel Cordiers, with Bellmers La Poupe in the background. Photo: Pablo Volta. Fig. 42: The banquet given on the evening of the vernissage in the last hall of E.R.O.S.; the idea was Meret Oppenheims. On the walls, Portrait dune toile (III) by Max Walter Svanberg and Large Target Construction by Jasper Johns. Photo: Roger van Hecke (all rights reserved), Centre Pompidou, Bibliothque Kandinsky, Paris. Fig. 43: Photo of Pablo Volta: Preparation of the inaugural banquet. Fig. 44: The main exposition hall, baptized fort os-sexe. In the foreground, LObjet du couchant by Mir ; at the back, Bed by Rauschenberg and LObjet invisible by Giacometti. Photo: Henri Glaeser. Fig. 45: Pablo Volta, photo of the Bote alerte reproduced on the cover of the standard edition of the E.R.O.S. expo catalogue. Fig. 46: Jean Tinguely. Hommage Duchamp, 1960. Stdtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mnchengladbach. Photo Lennart Olson. Fig. 47: H. Gerbault, Le Rire, n160, 21 February 1906, cover. Fig.48: A. Roubille, Le Rire, n355, 20 November 1909, cover.

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xiii

fr Joseph Beuys: VG-Bildunst, Bonn, 2007, 2007 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild. Succession Marcel Duchamp. ADAGP, Paris, 2006. Salvador Dal, Fondation Gala-Salvador Dal. ADAGP, Paris, 2006. Henri Glaeser. ADAGP, Paris, 2006. Franois Martinez Picabia. ADAGP, Paris, 2006. Raoul Ubac. ADAGP, Paris, 2006. Pablo Volta. Man Ray Trust/ ADAGP, Paris, 2006. Jean Tinguely ADAGP, Paris, 2006.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This colloquium took place on December 7, 8 and 9, 2005 at the University of Orlans and the Muse des Beaux-Arts in Orlans, France, where there was also an exposition entitled Marcel Duchamp R Rose Slavy (28 November 200529 January 2006) with a 16-pages brochure of the same title. The colloquium poster (which will leave its mark in the history of the genre) was created by Guillaume P, editor, PhD in Fine Art and Pataphysician. It appears on the cover of this book. I would like to thank all those who have accompanied me in this adventure, from the preparatory stages to the realization of this book: milie Bettega, Sandra Dcimo, Isabelle Klinka, Jacqueline Matisse-Monnier, Hliane Ventura, and the translators, Paul B. Franklin and Catherine McMillan. Finally Hlios Azoulay, Marielle Rubens, Jean-Louis Tallon and Thomas Valverde, who organized the concert Musiques autour de Marcel Duchamp. These events were supported by the Orlans Town Council, the University of Orlans, the French Ministry of Education and Research, the Muse des Beaux-Arts in Orlans, the Centre Region, the CROUS dOrlans-Tours, Intertrad and the Marcel Duchamp Association.

PRELIMINARIES MARC DCIMO

It was only once freed of the traditional concept of painting (of making beautiful things; indeed, of making anything at all), only when he had rid himself of the activity of paintingthat olfactory and gestural practice he often described as compulsive and masturbatorythat Marcel Duchamp became a researcher. Then, as well as the painter he had always been, Duchamp became an enquiring mind. Marcel Duchamp had a good eye; not only because he discovered new talent (the thirty or so notices he wrote for the Catalogue de la Socit Anonyme, which constitutes the first museum of modern art in the United States, is evidence enough1) but also because he succeeded, especially with his readymades, in adding another universe to the previously existing one: that of anartism. Only those forms that appealed to his cultivated eye as being new, whether in Art or in Literature, irresistibly drew him. Dj vu and dj dit held decidedly no attraction. Like many of his peers, Duchamp defended the exception; i.e. that which has not yet been accepted into common knowledge. To be, to exist, is to be different. In this respect, Duchamp is a perfect example of his times: he depends on his environment and the post-symbolist ideas that spread to the very frontiers of what we call les avant-gardes. Even as a cubist, Duchamp is not content to be just another painter. But such a quest is only possible when driven by an inner necessity. Duchamp (as an affective being) strives/is urged to reveal to spectators their own ingenuousness, their capacity to be astonished. In truth, Duchamp goes out of his way to render even the informed spectators vision completely new, unencumbered. Using the devices available to him, he seeks to surprise, to incite curiosity, even to arouse awareness so that the spectator might (re)consider an object that is usually fixed in a precise function. For it is the spectator who must make the discovery that familiar forms (a bottle rack, a public urinal, a hat stand but also linguistic forms, for example the word fountain) can be subject to
1 Marcel Duchamp, Duchamp du signe. crits, (Paris: Flammarion, 1976), 193-215 (now abridged in DDS). The collection is now conserved in Yale University, Connecticut.

