Exhibition Idea and Project:
Adriana Rosenberg y Jorge Helft Curator: Elena Filipovic Production: Fundación Proa General Coordinator:
Cintia Mezza Assistant and producer:
Iara Freiberg Exhibition Design:
Caruso - Torricela, Architteti Catalogue Coordinator:
Debbie Grimberg Sponsor: Tenaris - O. Techint
February 22, 2007
Clarín published a preview of Duchamp’s exhibition at Proa
The journalist Fernando García points out that it will be the first time an exhibition entirely dedicated to the French artist will be presented in Buenos Aires and shows his enthusiasm for some of the outstanding pieces which will be on display, such as El gran vidrio (The Large Glass) and the readymades.
Article published in Clarín on February 17th 2007
CULTURE: A FRENCH THINKER AND ARTIST WHO ANTICIPATED THE CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL SCENERY
For the first time, there will be an exhibition of Marcel Duchamp in Buenos Aires.
ByFernando García
It will take place in 2008 at the Fundación Proa. Well-known pieces such as El gran vidrio will be presented. The show will be held 90 years after the legendary and secret time he spent in Buenos Aires.
Exactly 90 years after his mythical stay in Buenos Aires, Marcel Duchamp will be back in spirit to the city once alien to him, with a great exhibition of 120 works which Fundación Proa will present for the reopening of its building in La Boca in June 2008. The preparations for the show have been carried out in utter secrecy since 2006, and both Proa and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (reservoir of Duchamp’s work) have confirmed its execution to Clarín.
Adriana Rosenberg, Proa’s Director, and Cynthia Mezza, Project coordinator, have disclosed that the Duchamp’s exhibition is not a retrospective but it is focused on his work based on the object; from the revolutionary concept of the readymade onwards. ‘Proa always chooses to display the heyday of an artist’s work. What is Duchamp’s legacy to Art History? The object, two-dimensions’, said Rosenberg.
The idea behind the readymade (something that already exists)- mainly symbolized by the urinal exhibited in New York in 1917 and the iconic moustached Gioconda- basically involves appropriating non artistic objects to make them circulate in the art world. From Duchamp onwards, the artist points out and their work lies in their choice. Although it may seem simple, it is a concept whose depth is still being explored. In 2004, Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ (the famous urinal) was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 of the most powerful people in the British art world. Duchamp’s idea (key in later movements such as pop art and conceptualism) has spread and become part of the cultural scenery. From Borges’ Pierre Mennard to the conception of the Sex Pistols; in Madonna’s latest hit (an ABBA readymade) and also in a recent advertising campaign which reused an entire ad from the 80s (that of Colbert) to promote a loan.
All of his famous readymades – which Duchamp made before 1920 and reproduced in the 60s shortly before his death- will be shown at Proa. It is worth mentioning that there has never been a solo exhibition of Duchamp in Buenos Aires (some of his works were shown in Dada y Surrealismo which Malba presented in 2004) and after visiting Proa, the show will travel to São Paulo.
The exhibition in Buenos Aires will feature for the first time the work regarded by many Duchampians as the summit of his career: El gran vidrio. It was directly sent from the Modena Museet of Stockholm thanks to the personal negotiations of the collector Jorge Heft -who has been promoting this show for 10 years- together with Lars Nittve, Director of the Swedish museum. El gran vidrio is the object with which Ducamp comes down on the ‘retinal art’ tradition. It is a paradoxical piece of conceptual-eroticism that is accompanied by the Caja Verde (Green Box- the selection of his own notes on the outcome of the piece) also to be showcased in Proa.
The consignment – made up of public and private collections from USA, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Israel and Belgium – is worth 25 million dollars (Duchamp’s record in auctions is 1.7 million dollars) and will come with a blessing; that which Jacqueline Matisse Monnier, Henri Matisse granddaughter and Duchamp’s step daughter, gave Heft in Paris. Responsible for Duchamp’s archive, she proposed the American Elena Filipovic as the curator and paved the way: ‘It is an unfinished business with his memory’. Buenos Aires is the only city in which he lived apart from Paris and New York’.
His ‘porteños’ nine months
Duchamp’s stay in Buenos Aires, between September 1918 and June 1919, is a diffuse interval between his repeated trips between Paris and New York. ‘Since 1917 the United States had been in war and I, having left France basically for lack of militarism or patriotism, if you wish, had fallen into the American patriotism, which certainly was worse’ said fifty years later. On August 14th 1917, together with his friend Yvonne Chastel, he boarded the SS Crofton bound for Buenos Aires. Finally, on September 9th 1918, he arrived in Buenos Aires, where he is believed not to have known anybody, without a clear idea about his future.
The traces of his stay remain in a few letters and some fragmentary testimonies. He lives in an apartment in Alsina 1734 and sets up his studio in a room in Sarmiento 1507 (current plaza seca of the Centro Cultural San Martín). It is believed that there he worked on details for the design of El gran vidrio, which he would finish in 1923. During his stay here, he witnesses the Semana Trágica (Tragic Week), sends a readymade to his sister by post and begins a long series of hair experiments after cropping his hair. He praises the local butter but looks down on the artistic environment.
‘Nothing here: not even ateliers. The painters here are well-mannered young men who live with their families and use the basement or a covered patio as their studio’, he wrote to Florine Stettheimer. Chess fills his life: he designs a chessboard and plays correspondence chess, and he even frequents a club.
It is here where he receives the news of the death of his brother Raymond and of his friend Guillaume Apollinaire. In June 1919, Duchamp gets on board bound for France. The end.
