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LIVING ART - BAUDELAIRE AND DUCHAMP

BY

Anita Jon Alkhas

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Romance and Classical Languages

1999

ABSTRACT
LIVING ART - BAUDELAIRE AND DUCHAMP

BY

Anita Jon Alkhas

Having established Baudelaire, champion of the modern,
as a father of modernism, and Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy (his
alter ego) as parents to postmodernism, critics see
Baudelaire as spiritual forebear to Duchamp, but no in—depth
study of their relationship has been written. As
theoretician-practitioners, Baudelaire and Duchamp together
elucidate a significant, still incompletely defined
historical period. Because both situated their artistic
practice and intellectual explorations on the boundaries
between literature and painting, they often grappled with
the same issues, at times adopting similar stances and
strategies. Moreover, as a French intellectual and artist
born only twenty years after Baudelaire's death, Duchamp was
exposed to ideas of Baudelairean origin. After outlining
the possible influences of Baudelaire on Duchamp in the
introduction, this study explores the affinities between
these two highly influential figures of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.

The three chapters examine how Baudelaire and Duchamp

conceptualize and practice the creative act. “Enacting Art”

examines the constituent elements of an artwork in the
moment of creation. The focus is not on media or materials,
but rather on the physical and mental contributions of the
artist, specifically the tensions between execution and
intention, between skill and intelligence. “Timing Art”
considers how time — past, present and future — affects the
artwork as it is being created and once it has been created.
The issues under consideration include reception and
preservation of artworks, the role of contingency and
chance, the weight of art history traditions, and the weight
of the artist’s own past. Finally, the study turns from the
artist's past to examine the artist's present in “Living
Art”: how is art created within the context of the artist’s
daily life? The creative act is examined as a form of work,
as a form of play, and as a conflation of the two. This
blurring of the boundaries between work and play leads to a
shift in focus from product to process in which the very act
of living becomes aestheticized for Baudelaire and Duchamp:
how the artist works, plays, creates and lives, the artist's

art of living, is transformed into living art.

For Mansur Pakzad

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For a number of years now, I have drawn upon the
extraordinary kindness, intelligence and patience of
Professor Laurence M. Porter. I am deeply grateful to him

for his guidance and friendship.

I would also like to thank the other members of my
dissertation committee, Professor Eugene Gray and Professor

Anna Norris, for their assistance.

Professor Patricia Lunn, Shawn Morrison, Marjorie Porter and
Mary Vogl alone and in concert have offered much needed and

appreciated support and incentive.

Special thanks:
- to Mary Flanagan who has waited longer than
anyone but has never worried;
- to Karen Bouwer for endless reading, re-reading
and reassuring;
- and to Larry Kuiper who has been with me every

step of the way.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction:
Parenting (Post)Modernism -
From Baudelaire to Duchamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1:

Enacting Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
a. “Béte comme un peintre” . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
b. La Patte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
c. L’artiste—peintre vs. the artisan/craftsman . . 51

Chapter 2:

Timing Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
a. Dirty Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
b. Breaking Glass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
c. Exorcising Nostalgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Chapter 3:

Living Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
a. Daily Grind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
b. Playtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
c. Exhibitionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

vi

INTRODUCTION

PARENTING POSTMODERNISM - FROM BAUDELAIRE TO DUCHAMP

“Dans l’ordre poétique et artistique, tout
révélateur a rarement un précurseur. Toute
floraison est spontanée, individuelle...L’artiste
ne reléve que de lui-méme. Il ne promet aux
siecles a venir que ses propres oeuvres. I1 ne
cautionne que lui-méme. Il meurt sans enfants.”
Charles Baudelaire1

“Et sous l’apparence, je suis tenté de dire sous
le déguisement, d’un membre de la race humaine,
l’individu est en fait tout a fait seul et unique
et les caractéristiques communes a tous les
individus pris en masse n’ont aucun rapport avec
l’explosion solitaire d'un individu livré a lui—
méme.” Marcel Duchamp2
Neither Baudelaire nor Marcel Duchamp would portray
themselves as precursor and heir. And yet, despite his
insistence above on the independence of the innovative
artist exemplified by Delacroix, Baudelaire does not deny
the weight of historical connections: “Otez Delacroix, la
grande chaine de l’histoire est rompue et s'écroule a
terre.” (Baudelaire 130) Likewise Duchamp juggles
originality and debt, conscientiously refuting the influence
of others as in his refusal to be aligned with any

\

particular ‘-ism” and yet avowing multiple, if minor,
influences among which Baudelaire is never mentioned

directly.

Having established Baudelaire, champion of the modern,
as a father of modernism and Duchamp/Rrose Sélavy as parents
to postmodernism, critics instinctively link Baudelaire and
Duchamp. Robert Lebel begins his important monograph on
Duchamp by comparing him to Baudelaire. He even suggested
that if one reads Baudelaire's definition of a dandy “a
whole aspect of Marcel Duchamp’s personality will be
clarified in a few sentences, and perhaps once and for all.”
(Lebel, Marcel Duchamp,l)3 Speculating about Duchamp’s
decisive 1912 visit to Munich, Thierry de Duve also indulges
in a Baudelairean View of Duchamp, imagining that “like the
artist-flaneur in Baudelaire, he visited the town from top
to bottom, that he savored the half-bourgeois, half-bohemian
atmosphere.” (De Duve, Pictorial Nominalism, 96) In
Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp, Amelia
Jones investigates how Duchamp “seems to have perpetuated,
even in exaggerated form, the gender ambivalences that rift
Baudelaire's and D’Aurevilly's definitions of the dandy and
the flaneur” and builds on Moira Roth’s “convincing point
regarding the 0.8. art world’s reception of Duchamp as coded
through the Baudelairean model of the dandy/flaneur.”
(Jones, 174 and 177.) Jerrold Seigel, in The Private

Worlds of Marcel Duchamp, views Baudelaire as “[a]

particularly significant predecessor...whose descriptions of

the relationship between urban isolation and heightened
poetic imagination" help “place Duchamp in the context of
developing modernism.” (98)

Seigel goes on to note that “Duchamp seems never to
have spoken of Baudelaire as a source for his own projects,
but many ties link the two figures.” (99)4 Indeed,
Duchamp seems just to escape Baudelaire’s direct influence —
by only a decade, the decade that separates him from his
elder brothers Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon,
both of whom were clearly influenced by Baudelaire.

In 1911, Duchamp-Villon completes his bust, or more
precisely, his head of Baudelaire. (This work is one of
only two included in Marcel Duchamp’s annotations on his
brother for the 1943 Société Anonyme catalog.5) In 1921,
after Duchamp-Villon’s death, Jacques Villon pays tribute
both to his brother and to Baudelaire by making an engraving
of the sculpture entitled “Baudelaire avec socle.”
Baudelaire’s importance for Villon appears to have been
lifelong, as suggested by Pierre Cabanne’s 1975 study The
Brothers Duchamp: “At the end of his life, Villon often
told his friends how sad he had been about giving up his
chronicling of Parisian life, and cited the example of
Constantin Guys, whom he admired” and to whom he was most

likely introduced through Baudelaire's championing of Guys

in “The Painter of Modern Life.” (Lebel, Brothers Duchamp,
29) Marcel Duchamp himself acknowledged (if obliquely)
that the figure of Baudelaire loomed large - in an unusually
candid interview published in 1915 in Arts and Decoration,
he expounds freely on a number of artists including Gauguin
whom he qualifies as: “an impressionist and a romanticist —
a great force — Baudelairian [sic], exotic, a traveller
gathering romances out of vague or rare or uncivilized or
little known countries.” The juxtaposition of “a great
force” and “Baudelairian” suggest that Duchamp was more than
aware of the important heritage of Baudelaire’s ideas for
subsequent generations of writers and painters, even if we
cannot determine how much these ideas influenced Duchamp
directly. Certainly, Baudelaire’s ideas were in circulation
among the intellectual elite: whether Duchamp read
Baudelaire or the ideas simply filtered down to Duchamp
through his brothers, he could not have failed to be
influenced by them to some extent.

Even if we could prove that Duchamp studied Baudelaire
directly, the connection might add only more shading to the
picture (or rather pictures according to the art critic
Thomas McEvilley, as we shall see below) drawn by critics of
the metamorphosis of Duchamp into our century’s most

influential artist. The purpose of our comparison of

Baudelaire and Duchamp is not to reveal the effects of
possible influence but rather to show how, as artists in
general and as artists interested in both literary and
visual arts in particular, Baudelaire and Duchamp often
grappled with the same issues. At times they adopted
similar stances and strategies. Ultimately, inevitably and
fortunately, each forged his own link in “la grande chaine
de l’histoire” - a chain that stretches through modernism
to postmodernism.

In his October 1988 article in ArtForum “Empyrrhical
Thinking (and why Kant can’t),” Thomas McEvilley outlines
the “many different Marcel Duchamps” portrayed by critics
most of whose “models hinge on interpretations of events
between mid 1911 and mid 1913." McEvilley explains:

[T]his crucial period of Duchamp's
1ife...contained other events besides his trip to
Munich, his sister’s marriage, and his rejection
by the Salon. Various influences to which he is
known to be exposed at this time seem to have
contributed in specific ways to the reformation of
his work: the ambient interest among artists in
the Golden Section and ideas about the fourth
dimension, Henri Bergson's emphasis on coming to

terms with the machine age, Alfred Jarry's

absurdism, Francis Picabia’s iconoclasm, Guillaume
Apollinaire's humor, Stéphane Mallarmé's
linguistic ambiguities, Jules Laforgue’s
provocative titles, the recently published
notebooks of Leonardo de Vinci, Raymond Roussel’s
punning and the machines for making art described
in his novel Impressions d'Afrigue (a performance
version of which Duchamp saw in 1911), and others.
(McEvilley, 122)
To this extensive but not exhaustive list McEvilley makes
his own contribution by analyzing the influences of the
Greek philosophers, Pyrrho in particular, whom Duchamp
claimed to have reread during the “first and almost the last
job of his life in the Bibliotheque Sainte—Genevieve, in
Paris.” For McEvilley this additional piece of the puzzle
is necessary to explain Duchamp’s “turn” which led, in
McEvilley's opinion, to a singlehanded dismantling of
Kantian aesthetics. He sees the alternative offered by
Pyrrhonism to the “‘law of the excluded middle’” in logic
and metaphysics as having been just what Duchamp needed to
unshackle himself from convention. Pyrrhonism, McEvilley
explains, “confutes this so-called law, establishing a
position that is neither affirmation nor negation but a kind

of attention that is neutral and impartial while remaining

alert and vivid...It seems that Duchamp had a natural
sympathy for this stance, and that Pyrrho articulated it for
him, providing it with an intellectual basis.” (McEvilley,
123)

That Duchamp had a predilection for openness is
evidenced by the multiple influences he underwent in this
period without inordinately embracing nor rejecting any one
position. In interviews with Pierre Cabanne, he admits
having felt a sense of revolt at the rejection of “Nu
descendant un escalier” at the Salon des Indépendants in
1912:

MD C'est Gleizes qui est a l'origine; la toile
avait causé un tel scandale qu'avant
l’ouverture il chargea mes fréres de me
demander de retirer le tableau. Alors vous
voyez...

PC Est-ce que ce geste compte parmi les raisons
qui vous ont poussé a adopter plus tard une
attitude anti-artistique?

MD Ca m'a aidé a me libérer complétement du
passé au sens personnel du mot. J’ai dit:
‘Bon, puisque c'est comme ca, pas question
d’entrer dans un groupe, i1 ne faudra compter

que sur soi, étre seul.’6

Despite his indignation, Duchamp did not in turn reject
wholesale the ideas of the Section d’or; most significantly,
he retained the notion of retinal art, art that appeals
solely to the eye rather than to the mind, a concept
outlined in the 1912 manifesto “Cubism” by Gleizes and
Metzinger. He also remained on friendly terms with members
of the group, continuing to collaborate on occasion as in
the 1916 exhibition in New York entitled the “Quatre

II

Mousquetaires, a quartet including himself completed by his
future brother-in-law Jean Crotti and both Gleizes and
Metzinger. And although he begins to move in a different
direction from his brothers, he claims not to have held a
grudge against them for acting as Gleizes’ messengers, but
rather insists on his continued affection and admiration for
them. Thus revolt for Duchamp did not necessitate rejection
— this key factor in his make-up supports McEvilley’s thesis
that the “Pyrrhonist anti-position laid the foundation for
key areas of Duchamp's work.” Open to all of the influences
enumerated by McEvilley, Duchamp seems to have drawn freely
from them: no single influence predominates.

As suggested by McEvilley’s recent addition of
Pyrrhonist philosophy to the traditional list of influences

on Duchamp, the list is not necessarily complete nor have

critics exhausted the full import of the various influences

on Duchamp's thought and work. Jules Laforgue, one
influence mentioned by McEvilley in his list, may have
served as an intermediary between Baudelaire and Duchamp
according to Jerrold Seigel (see note 4). Laforgue’s
collection of verse “Des Fleurs de bonne volonté” clearly
announces a debt to Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal” even as
the title insists on contrast - good will rather than evil,
a partitive rather than a definite article pointing to a
more modest and less totalizing ambition. As Seigel has
conjectured, it is possible that Duchamp read Laforgue’s
notes on Baudelaire (written in 1885, but not published
until 1891), which have been lauded by Henri Peyre as a
significant contribution to Baudelaire criticism.7
Certainly the echos of Baudelaire in Laforgue could not have
been entirely lost on Duchamp despite his modest disclaimer
to Pierre Cabanne: “Je n'étais pas tres, trés littéraire a
ce moment-la.” (Cabanne, 48) Perhaps Duchamp chose Laforgue
as an inspiration in order to differentiate himself
deliberately from his brothers and other members of their
generation, many of whom had chosen Baudelaire as a hero.
In keeping with the “predilection for openness” we have
noted in Duchamp, his choice of Laforgue does not entail a
wholesale rejection of Baudelaire (and thus, by extension,

of Duchamp's brothers to whom he remained loyal) since

Laforgue emulated Baudelaire in a number of ways such as
writing prose poems and art criticism. Yet, at the same
time, Laforgue offers Duchamp a fresher, more up-to-date
literary model with which to distinguish himself:
L’idée du Nu me vint d’un dessin que j’avais fait
en 1911 pour illustrer 1e poeme de Jules Laforgue
‘Encore a cet astre.’ J’avais prévu une série
d’illustrations de poémes mais je n’en terminai
que trois.8 Rimbaud et Lautréamont me
paraissaient trop vieux a l'époque. Je voulais
quelque chose de plus jeune. Mallarmé et Laforgue
étaient plus pres de mon gout. (Duchamp,170)9
In her autobiography of Marcel Duchamp, however, Alice
Goldfarb Marquis downplays the influence of Laforgue on
Duchamp. She suggests a stronger possible intermediary
between Baudelaire and Duchamp: the artist Frank Kupka. She
notes that Kupka, a close friend and neighbor of Duchamp’s
brothers at Puteaux, admired Baudelaire to the extent that
he placed the poet in the “‘category of great men,’" a short
list that contained only five names (including Kupka
himselfl). (Marquis, 54) Baudelaire’s writings on art
provided a starting point for a philosophy of art that Kupka
attempted to articulate “in his correspondence, as well as

in a considerable volume of essays and journal-jottings.”

10

(Marquis, 54) Marquis notes: “That Marcel Duchamp absorbed
all of this [Kupka's ideas on art, including his knowledge
of Baudelaire] is difficult to prove in the courtroom sense
of beyond shadow of a doubt. Yet the circumstantial
evidence is strong. He saw Kupka frequently and he was soon
to incorporate many of Kupka’s notions into his own work.”
(Marquis, 56) Marquis’ evaluation can be generalized and
applied to the other links between Baudelaire and Duchamp
that we have outlined: it is difficult to prove that Duchamp
was well-acquainted with Baudelaire's art criticism and
literary works, yet the circumstantial evidence is strong.10
* * *

Several avenues have led us to a comparison between
Duchamp and Baudelaire. First, as figures at the opposite
chronological ends of modernism, Baudelaire and Duchamp
delineate and elucidate a significant, still incompletely
defined historical period. Secondly, because both situated
their artistic practice and intellectual explorations along
the boundaries of literature and painting, they faced a
number of similar issues. Thirdly, as a French intellectual
and artist born only twenty years after Baudelaire's death,
Duchamp was inevitably exposed to and affected by ideas of
Baudelairean origin. Finally, as we have seen, filtered

through the intermediaries of Duchamp’s elder brothers,

ll

Kupka, and of his interest in Symbolist poetry in general
and in Laforgue in particular, Baudelaire's ideas could not
have failed to leave their imprint on Duchamp’s highly
receptive mind, particularly since Duchamp deliberately
chose to be influenced by literary models. Having outlined
the possible influences of Baudelaire on Duchamp, we will
now turn to our central focus of exploring the affinities
between two of the most highly influential figures of the
European art world in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.

We will describe from three primarily temporal
perspectives how Baudelaire and Duchamp conceptualize and
practice the creative act. The first chapter, “Enacting
Art,” exa“ines the constituent elements of a work of art as
it is being created. We will focus not on the choice of
media or materials, but rather on the physical and mental
contributions of the artist, specifically the tensions
between execution and intention, between skill and
intelligence. The second chapter, “Timing Art,” considers
how time — past, present and future - affects the work of
art as it is created and once it has been created. Issues
of timing studied in the chapter include the reception and
preservation of works of art, the role of contingency and

chance, the weight of traditions in art history on the

12

artist, and the weight of the artist’s own past. From the
artist’s past we turn to the artist’s present in the final
chapter: how is art created within the context of the
artist’s daily life? We examine the creative act as a form
of work (work schedules, work ethic, money and art, etc...),
as a form of play (revolt against work; inspiration for
work; toys and art; etc...), and as a conflation of the two.
This blurring of the boundaries between work and play leads
to a shift in focus from product to process in which the
very act of living becomes aestheticized: how the artist
works, plays, creates and lives, the artist’s art of living,

is transformed into living art.

13

CHAPTER 1: Enacting Art
a. “Béte comme un peintre”

When offered a commission to create a statue in
Baudelaire’s honor in 1898, Rodin categorically refused to
do a standard full-body representation:

What is a statue after all?: a body, arms, legs

covered by banal clothing. What do these have to

do with Baudelaire, who lived only with his brain?

With him, the head is everything...11
Duchamp-Villon drew heavily on Rodin for his own head of
Baudelaire, concurring with Rodin’s emphasis on the
cerebral.12 In the catalogue for a 1967 joint retrospective
exhibition of Duchamp-Villon and his younger brother Marcel
Duchamp, Jean Cassou notes that in all of their works
“l'intellect se manifeste, clairement présent, dominateur”
just as it does in “ce pur, magistral Baudelaire, image
~absolue d'une téte, qui, tout aussi bien, pourrait s'appeler
la Pensée.” (Cassou, 8) Intelligence and artistic talent ran
high in the Duchamp family: two other siblings, the eldest
brother Jacques Villon and Suzanne Duchamp, the eldest of
three younger sisters, also became well-known artists. But
it was Marcel Duchamp, the third of six children in the

family, whose talent and, especially, intellect would earn

14

him the greatest fame, to the point that André Breton dubbed
him “the most intelligent man of the twentieth century.”

Upon the centennial of his birth in 1989, another
superlative was bestowed upon Duchamp when a collection of
essays in celebration of the event was entitled Marcel
Duchamp: Artist of the Century. This high compliment,
however, might not have been perceived as such by Duchamp:
“[h]e disliked both the term and the concept"_of ‘artist’
according to Pierre Cabanne, the critic who conducted and
published the most extensive interviews with Duchamp.
(Cabanne, The Brothers Duchamp, 28) The source of Duchamp’s
discontent with the term was what he perceived to be a
popular conception, the conception of painters as
unintelligent. Duchamp singled out the saying “Béte comme
un peintre” as representative of this attitude.

Duchamp refers repeatedly to this saying - early on in
connection with his retreat from painting and throughout his
career - to mark its contrast with the import of his work.
Thomas McEvilley sees Kant’s Critique of Judgment, in which
“the pure esthetic judgment or sense of taste has nothing to
do with cognition or concepts,” as “the basis for [this]
saying...to which Duchamp declared his work to be the
corrective when he said that he wanted to put art back into

the service of the mind" because in “the Kantian View, this

15

goal is innately antiartistic, since art cannot possibly
have anything to do with the mind.” (McEvilley, 127, n. 42)
In a 1960 talk entitled “L’Artiste doit-il aller a
l’université?,” Duchamp opens by quoting the saying which he
then traces to a different source:

Ce proverbe francais remonte au moins au
temps de la vie de Bohéme de Murger, autour de
1880, et s’emploie toujours comme plaisanterie
dans les discussions.

Pourquoi l'artiste devrait—il étre considéré
comme moins intelligent que Monsieur tout—le—
monde?

Serait-ce parce que son adresse technique est
essentiellement manuelle et n’a pas de rapport
immédiat avec l’intellect?

Quoi qu’il en soit, on tient généralement que
le peintre n’a pas besoin d’une éducation
particuliére pour devenir un grand Artiste.
(Duchamp, 236)

Although it may be difficult to trace the origin of the
saying itself, the source of the conception is not difficult
to imagine. Measurements of intelligence, informal ones
even more so than formal, tend to be based on verbal

manifestations. Overlooking works such as Delacroix’s or

16

Leonardo's journals, Michelangelo's poetry, or Fromentin's
or Leonora Carrington's novels, people assume that a
painter’s most common form of self-expression is non-verbal
and therefore does not lend itself easily to common
assessments of intelligence.13 In addition, a painter
typically spends long periods of time alone in his studio,
and if not alone, often in silence, thus limiting the time
spent developing verbal and social skills. A painter’s
consequent lack of social polish would place him at a
disadvantage in social interactions, leaving him subject to
the disdain of his more articulate peers.

