I’m Martin Sullivan, I’m Director of the
National Portrait Gallery, and thank you so
much for coming and for contributing to this
symposium, and we do hope that there will
be a lively give and take. This is one of
a series of symposia called the Edgar P. Richardson
Symposia that were generously supported for
the National Portrait Gallery through a gift
from one of our former commissioners, one
of the people who sits on the board that oversees
two important central questions for the Portrait
Gallery: who gets in, which sitters are of
such significance in American life; and which
portraits are of significant interest that
they ought to be in. But Bob McNeil, longtime
friend and generous supporter, made possible
this symposium and I want to thank him. And
of course the entire project beginning with
research and continuing through the exhibition
itself and the wonderful book that accompanies
it has been made possible by a number of other
generous donors. I’m looking around a little
bit for Dr. Ella Foshay. Ella, are you here
perchance? Perhaps not yet. Ella is also a
member of our National Portrait Gallery Commission.
She and her husband Michael Rothfeld have
been generous contributors. Some of you may
have seen, speaking of gaggle of scholars
kind of milling about, our efforts to organize
everyone just a few moments ago for a group
photo of this extraordinary distinguished
group of scholars and Duchamp would have loved
it. It was utter madness, absurdity. It took
forever, and then we found ourselves doing
that characteristic Duchamp frontal face and
then side view of everyone. And we’ll move
on to the more daunting technology of PowerPoint
this afternoon and hope for the best. But
I suspect that it will go very smoothly. The
reason that this entire project has come together
with such grace and such care to detail has
been through the leadership of the two co-curators:
Professor Jim McManus and our own Dr. Ann
Collins Goodyear who, together, and you will
hear more about the genesis of the project,
but together have really made it possible
for the National Portrait Gallery to do something
that has not been done before and that has,
in every aspect of it, really all of the elements
of a model integration of research, exhibition,
education, publication. It’s astounding.
So I am going to begin by thanking Ann who
is extraordinary and has pulled all of this
together to come forward and introduce the
symposium. Dr. Ann Goodyear. [Applause] Marty,
thank you for your generous remarks. We are
so grateful to all of you for joining us this
afternoon for the E.P. Richardson Symposium
on American Portraiture, offered in conjunction
with the opening of the Smithsonian National
Portrait Gallery’s exhibition Inventing
Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture.
It’s a pleasure to have you all with us
today. I’m going to borrow a page from my
good friend Julie Heath and ask you to do
us all the favor if you wouldn’t mind of
silencing your cell phones at this time. And
I also want to let everybody know that this
symposium is being recorded, video recorded,
for future broadcast. For that reason, during
our question and answer sessions, I will ask
everyone to please use the microphone so that
your comments and questions can be picked
up by our cameras. Over the course of the
past five years, Jim McManus and I have had
the pleasure of thinking carefully about the
nature of Duchamp’s self-construction. It
has been fascinating to observe the profound
influence of his recognition, of the fluid
unfixed nature of identity, and of the shortcomings
of physiognomic likeness as an analog for
the representation of self or other. One of
the lessons that has been driven home repeatedly
is that Duchamp was above all a collaborative
artist. Oh, I beg your pardon, I have to turn
my PowerPoint on. Thank you. So as I was saying,
one of the things that has been driven home
to us repeatedly is the fact that Duchamp
was, above all, a deeply collaborative artist.
Oops! Duchamp is definitely at work here today.
We’ve witnessed such collaborations in the
form of Duchamp’s ongoing collaboration
with Man Ray, which led to the construction
of “Rrose Sélavy” and “Monte Carlo
Bond” and many other works. We see such
collaborations at play in Duchamp’s subtle
encouragement of the painter Daniel MacMorris
and the photographer Arnold Newman to create
portraits that clearly reflect deep-rooted
philosophical concerns of Duchamp’s. We
witness ongoing provocations and virtual conversations
in the form of more recent portrayals such
as those by Brian O’Doherty, about which
you will hear more today, and Ray Beldner.
These works create dynamic juxtapositions
between the representation of self on the
part of the artist and the representation
of Duchamp. We invite you to visit these works
and many others upstairs in our galleries.
This exhibition, the first ever to combine
Duchamp’s innovative self-representations
with those of him by other artists, represents
itself a deeply collaborative effort, and
one which we wish to acknowledge this afternoon.
Above all, I want to stress the great value
and pleasure I have derived from working closely
with my co-curator, Jim McManus, on this project.
