The "Meta-Irony" of Marcel Duchamp

Author(s): Albert Cook

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Spring, 1986, Vol. 44, No. 3
(Spring, 1986), pp. 263-270
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/429736

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 ALBERT COOK

The "Meta-Irony" of Marcel Duchamp

Irony is a playful way of accepting something. the nude is dominated or dominating, anatomi-
Mine is the irony of indifference. It is a 'Meta-irony.' cally deconstructed or Cubistically dazzling.
MarcelDuchamp As Octavio Paz says, "The Nude is an anti-
mechanism. The irony comes first from our not
Des lors ne sommes-nous pas incites a prendre plus knowing if we are dealing with a nude. Locked
au serieux ce qui se pr6sente a nous pour ne pas into a corset of a suit of armor, it is inviol-
l'etre tout a fait?
etretoauesLacanable.' Yet the title's first words tell us it is a
nude; Paz's deduction must be applied not to
the visual effect but to our intellectual con-
DUCHAMP, LIKE MANY SURREALISTS, exploits struction upon it. Are our eyes failing to focu
the connection between the automatic or machine- for the erotic dazzle as she descends? Are we
like unconscious mechanisms of sexuality and seeing through the flesh to the bones under-
the amorous transport, a connection underlying neath, as in the Memento mori visual motif still
the visible discrepancy between the soft, alive in the late nineteenth century? These
curvilinear, rounded body and the hard-edged, questions, too, are undecidable.
rectilinear, skeletal machine. But typically he Duchamp's "Ready-mades" make the inert-
carries it farther even than his own writings do, ness of a foregone cultural context part of the
where the Rose Selavy texts are more simply question. Duchamp pointedly does not revise
surrealistic than any visual work that includes his Ready-mades in a visual direction the way
a reference to her. It is Boccioni, who showed Picasso turns the found object of a bicycle
rapidly successive views of a moving machine handlebars and seat into a "bull" by foreground-
in his work, whom Duchamp calls a "Prince ing an underlying visual metaphor. The visual
of Futurism."2 But Duchamp never simply is at once inert and elaborate in the nineteenth
translates Eros into a machine one-dimensional- century practical engraving of Duchamp's Roul-
ly, preserving in his most sportive and demystify- ette de Monte Carlo, while the verbal is at once
ing efforts the many dimensions of such a straightforward and endlessly questioning. The
virtual connection. The complication appears photograph of the dignitary on this bond is
already in the Nude Descending a Staircase none other than Duchamp of course, wearing
series, as he moves past Apollinaire's charac- goat horns in the center of a roulette wheel. Or
terization of him as the only painter still what look like goat horns. The effect has been
preoccupied with the nude. The tone in which achieved by having Man Ray soap Duchamp's
the viewer is to take the Nude has been hair and arrange it in tufts. The two officials
ironically concealed. How great is his sup- who countersign the bond at the bottom are
pressed distance from the celebratory, or even none other than Marcel Duchamp and his
the sorrowing, aura of the nude in prior Western transvestite alter ego Rose Selavy.4 The fiscal
painting! Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon Duchamp and the sexual Duchamp are one.
have been set in motion to go a step further. In This collapse of self-reference can in fact be
this work there cannot also be discerned whether extended into the world of finance, where
interlocking directorates produce an equivalent
ALBERT COOK is professor of comparative literature of the same man signing several times under the
at Brown University. guise of committee decision, and where stock

© 1986 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

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264 COOK

can be watered to the point rightof valuelessness.

