Oh hello, cross-holes. Fancy seeing you here. SF-MOMA’s edition has the triangle holes, but it also has a line of holes at the top that are completely different from either other version. Here’s one from Moderna Museet. Line and a circular set of holes!
Duchamp definitely intentionally made these different on purpose. It’s a “readymade” but it’s not, really, each of these is a specific custom creation. It’s not even clear if he made it! He wrote a letter to his sister claiming that a female friend sent it to him, and he just enrolled it in the art exhibit under his own name. There’s also a possibility that that female friend washimself, since he later had a female pseudonym ofRrose Sélav.
This whole piece of art is a fractal troll, and it’s a beautiful one.
The only possible correction I can make is Duchamp’s alter ego’s name was Rrose Sélavy. C'est la vie. Anglicé, “That’s life.”
Now I have said before that composer Gavin Bryars was my tutor at Art school in Leicester alongside the noted Art Historian Fred Orton they organised a Duchamp study group which I was a member of and brought in Brian Eno and people like Peter Greenaway The Draughtsmam’s Contract film soundtrack composer Michael Nyman as external lecturers [yeah you never shut up about it - EDRUDE!]
But Gavin also introduced me to many artists and writers (Thoreau) and composers not least his own work ( I think I am close to having everything official) and Charles Ives was one such composer and I have loved his work and appreciated it ever since hence this on the 150th anniversary, there is a new recording of his sonatas
On the latest episode of ‘New Classical Tracks’ with host Julie Amacher, pianist Jeremy Denk collaborates with violinist Stefan Jackiw to highlight Charles Ives’ piano and violin sonatas in celebration of the composer’s 150th birth anniversary. Check out this clip from his interview and listen to the complete episode below!
I think it was this that Conn is recommended to go see when they go to Europe and stay with Marianne in the family villa . . . . it meant a lot to me as we had enjoyed a ‘study group’ on Duchamp at college run by the peerless Art Historian Fred Orton and the wonderful composer Gavin Bryars which remains one of the few high points of my time at art school
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (French: Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) is a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp. The work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. Before its first presentation at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants in Paris it was rejected by the Cubists as being too Futurist.
The hanging committee objected to the work, on the grounds that it had “too much of a literary title”, and that “one doesn’t paint a nude descending a staircase, that’s ridiculous… a nude should be respected." Duchamp’s brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, sent by the hanging committee, asked him to voluntarily withdraw the painting, or paint over the title and rename it something else.
“But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that.” – Marcel Duchamp
I focused my attentions on Man Ray and Francis Picabia during this time and wrote papers on them both so we went on to meet Richard Hamilton (and his lovely partner fellow artist Rita Donagh) on whom I did my final thesis. We also went to the ICA Man Ray exhibition and were able to meet Sir Roland Penrose and his then wife, the Man Ray muse and artist, model and keen photojournalist herself (the first photographer into Bergen Belsen no less) Lee Miller
Happy Days . . . . .
Tuesday, July 09, 2019
How can you resist some
Nat King Cole
MONA LISA
On this day in music history: July 8, 1950 - “Mona Lisa” by Nat King Cole hits #1 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart for 8 weeks, also topping the Rhythm & Blues charts for 4 weeks on September 2, 1950. Written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, it is the thirty first single release for the legendary jazz and pop vocalist from Montgomery, AL. The song is featured in the film “Captain Carey, U.S.A.” starring Alan Ladd. Arranged by Nelson Riddle and with instrumental backing by Les Baxter & His Orchestra, Cole’s version of the song is featured on the film’s soundtrack. “Mona Lisa” wins the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1951, quickly becoming a pop standard and is covered by numerous artists over the years, though Cole’s is widely regarded as the definitive version. Nat King Cole’s recording of “Mona Lisa” is inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1992.
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Not The Mona Lisa
I used to collect versions of the Mona Lisa from adverts, different cultural appropriations of the picture being put on fridges to a supremely awful Painting By Numbers and methods of reproducing it badly and also repros of the many versions there were in other historic collections and also had numerous bad reproduction in plastic trinket souvenirs that I found in junk shops and the collection was with a view to doing an exhibition loosely about culture and it would have been funny, (hopefully) There is an apocryphal story of course that the one you see in the louvre is not the real thing at all but a reproduction. There is a school of thought that there is one in a Great Britain that is the 'real' one! The Isleworth Mona Lisa is clearly not it!
The Islesworth 'Mona Lisa' attributed now to Leonardo (sic)
Who would know! You can scarcely see it in the Louvre being behind bullet proof glass and usually thronged by people four or five deep.
I also had newspaper clippings about the theft of the painting and the books upon the theft and also basic books written about the one painting [there are hundreds literally]. It would also include Marcel Duchamp's 'L.H.O.O.Q.' a reproduction with an added moustache which started the whole thing as part of my studies under Fred Orton and Gavin Bryars where we started a Duchamp study group at what is now Demontford University. Duchamp playing with the gender issue ahead of his time questioning how we saw the sexes (he himself was not averse to being shown cross dressing as his alter-ego Rose Selavy)
The 'school of copies' fascinates me too. . . . . .this would have been on a loop on the gallery . . . . .
The stealing of the Mona Lisa The internet has now made this idea preposterous and completely redundant really (Google it and you'll see why)
Mona Lisa of The Subway (Internet meme)
Lisa Gerardini by Leonardo Da Vinci c.1503-06 current value approx £630 million
