Duchamp's Last Day

by Donald Shambroom

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.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Biography

72 pages, Paperback

Published November 20, 2018

About the author

Donald Shambroom is a visual artist, writer, curator, and videographer whose work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 1973, after graduating from Yale University where he studied philosophy and painting, Shambroom moved to Boston to pursue his career as a painter. Shambroom’s interest in Marcel Duchamp began in 1969, when he read Calvin Tomkins’s The World of Marcel Duchamp in highschool. His essays have appeared in Weltkunst (Duchamp’s Last Readymade, 2014), CFile (A Urinal Called Fountain, 2017), and Tout-Fait (Marcel Duchamp and Glass, 1999 and Leonardo’s Optics Through the Eyes of Duchamp: A Note on the Small Glass, 2000). He produced “Common Screech Owl, a Miller’s River Story” (2013), a multi-media natural history installation, and “The Garnet Cabinet” (2012), a meditation on crystal structure. Shambroom’s work has been shown at Francis Naumann gallery and Half Gallery in New York, and at Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston. For the past decade, he has lived and worked on the banks of the Millers River in north central Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are like me, a Marcel Duchamp fan, and one who almost purchases every book on this artist, you will need to read and own "Duchamp's Last Day" by Donald Shambroom. It's a small book, beautifully published by David Zwirner that focuses on the last 24-hours of Duchamp on this planet on October 1, 1968. His last day was pleasant. He purchased some bricks for his very final and secret art project, as well as buying a book at a bookstore on Rue Saint-Germain des Pres. He had a visit with his friend Georges Herbiet, a poet, and then later that night had dinner at Duchamp's apartment with Man Ray, his wife Juliet, Ms. Duchamp, Robert Abel, and his wife. After dinner, Duchamp dies in the bathroom. Ms. Duchamp calls a doctor and Man Ray to come over. Man Ray comes across with his camera equipment and takes the last photo of Duchamp. A perfect evening!

In a sense, Shambroom discusses the thought that Duchamp's death is also a collaboration between Man Ray and the great artist. And perhaps so, who knows, but this book is both respectful to the working habits of Duchamp and Man Ray, as well as a tribute to the Duchamp's personality and aesthetic. I read it in my bathtub, and it's the perfect size for such a reading. Buy, read, and enjoy.

[William Reichard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brief, lovely meditation on the last day of Marcel Duchamp's life. It's also an inquiry into the nature of Duchamp's work. It asks some good questions about the nature of artistic collaboration, and how we should regard work created by an artist, but never intended for public consumption. The book is very brief, small in size, and inexpensive, which is fabulous for an art text. It also features some excellent b/w photos.

[cantread26 · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been a minute since I was spending all of my reading hours with Mr. Marcel Duchamp, but I will forever be fascinated by his strange tendencies and ability to radically rock modern art. So, when I saw this little book at Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair I decided to pick it up. I am also obsessed with Entant Donnes (his last artwork that he produced in secret for decades) and thought this book on his “Last Day” might provide more info/analysis.

Reading this felt like visiting an old friend. In a few moments, Shambroom is able to convey Duchamp’s affinity for humor as well as his profound take on art, life, and death. During his last meal surrounded by some of his closest friends, Duchamp comments: “It’s curious that ideas coming from living minds maintain a feeling of permanent reality after death” (12). Shambroom writes this in a way that gives it ~ conspiracy theory vibes ~ with strategic placement of eerie statements like that one.

The book heavily focuses on a photo taken by Man Ray, a talented photographer and close friend of Dumchamp. The artifact serves as a source of mystery surrounding the end of Duchamp’s life. Why was it hidden from the public for so long? Was Duchamp involved in its making? Is it art???!?!?! Shambroom concludes, “If an object remains in darkness, removed by its maker, absent from the world and the ‘art world,’ it is not art”. So, guess that answers the question.

“Just as through the simple act of choosing he had turned a urinal into the sculpture Fountain in 1917, and through a demanding, five-decade process made it stick, Duchamp now switched from inanimate objects to the animated human body-his own-as the realm in which to challenge the definition of art” (17).

“Even their little revolutionary temple couldn’t understand that a nude could be descending the stairs” (18).

“...anything can be art that is seen and treated as art… Art is anything the artist makes or chooses” (26).

“He characterized the artist’s process in relation to the crucial role of the spectator as a ‘series of efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusals, decisions’” (29).

“It’s always the others who die” … Duchamp’s famous words and the epitaph engraved on his headstone.

[Randy Lowe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brief and speculative...best read like off-the-cuff what-iffing after a few drinks at a party. The further he developed his thesis (that Duchamp had either conspired openly with Man Ray to collaborate at the "infrathin" transitional moment of his death on this final photographic work....or that he had somehow orchestrated it all in that nearly magical Duchampian way he employed throughout his life) became flimsier the further the author digs into the recollections of the evening and the history of the friends in general.

That being said....it is brief. And a charged, irresistible opportunity to look into Duchamp's last hours. Almost pulpy. Which is absolutely a healthy, even celebratory Duchampian sort of exercise. Anybody remotely affected by the ocean that is Duchamp will happily absorb this droplet...to own a copy of incredible deathbed portrait is in and of itself a reason to get this well-designed little book.

(all of the Robert Zwirner ekphrasis books look fantastic)

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a small, but powerful book. It can set you to thinking about a lot of things. How one goes about one's life, going through the day, not knowing (or maybe knowing) that at the end of the day, you will be dead.

There is the conversation with poet Georges Herbiet. And then there is the dinner attended by the Duchamps close friends, Robert Lebel and his wife, and Man Ray and his wife, Juliet. There is the intense friendship between Duchamp and Man Ray, which seems to bring up more questions than answers. And, how do we view mortality?

[Ramsay Eyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Minutes after revolutionary artist Marcel Duchamp died, his longtime friend and collaborator Man Ray took his picture. Using its example, this small gem of a book asks: can death--and, by extension life--be art? The best book about art I've read in years--it will stay with you long after reading it.

[Deni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relato breve y eficaz del último día de uno de los artistas más importantes del S. XX. Lo interesante es el aparato crítico y especulativo a partir del cual el autor hilvana una serie de reflexiones sobre el arte de Duchamp y Man Ray, como amigos y colaboradores, pero también sobre el arte en general. En Argentina publicó Mansalva con posfacio de Fabio Kacero.

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me dió mucha alegría este libro. Duchamp y su amigo Man Ray conviertieron la muerte del primero en un último momento artístico.

Shambroom construye un relato dulce, tierno y muy inspirador de Duchamp. Super recomiendo.

[Carlos Valladares · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Dana G. for the rec. Gives me ideas for a lil motion picture I've got cookin......

[Ira A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

odd, obscure, fascinating, brief

[Aida Fani]

inspirational

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kind of writing I aspire to. Quiet and thought provoking. The photos at the end really touched me.

[اطلسی آذرفر · Rating 5 out of 5]

وانگهی... همیشه دیگرانند که میمیرند...
[نوشته پیدا شده در جیب مارسل دوشان که روی سنگ مزار وی حک شد]

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

A description of Duchamp's final day, with digression on his life and art, the deathbed photograph by Man Ray and the installation of Étant donnés. A small but powerful little document.

[Vivian Wang · Rating 5 out of 5]

woowww man ray x duchamp. his life as the final readymade??!! crazy dedication to art i hope to have

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and easy read. I read almost every book on Duchamp and this one I thoroughly enjoyed.