Rose Selavy, 1920."
Since Monte Carlo produces nothing Where is the sculpture
but the in all this? One
increment on money gambled cannotaway, even
see through a one can walk around
it, but
it-a fact that
real Monte Carlo bond would typify the again easily lends itself to
rarefac-
significative
tion and ultimate sterility of some highly deduction
profit- about the widow but
able enterprises. Yet unlike munitions
does not really add
manu-
much to the visual sculp-
ture. This
factures, such activities take place inseems, in the fashion of other
an unreal
world of pure play. The worldsculptures
of pure of the
playperiod,
hasto be reducing three
certain analogues to the world dimensions
of art, to where
nearly two. a Duchamp interested
valueless piece of paper, a fake
himselfMonte Carlo
explicitly in theories about the fourth
bond, can have a high value conferred
dimension long on it by
before executing this work."
a few strokes of the pen. Further dimensional puzzles, and further
In a sculpture like Fresh Widow theofpun
virtualizing on element in a sculpture,
the visual
"French Window" sets many interactions going,
are presented by another window of roughly the
since the actual sculpture is samea period,
miniaturized
La Bagarre d' Austerlitz.7 Taking
French Window fully labelledone atofthe bottomofas
the projections the portmanteau title,
an art work. The panes of the glass"Garehave
d'Austerlitz"
been in Paris, throws us
blacked out by leather, and theback connection
on the realizationtothat this flat window,
the title leads the viewer notbricked
to play and with
over thethe
typical French handles
removed,
sculpture visually but rather to draw cannot be entered for business. Still
significa-
tive inferences. Conceptual artlesshas
can itbegun,
be visuallybut
expanded into the com-
not on its later direct satirical course. The
plex three-dimensionality of a real "gare,"
widow is in mourning, and she is alsowith
theits vast salle and its further three-
dimensional extensions of track. Three dimen-
opposite of a transparent window; nobody
sions
knows what is happening inside her, and yetcollapsed into two in a sculpture can
suggest four dimensions collapsed into three,
she might be inferred to be entering the widow's
scandalously proverbial state of sexual as
read-
in the book Flatland and in Duchamp's own
iness, a reading that the veterinary sense of on the fourth dimension. In any case
remarks
"fresh" would reinforce.5 Something in theis no way of entering this "gare." It is
there
relentlessness of an animal response toclosed
deathfor business anyway, or ready for busi-
makes a widow proverbially "fresh" or ready
ness only in the future. The loops of whitewash
again for sexual activity. On the contrary,
that Duchamp has put on the panes of glass are
however, if a widow whose nose was stuffed
a French workman's sign that a house is not yet
up from weeping over her dead husband ready
were for entry. Or are these hints of the
to try to say the words "French window,"
figure-eights soaped onto windows by bands
what might come out would be the utterance of American children in the destructive fun of
"fresh widow," an embarrassing reversion, a Halloween night? The archness of the title,
through dreamlike and body-distorted Joycean and part of its other extension, as well as
punning, to a self-reference that could beDuchamp's
taken transatlantic existence, allow our
as scandalously undermining the inaccessibility reading the whitewash loops in the direction of
of her willed presentation. "I am a new widow, that kind of Bagarre.
and the fact that I have been weeping actually On that projection of the title, we have not
reveals rather than conceals the fact that I am a railroad station but a battle, one of the great
or am soon to be scandalously 'fresh.' I can'tvictories of a legendary French ruler, Napo-
help saying all this, and my very helplessnessleon. In a militarist ideology-but Duchamp
becomes an appeal with sexual overtones that was resolutely anti-militarist-it would be called
makes me transparent in a way that the particu- the Bataille d'Austerlitz, not the bagarre or
lar French window I am trying vainly to brawl that an anti-militarist cynic would want
indicate is not." And so on. The whole set of to call any battle, no matter how glorious. The
single portmanteau word has a single lexical
possibilities here is doubly qualified by literary
law and transvestite mockery in the further meaning, and becomes a portmanteau only in
designation of the title painted on it, "Copy- combination with Austerlitz. Ba is not a possi-

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The "Meta-lrony" of Marcel Duchamp 265

