I, like Ann and Marty Sullivan before me,
am so happy to have all you here today joining
us and the speakers who are a part of our
program.
The title for our exhibition was carefully
thought out in the program.
And when Ann [Ann Goodyear] and I [Jim McManus]
were working on putting it together, I think
the most important word that we included in
our title was that first word, ‘inventing,’
because it does a of couple key things.
One, I think it alludes to [Marcel] Duchamp
as an inventor.
And three points that I think are critical
to that.
Duchamp invents for us new ways in which the
artist negotiates their role as artist in
the 20th century.
He invents also new relationships or expectations
between the artist and his audience.
And added to that, new relationships between
the audience and works of art.
Also, it is very much suggested in our choice
of the word ‘inventing’ as opposed say
to having used ‘invented’ or ‘inventions
of,’ the title serves as a recognition on
Ann’s and my part that we present new possibilities,
new probabilities, not conclusions.
And I think the first two papers that we've
heard out of the six we will hear today reinforces
that very idea.
That Duchamp is open for continuing consideration
and we hope that if we've done anything with
the exhibition and this symposium is that
we've created new avenues and new possibilities
for ongoing investigation, i.e. inventing.
Well, with that, I would like to identify
the speakers in the order of their presentation
and, like Ann did in the first part, I’ll
provide a short, short introduction to each
in turn.
When each of the speakers has concluded their
remarks, we will respond to questions for
a few moments.
Hopefully if there is some time at the end
of our program, we would like all of our speakers
to come forward and then maybe we'll just
have a kind of roundtable discussion.
But we’ll have to see where we are on that.
The order for presentation this afternoon
of the four speakers begins with Dr. Lewis
Kachur, the professor who is professor of
art history at Kean University in New Jersey.
He will be followed by Dr. Catherine Craft,
an independent scholar who is currently living
and working in Munich, Germany.
Following her will be Dr. David Hopkins who
is professor of art history at the University
of Glasgow.
And as my friends in the medical profession
would say, the real doctor here is our final
speaker, Brian O’Doherty, artist.
Now, let me begin with a very brief summary
of Dr. Kachur’s biography which is more
fully played out in your program.
As I mentioned, he is professor of art history
at Kean University.
The paper that he is going to give today is
entitled “Portraits at an exhibition and
counting your chickens.”
A very intriguing title.
And it will consider the construction of Duchamp’s
identity as a post-studio artist.
Lewis has also just informed me that he is
currently working on and nearing completion
of a monograph on Marcel Duchamp which will
be published by [Faber?].
So let me introduce to you Dr. Lewis Kachur.
[Applause] Thanks to the McManus and Goodyear
team for the opportunity to try to say something
that hasn't already been said.
Oh, you just did that, okay.
But I did manage to start as an opening trope
the group portrait that I didn't realize was
so iconic until all the speakers just assumed
the pose in the break for our group photo
at this symposium.
So, good choice perhaps.
Anyway, I'm going to focus on a rather narrow
area in that attempt, trying to establish
the portrait at an exhibition as a genre among
the avant-garde and secondly try to evaluate
Duchamp's role as presence or his absence
in that particular typology.
So I'm going to focus both on individual and
group portraits in the context of shows or
exhibitions.
And perhaps the most iconic of these besides
our profile views is the one taken by George
Platt Lynes in March of 1942 in preparation
for an exhibition at Pierre Matisse gallery
called “Artists in Exile” and is very
striking as probably the most formidable assemblage
of artistic talent in one room that we might
think of.
Surrealists predominate, clustered around
their leader André Breton here whom some
might question of course as he is primarily
known as a writer.
In the rank-and-file include [Roberto] Matta,
Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, André Masson, and
Kurt Seligmann at a little bit more distance.
But there are other styles and schools represented
including the cubist Fernand Léger, the fantasist
Marc Chagall both front right, and the abstract
painter Piet Mondrian who looks rather dismayed
in fact to be surrounded by this passel of
surrealists.
So their styles are diverse.
So are their backgrounds.
As Jimmy Ernst commented, in Paris it would
have been impossible to gather this group
in the same room.
But of course in the melting pot of New York,
they are united by what T.J.
Demos has analyzed as ‘the exiles condition.’
All white males by the way, following on our
previous talk, became more conscious of that.
And quite formally attired in jacket and tie.
Pretty far from the model of the Bohemian
artist.
Rather going in the direction of the businessman.
To restore this to its original context, this
was a fold out to the brochure in the center,
actually not visible when you first pick it
up.
But it folds out, this photograph.
It’s the only illustration to this catalogue
of 14 works, one by each artist.
In fact, Breton did show a work, a palm object
in that exhibition at Pierre Matisse.
But where's Marcel?
Most of the specialists here know he was still
in occupied France for a number of months
and did not arrive in New York until June
of 1942.
This is a similar to the André Gomès photo
that's in the exhibition upstairs.
At some point soon after his arrival, the
surrealist group gathered at Peggy Guggenheim's
apartment for that iconic group portrait including
six of the same people who were in the “Artists
in Exile,” which seems to me almost as if
they had re-gathered for Marcel’s benefit
or perhaps in a sense to enfold him in their
group.