Preliminaries

a new interpretation when they are presented in a particular context and suddenly revealed. These ordinary and sometimes everyday forms, when they are assisted, become intriguing in a performative manner. Eroticism (a vague notion that Duchamp never defined, though he saw fit to make it his own) is one pointer. Eroticism is the tension that allows us to discover the other as we have never before imagined, charged with an unspokenand sexualfunction. It is as though all interpretation were inevitably flawed by our initial childhood failure in that most familiar of all relations, with our parents; and in an (the) essential partthe part that unites the parentsthe sexual part. Only then do we discover that things are in fact going on elsewhere: not in what is presented for interpretation at surface levellike the pawns we move around the chessboard according to pre-established rules, or the words we speak, obeying normative linguistic constraintsbut in our intuition. And even in our awareness that beyond this combination of pawns, words and things the otherfamiliar though he/she may seemis what Freud described as uncanny, or uncannily familiar, and likely to have an unseen side, a playful side whose logic is opaque, indeed hermetic. Eroticism: a show, a set of signs to be read; a subjacent logic to be discerned (as in a game of chess), inviting us to look beyond pre-conceived ideas. Eroticism is the proof that what we believe, what we believe to be established, should never be considered final. Eroticism is the ultimate opportunity to sing the praises of thought, dynamic thought, that adapts and creates (as opposed to what some describe as a-thinking, which remains inexorably rigid). Eroticism is the very instant when the click takes place, the rendezvous, the moment when our vision changes and approaches what is there, before our eyes, in a new way. Eroticism disconcerts thoughtor what we believe to be thought, but is, in reality, only an incomplete viewpoint. We might describe thought as an agency that is constantly capable of being surprised and changed. We are done with life, checkmateintellectually deadthe day that capacity to be astonished no longer functions and we accept the obvious, apparent, conventional interpretation. The very image of dpassement and what, according to Duchamp, life should be, intellectual life, are one and the same: Eroticism. ros, cest la vie. Duchamps work provides an opportunity to focus on the infinitely eroticdynamic functioning of thought, on its physiology; which consists in appreciating, through the intervention of the eye, what lies beyond the screen of memory and prejudice and being filled with wonder by the much more meaningful shadowy side, illuminated by the seduction of a revealed truth. If only we take the trouble to look. In short, Duchamps work commands our attention like a flash of light. One man perceives its brightness while another is blind. Duchamps work demands visual acuity, the subtle ability to marvel, the