It is not surprising then to find such a disdainful
conception of the intelligence of painters, much earlier
than in Murger, in Baudelaire’s art criticism. Despite his
great love for painting and for certain painters, Baudelaire
was scornful of the majority of painters, that is to say, of
fashionable, mediocre painters. In his Salon de 1859, he
speaks about the modern artist as “un enfant gaté," spoiled
by an undiscerning public: “11 peint, il peint; et il
bouche son ame, et il peint encore, jusqu'a ce qu'il
ressemble enfin a l’artiste a la mode, et que par sa bétise
et son habilité il mérite 1e suffrage et l'argent du
public.” (Baudelaire, 312) The exchange is reciprocal:

“si l'artiste abétit le public, celui-ci le lui rend bien.”

l7

(Baudelaire, 316) Like Duchamp, who answers his own question
“Should artists attend university?” with an emphatic ‘yes,’
Baudelaire stresses the importance of erudition for
painters. He ridicules the fashionable painter as an
imitator of imitators who pursues “son réve de grandeur” not
only by “bouchant de mieux en mieux son ame” but also by “ne
lisant rien, pas méme le Parfait Cuisinier, qui pourtant
aurait pu lui ouvrir une carriére moins lucrative, mais plus
glorieuse.” Baudelaire’s champion and counter-example to the
fashionable and mediocre painter is Eugene Delacroix whom he
defines as “un grand artiste, érudit et penseur” in a long
section of the Salon de 1846. (Baudelaire, 117) Later, in
his longer study Oeuvre et vie d'Eugéne Delacroix he
compares Delacroix to the Lyonnais artist Paul Chenavard,
for whom his admiration is much less complete, and states
that despite their differences: “Tous deux, d’ailleurs,
étaient fort lettrés et doués d'un remarquable esprit de
sociabilité, ils se rencontraient sur le terrain commun de
l’érudition. On sait qu’en général ce n’est pas la qualité
par laquelle brillent les artistes.” (Baudelaire, 447) In
another study devoted exclusively to the German and Lyonnais
schools, “L’Art philosophique,” Baudelaire adds: “Disons
tout de suite que Chenavard a une énorme supériorité sur

tous les artistes: s’il n’est pas assez animal, ils sont

18

beaucoup trop peu spirituels.” His very next statement
“Chenavard sait lire et raisonner” implies that most artists
are capable of neither. (Baudelaire, 509)

If a painter, the producer of art, lacks intelligence,
it would seem logical that his productions would be
affected. Duchamp believed that a series of unintellectual
painters had led to a trend in unintellectual painting.
Borrowing the term from Gleizes and Metzinger, he labeled
this trend “retinal art”; that is to say, art that addresses
primarily the eye rather than the mind. The addition of the
eye completes a cycle: the painter sees and paints, the
viewer sees and, perhaps, enjoys.14 Duchamp protested
against retinal art because he felt it leaves the mind out
of the equation.

Duchamp names the culprit: “Depuis Courbet on croit que
la peinture s’adresse a la rétine; ca a été l’erreur de tout
le monde." (Cabanne, 74) “Pour moi Courbet avait introduit
l'accent mis sur le c6té physique au XIXe siécle. Je
m'intéressais aux idées - et pas simplement aux produits
visuels. Je voulais remettre la peinture au service de
l'esprit.” (Duchamp, 171-172) By dating the inception of
retinal art with the advent of Courbet’s realism, Duchamp is
echoing his early Cubist colleagues and mentors Gleizes and

Metzinger who, while acknowledging a debt to Courbet for

19

“our present joys, so subtle and so powerful,” see the
painter as: “a slave to the worst visual
conventions...[who] accepted without the slightest
intellectual control everything his retina communicated."
(Gleizes and Metzinger, 2)

As we shall see, the charge against Courbet was first
leveled by Baudelaire. It is perhaps unjustified, as
Michael Fried argues in Courbet's Realism: “Now it is a
basic claim of this study that Courbet's paintings are
eminently imaginative in Baudelaire’s sense of the term and
that it’s therefore ironic, to say the least, that
Baudelaire not only failed to recognize that this was so but
regarded Courbet as the arch exemplar of the
realist/positivist/materialist esthetic he deplored.”
(Fried, Q3, 5) Whether or not Courbet deserved the
recriminations of Baudelaire, Gleizes, Metzinger and Duchamp
is not our concern here. We shall examine instead the
nature of their recriminations.

Initially, Baudelaire and Courbet seem to have
influenced one another. Having been introduced by a mutual
acquaintance in 1847, they developed a friendship over the
next several years.15 They became close enough for
Baudelaire to sleep over occasionally at Courbet’s studio.16

Critics have seen Courbet’s work until his break with

20

romanticism in 1849-1850 as answering Baudelaire’s call in
the Salon of 1845 for the celebration of contemporary modern
life, for showing “combien nous sommes grands et poétiques
dans nos cravates et nos bottes vernies.” (Baudelaire, 76)
In 1849, Baudelaire supported Courbet in his work - writing
a letter for him soliciting the attention of the president
of a commission buying works for “une loterie” and writing
out a list annotating Courbet’s works for the 1849 Salon.17
His first formal appraisal of Courbet, however, was largely
critical and did not appear until 1855. By then they had
clearly drifted apart without having had any specific
falling out as far as records show.

Baudelaire includes Courbet in his “Exposition
universelle de 1855" even though the painter did not
participate, organizing instead a concurrent personal
exhibition of forty-one works which provoked a famous
artistic battle. On a certain level, Baudelaire pays
tribute to Courbet — first, by including Courbet in his
review, he legitimizes the status of Courbet’s exhibition as
a worthy rival to the official Salon; and secondly, since
his discussion of Courbet is sandwiched within a longer
discussion of Ingres, part of Baudelaire’s occasional, if
always grudging, praise of Ingres in this document reflects

by association upon Courbet. His judgment, nevertheless, is

21

harsh, beginning with what is clearly a back—handed
compliment, given his prejudices: “M. Courbet, lui aussi,
est un puissant ouvrier, une sauvage et patiente volonté.”
(Baudelaire, 225) Courbet’s work shares with that of Ingres
“ceci de singulier qu’ils manifestent un esprit de sectaire,
un massacreur de facultés." While Courbet loses out in the
comparison, “la difference est que le sacrifice héroique que
M. Ingres fait en l'honneur de la tradition et de l’idée du
beau raphaélesque, M. Courbet l’accomplit au profit de la
nature extérieure, positive, immediate," in the end,
Baudelaire condemns both equally: “Dans leur guerre a
l'imagination, ils obéissent a des mobiles différents; et
deux fanatismes inverses les conduisent a la méme
immolation." (Baudelaire, 226)

Baudelaire published only one other statement on
Courbet. It appears much later in “Peintres et aqua-
fortistes” (1862). Once again, Baudelaire's assessment is
mixed, but the passing of time has softened his censure.18
If he cannot entirely sanction Courbet’s contribution to
painting, he nevertheless acknowledges its impact.

Bemoaning the current state of the arts, he announces:
“Cette pauvreté d'idées, ce tatillonage dans l'expression,
et enfin tous les ridicules connus de la peinture francaise,

suffisent a expliquer l'immense succés des tableaux de

22

Courbet dés leur premiere apparition. Cette réaction, faite
avec les turbulences fanfaronnes de toute réaction, était
positivement nécessaire. Il faut rendre a Courbet cette
justice, qu’il n'a pas peu contribué a rétablir le gout de
la simplicité et de la franchise, et l’amour désintéressé,
absolu, de la peinture.” (Baudelaire, 409)

Courbet figures in two of Baudelaire's unfinished
projects. The first is a series of notes outlining a
possible “critique générale du réalisme” with a sardonic
title that clearly announces Baudelaire's antagonism to his
subject. The sketchy notes that constitute “Puisque
réalisme i1 y a” are open to conjecture, but a general sense
of Baudelaire’s attitude toward Courbet can be gleaned.
While Baudelaire's attack is directed primarily at
Champfleury,19 Courbet’s name is mentioned as often as
Champfleury’s, that is to say nine times. Baudelaire
portrays Courbet as having been duped by Champfleury who “a
voulu faire une farce au genre humain” by establishing
realism — a nonsensical term for Baudelaire20 — as the new
rallying cry after Romanticism. After explaining the origin
of the term (“la création du mot"), Baudelaire planned to
describe his first visit to Courbet to show “[c]e qu'était
alors Courbet” and to offer an “[a]nalyse du Courbet et de

ses oeuvres.” One can surmise that this initial portrait of

23

Courbet during the early part of their friendship would have
been complimentary so that Baudelaire could offer a strong
contrast to his second portrait of Courbet under the
pernicious influence of Champfleury, a portrait that begins:
“Champfleury l'a intoxiqué." Champfleury remains the
primary Villain, with Courbet cast as his bungling
accomplice: “Quant a Courbet, il est devenu le Machiavel
maladroit de ce Borgia, dans le sens historique de Michelet.
Courbet a théorisé sur une farce innocente avec une rigueur
de conviction compromettante.” (Baudelaire, 823)

The next mention of Courbet in the notes states:
“Sujets familiers, villageois de Courbet et de Bonvin."
Again one can surmise that Baudelaire planned to offer first
a flattering description — his professed admiration for
Bonvin in the Salon de 1859 supports this thesis — before
discussing later in the notes how such works were corrupted
through realism: “Des lors, Réalisme, villageois, grossier,
et méme rustre, malhonnéte.” With his characteristic
admiration for rebelliousness, Baudelaire also planned to
discuss “l'affaire Courbet” with the ensuing “[c]olere et
soubresauts alors beaux a voir.” (Baudelaire, 824)

“Puisque réalisme i1 y a” ends with what appears to be a
plan for a more exclusive discussion of Courbet: “(Analyse

de la Nature, du talent de Courbet, et de la morale.)

24

Courbet sauvant le monde.” (Baudelaire, 825) This final
image, mostly derisive given Baudelaire’s lack of faith in
progress, receives an echo in the other of Baudelaire's
unfinished projects touching upon Courbet: the notes for
Baudelaire’s book project La Belgigue déshabillée written

toward the end of his life.21

Once again Baudelaire’s shorthand notes allow only for
conjecture. Courbet is first mentioned in connection with
the Belgian king Léopold I who died during Baudelaire's stay
in Belgium:

Le Roi

Ses economies.

Son avarice.

Sa rapacité. La rente de Napoléon III.

Pourquoi il passe pour un éléve de Courbet.

(Baudelaire, BO, 246)
The rapprochement of Courbet and Léopold remains ambiguous.
In a footnote to his edition of La Bel i ue déshabillée,
André Guyaux offers the following speculation: “Pourquoi
‘Courbet’? Parce que 1e roi passait pour ‘un amant de la
simple nature'?” (Baudelaire, ED, 694) Guyaux is referring
to an earlier description of the king: “Ses idées sur les
parcs et les jardins, qui l’ont fait prendre pour un amant

de la simple nature, mais qui dérivaient simplement de son

25

avarice.” (Baudelaire, ED, 244) Baudelaire seems to
insinuate that Léopold I preferred the English rather than
the French style of gardening, giving nature freer rein,
because he could thereby spend less on upkeep. The next
statement connecting Courbet to the king lends support to
Guyaux's thesis: “Ses economies [du roi] sur l’entretien des
Chateaux (Courbet).” (Baudelaire, ED, 249) Baudelaire seems
to be accusing Courbet of an avarice similar to that of the
king who masks an innate lack of generosity with a false
higher purpose. With regard to Courbet, it is the esthetics
of realism which Baudelaire mistrusts, the attempt to put
nature in control rather than the artist who instead of
interpreting nature merely copies it. Baudelaire sees this
relinquishing of control as self-serving, allowing the
artist to give in to laziness and to stint on ideas, while
pretending to ‘save the world' through a so-called
revolutionary approach to painting.

Further support for Guyaux's thesis might even be seen
in the next and most significant mention of Courbet, which
appears in connection with Baudelaire's assessment of
contemporary Belgian painting: “La composition, chose
inconnue. Ne peindre que ce qu'on voit, philosophie a la
Courbet.” (Baudelaire, ED, 250) Just as he disapproved of

Léopold I’s preference for unplanned gardens, Baudelaire is

26

contemptuous of what he sees as a lack of composition in
Belgian painting.
Baudelaire repeats his formula of “Courbet’s

philosophy” twice more:

Philosophie des peintres belges. Philosophie de

notre ami Courbet, l’empoisonneur intéressé (Ne

peindre que ce qu’on voit! Donc vous ne peindrez-

que ce que je vois).

(Baudelaire, BB, 251)

La composition, chose inconnue. Philosophie de

ces brutes, philosophie a la Courbet. Ne peindre

que ce qu’on voit. Donc vous ne peindrez pas ce

que je ne vois pas.

(Baudelaire, BB, 306)

The addition of the exclamation mark in the first of these
reiterations underscores Baudelaire’s repudiation of the
notion of painting only what one sees. He explains that it
is not simply a matter of the painter painting only what he
sees; the pronoun “on” can refer back to “peindre” and
designate the painter or it can function instead as an
impersonal pronoun. By including the viewer in the equation
through an unambiguous (and emphatic) use of pronouns (“Donc
vous ne peindrez que ce que je vois”), Baudelaire questions

the value of painting something that a viewer can already

27

see without the intermediary of representation. Baudelaire
adds a further nuance in the final version by negating the
phrase so that it reads “Donc vous ne peindrez pas ce que je
ne vois pas.” Here he shows that the resulting harm of
following “Courbet’s philosophy" would not only be
redundancy as in the previous version, but also the sad loss
of possibility - our horizons would no longer be broadened
by the visionary imagination of the other.

Note that once again Baudelaire attributes stupidity
and bestiality to mediocre painters - “ces brutes” refers to
the Belgian painters whom he then compares to Courbet. In
an interview with Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp seems almost to be
responding directly to these statements by Baudelaire:

"Béte comme un peintre was the saying in France all through
the last half of the nineteenth century, and it was true,
too. The kind of painter who just puts down what he sees is
stupid." (Tomkins, 58) Although in this instance Duchamp
does not name Courbet (as he does in several closely related
comments), Courbet’s commitment to realism did begin exactly
in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Courbet to
whom Duchamp refers (as do Gleizes and Metzinger) is clearly
the Courbet to whom Baudelaire objected, Courbet the realist
rather than the younger Courbet, Baudelaire’s friend and (in

the view of certain critics) follower. Duchamp bemoans the

28

legacy of Courbet's realism that extends into the twentieth

century, affecting even the work of the Surrealists whom

Duchamp admired:
Si j’ai eu la chance de pouvoir prendre une
attitude anti-rétinienne, malheureusement ca n'a
pas change grand-chose; tout le siécle est
complétement rétinien, sauf les surréalistes qui
ont un peu essayé d’en sortir. Et encore ils ne
s’en sont pas tellement sortis! Breton a beau
dire, i1 croit juger d'un point de vue
surréaliste, mais au fond c'est toujours la
peinture au sens rétinien qui l'intéresse. C’est
absolument ridicule. Il faudrait que ca change,
que ca ne soit pas toujours comme ca. (Cabanne,
74)

Among the artists in the nineteenth-century most
admired by Baudelaire for offering a counterweight to the
unintellectual painter is Constantin Guys. In his
celebration of Guys, Le Peintre de la vie moderne,
Baudelaire sums up the inadequacies of the mere artist
confronted with his rival, an “homme du monde” such as Guys:

Homme du monde, c’est—a-dire homme du monde
entier, homme qui comprend le monde et les raisons

mystérieuses et légitimes de tous ses usages;

29

artiste, c'est-a-dire spécialiste, homme attaché a
sa palette comme le serf a la glébe. M.G. n’aime
pas étre appelé artiste. N'a-t-il pas un peu
raison? Il s'intéresse au monde entier; il veut
savoir, comprendre, apprécier tout ce qui se passe
a la surface de notre sphéroide. L'artiste vit
trés peu, ou méme pas du tout, dans le monde moral
et politique...Sauf deux ou trois exceptions qu’il
est inutile de nommer, la plupart des artistes
sont, il faut bien le dire, des brutes trés
adroites, de purs manoeuvres, des intelligences de
village, des cervelles de hameau. Leur
conversation, forcément bornée a un cercle trés
étroit, devient tres Vite insupportable a l'homme
du monde, au citoyen spirituel de l’univers.
(Baudelaire, 460-461)
Baudelaire thus insists on the animal, brutish quality of
most painters who are therefore “bétes” in both senses of
the word. ‘Painter,’ the second term in the saying “Béte
comme un peintre,” tends to have a more negatively charged
connotation than ‘artist' in part because “painter/peintre”
is derived from the process (“to paint/peindre”) whereas it
is the product that is emphasized in “artist/artiste.”22 In

this hierarchy, conceptualization is valued more than

30

physical labor — the painter ranks as mere laborer or even
beast of burden (béte de somme) compared to his master, the
artist. Baudelaire often uses “painter” in a pejorative
fashion. In his Salon de 1846, he dismisses the painter
Haffner in the following manner: “je croyais que c’était un
grand artiste plein de poésie et surtout d'invention, un
portraitiste de premier ordre, qui lachait quelques
rapinades a ses heures perdues; mais i1 parait que ce n'est
qu'un peintre.”

As we shall see in the next section, this split
between the inner qualities of the artist and the
physicality (and automaticity through constant practice) of
the act of painting are of central importance to both
Baudelaire and Duchamp. Erudition, however, in and of
itself, does not guarantee that a painter may qualify as “un
grand artiste.” It can, in fact, also be an obstacle. Note
the contradictions in Baudelaire’s assessment of a number of
painters in the Salon de 1845:

“A quoi bon tant d’érudition quand on a du talent?”

[Fay]

“Voila ce que c’est que de trop s’y connaitre, - de

trop penser et de ne pas assez peindre.” [Laviron]

31

“Guillemin a certainement du mérite dans l'exécution,
dépense trop de talent a soutenir une mauvaise cause; -
la cause de l'esprit en peinture.” [Guillemin]
“...vrais tableaux de genre trop bien peints. Du
reste, tout le monde aujourd’hui peint trop bien.”
[Lepoitevin]

“On n’aime pas voir un homme si sur de lui-
méme."[Troyon]

“...leurs [de ses oeuvres] mémes désespérantes
perfections.” [Joyant]

“...une profonde naiveté — tandis que vous autres, vous
étes trop artistes.” [Chazal]

“...la singerie de la maestria” [Maréchal]

“l’execution n'est jamais a la hauteur de l’intention”
[Tourneux]

“Encore un habile - mais quoi! n’irait—on jamais plus

loin?” [Feuchére]

As if to suggest that in the painter of genius a delicate

balance between intelligence and technique must be struck,

Baudelaire first leans in favor of skill, criticizing Fay,

Laviron, Guillemain, Maréchal, and Tourneux for thinking too

much (they should in fact take Chazal for a model, he

claims) and then in favor of thought, criticizing

32

Lepoitevin, Troyon, Joyant, and Feuchére for not thinking
enough.

In this sampling of comments from an early Balpp,
criticism of too much erudition in painting predominates
slightly. Baudelaire's later discussion, unpublished in his
lifetime (and not quite completed), “L’Art philosophique,”
definitely tips the scales against didacticism and an “envie
d’empiéter sur l'art voisin” in its criticism of the
Lyonnais and German schools of painting. (Baudelaire, 504)

Qu’est—ce que l’art philosophique suivant la
conception de Chenavard et de l’école allemande?
C’est un art plastique qui a la prétention de
remplacer le livre, c’est-a-dire de rivaliser avec
l’imprimerie pour enseigner l’histoire, la morale
et la philosophie.

11 y a en effet des époques de l’histoire ou
l’art plastique est destiné a peindre les archives
historiques d’un peuple et ses croyances
religieuses.

Mais, depuis plusieurs siécles, il s'est fait
dans l’histoire de l’art comme une séparation de

plus en plus marquée des pouvoirs, i1 y a des

33

sujets qui appartiennent a la peinture, d'autres a

la musique, d'autres a la littérature.

(Baudelaire, 503-504)
Baudelaire rejects the two school’s goals, but cannot
dismiss them: “Mais le raisonnement, la deduction,
appartiennent au livre....Nous étudierons donc l’art
philosophique comme une monstruosité ou se sont montrés de
beaux talents.” (Baudelaire, 505) He is drawn to them
despite himself: “Quoique je considere les artistes
philosophes comme des hérétiques, je suis arrivé a admirer
souvent leurs efforts par un effet de ma raison propre.”
(Baudelaire, 512)

Thus, although he shares with Duchamp a natural
attraction to the conceptual in painting and an appreciation
for a painter’s need for intelligence and erudition,
Baudelaire expresses ambivalence with regard to the
appropriateness of crossing generic boundaries. Duchamp
exhibits no such ambivalence: he wishes to cross generic
boundaries in order to counteract what he sees as an excess
of emphasis on the senses in painting brought about by
decades of such autonomy.

Despite their call for intelligence in painting,
neither Baudelaire nor Duchamp ascribe to painting a

didactic function nor a socially transformative role.

