Books

Compact Disks

Events/Exhibitions

Film/Video

By Juan Antonio Ramirez
trans A. R. Tulloch
Reaction Books Ltd, London, 1998.
291 pp., illus.
ISBN 1-86189-027-3
Reviewed by Kieran Lyons, University of Wales College Newport / CAiiA-STAR, Wales, UK.
E-mail: kieran.lyons@newport.ac.uk


Writing about Marcel Duchamp in his essay 'The Lighthouse of the Bride' (1945), André Breton mused that, "It will be of great interest, some day, to explain the full meaning of all these projects and to try to unravel the law whereby they progress."

Duchamp was 58 at the time and had, in fact, been carefully preparing for the possible explanations that Breton was anticipating in his text. Between 1914 and 1966, he would release a series of notes in collections that were intended to smooth a path towards his complex methodologies and concerns. The first of these, 'The Box of 1914' was augmented by later publications, 'The Green Box' (1934), the 'Box in a Valise' (1941), 'The White Box' (1966) and the 'Operating Instructions for Given: 1. The waterfall, 2. The illuminating gas' (1967). After Duchamp's death a final set was released in French under the title 'Marcel Duchamp: Notes' (1980) and followed by its English translation in 1983. This has provoked a stream of publications in English as well as further offerings from Europe and elsewhere. One of these is Juan Antonio Ramirez' 'Duchamp: love and death, even,' originally published in Spanish and subsequently translated into English. It provides a useful but problematic addition to the canon.

Ramirez' aim is to project a beam of light over Duchamp's career. First to be illuminated are the Munich works from 1912 with the sweep finally arresting in 1966 on his last installation 'Given: 1. The waterfall,..' The last section of the book discusses this work through a variety of sources while giving particular attention to the 1967 'Operating Instructions' and Ramirez, good lighthouse keeper that he is, follows its directives, completes his examination and switches off the lamp.

Unexpectedly, it flickers back on again and we see for an instant, illuminated at the end of Duchamp's life a spectral parade of his earlier work. They appear in a swift sequence of nine 'representative' works, displayed across nine consecutive pages. This emphasis recalls Ramirez' preoccupations with the erotic conjugations of the number sixty-nine, which Ramirez is at pains to reveal in Duchamp's work (leading to prurient speculations that he might have discharged his survey even more hastily over six pages, rather than nine). In any event he makes quick work of these early pieces which includes such accomplishments as' The Nude Descending a Staircase No.2' and a selection of fauve and symbolist works all of which inherently support the erotic focus of Ramirez' book. As the lamp fades on the last pages we see his 'Select Bibliography' with its numerical sub-heading which reads '(69 Books)'.

Ramirez limits his main survey to the works that can be traced to the production of either the 'Large Glass' or of 'Étant donnés'. Through this process, the reader is introduced to the book's central thesis and its strongest and most attractive feature. This is the identification of the two great works as the two brightest stars of a constellation that hold in their orbit a discrete network of satellite objects and artifacts. All the works discussed in the main text are held in a pattern that determines their orientation towards one or other of the two major works. The review begins with survey of the ready-mades. Ramirez provides an analysis of each work, in a linear progression that creates in the mind of the reader an imaginary diagram, forming a meta-commentary on the original notes that Duchamp had conscientiously provided. In his analysis, Ramirez gives a great deal of detailed information that he draws from sources taken from contemporary advertising. These images contribute a wealth of visual material that purposefully animate the pages of the book while giving the reader a visual key to the material that lies ahead. At some point, however, questions have to be asked about this methodology. Duchamp's background, after all, was patrician, his father was a country solicitor, he was not a tradesman, and in these and subsequent surroundings one wonders where he would have encountered so many catalogues for products as varied as hydraulic pumps, porcelain sanitary ware, agricultural machinery and electrically enhanced corsetry. The ready availability of this resource allows Ramirez to devote as many pages to a work like 'Fountain' (1917) as he does to the entire section on the '9 Representative Works' of 1902-12.

Nevertheless, the chapters on the' Large Glass' are insightful and show Ramirez at his best. They are packed with useful illustrations that superimpose images from the 'Glass' and the corresponding drawings from the 'Notes'. Ramirez handles his material for the lower section of the' Large Glass' particularly well and his ordering of the component parts into two mutually incompatible systems that demonstrates clearly the intentional inadequacies of Duchamp's celebrated mechanism. The book is painstaking in its detail but it does lead the reader through an examination of minutiae that rarely steps back to consider the larger implications that make this work so attractive to succeeding generations of artists. Ramirez refers to Duchamp's general project and 'The Large Glass' in particular as being "globally interactive" and it would have been interesting to have him expand further on this theme.

'Duchamp, love and death,' even falls between stools in terms of its readership. It is insufficiently comprehensive for a general introduction, (his sketchy treatment of the early work before Munich has already been addressed) and elsewhere his emphasis on 'The Large Glass' and 'Étant donnés' leaves important areas of practice without adequate coverage. The mysterious role played by Rrose Sélavie would in any reasonable analysis occupy more space in a general work than s/he does here. It is paradoxical therefore that Ramirez' spotlight is on the erotic interpretation of Duchamp's work. His contribution brings much close detail to bear without significantly changing the pattern of an already burdened area of research.

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