Except now as sometimes is the case with Duchamp,
there are also women present.
One of them is the hostess Peggy Guggenheim
at the upper left.
The other two perform a kind of a distracting
role of reflecting back the direction that
the gaze that’s been set up.
So the back row all looking left, the middle
row profile right except when they meet Berenice
Abbott who turns the gaze back towards them.
Those in the front I think we're supposed
to be looking forward but [Frederick] Kiesler
couldn't manage to hold that with Lenora Carrington
on his arm and she returns his gaze as well
while [Stanley William] Hayter and Seligmann
play along and remain in frontal view.
So there's a kind of rhythm in the portrait.
Of course that's fascinating.
I also, not having really been a sort of fashion
historian, but do note again the formality
of dress of the men except for two: Jimmy
Ernst, top left, who is a more informally
dressed, and Marcel Duchamp, here second from
the right in front of Mondrian again, whose
loosened his tie and definitely, if he wears
a tie it's not quite clear, I think maybe
he does.
But loosened his collar and has left off his
jacket as the least formal member of his generation
to appear here.
And as we'll see it's a very rare concession
for Marcel to take part in any kind of group
formation symbolically played out as this
one is.
Peggy Guggenheim may have had a gallery open
or about open depending on the exact month
of this photo, but certainly it was in the
air.
There's no precise exhibition occasion for
this particular photo as strong as the Pierre
Matisse.
So one might go back even to the 19th century
with [Henri] Fantin-Latour’s kind of art
history, old saw the group portrait of the
“Atelier in the Batignolles” from 1870
whose title refers in fact to the location
of [Édouard] Manet’s studio.
And it’s Manet in the center who is painting
a portrait of the writer [Zacharie] Astruc.
Thus we have the presence of artists and writers
together attended by an admiring and implicitly
supportive younger generation including the
writer [Emile] Zola and the painters [Frédéric]
Bazille, [Claude] Monet, and [Auguste] Renoir,
all of whom had already began to talk about
planning a group exhibition which of course
would become later become known as the Impressionist
exhibits.
Already here the clustering of white males
all formally dressed.
And again in this this kind of seriousness
of purpose in order presumably to be taken
seriously by the public.
I thought also of Bernard’s [audio skips]
really sort of changes the ballgame.
And also [audio skips] mass media.
And so that the simple demonstration of artistic
solidarity is also camera-ready for the mechanisms
of publicity.
And this was understood first and very strongly
of course by the futurist artists.
They were in a milieu of increasing ability
of newspapers to print photo reproductions
as well as the rise of artist journals, avant-garde
journals, and little magazines all to provide
an outlet for artist’s individual or group
portraits.
The top image of course is widely disseminated
around the world at the occasion of the futurist
exhibit, first exhibited in Paris in January
1912.
All centered around their blustering leader
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, in the center.
Again, a writer at the middle of this just
as Breton was in the middle of the photo at
Peggy's apartment.
Marinetti, not an artist, still present inside
as you see below [audio skips] I think the
image of the installation at the Bernheim-Jeune
Gallery standing next to paintings by [Gino]
Severini and I think [Carlo] Carrà.
The futurists of course were the first to
harness the mechanisms of publicity to presence
of the avant-garde in the public mind.
After World War One, one of the landmarks
is the Berlin Dadaists who casually disport
themselves in the small room of their ‘Trade
Fair’ as they term their exhibition at the
Burkhardt Gallery amidst the real cacophony
of posters, collages, photomontages, paintings,
and mannequin on the ceiling.
Interestingly back indoors not on the boulevard
like the dynamic futurists in the street but
rather more in the metaphor of something analogous
I think to the café.
Deliberately not lined up in rows but sort
of casually scattered about looking here and
there.
Sort of studied casualness which I will argue
is a sort of Dada pose.
Also on the left, sorry it's on the left [audio
error] dialogue between them and their photomontages.
To go a couple years forward, one of our art
history textbook classics and one of the first
documents of the surrealist group existing,
December 1922, Max Ernst’s rendezvous back
outside, and in fact improbably dislocated
into some kind of strange and otherworldly
atmosphere.
Only three artists present: Ernst on [Fyodor]
Dostoevsky's lap, Jean Arp, and [Giorgio]
de Chirico who was rendered as a footless
bust.
The rest writers, some them not alive, Dostoevsky
not alive and Raphael in the back behind Paul
Éluard also long gone.
There’s a kind of strangeness to this conceptualization
and of course this sort of very stiff quality
and strange-quality to these hand gestures
that they make.
Sort of the willingness to cast the portrait
as a kind of secret society or something that
involves some kind of inside joke.
It occurs to me that this is the very same
moment as Duchamp is playing probably more
radically with identity in his Rrose Sélavy
just before and his wanted poster just after
Ernst’s group picture.
Duchamp course up was very tied to exhibitions
in terms of the formation of his reputation
beginning with the Armory Show in New York
where his work was triumphantly received,
much differently than it had been received
in Paris.