Since the summer of 2004, when the idea for
this exhibition was first hatched, this project
has benefited from a true partnership of ideas
and efforts. Along the way, numerous institutions
and individuals stepped forward to help us
with the extraordinary generosity. Although
the list is far too long to enumerate here,
there are a few people and organizations to
whom we wish to extend a special thank you.
First, we thank our private and institutional
lenders, without whom this show would not
be possible. We are particularly grateful
for the efforts of Jacqueline Matisse Monnier,
Francis Naumann, Michael Taylor, Francis Bedy[?],
Sean Kelly, Barbara Novak[?] and Brian O’Doherty,
and Doug and Judy Vogel for their ongoing
generosity and brainstorming with us about
our goals for the show and how to achieve
them. Second, as Marty has indicated about
these collaborative efforts, it’s always
impossible to stage a project of this complexity
without financial support from a broad range
of individuals and institutions. And for that
we want to thank the Henry Luce Foundation,
the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Studies
Program, the Marc Pachter Exhibition Fund,
the Florence Gould foundation, and several
generous individuals: Ella Foshay and Michael
Rothfeld, Aaron and Barbara Levine, Mary McMorris
and Leonard Santoro. We also thank Julie Heath
and the Lunder Conservation Center for supporting
new research on Jean Crotti’s portrayal
of Marcel Duchamp. Finally, we are indebted
to our colleagues at the National Portrait
Gallery who committed themselves to this effort
at an early moment, in particular our former
directory Marc Pachter, our current director
Marty Sullivan, our deputy director Carolyn
Carr, our chief of exhibitions Beverly Cox,
our head of design and production Nello Marconi,
and many other colleagues who include Wendy
Wick Reaves, Ann Shumard, Rosemary Fallon,
Ed Myers, and my husband Frank Goodyear. With
regard to today’s event, Jim and I wish
particularly to commend Amy Baskette and Jennifer
Quick. They have handled myriad details related
to this symposium with characteristic resourcefulness,
reliability, and grace. It goes without saying
that Jim and I have continually relied upon
the good offices and extraordinary understanding
of our spouses, Frank Goodyear and Lonnie[?]
McManus. We recognize that no scholarly project
ever represents the final word on a scholarly
subject. Indeed, it is our hope that this
exhibition will continue to spawn discussion
and debate. For their important role in this
discourse, we thank our catalog essayists
who are with us today, Janine Mileaf, Francis
Naumann, and Michael Taylor. We thank too
the superb research assistants who contributed
catalog entries and a chronology – who helped
us with these catalog entries and chronology
for the catalog. These include Audrey[?] Koenig[?],
Anna[?] Wong[?], Kate[?] Dempsey[?], and Jennifer
Quick. Today, we look forward to hearing from
several other distinguished scholars on the
subject of Duchamp, self-construction, and
portrayal. Our first pair of talks by Wendy
Wick Reaves and Linda Dalrymple Henderson
will elucidate the cultural and intellectual
context in which Duchamp developed his complex
self-representation. As Wendy Reaves will
explain, Duchamp’s innovations in self-portrayal
developed in a fertile field of widespread
experimentation with the genre of portraiture.
As Linda Henderson will discuss, Duchamp negotiated
his artistic identity against a backdrop of
profound intellectual transformation as the
very nature of time and space was itself being
reinterpreted. I will provide brief introductions
for each speaker whose fuller biographies
are included in your symposium programs. A
brief question and answer session will follow
each talk, and again please do remember to
use the microphones for your comments and
questions. It brings me great pleasure to
introduce Wendy Wick Reaves, the founding
curator of the Department of Prints and Drawings
at the National Portrait Gallery, and a very
strong supporter of this project. She has
devoted several recent exhibitions and publications
to exploring the reinvention of portraiture
during the 20th century. These include the
upcoming exhibition Reflections/Refractions:
Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century,
with an accompanying catalog of the same title,
which will open next month here at the National
Portrait Gallery, and we invite you all to
come back to see that show in dialogue with
the one that we will be discussing today.
Wendy Reaves’ paper today addresses “Brittle
Painted Masks: Portraiture in the Age of Duchamp.”
[Applause] Good afternoon everyone, and many
thanks to Ann and Jim for your wonderful exhibition,
for organizing this symposium, and for including
me among your speakers. I was also invited
by Jim to wear a pink dress and a moustache
for my presentation today. Now, I like pink
as much as well girl, and I hope that you
appreciate my spring jacket, Jim. But you
know, ladies of a certain maturity do not
embrace a moustache. [Laughter] Transgendered
humor is all very well. Unwelcome signs of
aging, not funny. Now, if I were to continue
in this vein about my outfit and ladies facial
hair, I expect most of you would find such
comments indiscreet. As a speaker in a scholarly
symposium, my specifically gendered and middle-aged
identity, my face and costume and hairstyle
should not be remarkable or remarked upon.