ble prefix for a gare in the sense of a railroad hand, or to respond fully to or offer trans-
station, and bagarre degenerates and unmasks formateurs (pace Lyotard) on the other.
bataille. The process of construing the title, or Such a work as La Bagarre d'Austerlitz does
relating it to the sculpture, is also a bagarre. not visually enclose a syntax of discordant
A contradiction obtains between the visual and signs, as a surrealist painting might. In a Miro
the verbal: between this sculpture of a brickedwe relate star, bird, and woman to a group of
French window and either a railroad station or abstract configurations that the near-abstracted-
a battle. And there is also a contradiction ness, or even the sketchiness, of the particular
between a railroad station, which organizes delineations within the painting have already
people to travel long distances alone in peace,suggested. In a Magritte we visually register
and a battle, which immobilizes them to that fighta painted sky differs from a "real" (painted)
in a great crowd in war. The references back sky, or that a woman's shoe has fused to her
and forth to the visual window, however, do foot. In a Duchamp the work itself offers
actual
not contradict, but reinforce and pick up,
us no discordancies: a brick wall with a window
aspects of railroad station or battle-but do not
that contains windows whitewash-scrawled by
ever square the nest of contradictions. the builder can be found in an actual French
There is the further sense that society strange-
city. The title taken by itself offers just a simple
ly persists not only in warring but in glorifying
pun produced by fusing three ordinary locu-
great battles. It does so by displacing tions,
the La Bataille (d'Austerlitz), La Bagarre,
normal rules for forming the nomenclature andof
La aGare d'Austerlitz. As we move from the
French railroad station, in the instance ofrepresentational
the mystery of the fenestrated wall
actual station in Paris, named for where you arenesting signifiers in the verbal title, an
to the
rather than as often for where you are going.interaction gets set up just because the discrep-
The glory of the battle stops the title rather than
ancy does not seem obviously discordant; they
pointing it in the direction of Lyon, theseem East,to belong to domains that do not stand in
or the North, where the trains would be going.
any sort of simple opposition. Within the verbal
This would be the case of stations given not the this also follows surrealist practice: "le
realm,
names of the direction to be taken, but rather
revolver a cheveux blancs" offers domains that
are not even opposable to one another, since
that of a more benign place name of religious
associations or classical, St. Lazare or revolvers do not grow hair nor are they in any
Montparnasse. These are places in Paris immediately
itself, obvious antithesis to hair. Duchamp
takes this practice of Breton's and extends it to
though, a starting point for a trip, and Austerlitz
is first of all a place in Austria where athe
battle
partial discordancy between the verbal and
was fought. The Gare d'Austerlitz willthe
never
visual realm, stretching the viewer into
provide a train to take you from Austerlitz, or the discordances, for which the work
producing
to Austerlitz, and Duchamp's sculpture advertises
serves as a kind of exercising cause rather than
both the elaboration of its signs and aa disap-
result. The miniature size of the Bagarre
pointment of recursive meaning in them,d'Austerlitz,
a and the difference between the
procedure different alike from Breton,door
fromon one side and the window on the other,
Dada, and from Joyce. hint at the artistic nature of the work-as of
The train is of course a surrealist, as well as its title and gallery situation also do.
course
a futurist, icon. There are trains in Breton, as
The removal of the handle-according to an
in Apollinaire and in Paul Delvaux. But there French provision in such French
ordinary
doors-from
are no trains present either in the sculpture or the vertical lock system on the
the title of Duchamp's work. These specially
door side, hints at the necessity for exercise to
"unlock" the work.
significant and especially cryptic procedures
are even more elaborate in the vast late works,
Duchamp in the title begins by offering puns
the Large Glass and Etant donnes la of chute
the sort printed in the collection Rrose
d'eau et l'eelairage au gaz. In all these Selavy,9 an anthology of puns built on the
Duchamp is what Char calls him, a "distil-punning transvestite name of the artist himself.
lateur des ecritures."' It is an ecriture that Some of these break the class mold of high art
cannot be said to fully deconstruct on the one by seeming to be drawn from low-life dialect

