Marcel Duchamp: 100 Questions. 100 Answers.

“Can one make works that are not works of ‘art’?” –Marcel Duchamp

There are few artists whose work and writings have changed our perception of art as much as Marcel Duchamp. As the inventor of the readymade and the author of a sizable body of complex notes, he paved the way for a whole generation of conceptual artists. To this day, his seminal ideas have lost none of their relevance, and they continue to challenge us to review our notion of art.

This exhibition is the first to present the extensive Marcel Duchamp holdings of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Seminal works from our own collection, among them the readymade Bottlerack and the window object The Brawl at Austerlitz, are shown alongside important loans such as the artist-authorised replica of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass, from the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

These works are complemented by the Duchamp archive put together by the Swiss artist and researcher Serge Stauffer over the course of several decades. The “100 Answers” Duchamp sent in response to Stauffer’s “100 Question” of 1960 offer important insights into Duchamp’s intellectual and creative practice and bear witness to the depth of Stauffer’s exceptional research.

The curatorial concept of the exhibition picks up on Stauffer’s intense dialogic engagement with Duchamp: “100 Questions” and “100 Answers,” developed to shed light on the Staatsgalerie’s wide-ranging Duchamp holdings, give visitors direct access to the artist’s fascinating work.

Almost 40 years after the publication of his benchmark book Marcel Duchamp. Die Schriften in 1981, this exhibition is the first to recognise Serge Stauffer as one of the most important disseminators of Duchamp’ ideas in the German-speaking countries.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue in German and English with essays by internationally renowned specialists: Stefan Banz, Carlos Basualdo, Susanne Bieri, Lars Blunck, Deborah Bürgel, Gorka Couvrat Desvergnes, Dieter Daniels, Paul B. Franklin, Thomas Girst, Michael Hiltbrunner, Corinna Höper, Alexander Kauffman, Susanne M.I. Kaufmann, Joseph Kosuth, Herbert Molderings, Arnaud Obermann, Christian Sander, Gregor Wedekind (Prestel Verlag).

Public program

Duchampian Cinéma
December 6, 6:30pm
Selected videos about and with Marcel Duchamp

Duchampiana Festival
January 19, 1pm
Interdisciplinary festival with works influenced by Marcel Duchamp: music, performances and vocal art
 
Music for Marcel Duchamp
January 24, 8pm
Concert talk and lecture with works by John Cage, Darius Milhaud, Erik Satie and others

Questions of the century
February 2, 2pm
Marcel Duchamp and Karl Barth. An interdisciplinary symposium

Artists ask artists
February 23, 6:30pm
Artist talk with Fatima Hellberg, Dr. Michael Hiltbrunner, Dr. Susanne M.I. Kaufmann and others. Talk in english, with music and drinks.