In June 1912 Marcel Duchamp left Paris for a solitary sojourn in the Bavarian capital Munich; he was twenty-five.
Earlier this year, in March 18th, the day of the press preview of the Salon des Indépendants, Duchamp had received the unexpected visit from his brothers Villon and Duchamp-Villon. The hanging committee was not pleased with Duchamp’s participation with th Nude descending a Staircase and asked hiv at least to change the title. The title though was written in capital lettersa at the bottom left hand corner of the canvas. He immediately withdrew the painting from the Salon and felt an urge to distance himself from his environment.
The choice of Munich was not an arbitrary one; his friend Max Bergmann, whom had met in Paris two years before, was there to guide him.
In Munich Duchamp worked vehemently and produced among many drawings two of his most significant oil paintings, the Bride and The Passage from Virgin to Bride.
Artist Kendell Geers, a pivotal figure in contemporary African art, has conducted an extensive research regarding this crucial year in Duchamp’s career. The findings of Geers research are unveiled through Duchamp’s Endgame, a fascinating book published by Wilde in partnership with Fonds Mercator and Yale University Press and The Oculist Witness, an exhibition currently running at Wilde Gallery, Basel.
Kendell Geers talks to Ex_posure.
The Oculist Witness is the title of your exhibition currently running at Wilde Gallery, Basel.
To whom you are reffering to?
The title of the exhibition refers to the work Duchamp made in 1920 when he asked Man Ray to photograph the back of carbon paper. It always intrigued me why he would draw attention to the detail of the carbon paper and I suspected it was a clue. The key was in title whereby Duchamp is warning us that there is something to LOOK for and it turns out that he was using the carbon paper to trace the lines of old master paintings from books. I have used the same title to invite you to look past the obvious in my own works.
Both your work and refernces over time manifest an “obsession” with Marcel Duchamp;
Could you define what do you love and what do you hate about M.D. ?
Duchamp changed course of art history by rejecting the medium of painting. He never said painting is dead and really wanted to simply restore an intelligence to the medium. As I have struggled with the claustrophobia of the art system that has all but forgotten Duchamp’s stated ambition to restore art “to the service of the mind” I found myself returning, at least spiritually to 1912, to the book of Kandinsky and the origins of abstraction in search of hope. I hate the way misunderstanding has been embraced as the blueprint of reading the work of Marcel Duchamp.
Duchamp’s trip to Munich in 1912 is the core theme of your book recently published by the title “Duchamp’s Endgame”.
Duchamp himself characterized his stay in Munich as the scene of his complete libaration.
Do you, as an artist, have experienced such a liberating moment or period in your life? If yes, would you share it wih us?
Unfortunately, the nature and structure of the contemporary art system is the antithesis of liberation.
The works M.D. made while in Munich were his first attempt to distance himself from all the known –isms in art at that time. However he did not brake ties with painting. As you point out in your book, each work made in Munich is an implicit reference to a painting made by an old master, a “Duchampian” version, an echo of it.
Why, in your view, did Duchamp invest the works he made, in his emerging unique artistic style, with an homage to the old masters? What did this choise state about his perception of art?
I believe that it was Kandinsky who introduced Duchamp to Dürer and his ideas on perspective. In 1912 Duchamp studied Dürer’s original notebooks in Munich and that became the foundation and core of his own practice. Art history is an open source language that artists copy, paste and edit so its logical that Duchamp might begin with the paintings that are the very foundation of art history.
What is the most painful part of being an artist?
The art system
What is the most gratifying part of being an artist?
Changing the art system
KENDELL GEERS
THE OCULIST WITNESS
10.06. – 17.08.2024
WILDE | BASEL