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266 COO K

(Cockney rhyming slang and thatargot puns)

can be applied orto itself in an endless
back
child language (naive scatology or"Any
regress. pig idea
Latin).
that came to me, the thing
Like the puns on the several pun-discs
would he
be to turn it around and try to see it with
another set ofin
painted, these are verbally complete senses. "
them-
selves, whereas the sense of La Bagarre
L.H.O.O.Q. is not the title of the Mona
d'Austerlitz can only be obtained by shuttling Lisa-a painting that strictly speaking lacks a
back and forth between the verbal and the title and may have one provided. The work of
visual. Thus is set up an area of assimilation Duchamp is not the Mona Lisa but a reproduc-
which has a powerful completeness fromtion its of it modified by a beard and moustache
enclosure of two realms normally complete crayoned on it. The archness of this childish
each to itself. And at the same time the viewer
desecration of a hallowed artifact begins as a
is removed both from "full" aesthetic appre- Dadaist gesture, and it is replicated in the
hension by the verbal title's energic approba- irreverent reading of the cryptic alphabetical
tion of the visual artifact, and sealed into a sorttitle, putting a French slur on the Italian
of active discontinuity for the incompleteness, painting, elle a chaud au cul. The irreverent
never resolvable, of the title. The visual windowsentence gives a transient and de-mystifying
and wall will stop both verbal railroad andexplanation of the smile by referring to a part
verbal battle. The verbal railroad and the verbal of the sitter's body not shown. It does not at all
battle will both force the signification of the explain the beard and moustache, and they
visual window and wall beyond the threshold remove her from erotic appeal to de-eroticized
of even a constructed visual coherence. transvestite masquerade. She has been turned
Schwarz"' quotes Duchamp as saying that awayitfrom
is art object into desecrated reproduc-
tion,
his aim "to transfer the significance of as a sort of reverse Rrose Selavy. A
lan-
guage from words to signs, intocommon
a visualDuchamp theme, the gap and the
expression of the word, similar to the ensuing contradictory connection between eros
ideogram
of the Chinese language." Or into a and dynamic
high art, has been re-illustrated by calling
attentionwe
version of the Chinese ideogram-begun, to a desecrator who shifts the values
might remark, around 1915 at almostplaced upon each, and upon the relation between
exactly
the time that Pound was adapting thethem. Trivializing and modernizing become the
Chinese
ideogram for what would soon become same act, and the irony has lost the twist of
a cen-
hurting by not leaving the addressee open to
tral place in the Cantos. Duchamp's ideograms,
however, surpass the Chinese by being more
explore the contradictions further than the work
posits them. The verbal sense here stops, losing
comprehensive (they keep the visual interact-
auras and
ing) and more arbitrary (they are personal; intimations, because it has been
and
the senses keep multiplying)." recycled back ironically through the visual. It
In this way Duchamp makes the isverbal
not only that "Duchamp has brought the
ironize the visual and the visual ironize the tools of chance, humor and ironic indifference
verbal. Irony usually activates the response into
of play."14 He has done so in a way that
removes the normal props of them all. Chance
an addressee by calling attention to contradic-
tions in the utterance or in the posture of comes
the to have a sort of rigidity; a Monte Carlo
addresser, as Socrates forces self-questioning
bond has a value that is in turn questioned. "I
by obliging the addressee to deal with his would like to force roulette to become a game
proffered doubt.12 But Duchamp's irony cir- of chess," he said. Humor is arrested in its
bodily response: the joke offers no cathartic
cuits itself back through the work. The visual-
and-verbal in the work thereby calls attention
release, and it may be said that the effect of the
to the context in which it is exhibited, out of
interplay between beard-and-moustache and
which it has been created. "I have forced elle a chaud au cul is to deprive both of the
myself to contradict myself in order tolaughter
avoid that either would invoke singly. Ironic
conforming to my own taste," Duchamp indifference in this situation comes to exhibit
declares, underscoring the obligation alertness
he has to mysteries it is neither deploring nor
exploring.
triggered off in the spectator to deal with the
One can attribute to Duchamp himself an
artist. In the process he provides a statement