But, as you surely guessed, I intended those
close to inappropriate comments to do more
than just register a tone of Dada discomfort.
I would like to ‘prime the canvas,’ if
you will, although ‘setting the stage’
is the more apt analogy, for our discussions
of portrayal during Marcel Duchamp’s lifetime.
And I wanted to remind us of a moment in which
self-presentation was acutely self-conscious.
Identity was on display. It was performed.
And portraiture in America, despite parallel
conservative trends, was also highly experimental
and playful. This context of portrayal and
presentation frames our Duchamp exhibition,
the excellent catalog essays, and the papers
today. So it might be useful to peer more
closely at what those notions meant in the
early 20th century. How did radical experiments
on identity play into the broader scope of
American culture as concepts of portraiture
took a roller coaster ride during Duchamp’s
own lifetime? In 1928, Charles Demuth made
this poster portrait, apparently an homage
to Gertrude Stein, one of a series of non-representational
portraits which incorporated symbols, letters,
and numbers to probe psychological, sexual,
or spiritual aspects of his subject. If, by
the way, you think you see vague reflected
figures in the upper left, they aren’t ghostly
evocations of Gertrude of Charles Demuth,
they are Wendy and her husband John Daniel
on trip last fall trying to take this photograph.
[Laughter] No Duchamp-ian gestures intended,
at least not consciously. But I start with
Demuth not only because of the importance
of his non-mimetic, symbolic imaging, but
also because of his central motif here of
the mask. From costume balls to stage, screen,
and literature, the mask was all the rage
early in the century. And both as a physical,
theatrical costume device, and as a nuanced
metaphor of coded identity, the mask can stimulate
our thinking about the way that complex ways
portraiture was reinvisioned. Historically,
masks as incorporated into religious or social
rituals provided protection, disguise, enhancement,
or the ability to impersonate. All those implications
resonated in the revival of masks in the theater,
and such related arts as opera and dance.
As Susan Valeria Harris Smith has documented,
this widespread revival in Western culture
drew upon modern thought. The divided psyches,
the subconscious realities, and false social
selves explored by Freud, Jung, William James,
and others. Alfred Jarry’s theatrical satire,
Ubu Roi, with masks designed by Toulouse-Lautrec,
Pierre Bonnard, and Édouard Vuillard launched
extensive European interest, and that well-publicized
trend was soon adapted by American playwrights
and directors. Both Charles Demuth and Gertrude
Stein were secretive, masters at masking themselves
on questions relating to health, sexuality,
professional identity, and relationships to
others. “Charlie never spilled over to his
friends,” William Carlos Williams noted
about Demuth, “but kept a tight-lipped and
well-groomed appearance always. He gave nothing
away.” Demuth also understood a broader
application of masking available to everyone.
He evoked that protective, artificial surface
when he wrote, about Peggy Bacon’s portraits:
“All this work comes only out of the American
scene. It could come from no other. All if
it is covered, liaised with our own wit.”
Self-conscious self-fashioning was not a new
concept at the beginning of the century. But
advice books and popular writers urged the
importance of a vital, dynamic public persona.
“Was up to be photographed today,” Everett
Shinn wrote to John Sloan in 1907 about his
visit to Gertrude Käsebier’s studio just
before the opening of the eighth exhibition.
“Great fun,” he continued, “being an
artist with temperament.” He included a
dandified sketch of himself posing with hat,
walking stick, and cigarette. But in the subdued
palette and downcast eyes of this 1901 self-portrait,
Shinn cast himself in another role: the common
stereotype of artist as bohemian genius, given
to hilarious hijinks or, as seen here, melancholy
suffering. Play-acting with keen self-consciousness,
he inscribed the drawing to his idol, the
actress Julia Marlowe. And let me just mention
that all of my examples that I will show today
are from the Portrait Gallery’s collection
unless otherwise identified. Certainly Shinn
was as obsessed with the theatre as any artist
of his day. But such presentations were hardly
unusual. What everyone aimed for was personality,
a word frequently evoked at the time, which
had come to mean a colorful, original combination
of attributes that attracted an audience.
As Theodore Dreiser described it, “Old-time
virtues such as honesty, fairness, and intellect,
did not suffice. Magnetism and vitality were
also required.” The principle manifestation
of this distinction was a compelling theatricality,
or, as Mae West phrased it, “The glitter
that sends your little gleam across the footlights.”
It was, as historian Ann Douglas reminds us
of the early twentieth century, “The most
theatrical generation in American annals.”