34

Baudelaire’s diatribe against the notion of progress is
woven throughout his art and literary criticism. Duchamp in
turn states firmly: “L’art est produit par une suite
d'individus qui s’expriment personnellement; ce n’est pas
une question de progrés. Le progrés n’est qu'une

exorbitante prétention de notre part.” (Duchamp, 169)

35

b. La Patte

It is not uncommon for an artist to feel restricted
within his chosen medium. Baudelaire, who dabbled in
drawing, envies Fromentin for successfully emulating “[l]es
peintres anciens [qui] aimaient aussi a avoir 1e pied dans
deux domaines et a se servir de deux outils pour exprimer sa
pensée.” Although he suggests that Fromentin’s successful
dual career in writing and painting may have prevented him
from achieving greatness in either of the two, Baudelaire is
unwilling to choose one art over the other for Fromentin:
“s’il était permis d’abattre et de couper l’une des tiges
pour donner a l'autre plus de solidité, plus de robur, il
serait vraiment bien difficile de choisir. Car pour gagner
peut-étre, il faudrait se résigner a perdre beaucoup.”
(Baudelaire, 359) Baudelaire’s own career as an art critic
was in part motivated by a desire to cross generic
boundaries and satisfy his deep-seated love of painting. If
he could not exercise fully the two genres of poetry and
painting like Fromentin, at least he could engage in
commentary on art in addition to his more purely creative
work as a poet.

The satisfaction of crossing generic boundaries is
however mingled with anxiety, as is any act of

transgression. The approach to criticism which Baudelaire

36

begins to articulate by the Salon de 1846 presupposes that
the critic need not have perfect mastery of his subject:
“C’est par le sentiment seul que vous devez comprendre
l'art.” (Baudelaire, 79) Baudelaire thereby effectively
preempts an attack on his unofficial status and lack of
formal credentials. Twice in the Salon de 1859, having by
then established himself, he has the confidence forthrightly
to admit to his shortcomings, but he turns them again to his
advantage by appearing modest: “je vous demanderai, a vous
et a ceux de mes amis qui sont plus intruits que moi dans

II

l’histoire de l’art, si... (Baudelaire, 315) and by
valorizing his innate bent for criticism in the “Envoi”:
“la Peinture me...pardonnera, comme a un homme qui, a défaut
de connaissances étendues, a l'amour de la Peinture jusque
dans les nerfs.” (Baudelaire, 395)23

While one might suspect Baudelaire of false modesty,
Duchamp's sense of inferiority in his contacts with literati
strikes a genuine note. Early in his life, as his
disillusionment with the world of artists grew, he felt
drawn toward writers and yet intimidated. Duchamp describes
his first impressions of Apollinaire:

C’était un papillon. Il restait avec vous, il

parlait cubisme, puis le lendemain, il lisait du

Victor Hugo dans un salon. L'amusant chez les

37

littéraires de cette époque-la c’est que lorsque
vous les rencontriez avec deux autres littéraires,
vous ne pouviez pas placer un mot. C'était une
suite de feux d’artifice, de blagues, de
mensonges, le tout insurmontable, parce que
C’était dans un style tel que vous étiez incapable
de parler cette langue-la; alors, vous vous
taisiez. Un jour, je suis allé avec Picabia
déjeuner en compagnie de Max Jacob et Apollinaire,
C’était incroyable; on était partagé entre une
sorte d’angoisse et le fou-rire. Tous les deux
vivaient encore dans l’optique de l'homme de
lettres de l’époque symboliste vers 1880.
(Cabanne, 35-36)
Despite many years of friendship with a host of writers and
intellectuals, Duchamp retained his sense of awe and respect
for the literate and articulate. Speaking in 1967 of Arman,
Duchamp finds the successful young artist: “tres cultivé,
extraordinaire. Alors, moi, je respecte cela. Comme je
n’ai pas eu une grande culture, au vrai sens du mot, je suis
toujours étonné par les gens qui peuvent dire des choses que
je ne connais pas du tout, et les dire bien. Ce n’est pas
le cas des artistes qui en général sont des primaires.”

(Cabanne, 181)24 It is clear in Cabanne’s interviews that

38

Duchamp chose to accept as a challenge rather than as a
deterrent the “angoisse” he felt initially as a mute witness
to the verbal fireworks between Apollinaire and Jacob. To
observers, Duchamp’s articulateness in public statements and
interviews is proof that he rose successfully to the
challenge. Yet for Duchamp, verbal expression remained a
hurdle: “Parler en public est un événement dans la vie d'un
artiste, en général. C’est tres difficile de parler en
public quand on n'est pas orateur de naissance. C’était un
jeu pour moi de voir ce que je pouvais faire de ne pas étre
ridicule.” (Cabanne, 167-168)

Duchamp also ascribes the desire to avoid ridicule as
motivating the deliberately neutral tone of his own foray
into art criticism, his painstaking preparation of the
catalog for the Société Anonyme collection: “j’y ai attaché
beaucoup plus d’importance que cela n’en avait. J'ai changé
de métier a ce moment-la; je suis devenu chroniqueur. Je
n’ai pas tellement réussi mais j'ai essayé de ne pas étre
trop béte; malheureusement je l’ai été quelquefois. J’ai
fait des jeux de mots.” (Cabanne, 159) Duchamp describes
both temporary stints (as a public speaker and as an art
historian) in terms of game-playing (“C'était un jeu.”/“J’ai
fait des jeux de mots.”). The rules of his game do not

simply consist of trying to avoid ridicule in unfamiliar

39

territory through caution or conservatism. Rather he
maneuvers to create a strength out of his weakness: it is
precisely his lack of facility in expression which will
allow him to strike a new note.

Thus, Duchamp’s professed admiration for brilliant
speakers like Apollinaire or Jacob did not translate itself
into emulation. Having distanced himself from the company
of painters so as to avoid the stigma of “béte comme un
peintre,” Duchamp did not simply switch camps, for he was
not running away from intellectual mediocrity alone. His
move away from painters was also a move away from painting,
or more specifically, from the aspect of painting he
labelled “1a patte.” The expression “avoir le coup de
patte” means to have a skillful, adroit hand. The literal
meaning of “patte” (paw) parallels “béte comme un peintre”
by demoting the painter to animal, instinctive status. For
Duchamp a practiced hand allowed for automaticity in
painting, thus distancing it even more from thought and
intention. Had he moved to literature or writing, Duchamp
would have been attempting to replace “la patte,” or the
non-verbal facility of expression that had come naturally to
him, with a writer’s verbal facility of expression equally

prey to the danger of automaticity. Instead, the antidote

4O

for Duchamp was to combine verbal and non-verbal expression,
without yielding fully to the exigencies of either.25
Paradoxically, Duchamp credits “la patte” not only for
driving him away from painting, but also for attracting him
to it in the first place through the intermediary of his
brother:
PC Est-ce que Villon a eu de l'influence sur
vous?
MD Beaucoup, au début, pour les dessins, j'avais
une grande admiration pour sa facilité de
patte extraordinaire. (Cabanne, 42)
For Baudelaire, too, the painter’s hand can be a source
of fascination — that is to say when it is attached to a
great mind such as Delacroix’s. Baudelaire explains the
enormous importance of manual skill for the “grand peintre”:
“Il disait une fois a un jeune homme de ma connaissance: ‘Si
vous n’étes pas assez habile pour faire le croquis d’un
homme qui se jette par la fenétre, pendant le temps qu’il
met a tomber du quatriéme étage sur le sol, vous ne pourrez
jamais produire de grandes machines.’” But Baudelaire
nuances Delacroix's strong statement by suggesting that the
manual skill of the artist, while indispensable, must be in
service to the idea to be of value: “Je retrouve dans cette

énorme hyperbole la preoccupation de toute sa vie, qui

41

était, comme on le sait, d’exécuter assez vite et avec assez
de certitude pour ne rien laisser s'évaporer de l’intensité
de l’action ou de l’idée.” (Baudelaire, 445)

Baudelaire is not as stringent as Delacroix in
requiring perfect mastery of the hand - ideas and thought
can often compensate for shortcomings in technical skill.
For example, he praises the drawings of Saint-Francois who
has: “un style embrouillé et compliqué comme celui d’un
homme qui change son outil habituel contre un qui lui est
moins familier; mais il a des idées, de vraies idées. Chose
rare chez un artiste, i1 sait penser." (Baudelaire, 402)
Baudelaire also finds a certain charm in Delacroix when he
switches “son outil habituel,” the paintbrush, for a pen, to
write articles on various artistic and literary subjects.
Baudelaire discovers in Delacroix's writing “la trace des
habitudes aristocratiques prises dans les bonnes lectures,
et de cette rectitude de pensée qui a permis a des hommes du
monde, a des militaires, a des aventuriers, ou méme a de
simples courtisans, d'écrire, quelquefois a la diable, de
forts beaux livres que nous autres, gens du métier, nous
sommes contraints d'admirer”. (Baudelaire, 436)
Nevertheless, Baudelaire points out that writing didn’t come
easily to Delacroix who missed “1a certitude d'allure de son

pinceau. Autant il était sur d’écrire ce qu’il pensait sur

42

une toile, autant i1 était préoccupé de me pouvoir peindre
sa pensée sur le papier. ‘La plume, — disait-i1 souvent, —
n’est pas mon outil; je sens que je pense juste, mais 1e
besoin de l'ordre, auquel je suis contraint d’obéir,
m'effraye. Croiriez-vous que la nécessité d’écrire une page
me donne la migraine?’ C’est par cette géne, résultat du
manque d’habitude, que peuvent étre expliquées certaines
locutions un peu usées, un peu poncif, empire méme qui
échappent trop souvent a cette plume naturellement
distinguée.” (Baudelaire, 434) With more practice,
Baudelaire seems to suggest, Delacroix could have developed
the technical skills to become an accomplished writer since
he already possesses the more important and less easily
attainable qualities of intelligence and imagination.
Indeed, Baudelaire is often suspicious and even
scornful of “habileté,” the term which parallels “la patte”
in his art criticism. (Le Petit Robert offers the
following definition: “Coup de patte : coup de main habile.
Ce peintre a le coup de patte, a de la patte: est habile.”)
His strongest criticism of painting in the Salon de 1845,

his first Salon, is of an excess of technical skill to the

 

detriment of ideas. Having faulted, for example, Lepoitevin
for his “vrai tableaux de genre trop bien peints” adding

“[d]u reste, tout le monde aujourd'hui peint trop bien,”

43

Baudelaire expresses despair toward the end of the Salon at

 

Feuchére’s inability to move beyond mere “habileté.” Summing
up his disappointment in the offerings that year, he first
states: “Du reste, constatons que tout le monde peint de
mieux en mieux, ce qui nous parait désolant; — mais
d'invention, d’idées, de tempérament, pas davantage
qu’avant. — Au vent qui soufflera demain nul ne tend
l’oreille; et pourtant l’héroisme de la vie moderne nous
entoure et nous presse” and ends with the ardent plea:
“Puissent les vrais chercheurs nous donner l’année prochaine
cette joie singuliére de célébrer l’avénement du neuf!"
(Baudelaire, 85)

The terms “habile/habileté” are often repeated in his
subsequent art criticism, usually with negative connotations
as illustrated in the following examples. The painters
exhibiting in Le Musée Classigue du Bazar Bonne-Nouvelle
(1846) who “représentent assez bien dans l’art les adeptes
de la fausse école romantique en poésie” will never attain
the heights of true revolutionary painting since: “[p]our
s’élever si haut, nos rapins sont gens trop habiles, et
savent trop bien peindre.” (Baudelaire, 88) In the Salon de
IBAB, he warns: “Tel qui rentre aujourd’hui dans la classe
des singes, méme des plus habiles, n'est et ne sera jamais

qu’un peintre médiocre.” (Baudelaire, 194) Baudelaire rails

44

 

 

against “l’enfant gate,” the term he assigns the modern
painter in the Salon de 1859 who paints obsessively but
without soul, and who succeeds in becoming a fashionable
painter through “sa bétise et son habileté.” (Baudelaire,
312) The last two examples in particular underscore the
affinity of Baudelaire's view of “habileté” to Duchamp’s
concepts of “la patte” and “béte comme un peintre” by
evoking the animality inherent in the act of painting and
the danger of obscuring intention through thoughtless
repetition or automaticity.

As we have seen in Baudelaire's evaluation of Delacroix
as a writer, “habileté” can be attained in writing as well
as in painting. Baudelaire cites Théophile Gautier’s
literary parallel to Delacroix’s exaggerated requirement
that a painter draw fast enough to sketch a suicide as it
happens: “l’écrivain qui ne savait pas tout dire, celui
qu’une idée si étrange, si subtile qu’on le supposat, si
imprévue, tombant comme une pierre de la lune, prenait au
dépourvu et sans matériel pour lui donner corps, n'était pas
un écrivain.” (Baudelaire, 665, emphasis in original)26
Later Baudelaire praises Gautier for nearly attaining this
lofty goal: “A lui seul peut-étre i1 appartient de dire sans
emphase: Il n’y a pas d’idées inexprimables!” (Baudelaire,

756) and dedicates Les Fleurs du Mal to the “parfait

45

magicien es lettres francaises.” Once again, however, the
idea is emphasized over technical skill. Indeed, Baudelaire
is clearly suspicious of the appeal of a polished technique,
as we can see when he evaluates the reception of Gautier’s
work:
Théophile Gautier a son tour sera mis sur le
tapis; mais, aprés les couronnes banales qui lui
seront décernées (“qu'il a d’esprit! qu’il est
amusant! qu’il écrit bien, et que son style est
coulant!” — le prix de style coulant est donné
indistinctement a tous les écrivains connus, l'eau
claire étant probablement le symbole le plus Clair
de beauté pour les gens qui ne font pas profession
de méditer), si vous vous avisiez de faire
remarquer que l’on omet son mérite principal, son
incontestable et plus éblouissant mérite, enfin
qu'on oublie de dire qu'il est un grand poéte,
vous verrez un vif étonnement se peindre sur tous
les visages.(Baudelaire, 662, emphasis in
original)
Smooth execution (1e “style coulant” being roughly the
literary equivalent of “la patte”) may elicit indiscriminate
praise from the public, but true glory can come only from

high intention.27

46

In Baudelaire’s ideal work of art, then, execution
would rise to the level of intention. And yet, as he
laments in the preface to the Petits poémes en prose
(addressed to Arséne Houssaye), he is unable to attain his
ideal: “Sitét que j’eus commence le travail, je m’apercus
que non seulement je restais bien loin de mon mystérieux et
brillant modéle [Aloysius Bertrand], mais encore que je
faisais quelque chose (si cela peut s’appeler quelque chose)
de singulierement différent, accident dont tout autre que
moi s’enorgueillirait sans doute, mais qui ne peut
qu'humilier profondément un esprit qui regarde comme le plus
grand honneur du poéte d’accomplir juste ce qu’il a projeté
de faire.” (Baudelaire, BBB, 32) Here Baudelaire ascribes
the gap between his execution and his intention to chance.
Chance enters in as he begins to work - does it reside then
in the hand? Were the hand controlled entirely by the
conscious intention of the mind, intending a work of art
would equate producing it. But the hand has a mind of its
own.

In his art criticism, Baudelaire sets up a battle
between the hand and the mind. It is as if the hand tempts
the mind and must be resisted. The temptation is pleasure,
the pleasure of giving the hand a free hand, the sheer

physical pleasure of movement. Baudelaire warns that some

47

“naturalistes” and “coloristes” “se réjouissent trop dans
les jeux et les voltiges de leur pinceau." (Baudelaire, 177)
Most susceptible to this temptation is the eau-forte, a
genre much admired by Baudelaire but in which, as he notes
in his 1862 study “Peintres et aqua-fortistes”: “il y a un
danger dans lequel tombera plus d'un; je veux dire: le
laché, l’incorrection, l’indécision, l’exécution
insuffisante. C’est si commode de promener une aiguille sur
cette planche noire qui reproduira trop fidélement toutes
les arabesques de la fantaisie, toutes les hachures du
caprice! Plusieurs méme, je le devine, tireront vanité de
leur audace (est-ce bien le mot?), comme les gens débraillés
qui croient faire preuve d’indépendance.”28 (Baudelaire,
412) Note the proximity of “[p]lusieurs méme, je le devine,
tireront vanité de leur audace” to “tout autre que moi
s’enorgueillirait sans doute” in the quote given above from
the preface to Les Petits Poemes en prose: Baudelaire's
warning to artists is one that he heeds as a writer.29

He, in fact, equates writing with etching in an earlier
version of the study (“L’Eau—forte est a la mode"): “Parmi
les différentes expressions de l'art plastique, l'eau-forte
est celle qui se rapproche le plus de l'expression
littéraire et qui est la mieux faite pour trahir l’homme

spontané. Donc, vive l’eau-forte!” (Baudelaire, 407)

48

 

 

 

Baudelaire expresses a clear ambivalence with regard to the
genre. The etching is done not only: “pour glorifier
l’individualité de l'artiste, mais il est méme impossible a
l’artiste de ne pas inscrire sur la planche son
individualité la plus intime." (Baudelaire, 406)30 The
medium both liberates, providing the highest level of
individual expression for the artist, and dominates, forcing
the artist to reveal his innermost secrets.

It is the speed of execution that lends this power to
the eau-forte. For the initiated, the genre can offer a
simultaneous translation of the painter's soul. Baudelaire
finds the etchings of the Dutch painter Yonkind to be
“singulieres abréviations de sa peinture, croquis que
sauront lire tous les amateurs habitués a déchiffrer l’ame
d’un peintre dans ses plus rapides gribouillages.”
(Baudelaire, 406)31 ” How can the artist (or writer)
control a medium of expression “faite pour trahir l’homme
spontané”? Baudelaire valorizes the spontaneity made
possible by the eau-forte and by writing, yet he worries
that unconscious betrayal may replace deliberate self-
revelation.33 “En somme, i1 ne faut pas oublier que l'eau-
forte est un art profond et dangereux, plein de traitrises,
et qui dévoile les défauts d’un esprit aussi clairement que

ses qualités. Et, comme tout grand art, trés compliqué sous

49

sa simplicité apparente, il a besoin d’un long dévouement
pour étre mené a perfection.” (Baudelaire, 412) Time is both
the ally and the enemy of the artist and (by extension) the
writer who must aspire to spontaneity through speedy
execution and yet exert control through constant practice.
Practice, of course, does not necessarily make perfect
for Baudelaire - he has an abiding distrust of “l’habileté
sans ame.” (Baudelaire, 372)34 The battle between the mind
and “la patte,” intention and execution, artist and medium,
control and automaticity, is ongoing and unwinnable. And
yet, such conflict remains worthwhile for Baudelaire. One
might apply to this battle the same justification he offered
Fromentin for not choosing between painting and writing:
“Car pour gagner peut-étre, i1 faudrait se résigner a perdre

beaucoup.”

50

 

c. L'artiste-peintre vs. the artisan/craftsman

For Duchamp, practice makes Jack a dull boy. Duchamp
claims that unlike most painters (his own brother Jacques
being a prime example): “Je n'ai pas connu...l’effort de
produire, la peinture n’ayant pas été pour moi un déversoir
ou un besoin impérieux de m’exprimer. Je n’ai jamais eu
cette espece de besoin de dessiner 1e matin, le soir, tout
le temps, de faire des croquis, etc.” (Cabanne, 18)
Duchamp’s distaste for “la patte” is not only a principled
stance in defense of intention, but also a natural
disinclination. And yet, Duchamp’s high output of paintings
in his early years is proof that he was not always immune to
the powerful attraction painting exerted. On the contrary,
the tradition of painting weighed heavily on Duchamp who
fought to liberate himself: “Dada fut trés utile comme
purgatif. Et je crois en avoir été profondément conscient a
l'époque et avoir éprouvé 1e désir de me purger moi-meme.
Je me rappelle certaines conversations avec Picabia sur ce
sujet. Il était plus intelligent que la plupart de mes
contemporains. Les autres étaient pour ou contre Cézanne.
Personne ne pensait qu’il put y avoir quelque chose au dela
de l'acte physique de la peinture. On n’enseignait aucune
notion de liberté, aucune perspective philosophique.”

(Duchamp, 172-173) Here Duchamp’s notion of purging implies

51

a strong effort on his part to effect the rupture with
painting even though, as we shall see, he often downplayed
the difficulty he encountered.

Duchamp’s distaste for “l'acte physique de la peinture”
and for “l’idée traditionnelle du peintre, avec sa brosse,
sa palette, son essence de térébenthine" is not unlike
Constantin Guys' refusal of the role of the artist as, in
the words of Baudelaire: “homme attaché a sa palette comme
le serf a la glébe.” (Baudelaire, 460) Duchamp balks at
the act of painting as forced labor: “Quand vous faites un
tableau, méme abstrait, il y a toujours une sorte de
remplissage forcé. Je me demandais pourquoi.” (Cabanne, 22)
Once the intention has been sketched out, Duchamp’s interest
fades — the rest is pointless.

The pointlessness of “remplissage” for Duchamp extends
beyond the frame of any one painting: “Je considere la
peinture comme un moyen d’expression, et non comme un but.
Un moyen d’expression entre bien d'autres et non pas un but
destiné a remplir toute une vie.” (Duchamp, 159) He rejects
outright the gesture of painting in order to avoid the
accumulation of gestures that become the life of a painter.
“Dans la production de n'importe quel génie, grand peintre
ou grand artiste, il n'y a vraiment que quatre ou cinq

choses qui comptent vraiment dans sa vie. Le reste, ce

52

n'est que du remplissage de chaque jour." (Cabanne, 129)
Even in his own works far removed from painting,
“remplissage” creeps in. He chooses to leave the Grand
verre “finally unfinished” (in the words of Octavio Paz)
because by 1923 “cela devenait tellement monotone, C'était
une transcription, il n'y avait déja plus d'invention a la
fin.” (Cabanne, 119)

But Duchamp also claims playfully: “I have not stopped
painting. Every picture has to exist in the mind before it
is put on canvas, and it always loses something when it is
turned into paint. I prefer to see my pictures without that
muddying.” (D'Harnoncourt and McShine, 39) Duchamp wins
Baudelaire’s battle by conflating intention and execution.
This is a strategy, however, already considered by
Baudelaire in his prose poem “Les Projets”: “Et a quoi bon
exécuter des projets, puisque le projet est en lui-meme une
jouissance suffisante?” (Baudelaire, _BB, 98) Indeed, both
Duchamp and Baudelaire had a penchant for leaving projeCts
at the level of an outline - for Duchamp, his various
“notes” are strewn with possible projects; for Baudelaire,
there are titles or outlines for novels and plays, not to
mention the proposed titles for “Projets de poemes en proses

- poemes a faire”, his notes for articles on art and

literature, or his elaborate book project La Belgigue

53

déshabillée (too many projects to complete even if
Baudelaire had lived longer since inevitably he would have
generated still more ideas for projects).