Duchamp and Eroticism

blossoming of an inner smile. When Art with a capital A is judged to be outmoded in a world where technological progress inspires wonder much more readily, anartism offers a solution. Today, we can only observe that Duchamp has stood the test of time remarkably well, or should I say the test of familiarity (Duchamps bte noire), which ultimately and inexorably invades our minds. The historical, social and affective reasons that made Duchamp situate his uvre within that quest are worth investigating, as well as the devices that illustrate the notion of Eroticism as he presents it and his desire for mischievous connivance. That is precisely the aim of this book. In regard to this aspect of his uvre, it seemed appropriate to consult different viewpoints, lest we lose a dash of piquant. Those forms (the readymades for example, commonplace and even mundane when all is said and done), neglected by mere viewers because they see only their usual and ordinary functions; those forms which become incongruous in the intimacy of a gallery or a studio, are reified by spectators. Vivified. Discovered. Their destiny is assured by the intellectual reflection they incite. Their form is the potential within which another universe can be included, within which Duchamp creates intrigue in order to exalt his difference, to proclaim that he exists and that we must be aware of his existence. Eroticism and anartism organize the modalty through which the spectator can be reached. Behind the device is the ambition to dispel prejudice, to incite a radical modification in the viewpoint of the sufficiently attentive spectator, the one who is engaged by connivance and inner smiles. Those who are unwilling to give their full attention exclude themselves. This book about Duchamp aims to give a mirrorical return of that adventure, as perceived by each contributor. Consequently, its vision is kaleidoscopic. It is concerned with the inner eye and reflection; all in all, with the construction of Duchamp as an uvre perceived at a given time in the history of its reception by spectators of different horizons and disciplines. We will attempt to reify an uvre that is still put into question today in order to share it. For if we do not, it will become so familiar (to Duchamps great displeasure) that it will die and be dumped in the store rooms of museums, like so many abandoned tombs. This would be particularly inappropriate; Duchamp, cest la vie. Curiously, while Duchamp esteemed that Eroticism was decisive for his work, the subject has never really been studied through the spy hole. That need has made itself felt. The Large Glass hit upon that delicate question of rapports and relations between man and woman. Do men and women communicate, and if so, how? Through speech? The sexual act? Jean Suquet questions the representation of these acts in the Large Glass. What should we conclude? Should we be content with the representation of a practice, like the Kinsey Report, which focuses on doing and letting others know? Can relation be put down on paper? Doesnt

Preliminaries

everything that is recorded in writing start out from the seeming impossibility of representing the relation between a man and a woman by symbols, written or iconographical? Isnt every attempt doomed to failure (as Lacan maintains)? How can we access a human being? How can we suggest one? With a succession of spirals? Or the emission of a gas? Often marked by the times in which they originated, the solutions to the enigma are all fruits of the imagination. The historical method has its good points; it establishes them as being so. Michael Taylor has strived to examine the conditions, indeed the conditioning, that fashioned certain interpretations. He focuses his attention on Given. It all takes place in the Philadelphia Museum of Art where the work has been housed since 1969. The complex installation has to be viewed through two little holes drilled in an old wooden door. But should the rather surprising reasoning behind the Large Glass (1915-1923), on view in the previous room, be borne in mind? Should we take advantage of the instruction manual which accompanies the work, Approximation dmontable, a dossier of photo-illustrations intended to help us put it all together? Or should we rely on a few anecdotes or trivialities? For that is the central issue with Duchamp: the spectators anxiety. We have to make the decision. Just like a chess player, we have to choose the strategy we would like to see triumph. So Given gains from being understood in relation to photography, Dada sculpture and Surrealist installations, but also to Ingres Bain turc (which Duchamp included in Morceaux choisis in 1968) and to those constructors of onanistic machines, or fake-humans as represented by Edison in Lve future and by Villiers de lIsle-Adam (whom Duchamp read and used for the Large Glass)2:
This is the arm of an android I made, animated for the first time by this surprising vital force which we call Electricity, which gives her, as you can see, all the softness, all the tenderness, all the illusion of Life!3

If Duchamp substitutes optical machines of precision, anaglyphs and stereoscopic research, not forgetting strange cinematic experiences, for those things in painting that are much too simplistic (merely pleasing to the eye, qualified as retinal), it is because these opticeries give him more satisfaction, according to Patrick de Haas. The vibration of an engine, the oh, so slow
2

Marc Dcimo, Marcel Duchamp mis nu. propos du processus cratif. (Dijon: Les presses du rel, collection Chantiers, 2004). 3 Auguste de Villiers de lIsle-Adam, (1880), Lve future, (Paris: GF GarnierFlammarion, 1992), 183-184. Also, 227: You understand, I couldnt allow the Idal to be accessible to everyone and anyone. In spite of the long nights and years of work the Andride cost me, along with my other tasks, she remained my secret. (translation by C. McMillan).