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The "Meta-Irony" of Marcel Duchamp 267

attitude he attributes to a Kandinsky who as the an undertone, since the voice must break up
author of The Spiritual in Art cannot be imag- H. into a and ch.
ined so free of the unconscious and the emo- "Painting is an olfactory art" performs a
tional, "Tracing his lines with ruler and com- comparable irony upon the aesthetic effect. The
pass . . . it was no more the lines of the absurd demystification in this sentence can be
unconscious, but a deliberate condemnation of made to yield two contradictory senses (at
the emotional: a clear transfer of thought on least): "Painting is subliminal and intuitive in
canvas."' Duchamp says this with reference its production by the artist and its effect on the
to Tu m', the large work that organizes outlines viewer," or "painting makes either no impres-
of his own prior works on one canvas. The sion or a nonsensical one." In its form this
blank to be filled in for this title "Tu aphorism adheres to the classical pattern of
m'(emmerdes)"'6 does indeed control irony
the paint-
by stating a negative to imply a positive,
since
ing by thought, and a self-referential smell is the only one of the senses not
thought
that slights the very work and works it by
engaged ex-some art-sight has the visual arts,
hibits-an undertone aside of the artist to sound music, and literature; touch has sculp-
himself elevated to the position of a permanentture, and even taste has grande cuisine.
designation and governing the viewer's relation"Olfactory" involves us in producing such a
not to him so much as to the work that in turn series, and even in getting to the questionable
is governed by its relation to him. The "note fourth sense that leads us to ask if in some
of humor," Duchamp declares in a letter to the sense grande cuisine may be an art. This very
Arensbergs, "indicates my future direction toquestion returns us to the indubitable absence
abandon mere retinal painting." Still, to put a of any art connected with smell-other than
distance between himself and visual surfaces is that of the perfumer, whose task is to enhance
not to abandon them, but rather to enlist themthe erotic appeal that does have some con-
in an ironic relationship to himself and to anection with the mainsprings of artistic expres-
viewer simultaneously, where a Dadaist worksion. The work La Belle Haleine puts this term
does so successively, and thereby traditionally.and a photograph of Rose Selavy on a perfume
L.H.O.O.Q. has the initial look of Dadaist bottle. "Breath" replaces "Helen." The relief
alphabetical nonsense, but it turns out to have sculpture With My Tongue in My Cheek
a straight colloquial sense, and the alphabetical
solemnizes that indication of humor by confin-
coding has the additional ironic effect of play-ing itself to a simple visual representation of
ing this "only" key to the painting under what the the phrase physically describes. A side
voice. What cannot be directly stated inview the of Duchamp is shown with a cheek more
polite company of a group going through a swollen than a tongue pressed into a
evenly
museum is what can be taken for the source of cheek could really produce. This excess, in-
all it enshrines, a bodily effect and an engageddeed, leads the viewer to perceive it as what it
desire. feels like, rather than what it looks like, to have
The title is doubly cryptic, since initials
a tongue in the cheek. But in both cases it
with periods after them usually stand forremains
a physical and humorous.
sequence of words each successively beginning This Socrates, then, wishes the viewer to
with the letter printed. L.H.O.O.Q. would look
be and think his way back to the displace-
an unusual series in either English or French,
ments involved in looking by regarding the
and would be bound to result in some such seriousness underlying the self-effacement of
outlandish sentence as "Let her outpace others
an artist who has made joking and self-renunci-
quickly," "Ladle hot onions on quahogs," ation or
versions of each other. Visual perception
"La honte ouvre onze querelles." The cannot
right seek repose, and verbal expression
approach of enunciating the letters slowly cannot
pro- formulate either propositions or the
duces a more normative, but also a more charmed formulae of an equivalent poetry. The
indecorous, sense, "elle a chaud au cul." This terrain has been bared of all icons but the
sense further erases the sequence of letters by complex ones that ironically carry out an act
eliding the second and third, disrupting the of baring. By comparison Oldenburg merely
series and consigning the resultant phrase to points to a questioning of visual textures and

