Duchamp experience in Philly
At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Marcel Duchamp’s Etant Donnes 1. La Chute d’Eau, 2. Le Gaz d’Eclairage (Given 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) is installed in a shadowy room off the corner of the main Duchamp gallery. Described by Jasper Johns as ‘the strangest work of art in any museum,’ this piece is strikingly different to Duchamp’s earlier works - he worked secretly on this installation for twenty years before it was revealed after his death. In the main gallery, Duchamp’s Large Glass or The Bride Striped Bare by Her Bachelors, The Green Box and his ready mades are exhibited. To gain a greater understanding of Etant Donnes, I will analyse this work alone, its relation to the other artwork in the gallery and address Duchamp’s ideas in order to reflect on the experience of the spectator in the gallery space.
In the Duchamp gallery of the Museum The Large Glass, perhaps the most striking object in the room, stands in front of the window in the original position Duchamp gave it in 1954. He wished to create an image in which the background would capture the ‘chance environment’ of the surroundings. The two glass planes hold Duchamp’s fragmented and ambiguous shapes that he claims represent the unattainable bride and her determined bachelors who seek to consummate the marriage. However, the forms appear unrecognisable and are represented by Duchamp mathematically, as if the glass is acting as a grid system which the bachelors fail to understand. Henderson supports this when she says The Large Glass is a ‘humorous allegory of sexual quest cast in scientific/technological language.’ The bride is reminiscent of Duchamp’s The Passage from Virgin to Bride as she appears ‘four dimensional, biomechanical’ and embodies a fusion of science and technology. In contrast, the model in Etant donnes is a stark representation of a woman. The fact that she is holding a gas lamp suggests she has fled from somewhere more safe, whether on her own terms or not. The lack of scientific and mathematical reference contrasts to Large Glass as Duchamp appears to highlight her with an earlier time.
Interestingly, this work seems to reverse Duchamp’s earlier philosophical work which advocated the artist as an intellectual. The most famous of these, Fountain from 1917, also in this room, presented art as ready made and reproducible. In her book dedicated to the artwork, Julian Haladyn highlights that Etant Donnes ‘represents excess in both conceptual and material terms;’ the skill involved and multiple mediums do not align with the readymades. Instead, it is an assemblage of multiple materials such as wood, bricks, velvet and leather that are layered together to create an artwork that exemplifies multiplicity. Further. as it can only be viewed by one person at a time, the individual is given a special insight, unlike the openness and formlessness of The Large Glass. It does not rely on the surrounding environment but instead creates its own physical space although at first appears as an incognito wooden door.
Henderson draws attention to the fact Duchamp describes his bride to be in a ‘isolated cage’ in his description for The Large Glass in his Green Box; a cabinet of his notes for the work. Similarly, behind the wooden door of Etant Donnes, the sculptural woman reclines naked and alone on the ground. Despite the element of nature suggested by the landscape and waterfall, she appears in a confined space and is explicitly vulnerable to the ‘male gaze’; we observe her naked body without her awareness. In this sense, the female is present but unidentifiable; we are unable to communicate with her on an emotional or intellectual level as her head is cut out of the scene. Further, without seeing her face and most importantly her gaze, we are not challenged by her and instead, take on a voyeuristic role that is highlighted by our privileged viewing of the subject through peepholes in the darkened room. The fact she is nude encourages us to consider the repetition of female nudity in the history of art. Judovitz argues that the Duchamp used the nude in a different way, ‘in order to question its premises as a pictorial and artistic genre.’ In this sense, he treats the nude as the outcome of the issues represented in images and works of art.
Therefore, in what Haladyn refers to as the ‘Waiting Room,’ Etant Donnes provides an overtly sexual scene in which the spectator is, depending on when you visit the Museum, forced to anticipate the artwork and in turn, the female body. One does not view Etant donnes as a collective group but rather as an individual awaiting the ‘climax’ of the artwork that is sometimes intentionally delayed by Duchamp. When the spectator looks through the peepholes, they are met by a feeling of invasive intrusiveness. This feeling is what epitomises the artwork, the spectator is not only viewing the art but participating in Etant Donnes. The element of voyeurism in this act draws attention to the fact the spectator is directly challenged with their own desire to look upon the naked woman and to be fascinated by the scene before them.
In this sense, the interaction between the spectator and the art is pivotal to the artwork itself. Rather than viewing artwork in a traditional context and environment, Duchamp wished for the spectator to treat ‘the context of exhibiting artwork as a single unit, one that connected all of the works on display in an active dialogue with each other and the viewer through the space of representation itself.’ This encourages us to consider the layout of the gallery in the Philadelphia Museum of Art dedicated to Duchamp and how the works intermingle with one another. The relationship between the viewer and the art and how we move from one piece to the other becomes significant in how we interpret one piece of artwork.
Due to the layout of the gallery, the spectator will most likely have viewed Duchamp’s Large Glass, Green Box and his ready mades before they encounter Etant donnes. The ready mades, in particular, seem to lack the same spectator involvement that Etant donnes requires. Before peering through the peep holes, the spectator has already been shown everyday objects transformed into art objects that are worthy of being exhibited, an idea that challenges traditional artistic definitions. Whether the spectator approves or not, they will have been met by an unusual artistic practice and have a sense of unfamiliarity that is only heightened by the complex ideas in The Large Glass. Viewing Etant Donnes afterward, one might expect that the wooden door is another example of a ready made, a familiar object transformed into artistic object. In this way, Judovitz argues that Etant Donnes serves as a pun on on the ‘immediacy of the visible.’ In a similar way to the ready mades, it blocks meaning and questions the purpose of our vision in spectatorship. According to Judovitz, the material object that the door presents becomes the site for reflection on the mediated character of vision within the institutional space of the museum’ Comparatively, Hayadan draws attention to the fact that the door itself, without looking through the peep holes, is meaningless. Similarly, the Large Glass, when viewed without the Green Box or any of Duchamp’s notes, might appear uninterpretable.
The assemblage Etant Donnes, is and artwork that reversed Duchamp’s earlier ideas of art as readily available and accessible to all. During the last twenty years of his life, the artist chose to create an artwork that layers multiple materials and involved meticulous installation. The result is a work different to his other work found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and demonstrates his ideas of the spectator as an integral aspect of the artwork.
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Henderson, Linda. "The "Large Glass" Seen Anew: Reflections of Contemporary Science and Technology in Marcel Duchamp's "Hilarious Picture'" Leonardo 32.2 (1999): 113-26. Print.
Judovitz, Dalia, and Marcel Duchamp. Unpacking Duchamp Art in Transit. Berkeley: U of California, 1998. Print.
Singer, Thomas. "In the Manner of Duchamp, 1942-47: The Years of the "Mirrorical Return"" The Art Bulletin 86.2 (2004): 346-69. Print.
"Philadelphia Museum of Art - Exhibitions - Marcel Duchamp: Étant Donnés." Philadelphia Museum of Art - Exhibitions - Marcel Duchamp: Étant Donnés. Web. 13 Apr. 2015. <http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/324.html>.
