In August 1946, Marcel Duchamp spent 5 weeks in Switzerland, including 5 days at the Hotel Bellevue near Chexbres, on Lake Geneva, discovering the Forestay waterfall. A multidisciplinary event took place in May 2010 to attempt to understand why the artist chose this waterfall for his final masterpiece 'Étant Donnés'.

Stefan Banz rassemble des preuves et des documents jusqu'alors inconnus sur l'émergence, la disparition et la réception du célèbre readymade de Marcel Duchamp, Fontaine, et offre une perspective nouvelle sur cette œuvre qui apparaît comme la plus importante du XXe siècle. Stefan Banz examine en détail les cinq différentes répliques de Fountain réalisées en 1918, 1938, 1950, 1963 et 1964. Cette œuvre questionne la question de l'auteur et elle est posée pour la première fois dans l'histoire par des moyens artistiques. On découvre dans son étude que l'urinoir des deux photographies de Roché de 1918 n'est pas le même modèle que celui de la célèbre photographie de Stieglitz de 1917 : l'urinoir des photographies de Roché peut être clairement identifié à un modèle commercial, tandis que celui de la photographie de Stieglitz ne peut être identifié à aucun modèle industriel. Dans ce contexte, l'auteur propose également une nouvelle théorie sur l'origine réelle de cet urinoir qui est aujourd'hui considéré comme le célèbre « original » disparu de Fountain. On y trouve aussi des indices sur la raison pour laquelle Duchamp a signé cette œuvre avec le pseudonyme R. Mutt. Les sources et les documents de cet ouvrage prouvent aussi que la proposition d'Irene Gammel, de Glyn Thompson et surtout de Siri Hustvedt concernant l'implication de La Baronne von Freytag-Loringhoven dans la conception de Fountain est plus qu'improbable. Curieusement c'est Francis Naumann, le plus célèbre spécialiste américain de Duchamp, qui s'est involontairement trouvé à la base de cette fausse nouvelle, en essayant, en 1994, d'améliorer le travail artistique de la Baronne dans son célèbre livre New York Dada 1915-23 (également par intérêt personnel, car il est aussi marchand d'art et possédait de nombreuses œuvres de la Baronne). Il lui a attribué par exemple, comme co-autrice, le Readymade God de Morton Schamberg de 1917 (aujourd'hui au Philadelphia Museum of Art), qui représente en quelque sorte une réaction à Fountain. Quand Irene Gammel (qui a écrit une monographie sur la La Baronne von Freytag-Loringhoven) a lu ce texte en 2001, elle a poussé l'allégation jusqu'à à prétendre (sans avoir de preuve) que la Baronne pourrait aussi être l'auteur de Fountain de Duchamp. Et l'idée fait son chemin, reprise entre autres par la femme d'une superstar (Paul Auster), et la fausse nouvelle se répand sur Internet, appuyée par la vague de #metoo.

This is the first publication devoted exclusively to Marcel Duchamp's 'Pharmacie', the first rectified readymade in the history of art.

In his early thirties, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) convinced everyone that he had abandoned making art in favor of playing chess. But from 1946 to 1966, he was secretly at work in his studio on West 14th Street in New York City. There he produced his final masterpiece: Étant donnés: 1o la chute d'eau, 2o le gaz d'éclairage, composed of a battered wood door through which one views a prone, nude female, holding aloft an antique gas lamp against a landscape of trees, waterfall, and sky. Unveiled as a permanent installation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in July 1969, the year after Duchamp's death, it startled the art world with its explicit eroticism and voyeurism, as well as its trompe l'oeil realism. Since its public debut, Étant donnés has been recognized as one of the most important and enigmatic works of the 20th century. Published to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the original installation of Étant donnés and to accompany the first major exhibition on the artwork and its studies, this richly illustrated book presents a wealth of new research and documents that draw upon previously unpublished works of art and materials. The catalogue also examines the critical and artistic reception of Étant donnés, as evidenced by the subsequent work of Les Levine, Hannah Wilke, Robert Gober, Marcel Dzama, Ray Johnson, and other artists who have engaged with Duchamp's provocative and challenging tableau-construction.

In his impressive analysis Stefan Banz examines how Jeff Wall uses camera, computer, actors and specialists to generate a visual performance that provokes epistemological questions in the viewer; illustrates how the artist - beyond avant-garde criteria - develops a sophisticated and engaging visual feel, which deals both with the everyday but also with the history of art; and explores meticulously how he reflects the role of the recipient in his compositions.In this sense, Banz shows with the eyes of an active observer how art has an inexhaustible metaphorical power for Wall, which enriches and upsets our visual concepts. And he also creates new, startling references between his photographic works and paintings by such different artists like Diego Velázquez, Jan Vermeer, Claude Monet, Frederic Remington, Hans Emmenegger, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalí.

While much has been written on Marcel Duchamp - one of the twentieth century's most beguiling artists - the subject of his flirtation with architecture seems to have been largely overlooked. Yet, in the carefully arranged plans and sections organising the blueprint of desire in the Large Glass, his numerous pieces replicating architectural fragments, and his involvement in designing exhibitions, Duchamp's fascination with architectural design is clearly evident. As his unconventional architectural influences - Niceron, Lequeu and Kiesler - and diverse legacy - Tschumi, OMA, Webb, Diller + Scofidio and Nicholson - indicate, Duchamp was not as much interested in 'built' architecture as he was in the architecture of desire, re-constructing the imagination through drawing and testing the boundaries between reality and its aesthetic and philosophical possibilities. Marcel Duchamp and the Architecture of Desire examines the link between architectural thinking and Duchamp's work. By employing design, drawing and making - the tools of the architect - Haralambidou performs an architectural analysis of Duchamp’s final enigmatic work Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas... demonstrating an innovative research methodology able to grasp meaning beyond textual analysis. This novel reading of his ideas and methods adds to, but also challenges, other art-historical interpretations. Through three main themes - allegory, visuality and desire - the book defines and theorises an alternative drawing practice positioned between art and architecture that predates and includes Duchamp.

Presenting the most compelling explanation yet for the bizarre nature of the Black Dahlia murder, this volume includes never-before published crime-scene photographs and links the alleged killer to a vast array of influential people.