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

Fundamental Aspects
Conversation with Jorge Helft (II/III)


By Victoria Verlichak

In this segment of the conversation, collector Jorge Helft tells how his interest in Marcel Duchamp began –bolstered by reading and rereading over 40 books in the past two years– and reveals some aspects of the hermetic artist.


Idol of the Pop Generation
“While studying the art of the 20th century, in the ‘60’s or so I discovered Duchamp’s world. I slowly realized how big an artist Duchamp was and that his work held enormous potential. A few years before his death, Duchamp became a leader and idol for the entire Pop generation. Not only did he awake the admiration of creators in the visual arts, but also that of John Cage and of a generation of writers such as Allen Ginsberg.

“Duchamp knew how to develop in a more complete way, in a much more categorical way, ideas that had always existed in the arts field. He consolidated them in 1913, for many reasons a fundamental year for his production. I thought it was brilliant that these ideas are invading the world so much later on, 50 years after having elaborated them mentally and putting them into practice, which goes to show that everything done after 1963 is ‘Duchampian’. Nobody, not even Rembrandt or Picasso by far, have had the influence that Duchamp has, which is why I am so passionate about him.

“In the beginning, Duchamp didn’t want these objects to be seen as art; he realized that art depends as much on the eye of the beholder as on the artist. How did such an incredible thing like that occur to him? No, it is really not incredible, because according to André Breton he was the most intelligent man he had ever met. Duchamp was a thinker, reflecting with his pipe, with his cigar. He said that there were thousands of masterpieces that never saw the light of day because no one ever understood them; sometimes they are rediscovered, such as the concrete case of Vermeer (in 1870 nobody knew who Vermeer was).

“Duchamp realized that the viewer had a power, a colossal importance in determining what is and what is not art, which fascinated me because it is similar as the thought  Borges had when he said that a book is made by the reader, not the writer. “I am a reader”, said Borges. What counts is the reader, because we know that a lot of people write and nothing happens. Likewise, Duchamp said that the viewer, the spectator, makes the work of art.

“With such a clear thought, Duchamp takes the bicycle wheel. The first object he incorporated is the bicycle wheel (Bicycle Wheel), he buys it because he finds it visually amusing, he liked the movement; he said that since he did not have a chimney, spinning the wheel created the same peaceful effect as a burning fire’s oscillation. When he goes to the United States he builds another bicycle wheel. Once again he is not thinking of ‘what is art’. The idea of the readymade begins with the objects he looks for –without any aesthetic intention– and buys there. This makes for an evolution; there are 15 or 20 different readymades –the assisted readymade, rectified readymade, soft readymade– and each one is a defining moment in his thinking process. These are not objects that Duchamp bought at hardware stores or shops and accumulated randomly, each one had the clear purpose of adding something to his way of thinking.”


Picasso, Matisse y Duchamp
“Picasso, who was six years older, did not influence him nor were they friends. Duchamp met Picasso briefly but was never taken seriously by the latter; Picasso found him to be an interesting intellectual, but never appreciated Duchamp’s importance. Clearly, Duchamp was acquainted with Cubism, but the 1912 painting Nude descending the staircase (Nº2) is Futurist with a Cubist palette. He was trying to show movement, something Cubism was never interested in.

“During the years of my education I always heard that although the 20th century is very abundant in important artists, there are only two who remain untouchable geniuses: Picasso-Matisse; Matisse-Picasso. Picasso had only one rival whom he was afraid of: Matisse. Picasso was never afraid of Braque; he respected him and loved him very much, despite some falling-outs.

“Starting in the 60’s, and little by little in the 70’s, in the 80’s, and entering the end of the century, important and prestigious museum directors and art historians with certain authority, began to say that the 20th century produced three super geniuses: Matisse-Picasso-Duchamp; and some maintain that, to put things in the right place, the trilogy should be Duchamp-Picasso-Matisse. With 60 years of delay, suddenly, Duchamp enters this select club of the great three. Before he was barely named and in the 60’s, the 70’s, we would have said Picasso-Matisse-Duchamp, people would have thought it was crazy. Through Fundación Proa’s exhibition, I want people to realize why with such delay Duchamp is considered a super genius par of Picasso and Matisse.

“It’s true that in the name Duchamp and conceptual art for many in the art world anything goes. However, the sole responsibility of the artist’s having being relatively unknown is the artist himself, who only showed his readymades to his friends; the two that he did send to exhibitions were never properly shown, having remained hidden. I think he is a genius for having developed several strong thoughts that already existed, but that he was able to crystallize, explain, and demonstrate.

“Duchamp starts his revolution during Dada’s moment. He refuses to participate in the movement since, initially, he did not want to belong to any groups; he was above all an individualist. Nonetheless, he is the first great Dadaist, although he did not want to be Dada. This has to be contextualized; the bicycle wheel and the snow shovel are also within the Dadaist spirit. Duchamp refused to participate in those groups; Breton got down on his knees asking him to join Surrealism, but he never wanted to, he always said no.

“Marcel Duchamp wrote, in 1955, that those that were going to understand his work were those that ‘will live in 50 or 100 years time’, those were the viewers that interested him; today’s viewers.”


Essential Aspects
“I would like to mention three fundamental aspects in Duchamp. In the first place, he is a musical composer. Before the bicycle wheel, in 1913 he composes three pieces where he plays with the concept of randomness. At one moment he writes musical notes on small cards that, according to the sequence in which they are selected at random, write out the composition. Then, for another composition he works with a funnel in which numbered balls are thrown and the same mechanism is used: the composition is rewritten every time according to the extracted numbers. The idea is incredible, although musically infamous. It is the same idea grasped by Cage, which he transformed into contemporary music in 1950, but Duchamp was doing it in 1913.

“The second aspect to point out is the colossal importance that chess had for Duchamp throughout 30 years; then less so. Jackie Matisse told me that when her mother, Teeny, and Duchamp were in Paris, she and her husband (Bernard Monnier) would invite them over for meals and to play chess. In Buenos Aires he would play chess everyday; in New York he didn’t do anything else than play chess.

“The third item to point out is the importance of puns for Duchamp. He dedicated hours and hours to those games of double meanings, generally in French and some in English, for the most part with highly erotic, quite vulgar, connotations together with the puns, such as the well-known L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), Elle a chaud au cul. But there are entire books of those puns with double meanings that are untranslatable.

“About his feminine personality… Duchamp wanted to change…; his initial idea is to simulate changing religions and seeks to convert to Judaism, but when he can’t find a Jewish last name that truly satisfies him, he created Rrose Selavy (Eros, C’est la Vie), another pun, and has himself photographed in drag by Man Ray. His purpose was to deny his identity; turn up as ‘other’.”