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


email: duchamp@proa.org

Why Duchamp in Buenos Aires
Conversation with Jorge Helft (I/III)


By Victoria Verlichak

Speaking of the exhibition Marcel Duchamp: a work that is not a work “of art”, organized by Fundación Proa with a highly qualified and tenacious Argentine team that is carrying out its complex realization, Jorge Helft explains why this show, based on a project he proposed to Proa at the beginning of 2006, is necessary.
A great Duchamp collector, in this segment of a conversation in Buenos Aires, Helft recounts some of his findings in the ‘Duchampian’ world.


Presence in Buenos Aires
“Adriana Rosenberg, president of Fundación Proa, accepted to do the exhibition Marcel Duchamp: a work that is not a work ‘of art’ on January 2, 2006. Since then two and half years have passed, my project was a lot more modest, but Adriana pushed and pushed, and now Proa’s exhibition will be very important, very big.

“I wanted to show Duchamp’s backbone pieces, the most important, give a message that could explain his thoughts and his criteria on how he modified the interpretation of what is art. I had wanted to do it in a modest format, appropriate for the poor Buenos Aires that we are. I did not want to bring The Large Glass (La Mariée mise au nu par ses Celibataires, meme), I thought it was too expensive… but the exhibition grew, and now The Large Glass will be shown.

“When Adriana Rosenberg agrees to do the show at Proa –after going about for years with an idea, with my presentation folder, that no one paid attention to– I thought we would need an ally. Jackie Matisse coincided that this was a pending debt with Duchamp’s memory. ‘Everything I have is at your disposition,’ she said to me. She has been my strongest, most forcible, and agreeable ally.

“After his stay in Buenos Aires between the end of 1918 and mid 1919, Duchamp was asked throughout 40 years what it was he did in this city. He said he only played chess. But here he perfected the Small Glass and made the Unhappy Readymade, based on a geometry book he sends to his sister for her to tie to her balcony so that time and rain do their job, to wear it down. In Buenos Aires he writes many notes on The Large Glass, so it’s a fact that he did a lot more than play chess.

“Precisely, on occasion of Duchamp’s visit to Buenos Aires in the first decades of the Twentieth century, in the year 2000 I thought it was necessary do an exhibition on the artist. He was in Buenos Aires for nine months; the only other placed he lived in, besides two months in Munich, other than his habitual residence Paris-New York, New York -Paris.

“I think there was a pending debt here. Ever since I became interested in Duchamp, in these past 30 years I became very close to the artists I collected and who idolize him: Victor Grippo, Edgardo Vigo, Roberto Elía. I wondered why nothing was ever done for Duchamp. While I worked on my proposal, beginning in 2000, Arturo Schwartz’s collection came to the Malba – Fundación Costantini, where his readymades were shown. More than welcome, it was a superb exhibition and finally some of the readymades that Duchamp edited with Schwartz were seen. But, we were still in debt with Duchamp. Duchamp was not explained. And here, everything is ‘Duchampian’, and people only know him here through books and some travels. Duchamp is an art pillar.

“That is why, other than his painting, everything will be shown. The show, which includes over 140 works, starts off in 1913. A very complete Duchamp will be coming.


The “Duchampian” world
“The daughter of Teeny Matisse and Pierre Matisse, and granddaughter of Henri Matisse, Jacqueline Matisse Monnier, grew up with Duchamp, whom her mother had married. Duchamp was the ideal stepfather and had an extremely warm relationship with Jackie and her brothers.

“Jackie, who is also an artist, together with Paul Matisse and another brother are the owners of the Duchamp’s archive and estate, and also of Duchamp’s private art collection, inherited from their mother. Paul Matisse has translated many of Duchamp’s notes and done a lot of work on his papers. Jackie adored Duchamp, and he trusted her. She made the last of the Boite-en-valise series and, also, was one of the actresses in Hans Richter’s movie (1947), inspired in the drawings of Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs.

“Thanks to Jackie Matisse, whom I met when I was also on the jury of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in France, I established ties with the German, Swedish, French, English, and American ‘Duchampian’ world; I have interviewed everyone. Once the project had been approved by Fundación Proa and I had decided not to be the curator, Jackie suggested to invite Elena Filipovic, a young curator with a fresh perspective on the artist.

“The only interview that Jackie has ever given was to me in January 2008. She always refused to be interviewed; she would say ‘the memories are mine’. But she accepted my interview. It is the first interview she has given and it will be published in our catalogue.


The Coloquium
“Jackie and Paul Matisse will be coming to the exhibition in Buenos Aires, where Adriana Rosenberg has organized an International Colloquium which will be directed by Paul Franklin, editor of Étant Donné magazine and who has dedicated his life to Duchamp. Étant Donné is published in France but has an international circulation; it constitutes a very important sector of the ‘Duchampian’ world. Jackie Matisse is on the executive board and is its driving force. Elena Filipovic also collaborates; the great thinkers are in this group.

“A brilliant panel has been invited –Jean-Jacques Lebel, Bernard Marcade, Herbert Molderings, Francis M. Naumann, Molly Nesbit, Michael Taylor– and it will have an equally important audience. Among the guests to the inauguration and the Colloquium, who have contributed generously by lending works to the exhibition or in some other way, there are the French collector and dealer David Fleiss, the Italian collector Luisella Zignone, the French dealer and mathematician Alain Tarica, Virginia Zabriskie, director of the Zabriskie Gallery of New York, Adelheid Gealt from the Indiana University Art Museum, among others. Also assisting will be members of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s team, which owes its great Duchamp collection to Walter Arensberg, collector and great benefactor”.