Marcel Duchamp
Bottle Rack, 1914/c.1921
Readymade: Galvanizad iron bottle dryer
© Succession Marcel Duchamp, 2008, ADAGP/Paris, AUTVIS/Sao Paulo

Fundación Proa announces the upcoming release of the book/catalogue Marcel Duchamp: a work that is not a work “of art”, in a Spanish version for Buenos Aires, and a Portuguese version for São Paulo as well.

Designed by Mario Gemin, the catalogue is a review of Marcel Duchamp’s life and work (1887-1968), through photographs, letters, writings and an important selection of texts by outstanding researchers.

Elena Filipovic’s curatorial presentation is accompanied by texts by such specialists as Thierry De Duve, Octavio Paz and Rosalind Krauss, among others. They illuminate and debate Duchamp’s ideas; working on the central concepts of his production, like the readymade, the Big Glass, and Étant Donnés. The essays complete the valorization of the “Duchamp effect” for the art and culture of the XX and XXI centuries.

The current researches bring into light new information about his stay in Buenos Aires and about the meticulous correspondence that he kept in the period of the São Paulo’s Museum of Contemporary Art construction. The circulation of the artist’s writings, along with an historical and biographical chronology, developed by Latin-American researchers from a fully context-conscious perspective and in relation with art history, contributes new edges to the debate and views about Duchamp.

The catalogue’s great amount of photographs and documents to be published offer a reading from the “images”, enriching the reader’s vision towards a new comprehension of the artist’s life and work.