Alain Badiou Some Remarks on Marcel Duchamp

7/31/2019 Alain Badiou Some Remarks on Marcel Duchamp

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mptom 9 Some Remarks on Marcel Duchamp Alain Badiou

www.lacan.com/symptom/?p=39[8/3/2009 3:46:25 AM]

_ _So m e Re m a r k s o n M a r ce lD u c h a m p

Ala in Bad iou

THE SYMPTOM 9Unive r sa l i sm ve r sus g loba l i za t ion . Th i s a t l eas t w i l l be our US chap t e r - t o be r ead as Uni t ed Sympt oms ,Jac ques -Ala in Mi l l e r Fa l l 2008

.................................................. EDITORIAL by J.A.

A u t h o r s B io

My departure point will be Andre Bretons text, in 1922, consecrated

to Duchamp in the fifth issue of the review Littrature . In this text,Breton writes: Could it be that Marcel Duchamp arrives more quicklythan anyone else at the critical point of ideas? That says everythingin a sense.

Synthetically, Breton attributes to Duchamp, once more, the qualitythat everyone has attributed to him: an exceptional intelligence. Thiswould be trivial if it was a psychological remark: But it is much morethan that. What is in question, in fact, is a new relation between artand concept. That is, a form of transgression of romanticism. Call

romanticism the theory of a space between the quasi-divine orsacred poetic intuition of the infinite, and the supposedly finite andsterile constraints of calculating rationality. In a totally .explicitmanner, Duchamp is the hero of an art that ignores this space.Duchamp creates against the entire theory of inspiration and genius.He despises the category of taste that constitutes the unity of artisticaction.

Two slogans are quite characteristic. Duchamp declares he made the ready-made with no other intention except to discharge ideas.And again: I want to contradict myself in order to avoid conformingto my own taste.

But Bretons statement must also be taken in detail. It can beanalyzed as five abstract moments.

1) Art has become a question of movement, of what we get to ratherthan the abolition of this getting to in a result closed in theidolatrous cult of the work of art. Art is only the trace of its ownaction.

2) As a result the count procedures of movement are internal to art;

Learning fromLas VegasJohannes ThumfartText asMorphologicalExcessIrigaraysPsychoanalytical WorksAdrian Switzer
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slowness and speed of execution are pertinent parameters. There isan immanent link between art and number.

3) Art treats a point of thought. The space-time it moves in,surfaces, supports, speed of execution, references, all this is theenvelope in which the point of thought is both exhibited andsubtracted. It is the locus of the point. The construction of the locusis toil, but this is so on order for the point to fulgurate.

4) This point is critical in a dual sense. In the ordinary sense,because it criticizes in thought the idolatrous theory of art, that is,ordinary romanticism. Romanticism supposes the infinitetranscendence as the horizon and aim of the finitude of art, it rejectsthe number and science to the outside of its sacred actiom, it intendsto reveal, not one point, but the All. But the point is critical inanother sense, the sense it has in mathematics and physics: a pointat which there is a qualitative discontinuity, such that at this samepoint, there is indiscemibility between one state and another, whichhowever differ absolutely every place else. Creating the locus atwhich anyone can reproduce the experience of such a critical point,and so of such an indiscemibility, would be the fundamental aim of art. At this point, we can say that the virtues of the conception of the infinite and of chance are exchanged.

5) This critical point is the visitation of the idea in its contemporaryartistic form. Art is pure idea. It is not, as in vitalism, cprporalenergy establishing the embrace of percepts and affects. It is not thecontinuous and projective passage from the experienced j ou issance of becoming to living thought. It is on the contrary the establishmentof a locus, of course, material, spatial- temporal, but at which theseparation of the idea is experienced, and the fact that it can onlytouch the surface, like a bird skims the sea.

I return now to these five points one by one.