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268 COOK

too, the red and

scales by the giant hard lipstick, and green dots do not change the
Rauschen-
berg returns the intellectual
landscape byacrobatics ofrefer it to
reproduction; they
Duchamp to the collage irrelevance (the dots cannot and
juxtapositions relate to the land-
scape), to the
honorific work-erasures become enabling
easy, a art (this sub-Seurat2'
classi-
cal repertoire. shows where painting, of landscapes or any-
The effect of Duchamp's irony is often to thing else, must begin), and to an art radically
contextualize the work, and at the same time different from landscape (patterning, or abstrac-
to suspend it from context.17 L.H.O.O.Q. tion, or the color harmonies of Delaunay-any-
dislodges the Mona Lisa from its Renaissance thing unconventional). The signature "takes
aura and from its cultural circumstances while over" the landscape, but impotently. In this
referring to those very elements by desecratingsense Therese Eiben is on the right track when
them. The Readymades of Duchamp do theshe asserts that such Readymades as "Unhappy
same by small but crucial alterations, as in theReadymade" and "Bicycle Wheel" offer a
first one, Pharmacy, where a calendar is alteredtenor and a vehicle but no referent.2- The
and enigmatically displaced by a red and greenspace of distance between one referent (foun-
dot placed in the middle of the work and the tain) and another (urinal) engendered by the
signature of Duchamp placed at the bottom.'8 tenor of "artistic act" (mounted porcelain
The dots, the artistic reproduction, and thefigure) and the vehicle of expropriated object
signature, revolve in a disjunction of non-(the installable urinal), creates a giant non-
relationship. "The Fountain," a urinal, typ- referent that can only be taken as a bracing,
ically raises a contradictory question (does theironic return to a verbal and visual tabula rasa.
water come from urination or from flushing?) Dada, by celebrating nonsense, stretches the
and answers it with an absence (water of neithercontext, rejects it, and still leaves it in place.
type will be seen when the work is set upThe work escapes the cerebration that produced
without plumbing in an art gallery.) The signa-it by consolidating a gesture of assertive rejec-
ture, "R. Mutt," suggests a man of bluntlytion. Duchamp's work never abuts on non-
humble origins or else a name for a dog thatsense. In To Be Looked at with One Eye (From
combines the honorific (a dog has two names the Other Side of the Glass), Close to, for
like a man) and the slangy ("mutt" is perjora- Almost an Hour, visual modifiers in the form
tive for "dog"). And because of physiologyof magnifying glasses, visual design in the
and habit a dog could not use a urinal-a form of a pyramidal figure, a visual referral-
further reason why such a gleaming appurtenance onward in the form of the glass, all refocus in
would be consigned to the realm of art (and yetan "imperial," artistic, visual imperative of this
never be created) by a dog-who lacks the work's title. The imperative is so exaggerated
realm of art anyway, as human beings should, as never to be obeyed, but the nonobedience
the Duchamp of that time pretended to claim. neither rejects context, as a Dadaist work does,
Duchamp said that in 1915 he had desired to nor creates a hieratic context, like the standard
break up forms-to "decompose them muchwork of art. Instead, it liberates its own context
along the lines that the Cubists had done."'9 through the very mechanism of referring to the
The act of decomposition proceeds not by manner of its visual apprehension.
visual perspectivizing but by referring the land- More complexly in the same vein, the title
scape reproduction of the urinal back to theof Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sdlavy? can only
implications of its context through the addition refer to its work, marble sugar cubes, a piece
of redefining touches. The touches fail to of cuttlebone, and a thermometer in a bird
redefine; the urinal does not become a fountain cage, if the imagined sneeze were so strong as
visually. Nor does it become one lexically: to disturb the sugar cubes, and temporarily
water is not produced, though its relation to rattle them in the cage, producing a temporary
water, and of such water to dogs, engenders a mobile. But no human sneeze could rattle these
thought pattern that sets up three contexts, each cubes; they are too heavy, and the transition
of which is a dimension in itself (fountains, from the lightness of objects in a normal
urinals, dogs).2' The social response to the context to the heaviness of artistic objects is
desecrating joke triggers these references. So, figured in the iconic move from light sugar