Duchamp and Eroticism

movement towards a deferred target that can be repeated infinitely, like lovemaking (The Act of love is of no importance, since it can be performed indefinitely.4). The interruptions and delays, the scrambling, the fact of never grasping reality, the oscillations that enrobe, must be in some way related to the image of woman that constantly eludes us, the female who possesses us. Duchamps optics, the eye that strives to discover, to touch, that haptic eye must be considered as a kind of inframince caress. After the eye, the idiolect of Rrose. For James McManus, Rroses language comes from her abandon of so-called serious science. It is constructed on a basis of alchemical operations that Duchamp knows very well for having found its quintessence in Pataphysics, a Science of Exceptions. This effort to achieve individualization was made in a search for treasure: to find the self, to make an appointment with the self; as all the sublimation around masturbation was to illustrate. Another point of view, another construction. Julian Bourg shows how Eroticism and the fourth dimension were able to offer Duchamp an imaginary solution, from the Large Glass to Given, taking in Paysage fautif (Wayward Landscape) (of which he interprets in passing the enigmatic meaning of the qualifying adjective) in order to succeed in representing or suggesting the non-representable. Yet another viewpoint: Sbastien Rongier focuses on the importance of the poil, in the history of mentalities and of iconographic representation, from L.H.O.O.Q. to Given, taking in Marius de Zayass haircut and those hairs of all sorts stuck onto Robert Mattas version of the Bote-enValise. If the under-arm hair visible in Libert guidant le peuple (1831) and Olympia (1863) caused scandal in their time, the poil, noticeable by its absence or its presence in Duchamps work is judged to be subversive. Beyond the inevitable erotic implications, or the history of bearded ladies and the vision of the troglodyte soldier who faced the Huns (the poilu5, the courageous fellow, in opposition to the shirkers and the bleus6), the poil is a manifestation of the DADA spirit and its presence or absence (according to the case) is an expression of Modernity. DADA, again. We always come back to DADA. The Surrealist exposition of 1938 (the one where 17 mannequins represented prostitutes under a sky lined with coal bags) provides another occasion for Duchamp to take his distance from what is imposed, and, according to Lewis Kachur, to breathe DADA into Surrealism. If it is true to say that one of the Surrealists scenographic strategies
4

Alfred Jarry, The Supermale (1902), (Jonathan Cape, 1968) Transl. from French by Ralph Gladstone and Barbara Wright. 5 A French infantryman of WW1, presumably so-called because they had neither the time nor the facilities to shave. 6 Lazare Sainan, LArgot des tranches daprs les Lettres des Poilus et les Journaux du Front, (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1915), 12-14.

Preliminaries

is to eroticize the commercial space of expositions, and that the fetishist aesthetics of the female body dominate, the Rrose Slavy mannequin affirms its originality in those questions it invites about sexual identity, the performative power of a title and a signature, and lastly, as though announcing the diorama of Given, about coherence in the continuity of an uvre. As with the presentation of a simple urinal (Fountain, 1917), the question is posed: can a mannequin, even a sophisticated one with an electric circuit and a handful of clues scattered around it, achieve the status of artwork? For David Gerstner, Rrose Slavy constitutes a happening; a manifestation that is inseparable from Duchamps own body (even if Rroses hands are not in fact Duchamps). Consequently, Rrose is a readymade, and perhaps the only projection of Marcels otherness, a projection resulting from the experience of a French artist exiled in phallocentric America (between 1910 and the beginning of the twenties), plunged into the often strange New York cultural milieu (that of Carl Van Vechten, Charles Demuth and the Stettheimer sisters). Rrose, born of the relation between Duchamp and his own cultural otherness, tests our perception of sexual identity in its foundations. The secular concept of art, the search for beauty (whose theoretical definition, canons, norms and academic values we must constantly strive to establish) is also experienced by Duchamp (among others) as a limitation. Duchamp devises the readymade in his attempt to escape the pleasing and the useful; because our concept of art generally oscillates between these two criteria. Like a demiurge, he beseeches us to insert the readymade into this mechanism, conferring upon it the merit of being able to attract attention to those very things that possess no particular quality. For Tania Lorandi, we approach the notion of agape. Because God is agape, he loves spontaneously and without reason. All is equivalence. This doctrine reminds us of Doctor Faustrolls, extended by the discourse of Sa Feue Magnificence le docteur I. L. Sandomir:
So there is no difference, either in nature or degree, between minds; or between what they produce, or between things. To the Total Pataphysician, the most banal graffito is equal in value to the most accomplished book, even to the Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, and the most basic, mass-produced saucepan to Altdorfers Nativity7