For Baudelaire and Duchamp ideas come first; they can
even come alone. And yet, technique is not shunned, if it,
too, stands on its own merit. Duchamp is nostalgic for a
time when art was craft and artists craftsman: “Le mot
‘art’...m’intéresse beaucoup. S’il vient du sanscrit, comme
je l'ai entendu dire, il signifie ‘faire’. Or tout le monde
fait quelque chose et ceux qui font des choses sur une
toile, avec un cadre s’appellent des artistes. Autrefois on
les appelait d'un mot que je préfére: des artisans. Nous
sommes tous des artisans, en vie civile, ou en vie
militaire, ou en vie artistique. C’étaient vraiment des
artisans comme cela se voit dans les contrats. Le mot
“artiste” a été inventé lorsque le peintre est devenu un
personnage dans la société monarchique d’abord, puis dans la
société actuelle ou, la, il est un monsieur.” (Cabanne, 19-
20) Baudelaire praises the same “autrefois”: “Tel qui rentre
aujourd’hui dans la classes des singes, méme des plus
habiles, n’est et ne sera jamais qu’un peintre mediocre;
autrefois, il eut fait un excellent ouvrier. Il est done

”35

perdu pour lui et pour tous. (Baudelaire, 191) A

54

craftsman — artisan or ouvrier — has an inherent dignity
which he can lose if he aspires to loftier ambitions.
Whereas Baudelaire and Duchamp both valorize the
craftsman over the “peintre,” they differ in that Duchamp
eschews Baudelaire’s notion of the “grand artiste,”
preferring to view artists in a less pretentious light as
simply “artisans,” a profession like any other. Where does
the crux of their difference lie? As we have seen, they are
both able to separate the idea from the necessary work to
give it form. But Duchamp, just as interested in ideas as
Baudelaire — “Je m’intéressais aux idées — et pas simplement
aux produits visuels. Je voulais remettre la peinture au
service de l'esprit. ” (Duchamp, 171-172) — demystifies
ideas by stressing their finitude:
PC On a l'impression tout de méme que les
problemes techniques passaient avant l’idée?
MD Souvent, oui.’ Il y a trés peu d’idées, au
fond. Ce sont surtout de petits problémes
techniques avec les éléments que j'emploie;
comme le verre, etc. Tout cela me forcait a
élaborer. (Cabanne, 66)
For Duchamp, then, there is no “artiste de génie” -
elaboration of the idea through craftsmanship is the only

honor an artist can honestly seek since, given the small

55

number of ideas, repetition is inevitable. Nevertheless,
and we shall return to this discussion below, Duchamp
strives for originality just as hard as Baudelaire.

To censor lack of originality as strongly as possible
in the penultimate section of the Salon de 1846, “Des Ecoles
et des ouvriers,” Baudelaire begins by taunting his reader
with the outrageous question: “Avez-vous éprouvé, vous tous
que la curiosité du flaneur a souvent fourrés dans une
émeute, la méme joie que moi a voir un gardien du sommeil
public, — sergent de ville ou municipal, la veritable armée,
— crosser un républicain?” As if to whip the reader into
accepting the analogy he will soon offer, he escalates the
tension: “Et comme moi, vous avez dit dans votre coeur:
‘Crosse, crosse un peu plus fort, crosse encore...” The
vivid description continues at a fevered pitch; only a
footnote defuses the tension somewhat by equating the
“républicain” with the stereotype of a “marquis,” the
standard whipping boy of comedies, thus lending a theatrical
air to Baudelaire’s outrageousness. Finally, Baudelaire
comes to the point: “Ainsi, les philosophes et les
critiques doivent-ils impitoyablement crosser les singes
artistiques, ouvriers émancipés, qui haissent la force et la
souveraineté du génie.” (Baudelaire, 191—192) He laments

the loss of schools of painting to a chaotic individualism:

56

“Les singes sont les républicains de l'art, et l'état actuel
de la peinture est le résultat d’une liberté anarchique qui
glorifie l'individu, quelque faible qu’il soit, au detriment
des associations, c’est-a-dire des écoles.” The few
exceptions “compensent mal ce désordre fourmillant de
médiocrités. L’individualité, — cette petite propriété, — a
mange l'originalité collective.” Baudelaire ends his
diatribe with the sweeping claim: “on peut dire que pour le
present c’est le peintre qui a tué la peinture.”
(Baudelaire, 194) He thus sets up the call for the future
which he will make in the final section, the call for a new
“héroisme de la vie moderne,” and the Bplpp is transformed
into a manifesto.

The Romantic myth of the creative genius is
counterbalanced in Baudelaire’s art criticism by a valuation
of the “originalité collective” of schools of painting where
the individual works for the greater good and acknowledges
his limitations, rather than indulging in delusions of
grandeur, striking out on his own, and risking mediocrity.

Duchamp is also highly suspicious of the pretensions of
artists as he states in an interview: "All artists since
the time of Courbet have been ‘beasts' and should be put in
institutions for exaggerated egos." (Tomkins, 419) As early

as 1905, Duchamp found an antidote: to demote himself (from

57

the point of view of society, of course, since he viewed it
as a promotion) from painter to artisan, a move that can be
qualified as opportunistic since it was also motivated by a
desire to reduce his required military service: “j’ai appris
qu'il existait un examen, celui d’ouvrier d'art, qui
permettait de faire un an de service au lieu de trois dans
les mémes conditions que le médecin ou que l’avocat. Alors,
j’ai cherché quel genre d'ouvrier d’art je pouvais étre.
J'ai découvert qu’on pouvait étre imprimeur-typographe ou
imprimeur de gravures, d'eaux-fortes.” He chose the latter
option because it allowed him to pay tribute to his
grandfather, “un graveur émérite,” by printing his etchings
depicting “des aspects tout a fait extraordinaires du vieux
Rouen.” (Cabanne, 26)36

After his military service, Duchamp returned to
painting, but a series of similar retreats from painting
would eventually lead to a complete abandonment, marked by
his last oil painting Ip_mL in 1918. From his experience as
an ouvrier d’art, he retained an interest in the technical
side of art. It was cubist technique which attracted him
to the movement early in 1911 (and yet represented a

hurdle):

58

PC Vous hésitiez a prendre parti.

MD Oui, parce que la technique nouvelle du
cubisme me demandait un certain travail
manuel d’adaptation.

PC En effet la technique cubiste semble vous
avoir tenté davantage que l’esprit, C'est-a-
dire la remise en forme de la toile par le
volume.

MD C’est cela. (Cabanne, 40)

His adhesion to cubism was brief - in his Moulin a café,
also from 1911, he had the inspiration to incorporate
technical drawing by adding “une fléche pour indiquer le
mouvement” thus opening “une fenétre sur quelque chose
d'autre.” The arrow reflected Duchamp’s deep desire to
“introduire dans la peinture des moyens un peu différents.”
(Cabanne, 50-51)

Already, by the following year 1912, he began to plan a
work without paint or canvas, which would introduce very
different means to painting. Le Grand Verre became
Duchamp’s major preoccupation, precipitating his decision to
take a position at the Sainte-Genevieve library in 1913 in
order to break not only with the traditional forms of

painting, but also with the profession of painting as a

59

whole: “Je voulais me dégager de toute obligation
matérielle et j'ai commencé une carriére de bibliothécaire
qui était une sorte d'excuse sociale pour ne plus étre
obligé de me manifester...Je ne cherchais pas a faire des
tableaux, ni a les vendre, j’avais d’ailleurs un travail
devant moi [le Grand Verre] qui me demandait plusieurs
années.” (Cabanne, 70)

Later in the interviews with Cabanne, Duchamp described
how his seemingly radical decision to break with the
tradition of painting evolved relatively naturally and
painlessly:

PC Vous aviez déja pris la décision de cesser de
peindre?

MD Je ne l'ai pas prise, elle est venue toute
seule, puisque déja le Verre n’était pas une
peinture. C'était une peinture sur verre, si
vous voulez, mais ce n'était pas une
peinture, il y avait beaucoup de plomb,
beaucoup d’autres choses. C’était dégagé de
l’idée traditionnelle du peintre, avec sa
brosse, sa palette, son essence de
térébenthine, idée qui avait déja disparu de
ma vie.

PC Vous n'avez jamais souffert de cette rupture?

6O

MD Non, jamais.

PC Vous n’avez jamais eu envie de peindre,
depuis?

MD Non, parce que je n’ai pas, quand je vais
dans un musée, cette espéce de stupéfaction,
d’étonnement ou de curiosité devant un
tableau. Je parle des anciens, des choses
anciennes...J’ai été vraiment un défroqué au
sens religieux du mot. Mais sans 1e faire
volontairement. Cela m'a dégofité.

PC Vous n'avez plus touché un pinceau, ni un
crayon?

MD Non. Cela n'a pas d’intérét pour moi. C’est
un manque d'attraction, un manque d’intérét.
(Cabanne, 123—124)

Nevertheless, even in this account, Duchamp confers on
painting the status of a religion, a religion he once
practiced more or less devoutly since he refers to himself
as “un défroqué.”

Contemporaneously with his new métier as a librarian,
Duchamp enrolled in the Ecole des Chartes, returning to the
study of a trade in the arts as he had done during his
military service. He realized that he could never pass the

certifying examination at the end of studies “mais j'y

61

allais pour la forme. C’était une sorte de prise de
position intellectuelle contre la servitude manuelle de
l'artiste.” (Cabanne, 71)

How did Duchamp, by becoming an artisan instead of an
artist, combat “la servitude manuelle de l’artiste,” “la
patte,” “l’acte physique de la peinture,” “le remplissage”?
The artisan would appear less free than the artist since the
gestures of the artisan tend to be subservient to an overall
plan, often not his own, whether a formal blueprint or
simply the cumulation of traditional methods, while an
artist has more freedom to change his plans as he works.
Freedom for the artisan lies elsewhere, in the honesty of
his actions; he has no pretension or delusion. Efficiency
and precision are his goals rather than speed.37 Duchamp's
conception of an artisan differs from Baudelaire’s
privileged artist for whom speed is of the essence if his
hand is to accomplish “avec une rapidité servile les ordres
divins du cerveau.” Otherwise, “l'idéal s’envole.”
(Baudelaire, 104)38 The artisan need not worry about losing
inspiration or vision since he proceeds methodically
following a clearly laid out plan. Value lies within the
act - it is not simply a means to an end for the artisan who
does not claim sole authorship of the final product. By

assuming the guise of an artisan, Duchamp claimed for

62

himself the honesty and dignity of his new rank, pointing up
the dishonesty of the artist who denies his debts to his
patrons, to the public, or to unconscious forces.39

As artisan, Duchamp can avoid falling into the
mediocrity that comes from catering to trends, or what
Baudelaire labels “le chic”: “Le chic est l’abus de la
mémoire; encore 1e chic est-i1 plutét une mémoire de la main
qu'une mémoire du cerveau...Le chic peut se comparer au
travail de ces maitres d’écriture, doués d’une belle main et
d’une bonne plume taillée pour l’anglaise ou la coulée, et
qui savent tracer hardiment, les yeux fermés...”
(Baudelaire, 155-156) If an artisan becomes so skilled that
he can work blindfolded, his success is attributed to
practice rather than magic. Duchamp’s overall goal is to
demystify the creative act.4O In his final painting 1p_mL,
commissioned by Katherine Dreier, he achieves his goal
through subtle uses of irony: “Dans cette peinture, j'ai
exécuté l’ombre portée de la roue de bicyclette....J'avais
trouvé une sorte de lanterne qui faisait des ombres assez
facilement et je projettais l'ombre que je tracais a la main
sur la toile. J’avais aussi, juste au milieu, mis une main
peinte par un peintre d'enseignes et je l'avais fait signer

par le bonhomme qui l'avait exécutée.” (Cabanne, 108-109)

63

This work is representative of Duchamp’s penchant for
incorporating previous works into new works and can serve as
a shorthand résumé of his preoccupations up to its date of
1918. For our purposes here, Ippp; can be seen as
commenting on the creative act in a number of ways. By
incorporating the Bicycle Wheel, it restates the complex
implications of the readymade with which Duchamp challenged
the value of artistic production by replacing neatly
execution with intention. An additional layer of irony is
added, however. Duchamp does not paint the wheel. Painting
it would have risked undoing the original, liberating
gesture of the readymade, creating a Bicycle Wheel issuing
from the hand rather than from the mind of Duchamp. Instead
Duchamp triples the distance between himself and his wheel:
the image on the painting is of his own work, but the image
is that of a readymade or of a work not created by his hand,
which he neither copies directly nor copies from memory,
which is “seen” not by him but by a lantern projecting its
shadow onto the canvas, which his hand traces rather than
draws so that no interpretation of the image can be added
unintentionally by the untamable will of the hand. The

painted hand that is also part of Tu m' takes an additional

 

swipe at “la patte”: both the autonomy and the

authoritarianism of the hand are expressed - the hand floats

64

alone in the painting and points. At the same time, the
hand valorizes the skill of the artisan: it is painted not
by Duchamp but by a sign painter he commissioned. By
pointing, the hand recalls the arrow which pleased Duchamp
so much in his Moulin a café and with which he paid tribute
to the technical side of art; and the signature of the sign
painter officially acknowledges workmanship in what usually
remains an anonymous production. Finally, the commissioning
of an artisan by the artist within the painting forces
recognition that the painting itself was commissioned, thus

quashing all notion of the independence of the creative act.

65

Chapter 2: Timing Art
Works of art are anything but timeless. All art is created
within time. Our discussion has focused primarily on the
constituent elements of a work of art within the time of
creation of art. We now look at how created works of art
are inserted into historical time — raising questions of
their reception and preservation. How does the time frame
in which a work is created affect its creation? We will
consider the past (in terms of both the history of art and
the artist’s personal history), the present (in terms of
contingency and chance events), and the future (in terms of
the continuity of the history of art through the
preservation of art works).
a. Dirty Pictures

The purity of the canvas can be daunting - the painting
must be a worthy rival to the pristine white surface or the
painter risks becoming “un poéte sentimental qui salit des
toiles,” a charge leveled by Baudelaire at his contemporary
Ary Scheffer.41 (Baudelaire, 207) This predicament
strengthens the temptation to leave works unexecuted or
unfinished, the artist losing hope of ever expressing his
ideal. Even if a painting, once executed, meets with the

approval of the artist or his audience, the venture is

66

risky: taste is fickle, the passing of time may reverse
opinion.42

Artists are often harsher on themselves than are their
audience - they may go to the extreme of overpainting
earlier works or even destroying them like Constantin Guys
who “[q]uand il rencontre un de ces essais de son jeune age,
il le déchire ou le brule avec une honte des plus
amusantes.” (Baudelaire, 460) As for the public and
critics, artists fall in and out of favor - Baudelaire
himself offers a fine example of fickleness when in his
estimation Rubens tumbles from a lighthouse (“Les Phares,”
published in 1855) into a “fontaine de banalité” (Lg
Belgigue déshabillée, begun in 1864). (Baudelaire, BB, 256)
A worse plight than that of the artist who sees his
popularity fade (or fears that it will) is the plight of the
artist whose recognition comes only after his death; Van
Gogh, the most famous case in point, left behind several
works that were burned as useless trash because they offered
no help in settling his debts.

As if the vicissitudes of judgment over time were not
enough to dissuade painters from painting, a still more
menacing threat looms. If the painter does not sully (or
destroy) the canvas, time and the elements still may, as

Delacroix well knew:

67

Une des grandes preoccupations de notre peintre
dans ses dernieres années était le jugement de la
postérité et la solidité incertaine de ses
oeuvres. Tantét son imagination si sensible
s’enflammait a l’idée d'une gloire immortelle,
tantét i1 parlait amérement de la fragilité des
toiles et des couleurs. D’autres fois i1 citait
avec envie les anciens maitres, qui ont eu presque
tous le bonheur d’étre traduits par des graveurs
habiles, dont la pointe ou le burin a su s'adapter
a la nature de leur talent, et il regrettait
ardemment de n'avoir pas trouvé son traducteur.
Cette friabilité de l'oeuvre peinte, comparée avec
la solidité de l’oeuvre imprimée était un de ses
themes habituels de conversation. (Baudelaire,
450)
A painting must therefore withstand the test of time both
figuratively and literally. Delacroix is clearly more
concerned by the latter, that is to say, by the physical
effects of time. He does not appear to question whether he
in fact deserves “une gloire immortelle.” Instead he
worries that his works will not survive long enough to
receive the favorable judgment of posterity that they

deserve. Although the public acclaim Delacroix received in

68

his lifetime never reached the heights Baudelaire sought for
him, Delacroix certainly had become a successful painter by
the end of his career.43 Since Delacroix’s overconfidence
occurs “dans ses dernieres années,” it merits our
indulgence.

Nevertheless, his self-importance (which, we should not
forget, is reported and perhaps exaggerated by Baudelaire,
Delacroix’s greatest admirer) is quite pronounced. He envies
the old masters not for their talent and accomplishments,
but for their good fortune in having found skilled engravers
to preserve their works. Age and experience did not spare
Delacroix the anxiety an artist feels about his place in
history; the anxiety has simply been displaced. The older
Delacroix no longer shoulders the responsibility for the
success of his works, but has made it depend on forces
beyond his control.

Marcel Duchamp likewise seemed proudly aloof and
independent of public acclaim, and he too was well aware of
the “friabilité de l’oeuvre peinte” as he explains to
Cabanne: “La peinture devient toujours sale, jaune ou
vieille au bout de tres peu de temps a cause de
l'oxydation.” (Cabanne, 71) Unlike Delacroix, Duchamp
sought to solve the problem himself instead of looking to

others to preserve his works. His solution, in the guise of

69

the Grand verre, involves extreme measures - abandoning oil
painting and adopting different materials, mainly glass and
lead. As a result, “mes couleurs a moi se trouvaient
completement protégées, le verre était donc un moyen de les
garder a la fois assez pures et assez longtemps sans
changements.” (Cabanne, 71) While glass preserves
Duchamp’s colors, it also serves as a reminder of the
fragility of works of art.44 Lead strengthens the Bpgpg
ypppp physically, but more importantly, by its very nature,
lead strengthens the statement Duchamp makes in the work
against the “tableau de chevalet.” One of the oldest metals
used by man and a common component of paint, lead represents
in shorthand the concept “tradition of painting,” thus
naming the very entity Duchamp wishes to challenge in this
work.45

Duchamp's concern with challenging the tradition of the
act of painting takes precedence over any desire to create
more-preservable works. Unlike Delacroix or Baudelaire, he
dismisses the judgment of posterity. That works should
suffer the effects of time is in order:
“Je crois que la peinture meurt, comprenez-vous. Le tableau
meurt au bout'de quarante ou cinquante ans parce que sa
fraicheur disparait. La sculpture aussi meurt. C'est un

petit dada a moi que personne n’accepte, ca m'est égal. Je

7O

pense qu'un tableau au bout de quelques années meurt comme
l'homme qui l’a fait; ensuite ca s’appelle l’histoire de
l'art.” Makers and buyers of Impressionist calendars and
coasters would take issue with Duchamp who continues: “11 y
a une grosse difference entre un Monet aujourd’hui, qui est
noir comme tout, et un Monet d’il y a soixante ou quatre-
vingts ans qui était brillant quand il a été fait.”
(Cabanne, 124)

Whereas Duchamp proclaims: “Les hommes sont mortels,
les tableaux aussi.,” Baudelaire counters in pseudo-Platonic
fashion: “Toute idée est, par elle—meme, douée d’une vie
immortelle, comme une personne. Toute forme créée, méme par
l’homme, est immortelle. (Cabanne, 124; Baudelaire, MBMB,
119-79)46 Thus, as we shall see, Baudelaire speaks of “les
statues et les tableaux immortels”(emphasis added) in the
Louvre. Duchamp, however, does not share Baudelaire's awe
of the old masters.47 For Duchamp, their works have no
claim on eternity; instead he lobbies for the rejection of
traditional painting as: “une trés bonne solution pour une
époque comme la netre on on ne peut pas continuer a faire de
la peinture a l'huile qui, aprés 4 ou 500 ans d’existence,
n’a aucune raison d'avoir l'éternité comme domaine. Par
consequent, si on peut trouver d’autres formules pour

s’exprimer, i1 faut en profiter.” (Cabanne, 176)

71

Baudelaire could never view an old master painting as
simply a dirty picture (or more accurately, dirtied
picture), blackened like a Monet in Duchamp’s eyes. But the
two can agree on reevaluating dirty pictures in a different
sense: they share a belief in the transcendence of the
erotic. Baudelaire equates so-called immorality in art with
immortality by juxtaposing the terms in this anecdote from
Mon Coeur mis a nu:
Tous les imbéciles de la Bourgeoisie qui
prononcent sans cesse les mots: “immoral,
immoralité, moralité dans l’art” et autres
bétises, me font penser a Louise Villedieu, putain
a cinq francs, qui m’accompagnant une fois au
Louvre, ou elle n’était jamais allée, se mit a
rougir, a se couvrir 1e visage, et me tirant a
chaque instant par la manche, me demandait, devant
les statues et les tableaux immortals, comment on
pouvait étaler publiquement de pareilles
indécences. (Baudelaire, MBMB, 120-121, emphasis
added)

This tirade against bourgeois values has an added weight

when viewed in the light of Baudelaire’s personal struggle

against the tyranny of censorship following the publication

of Les Fleurs du Mal. By ridiculing the simplemindedness of

72

Louise Villedieu’s response to undisputedly great works (a
naive application of received notions of morality despite
her status within the bourgeois system as a purveyor of
immorality), Baudelaire can be seen to be drawing an
unspoken parallel to the equally unintelligent reception of
his own work. The eroticism in his work, like that of the
great works in the Louvre, was misinterpreted as immoral;
Baudelaire would like to believe that his works will be
correctly judged by posterity as on the same plane with the
immortal works he so admires.

