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This thesis explores the relationship between Marcel Duchamp’s oeuvre and the texts of the Comte de Lautréamont, arguing that the author’s works comprise an overlooked and undervalued source of interest and ideas for the artist. Scholars have done an extraordinary job of documenting and analyzing a number of Duchamp’s literary sources and inspirations. Their work has elucidated the roles of Raymond Roussel, Alfred Jarry, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jules Laforgue, and Jean-Pierre Brisset, among others, for Duchamp. The work of Lautréamont, however, has received proportionally little attention, despite several indications of its importance for the artist. Among the few who have proposed such a connection, none have yet offered a broadly documented or sustained argument. Other historians, generally working under the premise that Lautréamont only came to Duchamp’s attention by way of the Surrealists, have explicitly rejected the possibility that the Uruguayan-French poet had any meaningful position in Duchamp’s library prior to the Surrealist championing of the author. This thesis proposes otherwise, making the case that Lautréamont was more fundamentally important to Duchamp than yet realized. Historical documents as well as statements by the artist himself and those closest to him suggest a stronger engagement by Duchamp with the works of Lautréamont than has been previously proposed. This relationship seems to have begun by as early as 1912, well in advance of the Surrealists’ discovery of the author, and it lasted throughout Duchamp’s life. Furthermore, an examination of Duchamp’s body of work demonstrates a number of strategic and thematic resonances between artist and author that reinforce what the archival evidence suggests. These resonances should be understood as open readings, rather than exclusive readings. They are proposed as additions to the existing constellation of understanding of Duchamp’s oeuvre, rather than as foreclosures upon other ways of reading Duchamp’s body of work. / text

One of the most consistent features of the diverse artistic movements that have flourished throughout the twentieth century has been their willingness to experiment in diverse genres and across alternative art forms. Avant-gardes such as Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, Fluxus and Pop were composed not only of painters but also dramatists, musicians, actors, singers, dancers, sculptors, poets and architects. Their works represent a dramatic process of crossfertilization between the arts, resulting in an array of hybrid forms that defy conventional categorisation. This thesis investigates implications of this cross-disciplinary impulse and aims by doing so to open out a site in which to reassess both the manner in which the avant-gardes have been theorised and the impact their theorisation has had on contemporary aesthetics. In the first part of this study, I revisit the work of the most influential theorists of the avant-garde in order to ask what the term “avant-garde” has come to signify. I look at how different theories of the avant-garde and of modernism relate to one another as well as asking what effect these theories have had on attempts to evaluate the legacies of the avant-gardes. The work of Theodor Adorno provides a connective tissue throughout the thesis. In Chapter One, I use it to complicate Peter Bürger’s notion of the avant-garde as “anti-art” and to argue that the most pressing challenge that the avant-gardes announce is to think through the cross-disciplinarity that marks their work. In Chapter Two, I trace how painting has come to be considered as the paradigmatic modernist art form and how, as a result, the avant-garde has been read as a secondary, “literary” phenomenon to be grasped through its relation to painting. I argue that this constitutes a systematic devaluation of literature and has resulted in an “art historical” model of the avant-gardes which represses both their real radicality and implications of their work for these kinds of disciplinary structures. In the second part of this thesis, I explore works which examine and question the aesthetic hierarchies and notions of aesthetic autonomy that the theories of modernism and the avant-garde explored in the first part set up. In Chapter Three, I approach by way of two cross-disciplinary works which employ literature and visual art: Marcel Duchamp’s Green Box (1934) and Andy Warhol’s a; a novel (1968). Works such as these, which slip through the gaps between literary and art history, have, I argue, important implications for literary and visual aesthetics but are often overlooked in disciplinary histories. In my final chapter, I return to the theory of the avant-garde as it emerges in the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard. I examine how his work reconfigures Adorno’s aesthetics by performing the cross-disciplinary movement that it argues is characteristic of avant-garde art works. Tracing his “post-aesthetic” response to Duchamp and Warhol, I explore how Lyotard articulates a mode of practice that moves beyond the dichotomy of “art” and “antiart” and opens out a site in which the importance of the twentieth century avant-gardes is made visible. I conclude by briefly considering the implications of the avant-garde, as I have presented it in this thesis, for contemporary debates on the twenty-first century “digital avant-gardes” and recent writing on aesthetics.

Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Histoire de l'art contemporain--Paris 10, 2006. / Bibliogr. p. 499-540.

Following his 1924 break with the Paris avant-garde, Francis Picabia (1879-1953) decamped to the French Riviera and soon began work on his radically new Transparency paintings. This series, which occupied Picabia from approximately 1928 to 1933, drew on classical imagery of biblical and mythological subjects, layering disparate human forms and natural motifs in sensuous compositions remarkable for their ambiguous pictorial space and sinuous lines. The Transparencies' resistance to narrative or allegory--notwithstanding their apparent clarity of reference--parallels the paintings' evasion of formal interpretation in spite of their classical beauty; both of these characteristics have made Picabia's Transparencies one of his most inscrutable and misunderstood bodies of work. To avoid treating the Transparencies as a non sequitur or as a conservative abandonment of earlier modernist goals, it is important to understand the sources of the concepts underpinning these works but originating in Picabia's earlier Cubist and Dada periods. Dimensionality, appropriation, figuration, and a rigorous commitment to individualism are all themes from Picabia's acclaimed work in the 1910s and early 1920s that continue into the Transparencies. Particularly relevant are the multivalent interpretations of the spatial fourth dimension--scientific, philosophical, and occult--that Picabia had first encountered in the context of Cubism and the Stieglitz Circle and, later, in his friend Marcel Duchamp's optical experiments. In the Transparencies Picabia's layered outlines both deny linear perspective and suggest projections of interior worlds. In 1936, Picabia affirmed his interest in the fourth dimension, referring specifically to the Transparencies' superimposition at the time he signed Charles Sirató's "Manifeste Dimensioniste." Picabia's visual synthesis of decades of avant-garde concerns in the Transparencies appealed to the American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein, who became one of Picabia's closest friends and confidantes in the early 1930s after she saw his recent paintings. Stein's commentary on Picabia's work and their friendship in "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" and "Everybody's Autobiography" reveals the painter's impact on Stein at a turning point in her career, but also elucidates their shared search for new verbal and visual expressions of the human figure and higher dimensionality. / text