And also in his reception or non-reception
of the urinal at the Independence.
In other words 1913-1917, precisely the same
time as the Futurists and Dadaists projecting
themselves in the nineteen-teens in the exhibition
context.
Duchamp’s reputation was essentially established
at this moment being one artist to rise above
fully 300 who were represented, crammed into
the Armory here some 1200 or so works, 1250
works in the exhibition.
And what's been very striking to me is that
his choice by other artists in the ‘beefsteak
dinner menu’ held only shortly after the
beginning of the show.
One color printing, so the “Nude Descending”
is changed from brown to red, budgetary reasons
no doubt.
But it becomes the signature of the exhibition.
It’s the logo of the whole thing as the
other artists, the American artists, had decided
about this picture by an artist they hadn’t
even met in person as of yet, or most of them
hadn’t.
Amazingly enough to me also a full two and
a half years later, World War later and two
and half years later, Duchamp finally does
arrive on these shores and he's identified
for this picture in this exhibition controversy
as the “Nude Descending a Staircase” – man.
And I think that in a sense this photograph
too I take also as Duchamp participating in
the construction of his identity on these
shores from the very beginning.
Namely, relaxing on the deck chair, taking
it easy, not trying too hard.
The artist as respirateur or perhaps just
breathing, as he liked to say, or in a sense
maybe a kind of forerunner to the studied
casualness of the Berlin Dadaists that we
also already looked at.
The other non-exhibition controversy of course
was the Independence Show.
In that case, the idea of the artist's magazine,
the little magazine, becomes the important
vehicle for the preservation and debates around
the work at the time if its first proposal
as an object to be shown.
In nineteen twenties and thirties as we saw
with Ernst’s portrait, the Surrealists start
carrying on the tradition of this avant-garde
group portrait on the occasion of exhibitions.
Ernst’s painting is an important one.
Pretty soon the collaborator on the Rrose
Sélavy sittings, Man Ray, becomes very central
to the surrealist group as a photographer
and documenter of their activities at various
levels.
They had of course published group photos
in “Révolution Surrealiste” from the
beginning of the [audio skip] “centrale”
and so on.
This is little bit later one outside of [Tristan]
Tzara’s atelier.
Man Ray himself appears.
[Salvador] Dali, Eluard, Ernst in the front
row.
Tanguy, Berton, Jean Arp, Man Ray in the back.
Where's Marcel?
More so, I think I’m quite struck by the
fact that Duchamp did not make it into the
“Surrealist chess board.”
What better place for a chess master and the
format here didn't require his presence in
the same sense as the photo of Tzara’s atelier.
These are all obviously individual headshots
cleverly manipulated to their white or black
backgrounds or predominant tones to suggest
alternate color squares of the chessboard
and photo collaged together by Man Ray, himself
one of the few in profile, lower right.
He certainly had photos of Duchamp that could
have been included here.
I can only speculate that Duchamp asked not
to be part of the “Surrealist chess board”
even as he was a chess correspondent for one
of the surrealist journals already in the
early thirties and starting to move in this
circle.
In fact we even go as far afield as somebody
like [Pablo] Picasso in terms of figures on
the margins of surrealism or de Chirico, long
banished.
So it seems to me there would be room for
Duchamp here on the “Surrealist chess board”
if in fact he wanted to.
Of course a great composition, the whole idea
of the grid here.
Still stuck on white males, aren’t we?
The real breakthrough in a way maybe on a
couple of those fronts, gender and exhibition,
group exhibition portraits, comes with the
British surrealist exhibition in London in
1936.
Large manifestation held at the new Burlington
Galleries that summer in the occasion for
a kind of formalization of the development
of Surrealism on a large, first time in a
large-scale exhibition.
Just scooping Alfred Barr’s fantastic art
dada surrealism in New York that winter.
And it became the occasion for these quite
formal photographic shots of various visitors
from across the channel.
This one taken with Dali and Paul Eluard in
the back row and visiting on the occasion
of Dali's legendary lecture in a diving suit
in the galleries.
And the English organizing committee flanking
them.
Amongst the works we see [Juan] Miró, Masson,
and others at the galleries.
What happened was that, sorry, the… in 1938,
the surrealists put these photos together
in the “Dictionnaire abrégé [du surrealism],”
the accompanying document to their Paris Exhibition
going back to what I mentioned before, the
surrealiste centrale in ’24, the group in
Belgium, the London group, and the group in
Prague.
Partly the internationalization of surrealism
but also in this way recapitulating the importance
of the group photo in the exhibition context.
But you’ve seen what they've done, or do
you see what they've done, with the London
surrealist group who had as Englishman gallantly
included the women involved with the group.
In ’38, this photograph was cropped across
the busts.
The women were all removed except for one
which makes it all the more interesting: Eileen
Agar, friend of Eluard, is displaced to the
upper left and Mr. Rupert Lee loses his place
to Andre Bréton who wasn't there at all.
In fact, Bréton and Eluard had been quarreling
at the time and the polite…