Just as Baudelaire wishes to lift his work above the
faulty judgment of his time period, Duchamp is drawn to the
erotic because of its ahistorical universality. Duchamp
describes the role of eroticism in his works as: “Enorme.
Visible ou voyante, ou en tout cas sous-jacente.” (Cabanne,
165) Eroticism, he believes, “est vraiment une chose assez
générale dans le monde entier, une chose que les gens
comprennent.” It replaces “ce que d’autres écoles de
littérature appelaient Symbolisme, Romantisme.” When used in
art “comme base principal, comme but principal,” eroticism
merits the status of an ‘-ism’ “au sens école du mot.”
Unlike Symbolism and Romanticism, however, eroticism is not
historically defined. “C'est la base de tout,” Duchamp

declares, and yet “on n’en parle jamais.” (Cabanne, 166)

73

 

Duchamp and Baudelaire give voice to the erotic by placiing
it center stage.

Rather than viewing the erotic as immoral, Baudelaire
and Duchamp see it as immortal, the unchanging factor that
allows for the continuity of history through procreation.
And yet, neither Baudelaire nor Duchamp had children; they
shared the “Grande Maladie de l’horreur du Domicile.”
(Baudelaire, MBBB, 103) They also, as we have seen, rejected
the notion that art is in the service of history. It is a
wholesale rejection as Duchamp insisted in a parting comment
after an interview: “You see art never saved the world. It
cannot.” (Ephemerides, 8.9.1966).48 Despite their
disavowals, the exploration in their works of the erotic
reveals an aspiration to participate in history through
artistic creation, to earn historical validation by

concentrating on a theme with an eternal appeal.

74

b. Breaking Glass

In 1936, when Le Grand Verre shattered during its
transfer through Connecticut by truck, Duchamp's joke -
using glass as a more durable substitute for “fragile”
canvas - appeared to have backfired on him. Instead he
proclaimed his work to be better than ever:

MD C’est beaucoup mieux avec les cassures, cent
fois mieux. C’est le destin des choses.
PC L'intervention du hasard sur lequel vous
comptez si souvent.
MD Je respecte cela; j’ai fini par l’aimer.
(Cabanne, 142)
Chance had laid the final touches to the “unfinished” work
Whether or not he foresaw the eventuality of the glass
breaking (as Harriet and Sidney Janis cannot help but think
he must have: “In using glass, he surely knew, even though
be ignored the fact, that the chances were it would be
broken.”), he certainly embraced the interference of chance.
(Janis in Masheck, Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, 39)

The concept of chance has multiple meanings, several of
which are important for our purposes here. Chance in a
temporal sense is often a function of future time,
associated generally with events that occur in unexpected,

random or unpredictable fashion. Since most events,

75

however, are subject to contingency and cannot be entirely
predictable, chance and future events can be conterminous.
Chance also refers to the likelihood of occurrence of an
event (probability). In games of chance, chance stands in
opposition to skill. Finally, chance can refer to a
fortuitous event, an opportunity. Good luck, however, is
dependent upon point of view: Duchamp chooses to see the
cracks in his work as a positive occurrence, as “le destin
des choses.” Chance can thereby become personified (as in
the expression “lady luck”). If we believe with Duchamp
that things often happen “for the best” (or simply for a
reason), then, we view chance as not necessarily random, but
as fateful. While such a viewpoint would appear
paradoxical, it is easily explained: once “chance” events
have occurred, our lack of tolerance for disorder causes us
to view them in retrospect as having been destined.

Taken out of context, Baudelaire’s categorical
statement “Il n’y a pas de hasard dans l'art, non plus qu'en
mécanique” would appear to place him in direct opposition to
Duchamp.49 (Baudelaire, 117) Baudelaire, however, is
defending Delacroix with this statement and, as in all his
championing of Delacroix (“mon sujet le plus cher et le plus
sympathique”), he does not shy away from hyperbole.

(Baudelaire, 111) He felt that Delacroix’s dramatic

76

expansive style and his penchant for suggestive rather than
highly wrought painting caused the uninitiated viewer to
undervalue the painter’s talent. “En général, et pour la
plupart des gens, nommer Eugene Delacroix, c’est jeter dans
leur esprit je ne sais quelles idées vagues de fougue mal
dirigée, de turbulence, d’inspiration aventuriére, de
désordre méme; et pour ces messieurs qui font la majorité du
public, le hasard, honnéte et complaisant serviteur du
génie, joue un grand role dans ses plus heureuses
compositions.” (Baudelaire, 115) Baudelaire offers less-
known detailed works by Delacroix - a study of Raphael and
lithographies based on old masters - as counter examples to
show that his style is intentional and not the result of a
lack of skill for detail. In this context, then,
Baudelaire's rejection of chance in art is based on only a
specific definition of chance as the opposite of intention
and skill. Moreover it is not a wholesale rejection: he is
simply denying that chance, personified as the “serviteur du
génie," rules the artist. He warns (raising the status of
chance in name, at least) : “Rien n'est plus impertinent ni
plus béte que de parler a un grand artiste, érudit et
penseur comme Delacroix, des obligations qu’il peut avoir au
dieu du hasard. Cela fait tout simplement hausser les

épaules de pitié.” (Baudelaire, 117)

77

In recalling Delacroix’s admirable studies of old
masters, Baudelaire has a dual purpose. They speak not only
of Delacroix’s technical skill but also of the depth of his
originality: “il est un des rares hommes qui restent
originaux aprés avoir puisé a toutes les vraies sources, et
dont l’individualité indomptable a passé sous 1e joug secoué
de tous les grands maitres.” (Baudelaire, 117) The
invaluable legacy of the old masters weighs heavily, but, to
become great, a painter must free himself of that burden.
There is a clear continuity in Baudelaire’s thought on this
issue. The above statements on Delacroix were published in
his Salon de 1846. Nineteen years later, in the Peintre de
la vie moderne, he reiterates: “Malheur a celui qui étudie
dans l'antique autre chose que l'art pur, la logique, la
méthode générale!” (Baudelaire, 468) For the modern
painter, inspiration must come from his own time period: “La
modernité, c’est 1e transitoire, 1e fugitif, le contingent,
la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié est l’éternel et
l'immuable” just as it has for all painters: “11 y a eu une
modernité pour chaque peintre ancien.” (Baudelaire, 467)
The painter who hides in the past “abdique la valeur et les
privileges fournis par la circonstance; car presque toute
notre originalité vient de l'estampille que le temps imprime

a nos sensations.” (Baudelaire, 468, italics in original)

78

Chance, in the temporal sense of chance occurrences, “le
contingent” and “la circonstance,” reinserts itself in
Baudelaire's equation for the creation of art. Delacroix's
greatness, like that of Constantin Guys, stems from his
serendipitous nature: “Delacroix aimait tout, savait tout
peindre, et savait gouter tous les genres de talents.
C'était l’esprit le plus ouvert a toutes les notions et a
toutes les impressions, 1e jouisseur le plus éclectique et
le plus impartial.” (Baudelaire, 425-426)

Duchamp draws strength from a similar openness to the
ideas and impressions that come his way, but, and we shall
return to this subject in our discussion of nostalgia, he
also problematizes the quality, worrying that it can ensnare
one within taste. While he, like Baudelaire, acknowledges
the role of chance in art, Duchamp does not assume that the
artist has ascendency. To exert a measure of control, he
feels the presence of chance must be dealt with explicitly
in the work of art. In the words of Sidney and Harriet
Janis: “Anomalous as this may sound, Duchamp uses chance
intentionally.” (Janis in Masheck, Marcel Duchamp in
Perspective, 38) Since chance inevitably plays a role in
creating art, Duchamp prefers to use chance as a
collaborator deliberately. Chance thereby becomes more

verifiably a “serviteur” rather than “un dieu.” The paradox

79

remains, however - how can chance be intentional or
intention be random?

Duchamp explores and exploits this paradox throughout
his career. To name just a few examples besides the Bpapg

Verre: the chance encounters with objects that struck his

 

fancy and were elevated to readymades; the “readymade
malheureux” created by turning the erosive forces of the
elements that ruin paintings into forces that create a
readymade work (“malheureux” is used in the sense of
suffering and unlucky); Elevaqe de poussiére,the result of
three months’ accumulation of dust on the Grand Verre
captured in a photograph by Man Ray; the 3 Stoppaqes
Etalons, with which Duchamp mocked notions that weights and
measures have a predestined or logical form [”Le hasard pur
m’intéressait comme un moyen d'aller contre la réalité
logique: mettre quelque chose sur une toile, sur un bout de
papier, associer l’idée d’un fil droit horizontal d’un metre
de longueur tombant d’un metre de hauteur sur un plan
horizontal a celle de sa propre déformation, a son gré.”
(Cabanne, 81)]; the Erratum Musical, the musical score
created by drawing notes out of a hat; the placement of his
notes for various works in boxes instead of in book form so
that their order would be random; or his experiments with

roulette experiments. Etant donné, his final work, can be

80

interpreted as an attempt to eliminate chance as much as
possible from the work. Detailed instructions are given for
its installation, instructions Duchamp considered an
integral part of the work, in order to simulate a
manufactured product in which all aspects have been planned
precisely. Duchamp also stipulated that the installation
could not be moved - a clear reference to the fate of the
Grang Verre. The work also prescribes the distance, angle
and extent of viewing, thereby restricting the freedom of
the spectator, a freedom that so pleased Baudelaire: “Un
tableau de Delacroix, placé a une trop grande
distance...vous pénétre déja d’une volupté
surnaturelle...l'analyse du sujet, quand vous vous
approchez, n’enlévera rien et n'ajoutera rien a ce plaisir
primitif.”50 (Baudelaire, 433)

The attempt to eliminate chance from Etant donné might
seem to imply a mistrust of chance. Certainly, by its very
nature, chance cannot be a faithful ally - one can perhaps
depend upon its intervention, but not upon the form in which
the intervention will take place. In general, however,
Duchamp displayed an optimistic attitude toward chance.
Thus, having welcomed the cracks in the Grand Vgrre as an
improvement, he simply encased it in yet more glass,

entrusting it once again to chance. His optimism that

81

chance would generally work in his favor seems to have
offered unexpected dividends. Chance often appears not just
to enhance his works, but to harmonize with Duchamp’s
manner, as if some sort of consciousness were mysteriously
at work. The Janises note: “The lines [of the nine malic
forms in the Grand Verre] fanned out like huge cracks,
anticipating the direction the actual cracks took when the
glass was eventually broken by accident...it is astounding
that by the use of chance, he was to anticipate the
configuration when the breakage occurred.” (Janis, in
Masheck, Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, 39) The cracks also
recall other works. For example, earlier, out of ignorance
(before Duchamp fully understood the fragility of canvas),
he had painted on the reverse side of his 1910 painting Lg
Rpi et la Reine entourés de Nus vites, weakening the canvas.
When cracks began to appear and the canvas was in danger of
disintegrating, Duchamp was pleased, seeing a particular
attraction in the layout of the cracks. “C'est
fantastique, c'est devenu comme un puzzle, et les gens
disent que ca ne tiendra plus longtemps." Instead of being
dismayed at the difficulty of restoring the painting,
Duchamp seems almost gleeful: “Vous savez, ca ressemble
vraiment a une chose de 1450!” (Cabanne, 60) Chance has

added qualities offering new potential interpretations: is

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it a representation of art as a puzzle put together by the
artist and the spectator? a refutation of the “eternal”
nature of art? ironic commentary on originality and
forgery?

Of course, as Duchamp believed, interpretations are not
independent of chance and do not have absolute validity: “Le
mot ‘jugement' est une chose terrible aussi. C’est
tellement aléatoire, tellement faible. Qu’une société se
décide a accepter certaines oeuvres et elle en fait un
Louvre, qui dure quelques siécles. Mais parler de vérité et
de jugement réel, absolu, je n’y crois pas du tout.

(Cabanne, 132) Nevertheless, interpretation appears
.inescapable even when the artist attempts to avoid it as
Duchamp did with In Advance of the Broken Arm: “C’était une
pelle a neige, et j’avais en effet écrit cette phrase
dessus. Evidemment, j'espérais que cela n'avait pas de sens

”51

mais, au fond, tout finit par en avoir un. (Cabanne, 96)
Thus, chance interferes in the creation as well as in the
interpretation of works of art.

The title of the readymade snow shovel, despite
Duchamp's alleged attempt to avoid giving it meaning,

reveals his preoccupations with chance and his oscillation

between viewing chance as collaborator and as adversary. 1p

Advanpg of the Broken Arm can be interpreted as signifying

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both anticipation of future events and their accommodation
to put a positive spin on a potentially negative event - by
shoveling snow one can limit the danger of slipping in it
and breaking one's arm (a fate an artist, in particular,
would wish to avoid).52 The appearance in 1915 of the snow
shovel, Duchamp’s first readymade in America, coincides with
the date he began work on the Grand Verre. It is not
surprising then to note parallels between the title he chose

for the ready-made and a subtitle he proposed for his

masterwork on one of the notes in the accompanying Green

 

B95:
Sorte de sous-titre
RETARD EN VERRE

Employer ‘retard’ au lieu de tableau ou
peinture; tableau sur verre devient retard en
verre — mais retard en verre ne veut pas dire
tableau sur verre. —

C’est simplement un moyen d'arriver a ne plus
considérer que la chose en question est un tableau
— en faire un retard dans tout le général
possible, pas tant dans les différents sens dans
lesquels retard peut étre pris, mais plutét dans

leur réunion indécise. ‘Retard' — un retard en

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verre, comme on dirait un poeme en prose ou un

crachoir en argent.” (Duchamp, 41)
Both titles In Advance of the Broken Arm and “retard en
verre” toy with time. They represent attempts at thwarting
chance by delaying its interference; in the first instance,
delaying its breaking of arms (and artists, by extension)
and, in the second, delaying its breaking of glass (and
artworks, by extension). In both cases, nevertheless, the
force of chance is ultimately conceded.

Duchamp calls his invented term “une sorte de sous-
titre.” Indeed, his description does not add up to a
subtitle for the Grand Verre so much as it does to a generic
label for his new type of work which is neither “tableau”
nor “peinture.” Indeed he likens it to another genre, the
prose poem, a genre that shares the mixed nature of his
newly invented type of work. The Grand Verre remained
linked to poetry in Duchamp’s mind as is clear from his
statements to Cabanne many years after the Green Box note:
“C'était 1e ceté poétique des mots qui me plaisait- Je
voulais donner a ‘retard’ un sens poétique que je ne pouvais
méme pas expliquer. C’était pour éviter de dire un tableau
en verre, un dessin en verre, une chose dessinée sur verre,
comprenez—vous? Le mot ‘retard’ m’avait plu a ce moment-la,

comme une phrase qu’on trouve. C’était réellement poétique,

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dans le sens le plus mallarméen du mot, si vous voulez.”53
(Cabanne, 68-69) Note here how Duchamp refers obliquely to
chance by designating the term “retard” as a happy find (or
one might even say as a readymade title). In both
explanations of “retard en verre,” the note from the Bpppp
Bpx and his statements to Cabanne, Duchamp emphasizes the
polysemous nature of the term. It has a poetic meaning even
he could not explain; it represents a “réunion indécise” of
possible meanings. The genre “retard en verre,” like the

term itself, should be impossible to pin down. The Green

 

Bpg is an integral part of the work so that: “les deux
éléments verre pour les yeux, texte pour l’oreille et
l’entendement devaient se compléter et surtout s’empécher
l’un l’autre de prendre une forme esthético-plastique ou
littéraire.” (Duchamp, lettre a Jean Suquet, 247) The
“retard en verre,” neither fish nor fowl, is indeed a
kindred breed to the poéme en prose which is neither
strictly poetry nor prose.

The adoption of the new mixed genres by Baudelaire and
Duchamp mark a break with the past, the abandonment of
traditional verse on the one hand and the abandonment of
traditional painting on the other. Duchamp expresses
succinctly an inherent affinity between the genres when, in

the note to the Green Box, he likens them to the oxymoron

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“un crachoir en argent”: they express an attitude of revolt
(a spitting in the face of convention, as it were) against
socially prescribed distinctions in art which call for
purity of genre or purity of suitable themes. They also
offer artist and poet freedom from the intrinsic constraints
of the abandoned genres, such as perspective or meter.54

The Green Box, the “literary” element of Duchamp’s
“retard en verre,” is organized, or rather, deliberately
disorganized as a collection of facsimiles of his notes on
separate sheets contained within the box in no particular
order. As Michel Sanouillet notes in his edition of
Duchamp’s collected writings, “l’idée d’utiliser une boite
comme receptacle d’une oeuvre ‘littéraire’ lui était venue
dés 1914 a Paris.” The result was Duchamp’s first box, the
Boite de 1914, which Sanouillet sees as a sort of prototype
for the Green Box. (Duchamp, 35) Duchamp did not designate
an order for the notes as Sanouillet explains: “les papiers
multiformes et multicolores se déplacent sans ordre
possible, au gré de leur possesseur et surtout d’un hasard.”
(Duchamp, 39) Duchamp did, however, exert control in the
production of the facsimiles to ensure that they matched the
original notes in minute detail, thereby respecting
scrupulously the integrity and independence of each note.

One might describe the box and its contents as “un petit

87

ouvrage dont on ne pourrait pas dire, sans injustice, qu’il
n’a ni queue ni téte, puisque tout, au contraire, y est a la
fois téte et queue, alternativement et réciproquement.”

The description belongs, of course, to another work,
Baudelaire's Petits Poémes en prose. It is Baudelaire’s own
description taken from his letter to Arséne Houssaye that
serves as a preface to the volume. Even though the work was
bound in book form, Baudelaire intended each prose poem to
be independent, nullifying the need for a sequential reading
of the poems. “Considérez, je vous prie, quelles admirables
commodités cette combinaison nous offre a tous, a vous, a
moi et au lecteur. Nous pouvons couper ou nous voulons, moi
ma reverie, vous le manuscrit, le lecteur sa lecture; car je
ne suspends pas la volonté rétive de celui-Ci au fil
interminable d’une intrigue superfine. Enlevez une
vertébre, et les deux morceaux de cette tortueuse fantaisie
se rejoindront sans peine. Hachez-la en nombreux fragments,
et vous verrez que chacun peut exister a part.”

(Baudelaire, BBB, 31) Note that while Baudelaire wishes both
to free his reader from the constraints of a plot-driven

reading and to create poems that stand on their own, he does
not reject organic unity in the Petits Poémes en prose (“les

deux morceaux...se rejoindront sans peine”).55 Duchamp,

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too, carefully and even lovingly places his notes in the
Green Box, forming an organic whole from disparate items.
Chance, which plays a role intended by Baudelaire in
the reception of the Petits Poémes en prose since he
encourages the reader to dip freely into the volume, was
also present in the conception of the work. In the latter
case, however, Baudelaire claims that the presence of chance
was unintentional: “je m’apercus que...que je faisais
quelque chose (si cela peut s’appeler quelque chose) de
singuliérement different, accident dont tout autre que moi
s’enorgueillirait sans doute, mais qui ne peut qu’humilier
profondément un esprit qui regarde comme le plus grand
honneur du poete d’accomplir juste ce qu’il a projeté de

faire.” (Baudelaire, PPP, 32) The interference of chance is

 

greeted grudgingly by Baudelaire, in contrast to Duchamp,
and yet Baudelaire’s disclaimer is couched within a
discourse of false modesty. Baudelaire does not repudiate
his co-production with chance but proffers it to Houssaye
“[d]ans l’espérance que quelques-uns de ces troncons seront
assez vivants pour vous plaire et vous amuser.”

(Baudelaire, PPP, 31)

 

It is no surprise, then, that chance also plays an
important role in a central prose poem in the volume, “Le

Mauvais Vitrier.” While it might seem contradictory to refer

89

to one of the poems as central since Baudelaire contends
that each poem “peut exister a part,” “Le Mauvais Vitrier”
is singled out by Baudelaire himself in the prefatory letter
to Houssaye: “Vous-meme, mon cher ami, n’avez—vous pas tenté
de traduire en une chanson le cri strident du Vitrier..?”

(Baudelaire, PPP, 32)

 

The prose poem sets out to analyze how “des natures
purement contemplatives” can sometimes act in surprisingly
rapid fashion, rising to an occasion with a force that would
surpass even that of an action-oriented person. Baudelaire
begins by giving a series of examples. First, he qualifies
such action as apparently involuntary, as if coming from an
outside force. Baudelaire then suggests that this
“impulsion mystérieuse et inconnue” seems to build through
procrastination, growing stronger through delay as if pent-
up: “Tel qui...réde lachement une heure devant [la porte de
son concierge] sans oser rentrer, tel qui garde quinze jours
une lettre sans 1a décacheter ou ne se résigne qu’au bout de
six mois a opérer une démarche nécessaire depuis un an, se
sentent quelquefois brusquement précipités vers l’action par
une force irresistible, comme 1a fleche d’un arc.” Finally,
Baudelaire ascribes the sudden action to a desire to play
with fate, to gamble, suggesting that the “impulsion

mystérieuse” is linked to chance: “un autre allumera un

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cigare a cété d’un tonneau de poudre, pour voir, pour
savoir, pour tenter la destinée, pour se contraindre lui-
méme a faire preuve d’énergie, pour faire le joueur, pour
connaitre les plaisirs de l’anxiété, pour rien, par caprice,
par désoeuvrement.”

