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.

The first major collection of poetry written in English by the flabbergasting and flamboyant Baroness Elsa, “the first American Dada.” As a neurasthenic, kleptomaniac, man-chasing proto-punk poet and artist, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven left in her wake a ripple that is becoming a rip—one hundred years after she exploded onto the New York art scene. As an agent provocateur within New York's modernist revolution, “the first American Dada” not only dressed and behaved with purposeful outrageousness, but she set an example that went well beyond the eccentric divas of the twenty-first century, including her conceptual descendant, Lady Gaga. Her delirious verse flabbergasted New Yorkers as much as her flamboyant persona. As a poet, she was profane and playfully obscene, imagining a farting God, and transforming her contemporary Marcel Duchamp into M'ars (my arse). With its ragged edges and atonal rhythms, her poetry echoes the noise of the metropolis itself. Her love poetry muses graphically on ejaculation, orgasm, and oral sex. When she tired of existing words, she created new ones: “phalluspistol,” “spinsterlollipop,” “kissambushed.” The Baroness's rebellious, highly sexed howls prefigured the Beats; her intensity and psychological complexity anticipates the poetic utterances of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Published more than a century after her arrival in New York, Body Sweats is the first major collection of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven's poems in English. The Baroness's biographer Irene Gammel and coeditor Suzanne Zelazo have assembled 150 poems, most of them never before published. Many of the poems are themselves art objects, decorated in red and green ink, adorned with sketches and diagrams, presented with the same visceral immediacy they had when they were composed.

Featuring works by artists including Cory Arcangel, Sophie Calle, Marcel Duchamp, Judy Fiskin, and Jeff Koons the book marks the centenary of an iconic masterpiece. One hundred years ago, Dada artist Marcel Duchamp forever changed the nature of art by anonymously submitting Fountain in 1917, a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt" as an art work to the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, New York. The show organizers' rejection of Fountain ignited a controversy that persists to today about the definition of art and who gets to pass judgement. NSU Art Museum marks this centenary by organizing S ome Aesthetic Decisions , a show of artworks by Cory Arcangel, John Baldessari, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Duchamp, Judy Fiskin, Claire Fontaine, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Joseph Kosuth, Jorge Pardo, Andy Warhol et al, examining issues of beauty, value and judgement. The title of the book, and of the exhibition, is derived from Judy Fiskin's photography series Some Aesthetic Decisions (1973 to 1995).

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'.

The extraordinary story of the 20th century, as told from the furthest fringes of science, art and culture. For readers of Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Before 1900, history was an account of great discoveries that actually made sense. People understand innovations like the steam engine, agriculture, or electricity. The twentieth century, by contrast, gave us quantum entanglement, cubism, relativity, psychedelics, postmodernism, chaos maths, and the Somme. This is the story of that confusing century as told through the ideas produced at the furthest fringes of our sciences, arts, and culture. Its cast includes well-known geniuses such as Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, and Pablo Picasso, lesser known geniuses like Edward Lorenz, Sergey Korolyov, or Shigeru Miyamoto, and infamous but influential ne'er-do-wells like Timothy Leary, Aleister Crowley and Keith Richards. In this company we take a tour through ideas as strange as general relativity, DNA, the subconscious, Gaia theory, and Dada. In this brilliantly written and original book, John Higgs explores, with great clarity and wit, the extremes of twentieth century thought, and in doing so shows how a world of empires became a world of individuals. You will never see the twentieth century in the same way again.

"A monograph of the work of Los Angeles-based artist Judy Fiskin. Includes duotone reproductions of 288 photographs made by Fiskin from 1973 to 1995, as well as an introduction, an interview with the artist, a chronology, and a bibliography"--Provided by publisher.