All hierarchy is a thing of the past. We are beyond beauty and ugliness, just as we are beyond good and evil.
Opus Pataphysicum, Testament de Sa Feue Magnificence le Docteur I. L. Sandomir, de son vivant Vice-Curateur-Fondateur du Collge de Pataphysique, prcd de ses autres uvres Pataphysiques, LXXXVI, 138-139. (Transl. C. McMillan).
7

Duchamp and Eroticism

In an article published in July 1900 entitled La Morale de lAmour, Rmy de Gourmont denounces the legislators of love to whom all sexual acts outside marriage are misdemeanors. The love physicians see love as a morbid state, not an instinct. (In 1903, he published Physique de lAmour : essai sur linstinct sexuel on the same theme.) For Rmy de Gourmont, desire is resolved in acts and we must surely feel concerned to see hygiene, like morals8 codified. Fae Brauer describes this situation, which found an echo in the satirical press in the form of caricatures, especially those produced by Duchamp and his brother, Jacques Villon, and in the themes present in the Large Glass. The spouse is no more than an engine made of reproductive organs awaiting the lubricating insemination of the robotic bachelors. And virtuous husbands and bachelors alike are condssemned to endure the ferociously reviled complex of Onan; and to continenceMalthuss moral restrainton sale over here at all the best rubber manufacturers9. Readers will agree that this rationalization of Eros is not so far removed from ve future (1880) or from Surmle (1902), nor from the male and female robots Duchamp puts on show. Jarry exploits that rationalization to the full, arguing paradoxically and against general opinion that alcoholism (by the number of drunks and the extent of their drunkenness) encourages repopulation10. Lastly, on the subject of bachelors, Jarry remarks that given all the leisure time they enjoy, not having the cares of a foyer, the task of repopulation ought to fall to them. The facts remain: almost allwe say almost to spare the easily upsetalmost all the children running around are the fruit of bachelors toils. And he concludes with a speculation per haps not unrelated to Cimetire des uniformes et des livres:
We all know the story of a family man, not yet a father but aspiring to be, who arranged for the mother of his future offspring to meet an unmarried soldier, in view of repopulation. It is completely untrue that the soldier will unfailingly produce a child, and a male in particular. But he enjoys the prestige of his uniform.

8 Rmy de Gourmont, La Culture des ides, (Paris: Mercure de France, 1926), 199-229. He refers to two books: that of Seved Ribbing, LHygine sexuelle et ses consquences morales (1891, translated from the German into French in 1895, Paris, Alcan) and that of Charles Fr, LInstinct sexuel. volution et dissolution (Paris, Alcan: 1899). 9 A. Jarry, Copulativement parlant, La Chandelle verte, published in Le Canard sauvage 5-11 July, 1903, Paris, Gallimard, Pliade t.II, 476-479. 10 A. Jarry, La Natalit en France en 1900 (Bernard), published in La Revue blanche, 15 December 1900, Paris, Gallimard, Pliade t.II, 599-600. Jarry rationalises by proposing a law which he calls formule de lalcoomtre repopulateur (the formula of re-populating alcohol).

