«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

These people, like Man Ray, were natural sophisticates with an enormous range of interests, from art to music to theatre to politics. Duchamp is quite a different case, and there are questions to be asked. When Duchamp attempted to place a urinal in the 1917 exhibit of the Society of Independent Artists (it was turned down) his act had some shock value. When Man Ray photographed Duchamp in drag as "Rrose Sélavy" -- Eros c'est la vie -- or, Rose Levy -- it was a witty reference to a cross-dressing Jew, it had some double entendre humor. But now the shock seems dated. Third rate Hollywood movies abound in bathroom scenes with an actor pretending to defecate, cross dressing has invaded Halloween, pretending to be a Jew is hardly daring. What remains when shock dies? Duchamp, the chess playing showman, was a mass of contradictions. His outer veneer was of an Greenwich Village aesthete, existing on the bare bones of living conditions. Yet Duchamp first lived off his father's trust fund, then married two substantial heiresses. He made a fetish of not making new works, yet spent his last twenty years in a single effort -- constructing in secrecy Etant Donnés, a female nude reclining, that is, trapped in a bed of leaves. The female is meant to be the Brazilian sculptor Maria Martins, who after their five year love affair rejected him.

Huffington Post
Nov 18 2009