"Linda Henderson's work stands out as a truly original contribution. . . . She has enlarged and illuminated our understanding of the most intelligent, elusive, and influential artist of the twentieth century."--Calvin Tomkins, author of "Duchamp: A Biography" "Henderson's book is the most thorough and dedicated analysis ever written about Duchamp's work. It represents the single most complete study of the "Large Glass" and its scientific sources-one that is unlikely to be surpassed."--Francis Naumann, author of "Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" "In tracing the emergence of Duchamp's artworks from their actual cultural/scientific context, Henderson has produced what is quite simply an indispensable book."--Marjorie Perloff, author of "Wittgenstein's Ladder and Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy" "Among the readers of Linda Henderson's brilliant book, historians of science will be especially rewarded by her thorough research into an area hitherto insufficiently explored-how artists and other laypersons during Duchamp's time came to learn of, and draw upon, the stream of exciting results of early twentieth century science."--Gerald Holton, Harvard University

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of Marcel Duchamp’s death, Duchamp’s Last Day offers a radical reading of the artist’s final hours. Just moments after Duchamp died, his closest friend Man Ray took a photograph of him. His face is wan; his eyes are closed; he appears calm. Taking this image as a point of departure, Donald Shambroom begins to examine the surrounding context—the dinner with Man Ray and another friend, Robert Lebel, the night Duchamp died, the conversations about his own death at that dinner and elsewhere, and the larger question of whether this radical artist’s death can be read as an extension of his work. Shambroom’s in-depth research into this final night, and his analysis of the photograph, feeds into larger questions about the very nature of artworks and authorship which Duchamp raised in his lifetime. In the case of this mysterious and once long-lost photograph, who is the author? Man Ray or Duchamp? Is it an artwork or merely a record? Has the artist himself turned into one of his own readymades? A fascinating essay that is both intimate and steeped in art history, Duchamp’s Last Day is filled with intricate details from decades of research into this peculiar encounter between art, life, and death. Shambroom’s book is a wonderful study of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

This wide-ranging and definitive volume illustrates how Marcel Duchamp's groundbreaking practice influenced 20th- and 21st-century art. This book documents Barbara and Aaron Levine's extraordinary collection of Duchamp's work, one of the most significant private holdings of the artist in the world, which has been promised to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Acquired over decades, these artworks span Duchamp's entire career, demonstrating his critical role in the development of 20th-century art and his influence on artists working today. The collection features an exceptional group of readymades, such as Hat Rack, Comb, and With Hidden Noise, which exemplify how Duchamp elevated ideas over craftsmanship and aesthetics. Prints and drawings by the artist offer an introduction to his unique approach to reproductions, while portraits of Duchamp by Man Ray, Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, and Henri Cartier-Bresson reveal other sides of this enigmatic genius. The book also contains insights about Duchamp's significance as an artist and the rise and fall of his critical fortunes, as well as an interview with the collectors. This strikingly designed volume, with fold-outs and comparative illustrations, places Duchamp squarely in the context of both modern and contemporary art, and affirms his radical status as an artist with continued relevance today. Published with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution

Marcel Duchamp is often viewed as an "artist-engineer-scientist," a kind of rationalist who relied heavily on the ideas of the French mathematician and philosopher Henri Poincaré. Yet a complete portrait of Duchamp and his multiple influences draws a different picture. In his 3 Standard Stoppages (1913-1914), a work that uses chance as an artistic medium, we see how far Duchamp subverted scientism in favor of a radical individualistic aesthetic and experimental vision. Unlike the Dadaists, Duchamp did more than dismiss or negate the authority of science. He pushed scientific rationalism to the point where its claims broke down and alternative truths were allowed to emerge. With humor and irony, Duchamp undertook a method of artistic research, reflection, and visual thought that focused less on beauty than on the notion of the "possible." He became a passionate advocate of the power of invention and thinking things that had never been thought before. The 3 Standard Stoppages is the ultimate realization of the play between chance and dimension, visibility and invisibility, high and low art, and art and anti-art. Situating Duchamp firmly within the literature and philosophy of his time, Herbert Molderings recaptures the spirit of a frequently misread artist-and his thrilling aesthetic of chance.

First published in 1973, this continues to be the definitive book on the artist.

With an introduction by Robert Motherwell and an appreciation by Jasper Johns "Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneer artists, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art. . . "In the 1920s Duchamp gave up, quit painting. He allowed, perhaps encouraged, the attendant mythology. One thought of his decision, his willing this stopping. Yet on one occasion, he said it was not like that. He spoke of breaking a leg. 'You don't mean to do it,' he said. "The Large Glass. A greenhouse for his intuition. Erotic machinery, the Bride, held in a see-through cage-'a Hilarious Picture.' Its cross references of sight and thought, the changing focus of the eyes and mind, give fresh sense to the time and space we occupy, negate any concern with art as transportation. No end is in view in this fragment of a new perspective. 'In the end you lose interest, so I didn't feel the necessity to finish it.' "He declared that he wanted to kill art ('for myself') but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, 'a new thought for that object.' "The art community feels Duchamp's presence and his absence. He has changed the condition of being here."--Jasper Johns, from Marcel Duchamp: An Appreciation

Kant after Duchamp brings together eight essays around a central thesis with many implications for the history of avant-gardes. Although Duchamp's readymades broke with all previously known styles, de Duve observes that he made the logic of modernist art practice the subject matter of his work, a shift in aesthetic judgment that replaced the classical "this is beautiful" with "this is art." De Duve employs this shift (replacing the word "beauty" by the word "art") in a rereading of Kant's Critique of Judgment that reveals the hidden links between the radical experiments of Duchamp and the Dadaists and mainstream pictorial modernism.Part I of the book revolves around Duchamp's famous/infamous Fountain. Part II explores his passage from painting to the readymades, from art in particular to art in general. Part III looks at the aesthetic and ethical consequences of the replacement of "beauty" with "art" in Kant's Third Critique. Finally, part IV attempts to reconstruct an "archaeology" of modernism that paves the way for a renewed understanding of our postmodern condition.The essays : Art Was a Proper Name. Given the Richard Mutt Case. The Readymade and the Tube of Paint. The Monochrome and the Blank Canvas. Kant after Duchamp. Do Whatever. Archaeology of Pure Modernism. Archaeology of Practical Modernism.