created 2025-02-19, & modified, =this.modified
Why I'm reading
Enjoy reading about Duchamp and this documents his final day of life in a short volume.
October 1968 Duchamp goes to a bookshop, he needed the book Geometric Anaglyphs to complete a printed image. Geometric Anaglyphs are drawings of cubes, spheres and solids in which configurations of red liens are superimposed on drawings in blue.
Throughout his career Duchamp was intrigued by the fourth dimension. Gertrude Stein singled Duchamp out as the man who talks very urgently about the fourth dimension.
Duchamp never got himself a notebook, but when he got an idea on his mind he’d tear off a bit of a menu, letter or gas bill and write it on it. Each note had a different shape..
Breather
“I am a respirateur a breather. I enjoy it tremendously.” Duchamp had been working on this project for five years - “An individual can do something other than the same profession from the age of 20 to his death. I expanded the way of breathing.” Later, “I like living, breathing, better than working… my art would be that of living; each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral. It’s a sort of constant euphoria.”
Language and thinking are the great enemies of man, if man exists.
Man Ray and Lebel meet with Duchamp.
Duchamp was in the process of disappearing, being deflowered by morality and loving it. Man Ray “You are sad, you have always been, since you were the Sad Young Man on a Train”
Duchamp emphasizes the word Tomb.
Duchamp takes longer than usual in the bathroom. Teeny finds him dead there.
Duchamp had hinted his goal as an artist was to vaporize the universe as if it had been an amazing dream.
Man Ray is called to photograph him one last time.
Besides, It’s always others who die.
I don’t want anonymous art… I still believe in individualism in art.
Etant donnes
Duchamp had not paid for the bricks. His stepson Paul Matisse took on the role as engineer to transfer Etant donnes from NY to Philadelphia. Every row is made of two half bricks, with this new configuration there were enough bricks.