Zugl.: Berlin, Univ. der Künste, Diss., 2007

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La condensation : un outil conceptuel pour la théorie de l’art / Résumé. Notre étude sur la condensation tente de montrer l’intérêt d’une voie peu explorée dans le débat sur la nature de l’art, à savoir l’économie sensible des représentations symboliques. Nous donnons tout d’abord consistance au concept de condensation en suivant les écrits de Freud. Freud, un des rares auteurs à avoir thématisé cette notion, fournit dans L’interprétation des rêves les linéaments principaux du concept. Dans l’analyse de cet ouvrage, notre effort se porte sur la distinction entre une approche plastique et une approche symbolique de la condensation, c’est-à-dire l’obtention d’une condensation par composition de différentes figures ou par répétition d’une même représentation. En relation marginale avec la condensation, la méthode d’analyse des rêves nous montre l’importance des thèmes de l’idiosyncrasie et de la totalisation, lesquelles se révéleront en affinité étroite avec celui de la condensation. Nous procédons ensuite à l’analyse du second ouvrage d’importance rapporté à la condensation chez Freud, Le mot d’esprit et sa relation à l’inconscient. L’accent est porté, d’une part, sur la relation entre condensation et économie, et, d’autre part, sur la distinction entre deux états ou attitudes d’esprit révélée par le Witz. Sur base de la thématisation freudienne, nous poursuivons la construction du concept de condensation à partir de l’expérience esthétique ordinaire. Cela comprend, tout d’abord, la simple considération du fonctionnement collégial et simultané de nos différents sens. Nous procédons ensuite à l’analyse de deux modes de représentation, tous deux fondés sur un rapport sensible au réel : la photographie et le cinéma. Par ces analyses, nous tentons de mettre en lumière les caractères élémentaires de la représentation sensible. Avec la photographie nous abordons l’économie sensible de la représentation, c’est-à-dire les transformations quantitatives et qualitatives qui sont au fondement du concept de condensation. Avec l’analyse du cinéma comme mode de représentation, l’effort est porté sur l’explicitation de la tension paradoxale entre présence et représentation dans le droit fil des développements sur le jeu des dimensions sensibles et l’hétérogénéité impliqués dans la représentation photographique. Cette deuxième partie assoit la validité objective du concept de condensation. Dans un troisième temps, nous étayons cette validité objective du concept en la rapportant aux différents intervenants impliqués dans la réalité artistique (principalement, œuvre, créateur, récepteur). Enfin nous confrontons le concept de condensation à deux aspects de la théorie de l’art : un versant spéculatif, l’antinomie du jugement de goût avec les questions de la subjectivité et de l’objectivité, mais aussi et surtout celle de la communicabilité ; un versant plastique, les œuvres atypiques de Marcel Duchamp. Préalablement à l’analyse de ces deux aspects, nous consacrons un chapitre important à une définition du signe tenant compte de la responsabilité du sujet dans la constitution sémiotique. C’est sous le paramètre de la liberté dans notre rapport au symbolique que se rejoignent les deux aspects de la théorie de l’art abordés. Condensation: A Conceptual Tool for the Theory of Art / Summary. This thesis investigates the question of art’s nature from an angle not much explored, i.e. following the perceptible economy of symbolic representations. Firstly we give consistency to the concept of condensation by analysing Freudian texts. Freud is indeed the only salient author who has focused on condensation and exploited it in the context of his own works. In The Interpretation of Dreams, we concentrate on the distinction between a plastic approach and a symbolic one, i.e. obtaining a condensation by composition of different figures or by repeating the same chosen representation. In addition, the method of analysis of dreams shows us the importance of two themes: idiosyncrasy and totalisation. In the other main book related to condensation, the Joke and its Relation to Unconscious, we stress, on the one hand, the connection between economy and condensation, and, on the other, the distinction between two different states of mind created by the analysis of the joke and its mechanisms. On the bases of these Freudian texts, we carry on constructing the condensation concept by analysing our ordinary aesthetic experience. First, it means merely considering the collective and simultaneous functioning of our five senses. Second, we analyse two modes of representation, both based on a perceptible connection to reality: photography and cinematography. Through this analysis, we bring to light the elementary features of perceptible representation. With photography, we examine the quantitative and qualitative transformations that are essential to the condensation concept. With cinematography, we try to elucidate the paradoxical tension between the actual presence and representation of the same object. This second part sets up the objective validity of the condensation concept. At a third stage, we strengthen this concept’s objective validity by linking it to the main entities involved in art (works, creators, receptors). Finally, we confront the condensation concept with two aspects of art theory: one speculative part, the antinomy of taste with questions of subjectivity, objectivity and especially communicability, and another plastic part, the atypical works of Marcel Duchamp. We also dedicate one chapter to the revaluation of the Saussurian sign theory including the responsibility of the subject in semiotic constitution. Art and condensation are so closely related to the theme of liberty in our relationship to symbolic representations.