Preliminaries Afterwards, he replied to the husband: You know, with a woman I dont know, I always keep my moral restraint. And he continued: tunique, because he was dressed in summer attire.11

Gavin Parkinson situates his subject in a comparative analysis of the works of Duchamp and Georges Bataille (1951-1962). Dont these two contemporaneous artists, who took their distance from Andr Breton while remaining close to certain aspects of Surrealism, have a common interest in certain themes and preoccupations, like loss, the unfinished, lack, transgression, chance, waste, human waste, laughter and Eroticism? While classic restrictive economies (for example, those of Hegel and Marx) are founded on the value that Western epistemology attributes to signification, general economies evoke vaster terrains that shun the universal and the absolute in favor of incomplete entities, more difficult to measure: the unconventional, the heterogeneous, the non-productive, the unrepresentable, the non-value, the non-sense and the perverse, which were later explored by Jean-Franois Lyotard, Michel Foucault and others. Derek Sayer goes back to LOrigine du monde (1866), to the representation of a sexual organ that should be neither seen nor even mentioned. Yet its exhibition might almost allow us to believe that here, at last, lies the truth; if we judge by the emotion and even the jubilation (of Khalil-Bey, then Jacques Lacan, both proud owners of the painting at one time) the thing (with its uncanniness, otherness) arouses. Yet this thing is no more a female sexual organ than what the Surrealists proposed as a representation of sex at the 1938 Exposition, especially Andr Masson (who, we remember, also created a landscape for Lacan to hide/reveal the Courbet). In other words ( la Raymond Queneau), here are the temporarily definitive documents made available to allow the nullities of existence to access the Pataphysical Reality. Philippe Dagen comes back to the question of representation; this time, that of the sexual act. How can this theme be approached? How can we represent the rapport and the relation between two subjects? If the works of Picasso and Duchamp diverge (to say the least), they do converge at this point: the problematic of the semiotic status attributed to the sexual act. No physiological description of love could exhaust the subject; nor could even a more-or-less complete list of practices, from the Kamasutra to the Kinsey report, taking in Krafft-Ebing. There again, the thing is taking place elsewhere. For Elfriede Dreyer, this representation is conveyed through the use of the color brown, at
11 A. Jarry, Copulativement parlant, Ibidem., 479. The Pliade draws our attention to the word-play on the words tunique and capote, 906. The word tunique is a homophone of tu niques a vulgar expression for sexual posession. But the tunique is also a soldiers summer outfit, in opposition to the capote , the heavy winter coat, and also, of course, the condom. Tunique and capote are both uniforms.

Duchamp and Eroticism

least in certain of Duchamps works. This is then considered as a sign (in the Saussurian sense of the word), a sign whose value we should explore as time goes by. Fusion and decomposition are associated with this color, two concepts that let us assume some erotic connotations. For example, isnt the color brown obtained by repetitive gestures or mechanical processes that crush and mix the primary or pure colors? Lastly, at the beginning of the 20th century, brown was also associated with other values, especially that evoking the process of deconstruction as a way of thinking. If we follow Leah Sweet, the unusual substance of chocolate is used by Joseph Beuys in an essentially metaphysical manner. At the famous performance of December 1964, The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated, chocolate refers to the wasted semen in Large Glass. In that way, masturbation is a metonymy of the mode of Duchamps selfreferential artistic production. Beuys Action is both a tribute (for devising a new way of reacting to the spectator, one that is not merely sensorial or aesthetic) and a criticism (Duchamp did not transmute elementary human actions into art that attained the social and the spiritual). Frdrique Joseph-Lowery brings us a philological work of precision. Basing her conclusions on the Dal manuscript that Matisses family donated to the Art gallery of Philadelphia, she reconstitutes to the letter a text that was diminished by the French and American editions. She then treats Dals appropriation of certain of Duchamps works, in order to examine to what degree the flowing of Duchamps work into Dals is a significant encroachment. Paying homage to Le roi et la reine traverss par les nus en vitesse, Dal had added a pseudo-scientific formula similar to H2O and, in an exact mirrorical return: he proposed a cold scientific formula that would desexualize La Joconde, totally opposed to Duchamps iconoclastic proclamation that La Joconde has a hot ass. And totally opposed to Jean Roc (alias HenriPierre Roch) in Don Juan et la Joconde12.

