Marcel Duchamp

by Kynaston McShine

Booklet

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History

345 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Kynaston McShine (born 1935) is a Trinidadian-born museum curator. In 1966, as curator at the Jewish Museum, he organized the first museum survey of minimalist art, Primary Structures (1966 exhibition). At the Museum of Modern Art, where he became associate curator in 1968, he initiated the innovative Projects series and has organized some of the museum’s most important exhibitions, including the early survey of conceptual art, Information (1970); exhibitions of Marcel Duchamp (1973), Joseph Cornell (1980), and Andy Warhol (1989); The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect (1999); Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul (2006); Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years (2007). He has held positions in the MOMA's Department of Painting and Sculpture as Associate Curator, 1968–71; Curator of Exhibitions, 1971–84; Senior Curator, 1984–2001; Acting Chief Curator 2001-03 and Chief Curator at Large, 2003-2008. In 2003, McShine was the recipient of the CCS Bard for curatorial excellence.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Susun Miller]

Good book about the author - lifestyle, friends, personal essays.

[Tosh]

If my memory serves me correctly this is my first book I have ever bought on Marcel Duchamp. I think I was around 17 or 18, and Duchamp was the ultimate role model of an artist to look up to. For one great reason he was the ultimate cool. And that was (and still is) important to me.

Duchamp appeals to my sense of humor as well as a possiblity of a secret world. Duchamp work is coded in a sense or one suspects that there is a code of some sort taking place. It adds both lightness and a sense of darkness to the soup Duchmap was cooking up with his art.

I met him briefly at the Pasadena Art Museum. I was very impressed wth the bicycle wheel on a stool. For most it had an absurd quality, but to a kid of nine, it was perfectly clear. A bicycle wheel is something to admire.

[Mieczyslaw Kasprzyk]

This is the essential starting-point for any student of Duchamp.