In other words, the artist, author, scientist,
or socialite along with the performer had
to assume the mask of his constructed persona.
So do we see this element of self-consciousness,
theatricality and distinctive personality
in portraiture after the turn of the century?
Not always. But I think we can argue that
artists often did search for that glitter,
that flair, that distinctive singular hype[?]
element. We see a change, perhaps, between
the comportment of John Singer Sargent’s
sitter, and an anxious self-portrayal by theatrical
artist Lee Simonson a generation letter. That
is, less composed in one sense, and more composed
in another. We see some of this drama in William
Zorach’s image of Edna St. Vincent Millay,
drawn for Century magazine just after the
poet had won the Pulitzer Prize. Millay, Ann
Douglas has stated, “asked only one thing,
expected but one safety net, and that the
flimsiest and most essential: an audience.”
As Zorach himself noted, “Edna was quite
a personality: a primadonna.” He captured
that quality here with its firm facial contour,
resolute expression, and odd immodest gesture.
The image posits a sexual and intellectual
independence that reflects the poet’s notorious
free spirit. Stage techniques were sometimes
directly incorporated into portrayal. In Marius
de Zayas’ charcoal of photographer Paul
Haviland, one sees the influence of pictorialist
photography’s soft focus aesthetic, but
also the artist’s exposure to the theatre
as a drama column illustrator, suggested here
in the back-to-the-audience pose, a viewpoint
from orchestra seats, and the effect of powerful
footlights. Edward Steichen’s photographs,
like Katherine Hepburn at right, conveyed
that heightened quality of presentation by
manipulating artificial light to etch a noble
profile and highlight the flesh tones of her
highly contrived pose. I think you see an
echo of this angular posing and dramatic lighting
in Paul Meltsner’s oil of Martha Graham.
Marguerite Zorach depicted poet Marianne Moore
with ramrod-straight posture and flame-red
hair. Moore had just won the Dial Award and
was about to become that magazine’s new
editor. Zorach’s exaggerated elongation,
old colors and slashing lines set Moore apart,
proclaiming her growing importance in the
literary world. Much of this new consciousness
about posing, presentation and portrayal grew
out of profoundly new ways of thinking about
the human individual. In the late nineteenth
century, notions of portrayal of the self
or others were inevitably altered by discoveries
in philosophy, psychology, science, religion,
and other fields. The nineteenth century concept
of identity, as Joanna Woodall[?] explains
it, “was unique, personal individuality
articulated in the face.” As mentioned,
that concept was undermined as Freud, Jung,
James, and Henri Bergson, among others, explored
the nature of the self. Charles Darwin’s
theories had emphasized genetic predisposition,
further undercutting established notions of
consciously directed moral character. One
could no longer presume a static, fixed, externally
evident character. Identities became multiple,
mutable, fractured, invented, or disguised.
Portraiture, in response at the turn of the
twentieth century, had to negotiate dramatically
new artistic and intellectual terrain. This
caused some artists to eschew mimetic representation
altogether in search of a ‘synthesis of
the soul,’ as it was sometimes called, through
abstract and symbolic portraiture like Demuth’s.
Gertrude Stein, shown here in a massive terra
cotta sculpture by Jo Davidson, helped launch
such experiments, evoking the inner essence
of an individual through coded reference or
emotional implication. In the first decade
of the century, she started composing abstract
word poems of friends or acquaintances, replete
with repetitive sing-song cadences and nonsensical
phrases. “Do you wish for he wishes for
do you wish for do they wish for them?”
Stein wrote in her portrait of sculptor Jo
Davidson. “Does he wish for do they wish
for him? Many many tickle you for them. Many
many tickle you for him.” Vanity Fair introduced
that impenetrable prose to its readers in
February 1923, along with three portraits
of Stein, Picasso’s famous oil, a Jacques
Lipchitz bust, and a photograph of the author
sitting for Davidson’s sculpture. Certainly
Stein’s experiments influenced small circles
of intellectuals. But they were also seeping
out to a broader audience. Radical notions
of poetry appeared in portraiture and music
as well. e e cummings, influenced by Stein,
wrote portrait poems, playing with discontinuity
and juxtaposition as well as spatial arrangements
of words and punctuation on the page. In 1917,
he penned this poem upon hearing of the death
of Buffalo Bill: “Buffalo Bill’s; defunct;
who used to; ride a watersmooth-silver; stallion;
and break ontwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat;
Jesus; he was a handsome man; and what i want
to know is; how do you like your blue-eyed
boy; Mister Death”. American composer -