1). Art has to become the trace of its own action. Art must be theplace of its taking place. So, the work of art is self-sufficient. Wemust have art without any artist. Duchamp affirms the impersonalityof artistic action. He argues against everything that brings into thebecoming of the work the trace of a perceptive passivity. Everythinghe calls retinian art, which goes back according to him to Courbet,and includes the impressionists, the fauves and the cubists. Hedreams of being totally absent from creation, of cutting off hishands. On the other hand, he gives detailed explanations of theprocess of the work. Fundamentally, he accompanies the object bythe something like a users7 manual, that is, of its modes of fabrication. Information on the work. The year before his death,speaking of the Grand Verre (The Bride Stripped Bare by herBachelors, Even), he explains that, in order to appreciate this work,it is absolutely necessary to follow the text he wrote, which is, hesays, a sort of diagrammatic or programmatic explanation of whatcan be seen on the Glass.


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2). On the question of relationship between art and number, we cansee that the fatal number, for Duchamp, is the 3. The number threeas three, for me is neither unity nor duality, the three is everything,the final end of numeration. Or again: One is unity, two is thedouble, and three is the rest. Duchamp works on the relationbetween the infinite and space or spaces, that is to say dimensions.But the final space is always tridimensional. This is why he can say

millions do not count, the three fills the same role for me.

3) On the point of thought, whose work of art is the envelope, or theplace. The correlation between the refusal of all post-romanticsensitivity and the chance for a point of thought is strongly presentin Duchamp. There is for him an implacable rationalism turnedagainst aesthetic idolatry. He goes so far as to say, in an interview of 1953, that when we do things for the pure idea of functionalreasoning, the idea of aesthetics disappears.

What is the ready-made after all? It is the exposed, although totallycommonplace, envelope of the pure thought of choice or selection,with no subjective adherence. The point of thought here is that thischoice, cut out of the commonplace, creates a pure point of indistinction between the commonplace and the supreme. Of course,there is a superior irony with respect to the envelope. The objectthat envelops the point is particularly without particularity.

(Fontaine seems to me with respect to this less convincing than thesnow shovel or the bottle stand.)

Seeing it today hang from the ceiling of a museum and surroundedby pious reverence is comical. But the ascesis of Duchamp is there.Because the choice must be made without adhesion, it is not easy.Duchamp says he must find, in choosing the object, a point of indifference of his own gaze. The ready-made is the envelope of thepoint where thought is reduceed to a choice where we must findnothing, except choosing itself. The ready-made exposes the choiceof the choice as a cut out of the commonplace. That is why its title isitself, its common name, and its situation a signature.

The complex works of Duchamp proceed on the contrary by learnedrecollection, but with the same objective; there are only two of

them: The Grand Verre, the great glass, whose the complete title is la marie mise a nue par ses clibataires mme The BrideStripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even and tant donn, un, la chutedeau, et deux le gaz dclairage, soit Given one the waterfall andtwo the Gas Light. They are in fact installations, which already re-produce often, as elements, anterior productions. The envelope ishere the result of an immense, very technical, work, and in theopinion of Duchamp himself, it is very boring. We have in them asort of maniacal craftsmanship. But why? Lets say for the moment:in order to exhibit a complexity whose exterior focal point is the pointof the gaze. Do not forget that The Bride Stripped Bare is a


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gigantesque transparent; and on the contrary, Given is a baroqueexhibition that is closed, and includes a terrible quartered nude and ablinking landscape that is seen through a hole in a door. Thecomplexity is here the capture of the seeing, as the ready-made isthe capture of the indifferent decision. The point is that the simplestupefaction of the gaze is made with respect to an envelopeconstituted by years of fastidious work. When Duchamp was askedwhy all this toil, why this tour dc force, he answered: Because I

didnt want to do something simple. As he explores the dimensions,Duchamp looks for the envelope of the point of thought in thesimplest, the ready-made, but also in the most complicated, thesynthetic installations, disposed in correspondence to the openness of transparency or the enclosure of the fantasy.