The image of Marcel Duchamp as a brilliant but laconic dilettante has come to dominate the literature surrounding the artist’s life and work. His intellect and strategic brilliance were vaunted by his friends and contemporaries, and served as the basis of the mythology that has been coalescing around the artist and his work since before his death in 1968. Though few would challenge these attributions of intelligence, few have likewise considered the role that Duchamp’s prodigious mind played in bringing about the present state of his career. Many of the signal features of Duchamp’s artistic career: his avoidance of the commercial art market, his cultivation of patrons, his “retirement” from art and the secret creation and posthumous unveiling of his Étant Donnés: 1° la chute d’eau/2° le gaz d’éclairage, all played key roles in the development of the Duchampian mythos. Rather than treating Duchamp’s current art historical position as the fortuitous result of chance, this thesis attempts to examine the many and subtle ways in which Duchamp worked throughout his life to control how he and his work were and are perceived. Such an examination necessarily begins at the start of his relationship with the general and specialist media, through the auspices of his painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. This is followed by an examination of Duchamp’s decades-long relationship with the press through the interviews given during his life. Duchamp’s concern for his physical legacy is explored next, initially through his relationships with his two dominant patrons, Walter and Louise Arensberg and Katherine Dreier. Not only did he act as advisor and dealer in the development of both prestigious collections, Duchamp had the privileged position of participant in the negotiations surrounding the disposition of the collections he had helped to build. Duchamp’s concern for the preservation of his physical legacy continued after the installation of his own work within major American museums. Thus, next is considered the development and effects of the two large-scale retrospectives of Duchamp’s work held within his lifetime. Finally is considered the role of Duchamp’s posthumous work, the Étant Donnés. Through the combination of secrecy and strategically revealed hints, Duchamp ensured that his final work would engender discussion long after his death.

L’alchimie, science de la manipulation des influences spirituelles par une métallurgie sacrée, et la pataphysique, esthétique pseudo-scientifique associant l'ésotérisme à l'humour, sont les deux principaux fondements idéologiques qui unissent Marcel Duchamp et Roberto Matta. Tandis que Duchamp s'intéresse déjà à l'ésotérisme dès 1910, soit près d'une vingtaine d'années avant sa rencontre avec Matta. Ce dernier aborde, dans sa production, des thèmes propres à la littérature alchimique, soit les opérations occultes, les états merveilleux de la matière et les appareils de laboratoire. De plus, les écrivains symbolistes et pseudo-scientifiques, lus par Duchamp, puis par Matta, influencent l'humour pataphysique, teinté d'ésotérisme, qui s'exprime dans la production de ces deux artistes. Ainsi, Les Célibataires, vingt ans plus tard, est une huile sur toile, réalisée en 1943, par Roberto Matta, qui représente un paysage cosmique, composé d'astres et de trous noirs, de trois alambics et d'une grande machine noire. Dans cette œuvre, Matta réinterprète très librement certains éléments du Grand verre, une peinture sur verre de Marcel Duchamp, laissée inachevée en 1923. Le présent mémoire de maîtrise étudie l'influence de l'alchimie et de l'iconographie duchampienne sur Les Célibataires, vingt ans plus tard. Dans un premier temps, cette étude vise à mettre en exergue et à examiner les influences alchimiques et pataphysiques dans l'œuvre de Matta. Dans un deuxième temps, notre mémoire vise à démontrer comment l'œuvre de Matta s'intègre dans le projet surréaliste de création d'un mythe nouveau, dans la continuité du projet duchampien. / Alchemy, the science of handling spiritual influences through sacred metallurgy, and Pataphysics, a pseudo-scientific aesthetic combining Esotericism and humor, are the two main ideological foundations uniting Marcel Duchamp and Roberto Matta. On one hand, while Duchamp already has an interest for Esotericism in 1910, that is to say, about twenty years before his first encounter with Matta. On the other hand, Matta addresses, in his production, themes specific to alchemical literature, that is to say occult operations, marvelous states of matter and laboratory equipment. Also, symbolist and pseudo-scientific writers, read by Duchamp, and then by Matta, have an influence on the pataphysical humor, permeated by Esotericism, expressed in the production of both artists. Therefore, Les Célibataires, vingt ans plus tard, is an oil on canvas, elaborated in 1943, by Roberto Matta, representing a cosmic landscape, made of stars and black holes, of three alembics and of a large black machine. In this painting, Matta very freely reinterprets some elements from the Grand verre, a painting on glass by Marcel Duchamp, left unfinished in 1923. This master thesis examines the influence of Alchemy and of the iconography of Duchamp on Les Célibataires, vingt ans plus tard. In the first part, this study aims to highlight and to examine alchemical and pataphysical influences within the work of Matta. In the second part, our thesis aims to demonstrate how the work of Matta integrates in the Surrealist project of creating a new myth, in the continuity of the project of Marcel Duchamp.