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Thierry de Duve

Born

Sint-Truiden, Belgium

Genre

Art, Philosophy, Nonfiction

Influences

Marcel Duchamp, Immanuel Kant, Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried ...more

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Thierry de Duve, son of Nobel Prize-winning cytologist and biochemist Christian de Duve, is a Belgian scholar of the history and theory of modern and contemporary art. He is a scholar of Immanuel Kant and has written several books on the artist Marcel Duchamp, including: Pictorial Nominalism; On Marcel Duchamp's Passage from Painting to the Readymade (1991), The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp (1993), and Kant After Duchamp (1998). Committed to a reinterpretation of modernism, much of his earlier work revolves around the challenges presented in Marcel Duchamp's readymades and their and implications for aesthetics. Thierry de Duve outlines an aesthetic theory of art to meet the requirements of our time, which mainly consists of three Thierry de Duve, son of Nobel Prize-winning cytologist and biochemist Christian de Duve, is a Belgian scholar of the history and theory of modern and contemporary art. He is a scholar of Immanuel Kant and has written several books on the artist Marcel Duchamp, including: Pictorial Nominalism; On Marcel Duchamp's Passage from Painting to the Readymade (1991), The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp (1993), and Kant After Duchamp (1998). Committed to a reinterpretation of modernism, much of his earlier work revolves around the challenges presented in Marcel Duchamp's readymades and their and implications for aesthetics. Thierry de Duve outlines an aesthetic theory of art to meet the requirements of our time, which mainly consists of three components: 1.) updating Kant's aesthetics by replacing the phrase "this is beautiful" with "this is art" as the paradigm for aesthetic judgment; 2.) reassessing Modernism in painting from Manet onwards with theory informed by Clement Greenberg, while at the same time acknowledging its failure; 3.) reflecting on the historical evolution of Fine Arts from the primacy of painting as a specific privileged avenue for art production to the general "art at large" espoused by later theorists and practitioners of contemporary art.

For Thierry de Duve there is no difference between modern, post-modern and contemporary art: the same logic rules from the beginning. Art has no essence; it is simply what we call by that name. Borrowing from Lacanian identity theory, Duve argues that the human brain develops prematurely, and the drive to create and consume art arises from neotenous desires that condition all humans. Thus for him, the enterprise of art remains utterly tragic: accounting for and responding to messianic desires of how life should be while at the same time informed by a postmodern weariness of modernism's naivety and inevitable failure.

With his colleague Jean Guiraud he co-founded the free institute of Fine Art, École de Recherche Graphique (ERG), in Brussels, 1972. He curated the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2003. He has been a visiting professor at: the University of Lille III (France), the Sorbonne (France), MIT, and Johns Hopkins University, and was the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Distinguished Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art in Penn's History of Art Department. He was a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In 2000, he curated the exhibition "Here - 100 years of contemporary art," at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. ...more

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Thierry de Duve’s books

Average rating: 4.03 · 488 ratings · 41 reviews · 56 distinct works

	Kant after Duchamp 4.18 avg rating — 105 ratings — published 1996 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx: Beuys, Warhol, Klein, Duchamp by Thierry de Duve, Rosalind E. Krauss (Translation) 3.65 avg rating — 49 ratings — published 2012 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pictorial Nominalism: On Marcel Duchamp’s Passage from Painting to the Readymade (Volume 51) (Theory and History of Literature) by Thierry de Duve, John Rajchman (Foreword), Dana Polan (Translator) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 1984 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Clement Greenberg: Between The Lines by Thierry de Duve (Contributor), Brian Holmes (Translator) 3.91 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 1996 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bernd & Hilla Becher: Basic Forms 4.53 avg rating — 15 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Au nom de l'art. Pour une archéologie de la modernité 4.42 avg rating — 12 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Aesthetics at Large: Volume 1: Art, Ethics, Politics 4.71 avg rating — 7 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp 4.14 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1991 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Duchamp’s Telegram: From Beaux-Arts to Art-in-General 4.83 avg rating — 6 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A arte diante do mal radical 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Thierry de Duve’s Followers (28)

Thierry de Duve

Combine EditionsThierry de Duve’s books

Combine Editions
Thierry de Duve’s books