4) On the critical aspect of the point. The center of thought is herediscontinuity, or the point at which the same and the other areindiscernible. The plastic concept of this indiscemibility proposed byDuchamp in the 1930s is that of the infra thin. It is necessary, hesays to try to pass into the infra thin interval that separated two

identical things.

Obviously, we have here the foundation of the use of reduplication,of copies, of multiples, which constituted a major part of Duchampsreputation. The famous gesture by which he signed a copy or aminiature or a multiplication of one of his products, or even andabove afll when they were done by someone other than himself, byapposing the famous inscription certified true copy. The infra thin isthe exercise of the critical point as a point of minimal discontinuity;the point of discontinuity from the same to the other same. The newproductive and reproductive thought must pass by this point.

5) That the idea not be embodied by a work, by an oeuvre, butgiven in a separation that touches the surface. The idea is there, inthe surface, but at the infra thin point that separates that being-there from itself. For example, the idea of chance is in the GrandVerre under the form of the impact of bullets made by a littlecannon that shoots matches with a bit of paint. Duchamp shot nineshots, three times three, remark, and he then pierced the points of impact. The strategy here is to mark the surface by the Idea forever,but that the surface be accountable for this idea, without itsbecoming its generous body. It is touched by it, like one shouts

touche in a game or a shooting gallery.

So, yes, Duchamp went the fastest between 1912 and 1922, in tenyears, in order to attain in the order of art the critical point of theidea. In reality, making the critical point of the idea the origin of art,in accordance with a de-romanticized and de-subjectivized line.Duchamps attempt is to reduce the work of art to the pureanonymous action (art does not mean doing but acting). Acommunist dream in its way, but indifferent to any politics. I quoteDuchamp :Art for me had died by the fact that, instead of being a


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singularized entity, it would be universal, a human factor in the lifeof people, each one would be an artist, but misrecognized as artist. Duchamp Rational form of the generic idea of the engulfment of artby ordinary life.

There we are. But everything must be taken up again starting fromthree points, which are quite singular: These points work against theanonymous and democratic concept of the work of art. These threepoints open the door, for a new aristocratic and self-expressivenotion of modern art.

1) The decisive function of the refusal opposed to his work inDuchamps destiny. First, in 1912, the refusal of the great cubistcanvas Nude descending a stairway by the Salon des Independants.This was the French refusal. Then, in 1917, the refusal or thedissimulation of the urinal entitled Fountain and signed R. Mutt, bythe counsel of The Society of Independent Artists. This was theAmerican refusal. These are crucial episodes. In 1968, Duchamp wasan artist practically idolized by his peers and by the vanguard youth.But his rancor is still felt, when he declares: Dont forget that itnever had any success until recently, very recently. Behind hisprovocative and accomplidhed vision, Duchamp is a man.

2) The function, not only of his signature, now unfailing even forcopies very far off. But inscriptions or legends affected to ordinaryobjects as to complex compositions, in vivid contrast with theredundant names of the type bottle stand or bicycle wheel oreven The Big Glass. Take for example The Battle of Austerlitz,which is a glass door. The Breeding of Dust (or: The Dust Ranch),

Why not Sneeze Rose Selavy Soigneur de gravit, In Advance of the Broken Arm, and many others. All that is not at all abstract art.He projects the singularity of an art of poetic writing.

3) The function of eroticism, absolutely original and constant. Theword naked is found everywhere. Or the thing the three greatworks, but also a great many other works. As well as the Virgin, theroguish puns (LHOOQ), the use of sperm, etc.

These three questions seem to converge towards something else thatwould be that any framing is polarized by a fantasized framing. Andthat eroticism is of the order of art, as the necessary other side of calculation. But that would be another story. The story in the workof Duchamp of the struggle between the abstraction of indifferentchoice and the seduction of desire and images. But it is probably thecontradictory destiny of the most important part of modern art.
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Learning from Las VegasJohannes Thumfart

Text as Morphological ExcessIrigarays Psychoanalytical WorksAdrian Switzer

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Alain Badiou Some Remarks on Marcel Duchamp

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