34 years! (707) 933-1300 info@sculpturesite.com
34 years! (707) 933-1300 info@sculpturesite.com
Provocateur (Marcel Duchamp), 2013
WALL SCULPTURE
mixed media
59 x 39 x 24 in
150 x 99 x 61 cm
Sandblasted carved glass, cast glass, bronze and wood.
French artist Marcel Duchamp, born in 1887, had two older brothers who became artists, Gaston, a printmaker and painter and Raymond Duchamp-Villon a sculptor. They, along with their grandfather, known for his etchings, influenced Marcel to become an Artist. Duchamp’s career began in a normal fashion as a painter starting in 1908. His early paintings were in the classical style of the period but he soon was taken with cubism and his painting “Nude descending a staircase” is a classic of that genre. In 1913, he startled the art world with the first of his series of “readymade” objects as works of art, a bicycle wheel mounted on a high stool. However, he truly began provoking outcries in the artistic community with his showing of a urinal signed R. Mutt at the Armory Show of 1917 in New York.
2013 marked the 100th anniversary of that first “readymade” so it is only fitting that I used a version of this bicycle wheel to help define this portrait. Engraved on that wheel are two images of Duchamp, one from his dada period in 1924 when he was photographed by Man Ray dressed as his alter ego, “Rose Sélavy”, and the other his more classic persona, suave and dapper. There also appears two cutout self-portraits taken from a work done in lead. To further characterize this curious personality, I have used as a central element, the chocolate grinder from one of his most famous pieces “the Large Glass” or “The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even”, which is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This creation on two panels of glass describes the erotic encounter between the bride and her nine bachelors.
In the early 1920’s Duchamp took up chess as a serious pursuit and he formally “gave up” art in the 1930’s to play the game on an international level, becoming champion of France and vice-champion of Europe. After a period of time, he began again to make some pieces completely in private. Upon his death in 1968, it was revealed that he had been working in total secrecy for almost 20 years on his last great work “Etant donnés” which translates as “Considering”. It has been said that Marcel Duchamp was certainly the father of the avant-garde and the predecessor of Yves Klein and such contemporary artists as Jeff Koons.