The core of the prose poem, the encounter of the
narrator with the vitrier, also underscores the role of
chance.56 The narrator awakes with the sensation that he
is “poussé, me semblait-il, a faire quelque chose de grand,
une action d’éclat.” Following this impulse, which is
qualified as “une inspiration fortuite” (the generic force
at the heart of the Poémes en prose as a whole), his first
action is to open the window. As fate would have it: “La
premiere personne que j’apercus dans la rue, ce fut un
vitrier dont le cri percant, discordant, monta jusqu’a moi a
travers la lourde et sale atmosphere parisienne.” In the
wrong place at the wrong time, the vitrier is subjected to a
series of abuses by the narrator, culminating in the
destruction of his wares by a flowerpot the narrator drops
on him: “1e choc le renversant, il acheva de briser sous son
dos toute sa pauvre fortune ambulatoire, qui rendit le bruit
éclatant d’un palais de cristal crevé par la foudre.” His
satisfaction at what has done, an act that rivals the fury

of an Olympian god, fuels his frenzy: “Et ivre de ma folie,

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je lui criai furieusement: “La vie en beau! la vie en
beau!” Dismissing the rashness of such an action, the prose
poem concludes: “Mais qu'importe l’éternité de la damnation
a qui a trouvé dans une seconde l’infini de la jouissance?”
(Baudelaire, BBB, 51-53) The action of smashing the
vitrier’s wares is further valorized by its transformation
into the prose poem. Once again, as with the Grand Verre,
the breaking of glass, a destruction, constitutes a
construction of a new work of art.

The finality of destruction is often called into
question by Baudelaire and Duchamp. After his musings in
Mon Coeur mis a nu about the immortality of creation whether
divine or human (“Toute forme créée, meme par l’homme, est
immortelle."), Baudelaire places a note to remind himself of
“Anecdotes relatives a Emile Douay et a Constantin Guys,
détruisant ou plutét croyant détruire leurs oeuvres.”
(Baudelaire, mpmy, 119) The inference to be drawn is that an
artist cannot in fact destroy his work. Duchamp refers to
the destruction of one’s works as “up geste idiot.”
(Cabanne, 132)57 A note from the Green Box perhaps best
encapsulates the generative possibilities of destruction:
Duchamp proposes to create a new type of readymade he calls

a “reciprocal readymade”:“Se servir d’un Rembrandt comme

planche a repasser.” (Duchamp, 49) This irreverent work,

92

never realized for obvious reasons, represents less a
desecration than an affirmation of the indestructibility of

a work of art.

93

c. Exorcising Nostalgia
“Quand on est gosse on ne pense pas d’une facon
philosophique, on ne se dit pas: ‘Est-ce que j’ai
raison? Est—ce que j’ai tort?’ On suit simplement
une filiere qui vous amuse plus qu’une autre, sans
réfléchir beaucoup a la validité de ce qu’on fait.”
(Cabanne, 30)
“[L]e génie n’est que l’enfance retrouvée a volonté,
l’enfance douée maintenant, pour s’exprimer,
d’organes virils et de l’esprit analytique qui lui
permet d’ordonner la somme de matériaux
involontairement amassée.” (Baudelaire, 462)

Life experience itself owes a debt to chance. Having
followed as a child “une filiere qui...amuse plus qu’une
autre,” the adult finds himself with “1a somme de matériaux
involontairement amassée.” How does the adult artist use
the past that haphazard inclination has conferred upon him?
Baudelaire proposes above that the artist must give shape to
this raw material. Genius looks backward, mining the rich
past of childhood with the tools of maturity. Duchamp’s
statement, however, is characterized by forward movement due
to the verb “suivre” and therefore conforms to the anti-

nostalgic tendencies in his work as a whole. But, as we

94

shall see, neither is Duchamp immune to nostalgia nor does
Baudelaire wallow in it.

‘Nostalgia’ is derived from the Greek nostos (home,
return) and algos (pain). The separation which causes the
pain of nostalgia can be spatial and/or temporal. Thus
‘nostalgia’ can signify homesickness (the desire to return
to a place and the pain caused by the impossibility of
immediate or eventual return) or a longing for absent
things, persons, or situations (the desire for their return
and the pain caused by their absence). In both cases, there
is a temporal element since any return through space would
also have to be effected by regressing through time. In
purely temporal terms, ‘nostalgia’ represents a longing for
things, persons, or situations that are absent due to the
passing of time; in short, ‘nostalgia’ can signify regret
for the past.

While it is this temporal definition of nostalgia that
will be our main focus, let us take time out (so to speak)
to examine nostalgia for place. Homesick, the young
Baudelaire cut short his trip to India, a trip planned by
his stepfather and mother who had hoped thereby to moderate
what they considered his reckless behavior. The old
Baudelaire’s notes for La Belgigue déshabillée reveal an

increasing homesickness during the last trip of his life,

95

although his visit to Belgium was intended as a self-imposed
exile or ‘vacation’ from France. In striking contrast,
Duchamp appeared to have adapted effortlessly to life in
America as he explains

MD C’est en arrivant a New York que je me suis

apercu que je n'étais pas du tout un étranger.

PC Vous étiez l’homme prédestiné de l’Amérique.

MD Pour ainsi dire, oui.

PC Et vous l’étes resté.

MD J’ai comme un second souffle. (Cabanne, 78)
Duchamp’s earliest works, however, tend to focus on home:
from the church in the town of his birth (L’Eglise de
Blainville, 1902) to portraits of family members and family
friends. The case could also be made that homesickness
prompted in part the painting Jeune homme triste dans un

train (1911) or even the rectified readymade Pharmacie

 

(1914) which Duchamp actually created during a train trip.
Both works preceded his first trip to America which took
place in 1915 when he was twenty-eight - a trip that offered
a rupture from childhood, youth and home and a leap into the
unknown.

Another work that predates his trip captures the

ambivalence of leaving home: Avoir l’apprenti dans le soleil

(1914). A line drawing on a blank sheet of music, the work

96

depicts a hunched-over figure on a bicycle going up an
incline that is represented by a single upward line freely
drawn. The title is written underneath the drawing as if to
represent lyrics to a rising melody whose notes are created
by the bicycle’s wheels, spokes and nuts. The rider appears
to be striving to make it up the hill - an apprenticeship
can be hard work - but there is the suggestion that musical
accompaniment and the possibility of a bright future make
the trip worth the effort. The destination is unclear - a
place in the sun or, since one usually says “au soleil,” on
the sun, or simply away from the here and now, outside
reality, by association with the expression “dans la lune.”
At any rate, the self—propulsion of the rider into a new
world is not effortless. Avoir l'apprenti dans le soleil is
tinged with a sentimentality unusual in Duchamp's works.
Duchamp’s representation of restlessness and of a
yearning to lift off - the infinitive “avoir” in the title
suggests he is making a wish - recalls the cry of the soul
“Any Where Out of the World” in Baudelaire’s prose poem of
that name.58 Both works share a special nostalgia for
place, a nostalgia for an unknown but vaguely intuited
otherworldly place or atmosphere. It is such nostalgia that
Baudelaire has in mind in his only two uses of the term that

occur in his art and literary criticism — the first in

97

regard to Fromentin’s Orientalist works and the second in
regard to Delacroix’s physical appearance (note the
proximity of “soleil" in both quotes):
Il est présumable que je suis moi—meme atteint
quelque peu d’une nostalgie qui m’entraine vers le
soleil; car de ces toiles lumineuses s’éléve pour
moi une vapeur enivrante, qui se condense bientét
en désirs et en regrets. (Baudelaire, 358)
ll m’est arrive plus d’une fois, en le regardant,
de réver des anciens souverains du Mexique, de ce
Montézuma dont la main habile aux sacrifices
pouvait immoler en un seul jour trois milles
créatures humaines sur l’autel pyramidal du
Soleil, ou bien de quelqu’un de ces princes
hindous qui dans les splendeurs des plus
glorieuses fétes, portent au fond de leurs yeux
une sorte d’avidité insatisfaite et une nostalgie
inexplicable, quelque chose comme le souvenir et
le regret de choses non connues. (Baudelaire, 440)
Both Baudelaire and Duchamp feel the pull of the sun, feel
drawn to other places. Baudelaire senses acutely that he
does not belong in the world that he knows; Duchamp accepts
Cabanne’s conclusion that he was predestined to leave France

for America. Only Duchamp, however, finds his predestined

98

world (or simply accepts America as suited to him), thus
attenuating his sense of nostalgia for place in comparison
to Baudelaire’s.

One might suspect, with Duchamp’s first biographer
Robert Lebel, that Duchamp sensed from early on that he
would leave behind him France, his past and even the past,
in the sense of traditions in art. His first ten years of
painting (1902-1912) produced a flurry of works, a
prolificness he would never again match. Lebel finds an
urgency here: “early in 1912, he thought of art as above all
a way to express his youth, to catch it before it
fled...Thus all his works of that time have something of the
character of a personal legend.” (Lebel, 12) In this manner
art serves Duchamp both as a mnemonic device, a method for
capturing and prolonging the past, and as a purgative, a
method for getting the past ‘out of his system.’ By
exercising his nostalgia feverishly, he is able
paradoxically to exorcise it and thereby prepare the way for
his later rupture with home, past and painting. How
successful Duchamp was in counteracting nostalgia for his
youth is debatable, however. The readymade La Roue de
bipyplette precedes the apprentice’s bicycle and reappears

in Tu m' - Duchamp’s wheels keep turning, in fact, from the

99

coffee and chocolate grinders to his scheme at the Monte
Carlo roulette wheel to the rotoreliefs.

At the end of his life, he still speaks fondly of his
youth and doesn’t deny the influence his childhood and
family had on his choice of profession. Despite his defiant
gestures of abandoning painting, taking “real” jobs or
concentrating on chess, he did remain an artist, carrying on
what had become a family tradition from his maternal
grandfather through his mother to 3 of his 5 siblings.

Lebel and Duchamp's other biographers tend to suggest
that Duchamp came ‘naturally’ to art, that he was a born
artist. Baudelaire shares their belief that an artist’s
calling is evident in childhood. He relates the story of a
friend who was fascinated as a child when watching his
father dress: “Déja la forme l’obsédait et le possédait. La
prédestination montrait précocement le bout de son nez. La
damnation était faite. Ai-je besoin de dire que cet enfant
est aujourd'hui un peintre célébre?” (Baudelaire, 462) When
describing himself to a potential publisher, Baudelaire
states: “Gout permanent depuis l’enfance de toutes les
representations plastiques.” (Baudelaire, BB, 438)

A corollary to Baudelaire's belief that destiny often
asserts itself in childhood is the idea that childhood

remains a powerful source of inspiration throughout an

100

artist’s life (a subject to which we will return in the next
chapter in the section devoted to play). In his commentary
on De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater,
Baudelaire notes: “Tous les biographes ont compris
l’importance des anecdotes se rattachant a l’enfance d’un
écrivain ou d’un artiste. Mais je trouve que cette
importance n’a jamais été suffisamment affirmée.” Childhood
exerted such a strong fascination for Baudelaire that he
claimed he could sense an artist’s childhood in mature works
of art: “Souvent, en contemplant des ouvrages d’art...j’ai
senti entrer en moi comme une vision de l’enfance de leurs
auteurs. Tel petit chagrin, telle petite jouissance de
l’enfant, démésurément grossis par une exquise sensibilité,
deviennent plus tard dans l’homme adulte, méme a son insu,
1e principe d’une oeuvre d’art." (Baudelaire, QB, 292-293)

It is in this same text that Baudelaire first suggested
a definition of genius in terms of regaining or retaining
childhood — “ne serait-i1 pas facile de prouver...que le
génie n’est que l’enfance nettement formulée, douée
maintenant, pour s’exprimer, d’organes virils et puissants?”
” — a definition he reformulated in Le Peintre de la Vie
moderne. (Baudelaire, BB, 293) Baudelaire is not proposing,
of course, that the artist remain a child, but only that

genius requires a childlike openness to sensation and ideas.

101

Earlier, in L’Exposition Universelle de 1855, he spoke

against the danger of close-mindedness: “J’ai essayé plus
d’une fois, comme tous mes amis, de m’enfermer dans un
systéme pour y précher a mon aise. Mais un systéme est une
espece de damnation qui nous pousse a une abjuration
perpétuelle; i1 en faut toujours inventer un autre, et cette
fatigue est un cruel chatiment.” His solution was
simplification: “je me suis orgueilleusement résigné a la
modestie: je me suis contenté de sentir; je suis revenu
chercher un asile dans l’impeccable naiveté.” (Baudelaire,
214)

Duchamp notes a similar tactic in the work of Paul
Klee, one of the artists included in the catalogue Duchamp
prepared for the “Société Anonyme”:

La premiere reaction qu’on éprouve devant une
toile de Paul Klee est l’agréable reconnaissance
de ce que nous aurions pu dessiner dans notre
enfance...Quand on y regarde de plus pres, on
découvre immédiatement que cette premiere
impression était incomplete et que, si Klee
utilise souvent une technique ‘enfantine’, i1
l’applique a une forme de pensée tres adulte que
révéle l’analyse de son oeuvre. Son extréme

fécondité ne s’accompagne pas des signes habituels

102

de répétition. 11 a tant a dire qu’un Klee ne

ressemble jamais a un autre Klee. (Duchamp, 204)
Duchamp is careful to make the distinction that childlike
does not mean childish. For Duchamp, as for Baudelaire, the
artist of merit is not a child, but an adult who has
retained the full force of inspiration to which the child is
exposed. Ingenuity is closely related to ingenuousness.

The highest compliment that Duchamp pays to Klee is to
note the lack of repetition in the artist’s work despite his
prodigious output. Duchamp always expressed wariness with
regard to repetition.60 His constant preoccupation in the
“Grand Verre” was to find: “une chose qui ne rappelle pas ce
qui s’est passé précédemment. J’avais cette hantise de ne
pas me servir des mémes choses. Il faut se méfier parce
que, malgré soi, on se laisse envahir par les choses
passées. Sans 1e vouloir on met un détail. La, C’était la
lutte constante pour faire une scission exacte et complete.”
(Cabanne, 65)

The struggle is difficult because it poses a dilemma:
how can an artist retain his childhood capacity for openness
and break with his past at the same time? Duchamp admitted
that endemic repetition among artists was essentially
inevitable: “C’est forcé d’ailleurs, on ne peut pas toujours

inventer.” (Cabanne, 187) This awareness did not cause

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Duchamp to abandon the struggle; he saw it as an ongoing
necessity. For Duchamp, repetition is inevitable, but
giving in is fatal.61

One of the consequences of repetition that Duchamp
wanted most to avoid was the routinization of taste, as he
explains to Cabanne:

PC Qu’est-ce que la nouveauté pour vous?

MD Je n'en ai pas vu tellement. Si on m’apportait
quelque chose d’extrémement nouveau je serais
le premier a vouloir comprendre. Mais j’ai un
passé tel que j'aurais du mal a regarder ou a
étre tenté de regarder; on emmagasine un tel
langage de gouts, mauvais ou bons, en soi, que
lorsque vous regardez quelque chose, si ce
quelque chose n’est pas un écho de vous, vous
ne le regardez meme pas. Moi, j’essaie quand-
méme. J’ai toujours essayé d’abandonner mon
bagage, du moins quand je regarde une chose
soi-disant nouvelle. (Cabanne, 179)

Once taste is formed, the spectator seeks repetition rather
than the new. On this basis, Duchamp rejects taste, good or
bad. Baudelaire expresses the same disdain for taste, only
in his case it is directed toward bad taste or “le chic” (as

we noted in the previous chapter). The artist who suffers

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from bad taste, or caters to it, is forced into repetition.
A case in point for Baudelaire was the caricaturist Charlet
who “s’est mis a imiter les idées du temps. II a décalqué
l’opinion, il a découpé son intelligence sur la mode. Le
public était vraiment son patron.” (Baudelaire, 270,
emphasis in original) Through the wordplay “patron” (the
public as both boss and model), Baudelaire gives added force
to his lack of respect for servile imitation.

Baudelaire and Duchamp seek the original and the new.
Not all innovations meet their approval, however. In his
Salon de 1859, Baudelaire shuns photography as a “grande
folie industrielle.” (Baudelaire, 320) Duchamp tolerates
photography, but primarily as a weapon against painting as
he notes in a letter dated 1922 to the photographer
Stieglitz: “Vous connaissez exactement mon sentiment a
l’égard de la photographie. J’aimerais 1a voir conduire les
gens au mépris de la peinture jusqu’a ce que quelque chose
d’autre rende la photographie insupportable.” (Duchamp, 244)
As for cinema, Duchamp states unequivocally: “Je ne crois
pas au cinéma comme moyen d’expression.” (Cabanne, 200)
Novelty is not necessarily new, nor does it not ensure the
originality sought by Baudelaire and Duchamp.62

Curiously, Baudelaire and Duchamp, the champions of the

present moment who called for a break with the past through

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“l’avénement du neuf” (Salon de 1845) and “l’incessante
trouvaille de chaque instant” (Duchamp, 246), each develop a
blind spot in their later years. They express a nostalgia
for the period of their youth as a ‘Golden Era’ of
innovation in art and criticize the current generation of
artists for not rising to the challenge of the new. In
1861, six years before his death, Baudelaire raves about an
earlier painting of Delacroix: “Le Sardanapale revu, c’est
la jeunesse retrouvée. A quelle distance en arriére nous
rejette la contemplation de cette toile! Epoque
merveilleuse ou régnaient en commun des artistes tels que
Devéria, Gros, Delacroix, Boulanger, Bonnington [sic], etc.,
la grande école romantique, le beau, le joli, le charmant,
1e sublime! ...qui pourrait le peindre aujourd’hui avec ce
feu, avec cette fraicheur, avec cet enthousiasme
poétique?...qui? qui?” (Baudelaire, 403) Likewise Duchamp,
in the interviews with Cabanne, compares the new crop of
artists unfavorably to his own generation (Duchamp died in
1968, two years later): “C’est cela qui est ennuyeux; ils ne
peuvent pas s’en dégager. Je suis sfir que lorsque les gens
comme Seurat se sont mis a vouloir faire quelque chose ils
ont vraiment supprimé 1e passé d’un seul coup. Méme les
fauves, méme les cubistes, l’ont fait. Il semble qu'il y

ait aujourd’hui plus que dans les autres périodes du siécle,

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des liens étroits avec 1e passé. Cela manque d’audace,
d’originalité...” (Cabanne, 196-197)

Baudelaire and Duchamp, despite being renowned for
their foresight, look backward, particularly in their later
years. Toward the end of his life an ailing Baudelaire
worries obsessively about the intactness of his papers,
laments having returned letters to his correspondents or
having burned them since they would have been useful for Mpg
Coeur mis a nu. Duchamp, who spoke so often about the need
to break with the past, nevertheless took stock periodically

in his career by producing ‘summary’ works such as Tu m’, Lg

 

Grand Verre or Les Boites en valise and often recycled old
ideas in new permutations (as in the literally recycled
bicycle wheel). Having shunned exhibitions for most of his
career, he allowed himself to be drawn into several
retrospective exhibitions in the mid-1960's. He even
admitted to enjoying the experience, as in the following
description of how he felt at a 1965 exhibition at the Tate
Gallery in London: “Quand 1e souvenir est réchauffé on voit
mieux. On voit la suite chronologique, c’est vraiment le
monsieur qui meurt et qui a sa vie derriere lui. C’est un
peu cela, sauf que je ne meurs pas! Chaque chose me
rappelait un souvenir; je n'éprouvais aucune géne devant des

choses qui me déplaisent, dont j’avais honte, ou que

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j’aurais voulu supprimer. Non, pas du tout. C’était
simplement la mise a nu, gentiment, sans heurts et sans
regrets. C’est assez agréable.” (Cabanne, 175—176) While
Duchamp may deny having regrets, one nevertheless senses in
his late comments a nostalgia as pervasive as that of

Baudelaire.

108

Chapter 3: Living Art

Art is not autobiography. And yet, as we have seen,
the artist’s past affects his work in the present, even if
he should do his utmost to avoid its influence. Nor can the
artist escape entirely from the history of art. Heavier
still, however, is the influence of the present. It is in
the present, after all, that art is created. With time spent
sleeping set aside (even though dreams might occasionally be
productive!), the present, in the sense of day-to-day life,
is divided between work time and leisure time. When does
the creative act happen, during work or during play?
Certainly, art is a form of work, often hard work, and an
occupation for which one can earn a living, if not often a
good living. But art, drawing on the powers of imagination,
is also a form of play. For the artist, then, the
boundaries between work and play can become blurred. The
artist has the potential to create at all times. This
conflation of work time and play time leads to a shift in
focus from product to process: how the artist lives -
working, playing, creating - becomes an object of aesthetic
interest, an art of living. After looking at how work
schedules, work ethic, and money affect art, we will turn to

a discussion of the relationship between art and play.

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Finally, we will consider how the artist explores and
exploits the act of living when creating art.
a. Daily Grind
Before we can entertain lofty notions of preserving art

for all time - to the glory of the artist or of mankind, art
must be produced in real time. Whether inspiration descends
in a lightning flash from the heavens above or whether it
rises up from a long slow boil in the unconscious, the
universe within, the work itself is created within the
cycles of the 24-hour clock, the 12-month year, and the
indeterminate number of years that constitute a lifetime.
“Art is long and time is fleeting” wrote Longfellow,
capturing for Baudelaire the key dilemma in the life of an
artist. In “Le Guignon,” he laments the misfortune of all
artists:

Pour soulever un poids si lourd,

Sisyphe, il faudrait ton courage!

