Marcel Duchamp critique d’art. Les notices du catalogue de la Société anonyme

Stéphanie Laudicina : Marcel Duchamp, Art Critic. In 1920, Marcel Duchamp founded, with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray, the Société Anonyme. The purpose of this society was to introduce European modern art into the United States. In 20 years, they brought together more than 600 works from some 170 artists, which were given to Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1941. Between 1943 and 1949, Duchamp wrote 33 notices in English which were published in 1950 in the catalogue of the collections, The Société Anonyme : Museum of Modern Art, 1920. In these notices, Duchamp’s critical judgment of 33 of the most important artists of this century is clearly revealed. Especially noteworthy is the historical importance that Duchamp places on cubism — Archipenko, Gleizes, Marcoussis, Lipchitz — as well as his negative judgment of the artistic current that, after 1912, created a uniformity of style. Duchamp also sees the cubist theories as useless after-the-fact reiterations of earlier works. His opinion of Picasso is ambiguous ; he praises Picasso’s success and talent, but writes derisively of the purely aesthetic dimension of Picasso’s ambition and the almost religious adoration he received from the public. These notices underscore the great reserve held by Duchamp with regard to modern art and an affirmation of the conceptual, rather than concrete, manual values of artistic creation.Laudicina Stéphanie. Marcel Duchamp critique d’art. Les notices du catalogue de la Société anonyme. In: Histoire de l'art, N°35-36, 1996. Réception, diffusion. pp. 81-90