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The "Meta-Irony" of Marcel Duchamp 269

cubes to heavy, enlarged cubes of marble. "The glass saved me because of its
Sugar cubes are kept in a closed box to keep transparence," Duchamp says of the "Large
them moist, not in an open cage, but these Glass."25 But we are not exactly meant to look
sugar cubes have the permanence of art and through it; we also look into it as into a mirror
need no protection. They are displayed rather of our psychic processes, an intellectual-emo-
than being shut away. The cubes could feed tional X-ray. Its transparence captures and
neither humans nor a bird, since the cage is heightens for this large sculpture the principle
empty, and in any case a little too small for a Duchamp expresses for art generally. Its "prin-
normal bird cage. The piece of cuttlebone, ciple of contradiction" is that "in general the
linking in the work's sole redundancy of sign, picture (tableau) is the apparition of an appear-
is too big for the cage and protrudes above it, ance" ("En general le tableau est l'apparition
altering the sense of scale. And the thermom- d'une apparence").26 Duchamp does not fol-
eter? Its precise measurement sorts ill with the low Plato and say that it is the appearance of
artistic observer, unless he is thought to be an appearance. The word "apparition" has a
running a fever in his transport before the negative aspect; it is something momentary and
work. Or unless it operates a vain climactic possibly illusory. But it also has a positive
control over the "sugar" cubes. "The ther- aspect; it is something conveying a vision
mometer," Duchamp says, "is to register the behind the appearance, Plato's idea as well as
temperature of the marble." Or unless its Plato's artifact.
numerical markers be taken to measure not the The anthropological context of Mary Douglas
mercury in the tube but rather the cubes and the is somehow appropriate here, "Rituals of purity
cage, the sculptural dimensions-a function it and impurity create unity in experience."'7 If
cannot perform in this context. It is useless, in we substitute coherence and disorder for purity
fact; a pure visual display. Before such loose- and impurity, we get Duchamp's work, as we
ness the alter ego of the artist, the Rose Selavy do if we substitute transparence and invisible
in Duchamp, can give in to the random bodily background. "A ritual is more to society than
reaction-she can sneeze. Why not? The viewer words are to thought," she also says. And
thus also becomes that alter ego, female to the Duchamp's works are an anti-ritual that carry
male of Duchamp, taking his cues, and extend- some of this ritualistic transcendence for a
ing his context, before the work, which only society of the mobile and alert.
incidentally "parodies" Cubism-or for that
matter, Constructivism, since this is a sculpture ' Quoted in Robert Motherwell, The Dada Painters
that advertises not its rearrangement of planes and Poets (New York, 1951 ), p. 31 1.
but its forced coordination of discordant con- 2 Ibid., 195.
texts. If you try to lift Why not sneeze, it creates3 Octavio Paz, Deux Transparents (Paris, 1967), pp.
16-17.
an effect somewhat mythological, Duchamp
4 Duchamp accompanied the Bond with a supposed
asserts.23 Why? The weight will be heavier
Society, a list of "Extracts from Statues" and explanatory
than the eye expects, and this discrepancy
letters to Picabia and Jacques Doucet. Marcel Duchamp,
Duchamp du Signe: Ecrits, ed. Michel Sanouillet (Paris,
between the body's visual and its tactile sense
1975), pp. 268-70.
will mythologize not the objects, surely-these
5 Duchamp says that the title means "a window
remain marble trompe-l'oeil sugar cubes-but
aroused to the point of abandon" (deluree). Marcel
the body of the viewer-holder, become strange-
Duchamp, Inqgnieur du temps perdu: entretiens avec
ly weightless thereby and induced into a realm
Pierre Cabanne (Paris, 1977), p. 113.
of hieratic connection. h Duchamp's own remarks about the fourth dimension,
and the practices leading to questions of dimensionality in
Duchamp sees Arp's Dadaism as "humorhis major works, have undergone considerable extension in
in its subtlest form."'4 And he praises in Dada
the discussions of his commentators, notably Craig E.
its exuberant liveliness as opposed to the intel-
Adcock, Marcel Duchamp's Notes for the Large Glass, an
N-Dimensional Analysis (Ann Arbor, 1983); Jean Clair,
lectual tendencies of Cubism and Expressionism.
These angles on an associated provocative Marcel Duchamp ou le grand fictif (Paris, 1975); and
Jean-Francois Lyotard, Les Transformateurs Duchamp
posture afford an angle on his own sense (Paris,
of 1977). As Adcock says (p. 109), "The Oculist
irony and context, where the humor disappears
Witnesses are possibly meant to suggest a flattened version
into an intellectuality never separate from it. of a Riemannian spherical space or a hypersurface trans-