Bien qu’on ait du coeur a l'ouvrage,

L’Art est long et le Temps est court.

Loin des sépultures célébres,
Vers un cimetiere isolé,
Mon coeur, comme un tambour voilé,

Va battant des marches funébres.

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In this borrowing from Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” only
the Sisyphus image is Baudelaire’s own. Like Sisyphus, the
artist is condemned to the daily grind of work, with no
_ guarantee of reaching the summit, of attaining success.
Each roll of the boulder up the hill, like the minute hand
turning round the clock face, is followed by yet another
roll, another hour, until day’s end. The next day offers
nothing new, but a new ascent, a new day of work. Unlike
Sisyphus, however, the artist is sentenced to a limited
term. His days of work are numbered. As a result, time
often defeats art, causing many a work not to come to
fruition and many an artist to remain unknown and untried as
Baudelaire’s lament continues (this time with a debt to
Thomas Gray’s “Elegy written in a country churchyard”):

— Maint joyau dort enseveli

Dans les ténébres et l’oubli,

Bien loin des pioches et des sondes;

Mainte fleur épanche a regret

Son parfum doux comme un secret

Dans les solitudes profondes.
After having berated himself for laziness and weakness in
the two preceding poems of Les Fleurs du Mal “Le Mauvais

Moine” and “L’Ennemi,” Baudelaire focuses here on the

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artist’s lack of time rather than lack of will, thus
allowing himself a moment of pure self-indulgence and
consolation. For, after all, he is in good company - or so
he has placed himself. By quoting from established poets
that he admires who have suffered and yet prevailed,
Baudelaire is suggesting that he, too, has a chance of
joining the “sépultures célébres” rather than receiving a
plot in a “cimetiere isolé.” His self-pity and resignation
mask an irrepressible ambition to come out of the shadows,
to have his ‘flowers’ see the light of day rather waste away
in “les solitudes profondes.”

Indeed, anonymity is a harsh sentence for the artist.
If he works but is not known or appreciated, then the value
of his work is as purposeless as the work of Sisyphus.
Duchamp agrees with Baudelaire but goes a step further,
insisting that art must in fact have an audience even to
qualify as art: “Parce que je considere, en effet, que si un
monsieur, un génie quelconque, habitait au coeur de
l’Afrique et qu’il fasse tous les jours des tableaux
extraordinaires, sans que personne ne les voie, il
n'existerait pas. Autrement dit, l’artiste n’existe que si
on le connait. Par consequent, on peut envisager
l'existence de cent mille génies qui se suicident, qui se

tuent, qui disparaissent, parce qu’ils n’ont pas su faire ce

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qu’il fallait pour se faire connaitre, pour s’imposer et
connaitre la gloire.” (Cabanne, 130)

It is unusual to hear Duchamp speak of ambition, will
and glory. In the interviews, Cabanne refers to Duchamp’s
singular “détachement” with regard to his status in the art
world. At several points, such as in the following
exchange, Cabanne probes the issue, appearing almost
incredulous, but Duchamp always insists on the genuineness
of his indifferent stance:

EKZEst-ce qu’il n’était pas surprenant qu’en 1946
vous soyez si peu connu a Paris?

DHDNon, je n’avais jamais fait d’exposition, meme
dans les groupes.

EKITout de meme, vous aviez pris dans l’art
contemporain une place capitale!

DHDQuarante ans aprés! C’est ce que je vous ai déja
dit. I1 y a des gens qui sont nés sans avoir de
la chance et qui ne s’en sortent jamais, tout
simplement.63 On n’en parle pas; c’est un peu le
cas. (Cabanne, 161)

Here, Cabanne’s incredulousness appears justified. Duchamp
does not seem to fit into the category of artists destined
to suffer from misfortune or 1e guignon, even “un peu” as he

qualifies in his statement. Duchamp is no Edgar Allan Poe,

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for whom Baudelaire expressed commiseration: “Il y a dans
l’histoire littéraire des destinées analogues [to that of a
criminal], de vraies damnations, — des hommes qui portent le
mot guignon écrit en caracteres mystérieux dans les plis
sinueux de leur front." (Baudelaire, BB, 575)

If ever fortune smiled on an aspiring young artist, it
certainly seems to have smiled on Marcel Duchamp. Born into
a family of artists, endowed with natural talent, bankrolled
by an indulgent father, and connected to the art world
through his elder brothers, Duchamp faced few of the
obstacles that conventionally block the path of a struggling
artist. Before he turned eighteen, he had even begun earning
money through his art, if only in small sums, by selling
caricatures to periodicals. He exhibited early and
recognition for his talent grew steadily until, as we have
seen, his first disillusionment occurred with the withdrawal
of his Nu descendant un escalier from the 1912 Salon des
Indépendants, a withdrawal forced upon him by Gleizes and
Metzinger’s Cubist group, la Section d’Or. And yet, Duchamp
claimed to have been disillusioned not so much by his own
lack of success, but more so because he sensed a lack of
true independence in the painters exhibiting at the Salons
des Indépendants whom he had theretofore considered free

agents. Duchamp reacted by reversing the direction one

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would expect an aspiring artist to follow. Instead of
rebelling against the purportedly shallow work-a-day world
in favor of the freedom and fulfillment of artistic life,
Duchamp distanced himself from what he saw as the hypocrisy
of the art world by taking a ‘regular’ job as librarian in
1913.

The objection that Duchamp’s work was not “dans la
ligne” traced by the Section d’Or Cubists was actually well-
founded. (Cabanne, 22) Even when he first exhibited with
them, Duchamp had begun experimenting along his own lines,
particularly through his interest in movement and mechanical
drawing as exemplified by the 1911 Moulin a café. A closely
related work, the Broyeuse de chocolat which would soon be
incorporated into the Grand Verre, coincides with his
library job in 1913. The Moulin a café and the Broyeuse de
chocolat suggest that the work world exerted an initial
fascination over Duchamp.64 He is exploring not only
technical art with its practical and commercial purposes,
but he has also chosen two manufactured objects with a
functional purpose: the grinding of coffee and chocolate
that sets in motion the worker’s daily grind.

There is a certain romanticization of work here: as
with his Bicycle Wheel (also from 1913) Duchamp is

emphasizing pleasure, whether the pure pleasure of movement,

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the pleasurable reward of coffee and chocolate (or even of
work!), or autoerotic pleasure (in his notes for the Bpgpg
ypppp, he makes a clear reference to the grinder as a
representation of autoeroticism since bachelors “must grind
their own chocolate”). If indeed Duchamp harbored any
illusions about ‘real jobs,’ they were duly shattered in the
last job on his very short curriculum vitae, his stint in
1917—18 as secretary to a French army captain in New York.
As Duchamp explained to Cabanne: “[C]e n’était pas dréle du
tout je vous l’assure. C'était affreux; ce capitaine était
idiot. J’ai travaillé la six mois et puis un jour je suis
parti, je me suis fichu a la porte tout seul, car pour
gagner 30$ par semaine cela ne valait vraiment pas la
peine.” (Cabanne, 93-94)

Duchamp’s romanticization of regular, non-artistic work
was more an attempt to demystify artistic work than to
celebrate work per se. Artists, he came to believe, even
the most bohemian among them, are neither freer nor nobler
than any working man: “[J]’ai peur du mot ‘création’. Au
sens social, ordinaire, du’mot, la création, c’est trés
gentil, mais, au fond, je ne crois pas a la fonction
créatrice de l’artiste. C’est un homme comme un autre,
voila tout. C’est son occupation de faire certaines choses,

mais le businessman fait aussi certaines choses, comprenez—

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vous? Le mot ‘art’, par contre, m’intéresse beaucoup. S’il
vient du sanscrit, comme je l'ai entendu dire, il signifie
‘faire’. Or tout le monde fait quelque chose et ceux qui
font des choses sur une toile, avec un cadre s'appellent des
artistes.” (Cabanne, 19)

Baudelaire, despite his greater reverence for art,
shares Duchamp’s desire to debunk artistic stereotypes.
Speaking of the Italian caricaturist Pinelli, he states:
“[111 fut un des types les plus complets de l’artiste, tel
que se le figurent les bons bourgeois, c’est-a-dire du
désordre classique, de l’inspiration s’exprimant par
l’inconduite et les habitudes violentes.” Instead,
Baudelaire finds that “le contraire se présente fréquemment
dans l’histoire, et que les artistes les plus inventifs, les
plus étonnants, les plus excentriques dans leurs
conceptions, sont souvent des hommes dont la vie est calme
et minutieusement rangée. Plusieurs d’entre ceux-la ont eu
les vertus de ménage trés développées. N’avez—vous pas
remarqué souvent que rien ne ressemble plus an parfait
bourgeois que l’artiste de génie concentré?” (Baudelaire,
301-302) Like Duchamp, Baudelaire wishes to pull aside the
curtain that artists, including poets, use to hide their
‘dirty work’ and exalt their status in the public eye: “Et,

si le poete lyrique trouve occasion de parler de lui-meme,

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il ne se peindra pas penché sur une table, barbouillant une
page blanche d’horribles petits signes noirs, se battant
contre la phrase rebelle ou luttant contre l’inintelligence
du correcteur d’épreuves, non plus que dans une chambre
pauvre, triste ou en désordre...” (Baudelaire, 767)

Baudelaire’s motivation in demystifying artistic
creation is not simply to render public service. He feels
the dire need to remind himself continually that art can be
achieved only through hard work. He is acutely aware that
his penchant for dreaming puts him at risk of remaining
“dans les ténébres et l'oubli, bien loin des pioches et des
sondes.” His fate could easily become that of his alter-ego
Samuel Cramer in La Fanfarlo: “C’est a la fois un grand
fainéant, un ambitieux triste, et un illustre malheureux;
car il n’a guére eu dans sa vie que des moitiés d’idées. Le
soleil de la paressse, qui resplendit sans cesse au dedans
de lui, lui vaporise et lui mange cette moitié de génie dont
1e ciel l’a doué. Parmi tous ces demi-grands hommes que
j’ai connus dans cette terrible vie parisienne, Samuel fut,
plus que tout autre, l’homme des belles oeuvres ratées.”
(Baudelaire, BB, 17) And so, Baudelaire, like the poet in
the prose poem La Chambre Double, cannot simply dream and
close himself off from the world in “la chambre

paradisiaque” but must be recalled back to his “taudis, ce

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séjour éternel de l’ennui” by the exigencies of life —
whether it be the demands of money (in the guise of “un
huissier”), of love (in the guise of “une infame concubine”)
or of work (in the guise of “le saute-ruisseau d’un

directeur de journal.") (Baudelaire, PPP, 42) To be an

 

artist, to make art, one must work in the here and now, one
must be subject to the “brutale dictature” of Time and its
commands: “Et hue donc! bourrique! Sue donc, esclave! Vis
donc, damné!”

That is why, even though Baudelaire gives into self—
pity and bemoans the misfortune of artists in his poem “Le
Guignon”, he states categorically that, in fact, luck is not
a factor in success — “i1 n’y a pas de guignon” — when
offering his “Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs” in 1846:

“11 y a lente agrégation de succés
moléculaires; mais de générations miraculeuses et
spontanées, jamais.

Ceux qui disent: J’ai du guignon, sont ceux
qui n’ont pas encore eu assez de succés et qui
l’ignorent.

Je fais la part des mille circonstances qui
enveloppent 1a volonté humaine et qui ont elles-
mémes leurs causes légitimes; elles sont une

circonférence dans laquelle est enfermée la

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volonté; mais cette circonférence est mouvante,
vivante, tournoyante, et change tous les jours,
toutes les minutes, toutes les secondes son cercle
et son centre. Ainsi, entrainées par elle, toutes
les volontés humaines qui y sont cloitrées varient
a chaque instant leur jeu réciproque, et c’est ce
qui constitue la liberté.
Liberté et fatalité sont deux contraires;
vues de pres et de loin, c’est une seule volonté.
C’est pourquoi il n'y a pas de guignon. Si
vous avez du guignon, c’est qu’il vous manque
quelque chose: ce quelque chose, connaissez-1e, et
étudiez le jeu des volontés voisines pour déplacer
plus facilement la circonférence. (Baudelaire,
540)
The image here of a moving circle recalls Baudelaire’s
reference to Sisyphus in Le Gui non, but the pessimism of
the poem is replaced by a guarded optimism: if one’s will to
work is strong enough, success is assured. Baudelaire is
not implying that hard work will always lead to great art,
but that it will at least lead to success. He urges young
writers to learn from even such a popular and prolific but
second-rate writer as Eugene Sue: “Allumez autant d’intérét

avec des moyens nouveaux; possédez une force égale et

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supérieure dans un sens contraire; doublez, triplez,
quadruplez la dose jusqu’a une égale concentration, et vous
n’aurez plus 1e droit de médire du bourgeois, car le
bourgeois sera avec vous. Jusque—la, vae Victis! car rien
n’est vrai que la force, qui est la justice supreme.”
(Baudelaire, 540-541) Again, Baudelaire emphasizes the need
for the steady, concentrated work that a bourgeois rather
than a bohemian lifestyle can best accommodate.65

Throughout Baudelaire's critical works, his
correspondence, and particularly his Journaux intimes are
indications of his fascination for “cette question toujours
si intéressante pour les artistes et les écrivains, a
savoir, de l’hygiéne du travail et de la conduite de la
vie.” (Baudelaire, 442) In Fusées and Mon Coeur mis a nu, he
repeatedly extolls the virtues of work in order to exhort
himself to work regularly, thereby helping allay his fears
and avoiding the paralysis that may result when “nous sommes
écrasés par l’idée et la sensation du temps.” (Baudelaire,
Fusées, 85 #88)66

Nothing would seem to be further from Baudelaire’s
tortured work ethic than Duchamp’s carefree attitude and
apparent spontaneity. But Michel Sanouillet, the editor of
Duchamp's collected writings, disputes this image: “Duchamp

n’est pas homme a improviser. Ses inventions les plus

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spontanées en apparence sont souvent le fruit d’une lente
maturation.” (Duchamp, 35) Duchamp is no exception to
Baudelaire’s formula: “I1 y a lente agrégation de succés
moléculaires.” In reference to his Grand Verre, for
example, Duchamp explains: “J’avais travaillé huit ans sur
cette chose qui était voulue, volontairement établie avec
des plans exacts; mais malgré cela, je ne voulais pas, et
c’est peut-étre pour cette raison que j’y ai travaillé si
longtemps, qu’elle soit l’expression d’une sorte de vie
intérieure.” (Cabanne, 23)

Nevertheless, an objection springs to mind: what of the
readymade? Does it not fly in the face of the importance of
the artist’s will, of his hard work? The gesture of an
artist ‘creating’ a readymade would seem to rival the high
conceit of the would-be writer Samuel Cramer: “Un des
travers les plus naturels de Samuel était de se considérer
comme l’égal de ceux qu’il avait su admirer; apres une
lecture passionnée d'un beau livre, sa conclusion
involontaire était: voila qui est assez beau pour étre de
moi! - et de la a penser: c’est donc de moi, — il n’y a que
l’espace d'un tiret.” (Baudelaire, LB, 18) Paradoxically,
however, even the creation of a readymade, the closest we
have come perhaps to ‘instant art,’ risks becoming a longer

process. As Duchamp sensed, the readymade, by virtue of

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being a work of art, could be drawn into the domain of
artistic production; that is to say, as any other work of
art, the readymade could become the product of the artist’s
work (albeit mental and not physical) rather than whim. To
avoid this pitfall, Duchamp proposed:
En projetant pour un moment a venir (tel jour,
telle date, telle minute), ‘d’inscrire un
readymade’.
— Le readymade pourra ensuite étre cherché (avec
tous délais).
L'important alors est donc cet horlogisme,
cet instantané, comme un discours prononcé a
l’occasion de n’importe quoi mais a telle heure.
C’est une sorte de rendez-vous.
- Inscrire naturellement cette date, heure, minute
sur le ready-made comme renseignements. (Duchamp,
49)67
On the other end of the scale, a more elaborated work of art
may also appear almost instantaneous to an artist who, once
absorbed in work, can lose track of time as Baudelaire
explains: “Il n’y a de long ouvrage que celui qu’on n’ose
pas commencer. Il devient cauchemar.” (Baudelaire, Fusées

86 #88)

123

Baudelaire is, of course, not simply expressing the
relativity of time for the artist engaged in the creative
act. He is also referring to the nightmarish consequences
of his chronic procrastination. In Tombeau de Baudelaire,
Jean-Pierre Jouve has suggested, however, that Baudelaire
purposefully used delaying tactics:

Le tableau de la vie a travers la
correspondance pourrait paraitre celui d’une
épouvantable horreur. Mais i1 y eut la aussi un
peu de masque. B a exploité — dans l’intérét du
seul lui-meme — sa misere et sa malchance...Les
grandes zones du guignon baudelairien auront été:
les dettes a payer (mais il en faisait toujours de
nouvelles), les malaises nerveux et ‘l’affection
vérolique’ latente, le conseil judiciaire,
l’incertitude du domicile, et Jeanne.

On apercoit des mécanismes de retard entre
dettes, incapacité, travail, maladie, qui
constituent la malchance. Les épreuves morales et
physiques courent l’une apres l'autre... (Jouve,
46-47)68

Baudelaire often traces his misfortunes back to his loss of
financial independence when the “conseil judiciaire” was

forced on him by his mother and stepfather for his having

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spent recklessly from his inheritance. But, in his journals
and correspondence, it appears increasingly evident that he
was as dependent on working in order to meet his financial
needs as he was dependent on having financial needs in order
to goad himself into working! However much Baudelaire
admired the Protestant work ethic and steel will of Emerson
whose sayings from The Conduct of Life he copied down in his
journals, he seems to have had trouble working for the sake
of working.69

Baudelaire did not follow the advice he gave to young
writers: “N’ayez jamais de créanciers; faites, si vous
voulez, semblant d’en avoir, C'est tout ce que je puis vous
passer.” (Baudelaire, 546) The dynamics of his work habits
seemed to demand pressure whether from time constraints as
we have seen or from money constraints. In “Le Guignon,” he
focuses exclusively on time, the nobler worry of the two,
but time is inextricably linked to money for Baudelaire.
When he uses Balzac to explain Comment on paie ses dettes
guand on a du génie, he vividly portrays this connection and
how it spurs the writer forward: “ce cas mortifiant que nous
connaissons tous, ou chaque minute qui s’envole emporte sur
ses ailes une chance de salut; ou, l’oeil fixé sur
l’horloge, 1e génie de l’invention sent la nécessité de

doubler, tripler, décupler ses forces dans la proporation du

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temps qui diminue, et de la vitesse approchante de l’heure
fatale. L’illustre auteur de la Théorie de la lettre de
change avait 1e lendemain un billet de douze cents francs a
payer, et la soirée était fort avancée." (Baudelaire, 536)
In Baudelaire’s optimum equation for work, money is an

essential factor: “Un peu de travail, répété trois cent
soixante-cinq fois, donne trois cent soixante—cinq fois un
peu d’argent, c’est-a-dire une somme énorme. En meme temps
la gloire est faite.” (Baudelaire, MBMB, 79-20) An important
distinction for Baudelaire, however, is that his motivation
for making money is to pay off debts, an honorable action,
rather than to make money for the sake of money which he
disdains.70 In a paradoxical manner, his debts are the
source of his honor; he cannot be sullied by the money he
makes since it goes to others, and thus he deserves the
glory which he may keep for himself. Still, Baudelaire
dreams of rising above all money concerns:

Dandysme.

Qu’est-ce que l’homme supérieur?

Ce n’est pas le spécialiste.

C’est l’homme de Loisir et d’Education générale.

Etre riche et aimer le travail. (Baudelaire,

Fusées, 102-33)

126

While Baudelaire never reached his ideal, one could
argue that Duchamp did without even quite aspiring to it.
Duchamp never became rich exactly, but he managed to sustain
the image of a dandy throughout his life. He pulled off the
trick by effecting a definitive separation of money from
work; his elegance was legendary, yet he seemed to have no
visible means of support. When he worked at all, he wOrked
for the sake of work rather than to make a living. As
Duchamp explains to Cabanne at the outset of the interviews,
this accomplishment ranked highest in his mind:

PC Quand vous regardez derriére vous toute votre
vie, quel est votre premier motif de
satisfaction?

MD “D’abord, d’avoir eu de la chance. Parce
qu’au fond, je n’ai jamais travaillé pour
vivre. Je considere quetravailler pour
vivre est un peu imbecile au point de vue
économique. (Cabanne, 17)

Cabanne’s interviews thus begin with the subject of
Duchamp’s sources of income and the subject resurfaces at
regular intervals throughout. Elsewhere, Cabanne alludes to
the almost maddening effect Duchamp could have upon critics
because he “spent his entire life evading definition": “A

critic approaching the life and work of Marcel Duchamp needs

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to cultivate an elegance of his own, a sense of humour and
even a hint of condescension.” (Cabanne, Duchamp & Co. ,8)
Despite the cultured tone of mutual respect in the
interviews, Cabanne occasionally appears to be somewhat
rankled by his inability to pin down Duchamp on financial
matters, a goal he nevertheless does not abandon. Several
exchanges, in particular, exemplify both Cabanne’s
fascination with the subject and exasperation at the
answers. When Cabanne asks “C’est pour vivre que vous aviez
vendu a Arensberg Le Grand Verre avant de l’avoir terminé?,”
Duchamp resists terming the action a sale:“Je ne l’ai pas
vendu, c’est une facon de parler parce que je n’ai jamais
touché d’argent d’Arensberg. 11 a payé mon loyer pendant
deux ans. C'est lui qui l’a vendu a Katherine Dreier.”