12

Jean Roc, Don Juan, (Paris: ditions de La Sirne, 1921), 177-180.

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Preliminaries

Fig. 1: Coquelin-Cadet, Le Rire, Paul Ollendorf, Paris, 1887, p.5 : The first "assisted" Mona Lisa, by Sapeck

Fig. 2: Fantasio n131, 1 January, 1912

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Fig. 3: Le capitaine Lux , Le Rire n472, 27 February, 1912

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Preliminaries

Fig. 4: Le Ministre des Joconds (Doumergue, Monis, Caillaux), Fantasio n179, 1 January, 1914

Duchamp and Eroticism

13

Fig. 5: Guillaume II, Postcard, 1918.

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Preliminaries

Lair des cimes est le lait des crimes.13 (Literally: The air of the summits is the milk of crime). According to Ornella Volta, Rrose Slavy is to Duchamp what La Joconde is to Leonardo da Vinci, an indistinct figure like a wheel or a roto-relief, that turns and whose charisma is undeniable. Rroses identity poses a question: name, first name, sex and habitus, ds-lyre14 Studying it letter by letter, Ecke Bonk brings out the affinities: ROSE EROS15 At the Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surralisme, 1959-1960 (where Rauschenbergs Bed was shown for the first time in France), Duchamp once again took his distance from Andr Breton. Ccile Bargues demonstrates how Duchamp, as always, stood out from the bunch by displaying, with humor, the mode of his Eroticism. Sade was present, and Bataille. And Duchamp. But who heard his voice? Lastly (but we could just as well have begun at this point), Sverine Gossart is concerned with seduction and exegetes. Why write about Duchamp? What is it in his work, and in the studies it has been steadily inspiring since the fifties, that goes on appealing to reason and sometimes arousing passions ? What is the relation between those we unambiguously refer to by the generic term Duchampians: artists, writers and researchers (who may indeed or may not be Duchampian) and the object of their enthusiasm? If Duchamp was an impassioned and sometimes compulsive chess player, if he felt a need for this type of confrontation, it was doubtless because he found therein a satisfactory equilibrium. He enjoyed living and reliving, at least for the duration of a game, the sensations of what might appear to be an anxietyproducing situation: one logic confronting another, which we dont understand, and against which we must invent systems of defense and attack in order to come up smiling. We can only admit that Duchamp, in chess as in his unique way of practicing art and life, felt the constant necessity to be confronted with the thing that eluded him, and to counter that thing with enigma. In other words, in all exchange, of whatever nature, beneath superficial communicationthose moves made according to precise rules and with familiar pawnsthe idea of detecting a hidden logic always comes to the surface. Eroticism is also something we must discover beneath the conventional surface, the polite
Roger Vitrac in Peau-Asie (Littrature, 1st February 1st March, 1923), quoted in Ds-lyre, (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 31. 14 Ds-lyre: homonym of the French word dlire (delirium, madness) but the expression can also be seen as a compound of ds (a suffix which indicates undoing or reverse action as in dsactiver, deactivate) and lyre, the instrument of the poet). 15 Ecke Bonk, (Typosophic Society, 1991).
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Duchamp and Eroticism

15

circulation of words, attitudes, looks, signs and tensions that govern social relations between one individual and another. The other is the secret whose martingale has to be discovered if we hope to share intimacy, exception. And vice versa. How can we enter into the others desire in such a way as to make him or her take notice? Duchamps work also attracts its players by affinity; each, as in chess (or in life), responds according to his or her resolution, history and experience. Each player reveals a mindset to the other, a mirrorical return, as in a game. How else can we achieve connivance if not by sharing some sort of secret, in a game of chess, in the jeu du je, even if both players know, deep down, it is only make believe?