From Library Journal
The grandfather of postmodernism and a consummate trickster, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) remains one of the most complicated characters in art history. In addition to an intellectually demanding oeuvre, he made public statements about his life and work that were often elusive, even contradictory. Journalist and historian Marquis (Alfred H. Barr, Jr.) sets out to present what she feels is a much-needed objective look at the artist, the man, and the conundrum. Though she doesn't attempt to discredit Duchamp or previous Duchamp scholarship, she doesn't take his Olympian stature at face value either. Even Duchamp enthusiasts who might bristle at statements like "Duchamp's art, like tripe, is an acquired taste" will likely thrill to the previously unpublished interviews, letters, and bits of gossip contained here. This alone makes the sure-to-be-controversial biography a noteworthy addition to Duchamp scholarship. The uninitiated may want to start with Calvin Tompkins's more admiring Duchamp: A Biography, but this work is recommended to anyone who wants to explore further. With color plates of major works and candid snapshots of the artist and his circle. In contrast to Marquis's fresh approach, the monograph Marcel Duchamp presents solid but typical essays on the master by Duchamp scholars. One of curator Szeeman's goals is to elucidate Duchampian ideas and their effect on other artists, specifically Jean Tinguely. The publisher hoped to have this supersede previous volumes by reproducing individual works in a larger scale and by including some more obscure artwork. But consequently every item is given more or less equal visual importance, which may cause confusion about the actual size of the original. Still, this handsome and fairly comprehensive volume would be useful to libraries that don't already own Anne D'Harnoncourt's Marcel Duchamp, the retrospective catalog by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York.Douglas McClemont, New York Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
A one-time Fauvist, Cubist, Dadaist, and Surrealist, but an eternal chess player, Marcel Duchamp remains the avant-garde figure beyond all avant-garde figures of the past century. Provocative and brilliant, he radically challenged and changed accepted notions of art and its manufacture, and of the relationship between art and life. Marcel Duchamp, published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel under the curatorship of Harald Szeeman, endeavors to trace the different periods of Duchamp's oeuvre by means of a selection of his work focused mainly on those aspects that influenced Tinguely's own oeuvre. Additionally, the publication contains statements by Duchamp and essays by renowned Duchamp scholars on such topics as the emergence and development of the ready-made concept and its impact on the art of the 1960s. Unless a picture shocks, it is nothing. --Marcel DuchampThe individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves. --Marcel Duchamp Essays by Harald Szeeman, Dieter Daniels, Herbert Molderings and Jacques Caumont. Clothbound, 9.5 x 11 in., 232 pages, 70 color and 130 b&w.

About the Author
One of the most controversial and influential artists of the 20th century, Marcel Duchamp, a.k.a. Rrose Sélavy and R. Mutt, was born in 1887 in Blainville, France. The brother of artists Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, Duchamp himself began to paint in 1908. After producing several canvases in the current mode of Fauvism, he turned toward experimentation and the avant garde, producing one of his most famous works, the cubist "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" (1912), which caused a furor in New York at the 1913 Armory Show. He painted very little after 1915, with the notable exception of his most challenging work, "Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" (1915-1923). Perhaps his most important legacy was the ready-made, a radical rethinking of the artwork initiated by Duchamp with his "Fountain" (1917), which consisted of a mass-produced ceramic urinal, turned upside down, signed "R. Mutt," and exhibited in a gallery setting. After his brief creative period, Duchamp virtually retired from the art world and spent the remainder of his life playing chess. He died in Paris in 1968.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal