Marcel Duchamp: A work that is not a work “of art”
Curator: Elena Filipovic
Organization: Fundación Proa
Coproduction: Fundación Proa and MAM-SP
MAM – MUSEU DE ARTE MODERNA DE SÃO PAULO:
15 July – 21 September, 2008
FUNDACION PROA:
November 19, 2008 – February, 2009
Two years after an intensive investigation and production, Fundación Proa today shares with the MAM-SP the success obtained from the critics and public for the exhibition Marcel Duchamp: a work that is not a work “of art”, inaugurated in São Paulo last July 15, constituting the artist’s largest individual show in Latin America.
This is the first presentation of the exhibition, which will be shown in Buenos Aires starting November 22, when Proa inaugurates its new building. The last great retrospective of Duchamp was at the Tinguely Museum, Basel, in 2002, curated by Harald Szeemann; after this six year absence Fundación Proa undertakes the challenge of organizing a traveling exhibition, bringing the artist back to the international art scene.
The show at Proa is curated by Elena Filipovic and offers an extensive panorama of over 140 pieces that highlight Duchamp’s aspects as curator, designer, typographer, and promoter of culture, without excluding his revolutionary production. Through objects, works on paper, photographs, projections, and documentation, the exhibition underlines the production following the 1913 creation of the readymade – revolutionary step in the history of art that implied the rupture with the traditional concept of a work of art- until the last works by Duchamp, making its way through the most emblematic pieces of his production, among them La Mariée mise à nu par ses Célibataires, même, also known as The Large Glass and Boîte-en-valise, his miniature portable museum.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 360-page catalogue containing a careful and rigorous selection of images specially produced for each institution in its local language with the original version and English translation. It is composed of a selection of historic and foundational essays (Thierry de Duve, Octavio Paz, and Rosalind Krauss), which allow to see who Marcel Duchamp was and his importance in the context of art history, contributing to the debate new perspectives on different aspects of his production.
In parallel to the exhibition, Fundación Proa is organizing its first International Colloquium on Duchamp, coordinated by Paul B. Franklin, art critic and Editor in Chief of Étant donné Marcel Duchamp -magazine published annually by the Association pour l’Étude de Marcel Duchamp (Association for studies in Marcel Duchamp)-. For more information regarding the colloquium, please write: duchamp@proa.org
It will be a unique and unbeatable opportunity to interchange points of views and discuss in the Twenty-first century one of the great men that left their mark in the last century, with the presence of renown local and international researchers. The meeting will become a platform for debate and investigation on contemporary art and the influence of Duchamp’s work not only on the visual arts, but also on music, literature, cinema, theater, and other performatic arts.