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270 COOK

onto Picabia's
formed through perspective projection." semi-composite
Adcock L'oeil cacodylate, "Pi
is obliged
qu'habillaDuchamp's
to redefine and adjust in order to align Rrose," where the intuitions
name of the painter, the
with non-Euclidean geometry. Themathematical symbol pi, and Duchamp's alter ego are
term "transformateur"
conjoined. Duchamp
itself Lyotard borrows from Duchamp. He has put a a
has suitpoem
on mathematics.
or
list of that title whose items are asHedges
17 Inez disparate
(The Languagesas the[Durham,
of Revolt
constituents of the Large Glass; Duchamp
1983]) discusses Duchampdu Signe,
and other surrealistsp.
in terms of
272. the breaking of referential frames along the lines of Marvin
7 This title is twice recorded in Duchamp's notebook Minsky and Erving Goffman. But again, Duchamp goes
of puns. much farther than simply registering what such a procedure
8 Rene Char, Recherche de la Base au sommet (Paris, can account for.
1971), p. 43. 18 Carol P. James ("Duchamp's Pharmacy," Enclitic,
9 Marcel Duchamp, Rrose Selavy (Paris, 1939); 2, no. 1 [Spring, 1978]: 65-70) offers many deductions for
reprinted in Sanouillet, Duchamp du Signe, pp. 151-58. the red and green dots in Pharmacy.
"0 Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel 19 Duchamp du Signe, p. 171.
Duchamp (New York, 1970), p. 29. 20 Duchamp said that "America's unique contributions
" Duchamp goes well beyond the modem practice to art are hydraulic articles and bridges." "The Case of
summarized by Michel Butor, Les Mots dans la peinture, Richard Mutt," in The Blind Man, no. 2 (May 1917): 5,
Geneva, 1969, 17: "L'Oeuvre picturale se pr6sente comme quoted in Arturo Schwarz, Almanacco Dada (Milan, 1976),
l'association d'une image sur toile, planche, mur ou papier p. 73.
et d'un nom, celui-ci fut-il vide en attente, pure 6nigme, 21 There is a reference to Seurat in "Infra-minces,"
reduit a un simple point d'interrogation." "The painter's Marcel Duchamp, Notes, ed. Pontus Hulten (Paris, 1981),
work is presented as the association of an image on canvas, p. 1.
board, wall or paper, and of a name, be it void of 22 Therese Eiben, in an unpublished article on Duchamp's
association, pure enigma, reduced to a simple question Readymades.
mark." 23 Duchamp du Signe, p. 182.
12 I am here following the speculations of Gary 24 Ibid., p. 194. Duchamp says he got his start from
Raymond Roussel, in whose Impressions d'Afrique a
Handwerk, Irony and Ethics in Narrative (New Haven,
1985). Handwerk brings the deductions of Grice, Schlegel,painting machine is to be found (ibid., p. 173). He denies
Kierkegaard, and Lacan, among others, to bear on the a connection of his own art with Futurism, which he calls
situational ramifications of an ironic stance. (ibid., p. 171) "an impressionism of the mechanical world.
13 Marcel Duchamp, quoted in Anne d'Harnoncourt It was strictly a continuation of the Impressionist Move-
and Walter Hopps, Etant Donnes: lo la chute d'eau 20ment." He goes on to place Dada in a preliminary position,
le gaz d'eclairage (Philadelphia: 1973), p. 13. "Dada was very serviceable as a Purgative . . . I recall
14 Ibid., 16. certain conversations with Picabia along these lines" (p.
15 Schwarz, p. 471. 172).
16 As Duchamp says, "You can put the verb where 25 Cabannes-Duchamp, Entretiens, p. 60.
you wish, provided it begins with a vowel." Ingenieur, 26 Hulten, p. 250.
p. 102. Possibilities immediately suggest themselves-m'em- 27 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (Harmondsworth,
mennes, m'accahles, m'ouvres, m'arroses, m'ordonnes, 1966), pp. 13,78.
etc., etc. One may be reminded of the signature he scrawled

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