But Cabanne resists in return, almost accusing Duchamp of
passing the buck figuratively by passing it literally:

PC Chaque fois que vous me parlez d’une oeuvre
de vous qui est vendue j’ai l’impression que
vous ne touchez pas un dollar!

MD Je n’ai jamais touché d’argent, ou que ca se
passe...

PC De quoi donc viviez-vous?

MD Je n’en sais rien. J’ai donné quelque

lecons de francais, j’ai vendu tout de méme

128

PC

MD

PC

quelques tableaux, la “Sonate”, par exemple,
les uns aprés les autres..

Des tableaux anciens.

Des tableaux anciens. J’ai meme fait venir
de Paris l’autre Verre, 1e Verre demi-rond,
je l’ai aussi vendu a Arensberg.

Au fond, c’est votre passé qui vous faisait

vivre. (Cabanne, 109-110)

Cabanne finally succeeds in getting Duchamp to admit to

selling works, but because they are his earlier works in a

medium he no longer uses, Duchamp claims they are exempt

from the stigma of commercial gain.71 He is simply hocking

his personal possessions.72

The sparring between Cabanne and Duchamp becomes almost

heated toward the end of the interview:

PC

MD

PC

MD

PC

De quoi viviez-vous a ce moment-la?

Je n’en sais rien. Je n’en sais absolument
rien.

C’est toujours la méme réponse que vous me
faites!

Mais je n’en sais vraiment rien. Et vous ne
le savez pas vous-meme!

Ah! moi, bien sfir!

129

MD Personne ne sait comment je vivais. Cette
question, vraiment, n’appelle aucune réponse
exacte. (Cabanne, 155)
Despite this rebuke, Cabanne does not abandon his pursuit.
Even one of his very last questions brings up money, in a
particularly crude fashion: “Si on vous proposait 100 000 $
pour faire une toile?” (Cabanne, 202)

Could a hint of envy have motivated Cabanne, envy of
Duchamp’s ability to live well with no visible means of
support?73 If so, Duchamp’s evasive tactics are fully
justified. Within the interviews, the tug-of-war between
society and the artist is reenacted: bourgeois society, even
it would appear in its intellectual circles, has little
tolerance for the economic independence of artists,
particularly since artists already pose a threat as an elite
group. Duchamp's singular accomplishment was to assert the
independence of art and yet simultaneously challenge the
elite status of artists. He neither sold out nor fenced
out. He simply hoped that others might be able to join him
in giving up the daily grind for a lucky spin of the wheel:
“J’espére qu’un jour on arrivera a vivre sans étre obligé de

travailler.” (Cabanne, 17)

* * *

130

Work is most often viewed as a function of time and money.
In artistic work, time and money constraints often lead to
increased production; many great works would never have been
created without such powerful incentives. As we have seen,
however, the pressures of time and money also compromise art
in a number of ways, such as by blocking the flow of
creative ideas and inspiration or by undermining the
artist's autonomy. Baudelaire's ideal “To be rich and to
love work” entails divorcing oneself from money obligations
and from viewing work as a term of enslavement. By loving
work, one transforms it into non-work. Baudelaire’s ideal
thus approximates Duchamp’s wish that we will one day be
freed from work. With work behind us, we will now open the

door to the playroom.

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b. Playtime

In an article on his friend Pierre Dupont, a popular
chansonnier, Baudelaire recalls happier times in their
youth: “(heureuses flaneries d’un temps ou nous n’écrivions
pas encore, l’oeil fixé sur une pendule, délices d’une
jeunesse prodigue, 5 mon cher Pierre, vous en souvenez-
vous?)” (Baudelaire, 772-773) By placing this lament in a
parenthetical statement, Baudelaire illustrates visually its
cause: with his eye on the clock and feeling the weight of
all the work he must do, in this case the article on Dupont,
he can pause but briefly to indulge in idle reminiscences.
Indeed, in much of Baudelaire’s later writing (the article
was published six years before his death), he expresses,
whether through direct mention or simply through writing
style, a breathless feeling of time running out. He appears
to harbor guilt for having led a somewhat dissolute youth —
squandering his money, health and time — and is desperate to
make up for lost time.74 Duchamp, who lived almost twice as
long, functioned under a different economy. He denied
categorically having any regrets and would have chided
Baudelaire for viewing his youth as misspent, just as he
chided young artists in Paris for taking themselves and
their work too seriously: “Ceux qui sont ici ont toujours

ces idoles sur les épaules comprenez-vous? Ils n’ont pas le

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sens de la gaité, ils ne disent pas: ‘Je suis jeune, je veux
faire ce que je veux, je peux danser.’” (Cabanne, 182-183)

The tyranny of work, enforced by the exigencies of time
and money, cannot fail but to inspire its share of revolt.
The only true form of revolt against work, however, is not
to play its game, or rather to play one’s own game, any
game. Gambling has often been the adult’s choice — an
escape into a world where time and money seem to function
differently. The differences are illusory, of course.
Casinos, and other official places of gambling, are in the
entertainment business, selling chips as theaters sell
tickets to weary customers who want to get away from it all.
Customers pay for the privilege of dreaming that they might
strike it rich and be liberated forever from work. But the
cards are stacked against them, as Baudelaire well knew:

“Le jeu, meme dirigé par la science, force intermittente,
sera vaincu, si fructueux qu’il soit, par le travail, si
petit qu’il soit, mais continu.” (Baudelaire, Fusées, 76-
17)

To beat the system one must join it, forfeiting
fantasies and investing real time and real money. The
professional gambler, like the pro golfer, works rather than
plays. Still, from the outside, gambling is a profession

with a glamorous appeal. Duchamp, always on the lookout for

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options to circumvent work, could not resist trying his hand
at such an unproductive occupation, especially one that
involved chance and a spinning wheel. Taking a break in
1924 from his “regular” profession (chess, that is, and not
painting which he professed to have abandoned), Duchamp
decided to experiment with roulette in order to develop a
winning system. “I have been winning regularly every day -
small sums - in 1 hour or 2... It’s a delightful monotony.
Not the slightest emotion.” The gambler's dispassionate
stance and cool nerve suited Duchamp, but the delight he
felt betrayed his lack of seriousness. He was clearly
playing at gambling.” It is also clear that he harbored
few illusions and understood that “successful” gambling is
tedious and time-consuming, rather than glamorous. Two
hours of work at the roulette table yielded only “small
sums,” whereas the same investment in time would probably be
more lucrative in almost any other line of work, in keeping
with Baudelaire’s assertion. Duchamp, as we shall see, had
ulterior motives for his foray into gambling.

In approaching the game of roulette, Duchamp drew on
the more familiar reference points of chess and painting:
“The problem is to find the red and black figure to
counteract the roulette. The martingale [a betting system]

has no importance. They are all good and all bad. But with

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the right pattern - even a bad martingale could be valid —
and I believe I have found a good pattern. You see, I have
not ceased to be a painter, I am drawing now with chance.”
(Ephemerides, 20.4.1924)76 For Duchamp, roulette was at once
a matter of logic, like a chess problem, and of art, like a
work created in the media of color, pattern and chance.77

Duchamp’s preliminary investigations into roulette were
part of a larger scheme, the organization of a company “to
exploit the Roulette of Monte Carlo, and also ‘Trente et
Quarante’ and other mines on the Cate d’Azur.” With Rrose
Sélavy listed as president of the board of directors and
Duchamp as administrator, bonds were issued and sold to
various acquaintances to finance further gambling using the
system Duchamp had developed. The bonds, or Obligations
pour la Roulette de Monte-Carlo, were issued at 500 francs
each and bore 20% interest. The scheme, which did not quite
break even, allowed Duchamp and his alter-ego Rrose Sélavy
to play mock capitalists and thereby mock capitalism,
particularly in its effect on art. The casinos, businesses
that thrive by appearing to be anything but businesses to
lull gamblers into thinking they will come out ahead, are
treated at face-value as a “natural” resource just waiting
to be mined by the public. Instead, the mock company

mirrors the casino, pointing to its true capitalist nature.

135

The gambler’s delusion that a big break will eventually free
him from all work, including gambling, is replaced by the
reality that he is freeing others from work and not himself:
the proceeds of Duchamp’s gambling go to the bondholders who
potentially live on interest rather than work (just as the
investors in casinos live off the losses of gamblers).
Ultimately, though, the scheme is a commentary on the art
market for which Duchamp had developed a deep mistrust. The
entire project is an artwork in the form of performance art,
commissioned by the bondholders who are themselves an
integral part of the work. Duchamp bypasses the art market
and its capitalist foundation by creating his own self-
contained market.

Despite this clear critique of the art market, the tone
of the entire project is more lighthearted than polemical,
as illustrated by the design of the bonds which picture a
roulette table with a background made up of the words
“Moustiquesdomestiquesdemistock”printed over and over in
green. Rrose Sélavy’s playful phrase about the sale of
domesticated mosquitoes suggests teasingly that even such a
farfetched product, as fanciful as the bonds themselves,
would be sold if a profit could be made. At the top of the
bond is a roulette wheel with a superposed photograph by Man

Ray of Duchamp’s “head lathered with soap and his hair

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sculpted into the winged head of Mercury, the Roman god of
science and commerce, patron of vagabonds and thieves.”
(Ephemerides, 1.11.1924) Duchamp, in the guise of Mercury,
has a devilish countenance to match his devilish plan of
combining science and commerce for the benefit of those who
do not work. Like the devil in Baudelaire’s prose poem “Le
Joueur généreux,” he is more readily a “bon diable" offering
respite from “cette bizarre affection de l’Ennui” in
exchange for participation in his game. (Baudelaire, BBB,
113) His investors, however, risked losing only money, not
their souls.

The bonds which take their place as independent works
in Duchamp’s oeuvre are not his first attempt to create play
money. In 1919, he repaid his dentist Daniel Tzanck with a
handmade check drawn on The Teeth’s Loan &Trust Company:
“This slightly larger-than-life Chaque Tzanck, which has the
name of the bank repetitively rubber-stamped in red as part
of the background and a serrated edge on the left as if it
had been torn from a cheque-book, is ‘crossed’ with the
mention ORIGINAL in red.” (Ephemerides, 3.12.1919) The $115
payment was accepted by Tzanck who collected modern art.
Artists have often been known to pay in kind,78 but Duchamp
went a step further creating his own currency just as he had

created his own measures through Trois stoppages-épalons in

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1913-14. Money, he reminds us, like weights and measures,
is only man-made and not divinely decreed. Also, by
conflating money and art, Duchamp pointedly circumvents the
art market (or middleman) while illustrating how money and
art are too often inextricably linked.79

The overriding lesson to be drawn from Duchamp’s
financial projects is that work and play do not represent a
dichotomy for him; he wishes to show how the boundaries can
be blurred. By playing at making a living through playing
roulette or making money through making play money that has
actual value as an artwork, Duchamp refused to take work
seriously. He also refused to take playing seriously,
whether as a gambler or even in his so—called career as a
professional chess player. From the very first, he never
viewed it as a true profession. In 1921, he declared “that
his ambition is to be a professional or ‘anti fesses Lionel'
chess player." (Ephemerides, 2.8.1921) His choice of chess
over art represented a revolt against work and a lampooning
of the notion of profession rather than the adoption of a
new substitute profession.

Professional game playing — whether gambling, bridge,
chess, or sports — would appear to be an oxymoron if not for
the fact that its participants err in the opposite direction

from Duchamp by taking it as seriously as possible. The

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commodification of play has a long history and is not
limited, of course, to catering to adult play. Children’s
toy manufacturing, already an important industry in
Baudelaire’s time, interested both Baudelaire and Duchamp.
As we shall see, Duchamp dabbled in making toys, both for
his own use and for the use of others. But first, we must
examine in detail Baudelaire thoughts on toys as expressed
in a significant 1853 article entitled “Morale du Joujou.”
In his 1962 edition of Curiosités esthéti ues, Henri
Lemaitre suggests that: “Baudelaire avait songé a développer
1e contenu de cet essai jusqu’a en faire une veritable
esthétique du JOujou.” The disjointed feel of the article,
which lacks smooth transitions between several of the main
ideas, supports the thesis that he planned to come back to
the article to expand it. Baudelaire did in fact draw on
one section from this article to serve as the core of the
prose poem “Le Joujou du pauvre.”

The title “Morale du Joujou” is itself playful,
juxtaposing the serious adult term “morale” with the child’s

”w Baudelaire

term for toy “joujou” instead of “jouet.
thereby announces from the first his intention to treat toys
as a matter worthy of serious consideration without

stripping them of their essential connection to play. As if

to invite the reader to hark back to his own childhood,

139

Baudelaire begins the article without preface by describing
a nostalgic memory “[qui] remonte aux temps nébuleux de la
premiere enfance.” The setting is magical like the memory.
Baudelaire is taken on a visit by his mother to a rich
woman’s hOtel particulier down a quiet street. The house,
too, appears “trés calme” but he knows that on certain days
it is transformed, becoming “lumineuse et bruyante” — no
less an illustrious guest as Alexandre Dumas once attended a
costume ball there. The woman “habillée de velours et de
fourrure” takes the young Baudelaire by the hand and,
passing through several rooms, leads him to a special room.
She opens the door revealing: “un spectacle extraordinaire
et vraiment féerique.” The walls, the ceiling, and
practically the entire floor are covered with toys, in all
shapes, colors, and sizes “depuis les plus chers jusqu’aux
plus modestes, depuis les plus simples jusqu’aux plus
compliqués.” Baudelaire, like every boy who visits the
house, is allowed to choose any toy to take home with him as
a souvenir to remember the woman by. To the embarrassment
of his mother, Baudelaire “[s’empara] immédiatement du plus
beau, du plus cher, du plus voyant, du plus frais, du plus
bizarre des joujoux." In typical adult fashion, his mother
intercedes pushing him to accept the most modest of the

toys. She is only able to extract a compromise; to appease

140

her, Baudelaire settles on “un juste—milieu.” (Baudelaire,
201-202)

Like a treasure trove in an adventure story, the room
is hidden in the center of the house lending it a more
imaginary air. In opposition to this children’s dreamworld
is the interference by Baudelaire’s mother in his choice of
a toy. Instead of abiding by the one rule in the room, that
the child can choose any toy, she tries to impose rules of
etiquette from the outside adult world. She is only
partially successful. Her son resists with the single-
mindedness of a child; he draws added strength perhaps from
being in a realm where children reign rather than adults.81
Baudelaire emphasizes how different children are from
adults, praising the force and decisiveness that they lose
once they enter into adulthood. He explains that his rapid
choice of a toy was made: “Avec cette admirable et lumineuse
promptitude qui caractérise les enfants, chez qui 1e désir,
1a deliberation et l’action ne font, pour ainsi dire qu’une
seule faculté, par laquelle ils se distinguent des hommes
dégénérés, en qui, au contraire, la deliberation mange
presque tout le temps.”

Baudelaire appears to nurture the hope that the
degeneration of adults is not always complete, that one can

retain or regain some of the magic of childhood as an adult.

141

The article moves into the present as he wonders about all
the other little boys who visited the room. He fantasizes
about meeting them now that they have lived through “une
bonne partie de la cruelle vie.” He does not say what he
would ask them, but it is likely he wished to compare the
effect the experience had on them with that which it had on
him. Certainly, it had the effect desired by the woman —
Baudelaire never fails to remember her each time he stops in
front of a toy store. Speaking now as an adult, he uses the
word “jouet” for the first time, but confesses that his
childhood experience has had the additional result of
creating in him an abiding attraction to toys and toy
stores. He has maintained affection and admiration for the
strange aesthetics of toys that “représente si bien les
idées de l’enfance sur la beauté.” He is also drawn to the
“gaieté extraordinaire” of a toy store, which he describes,
like the room in the house, as a world of its own where one
encounters “[t]oute la vie en miniature.” (Baudelaire, 202)
“Tous les enfants parlent a leurs joujoux,” Baudelaire
announces, moving abruptly to another world, the world of
the child’s imagination. Through their “grande faculté
d'abstraction et...1eur haute puissance imaginative,”
children infuse life into their toys. They also “jouent

sans joujoux.” By this, Baudelaire does not mean

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roleplaying games such as little girls “qui jouent a la
madame,” a game he treats with contempt as a misguided
imitation of adult life. He is referring to improvised
games where simple props like chairs can take on infinite
guises: “1a diligence-chaise, les chevaux-chaises, les
voyageurs-chaises.” He therefore admires not so much the
child’s ability to make do without toys, but rather their
ability to transform anything into a toy. In this, children
are far superior to adults who due to their “impuissante
imagination...exige des theatres une perfection physique et
mécanique.” It is adults, not children, who have need of
bells and whistles.

The capacity of the child’s imagination to improvise is
particularly evident in wargames: “Les soldats peuvent étre
des bouchons, des dominos, des pions, des osselets; les
fortifications seront des planches, des livres, etc., les
projectiles, des billes ou toute autre chose.” Baudelaire
has the highest regard for this talent which he links to
artistic sensibility: “Cette facilité a contenter son
imagination témoigne de la spiritualité de l’enfance dans
ses conceptions artistiques.” In Baudelaire’s aesthetic
theory, toys take on a crucial role to the point that he
proclaims: “Le joujou est la premiere initiation de l’enfant

a l’art.” (Baudelaire, 203-204)

143

Unfortunately, the adult is never able to recapture the
same degree of enthusiasm with which the child greets this
first encounter with art. Baudelaire exemplifies the gulf
between the imagination of children and adults by stating
that fancy toys chosen by adults represent more “un hommage
de la servilité parasitique a la richesse des parents” than
“un cadeau a la poésie enfantine.” The imagination of
children is such that the simplest, most inexpensive, mass-
produced toys are more than sufficient to amuse them, but
adults forget this fact and buy toys according to their own
impoverished aesthetic notions. At this point in the
article we reach a three—paragraph section which will later
be transformed into the prose poem “Le Joujou du pauvre.”

In this section, Baudelaire advises his readers to try an
activity the next time they go out “avec l’intention décidée
de flaner solitairement sur les grandes routes”: they
should fill their pockets with cheap, mass-produced toys,
hand them out them to any poor children they happen upon and
observe the children’s reactions. (Baudelaire, 204)

Since almost all of the wording in the three paragraphs
reappears in the expanded version, we will turn to the prose
poem which offers a more detailed picture. First, however,
it is important to note how the context of the article

“Morale du Joujou” in which the prose poem first appeared

144

offers insight into Baudelaire’s motivation for writing it.
The prose poem begins with two new lines serving as an
introduction to replace the context given in the article:
“Je veux donner l'idée d’un divertissement innocent. Il y a
si peu d’amusements qui ne soient pas coupables!” Here
Baudelaire is making light of the advice he is about to
give. The original context makes it clear, however, that he
was suggesting more to his reader than an innocent
diversion. Since the advice follows a discussion of the
adult's fall from grace, it can be seen as almost a form of
therapy to put adults back in touch with their former,
stronger artistic sensibilities by having them observe, and
therefore relive, the pure joy of a child’s encounter with
toys (an encounter that serves, we must remember, as “la
premiere initiation de l’enfant a l’art.”) Baudelaire is
also reenacting his own experience when he visited the “Fée
du Joujou,” but with a twist: instead of the children coming
to the woman’s house to receive the toys, Baudelaire brings
the toys to the children.82 In both instances, they are
engaging in a selfish enterprise and not in philanthropy.
The woman wants to be remembered; the flaneur wants to
remember.

After dispensing the advice to the reader, the narrator

of the prose poem describes a scene that he witnessed during

145

one of his walks. Two children face each other on opposite
sides of a fence, one standing in the garden of a chateau,
the other standing among weeds along a country road. The
rich child, dressed in elegant countrified clothing, has
cast aside his favorite toy, as clean and fresh as he.
Mesmerized, he stares through the fence at the poor child
who is so dirty that only an “oeil impartial” could discover
his underlying beauty, just as only a connoisseur could
detect “une peinture idéale sous un vernis de carrossier.”
The poor boy has captured the rich boy’s attention by
holding up to his view a strange toy in a cage. It is no
less than “un rat vivant!” The narrator explains how this
could be: “Les parents, par économie sans doute, avaient
tiré le joujou de la vie elle-meme.” The narrator thus
appears to be suggesting that necessity dictated their
choice of a toy; poor parents are no wiser than rich
parents, no closer to understanding what truly pleases a
child. The success of their gesture — a sleight-of-hand
producing a toy out of thin air, out of life itself — lies
in its adventitious resemblance to the instinctive gesture
of children who are able to transform anything into a
plaything.

The prose poem ends with an image of the two boys

sharing their delight in this unlikely toy: “Ils se riaient

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l’un a l’autre fraternellement, avec des dents d’une égale
blancheur.” (Baudelaire, BBB,83-84) Through the adverb
“fraternellement” and the italicization of “égale,"
Baudelaire suggests that their mutual enjoyment erases their
class differences and, since he has drawn a parallel between
the appreciation of toys and of art, he is also making the
weightier assertion that aesthetic appreciation is itself a
great equalizer.83

Baudelaire moves on in the article to a consideration
of which weighs heavier: the effect children have on their
toys or the effect toys have on them. Baudelaire believes
that “leur choix est dirigé par des dispositions et des
désirs, vagues, il est vrai, non pas formules, mais trés
réels.” At the same time, he raises that possibility that
the kinds of toys to which children are exposed might also
affect their lives directly “surtout dans le cas de
prédestination littéraire ou artistique.” (Baudelaire, 205)
Baudelaire hypothesizes that a child whose parents buy him
primarily marionettes and similar toys might be drawn to the
theater as an adult. Baudelaire might easily have used
himself as an example. In one of several bio-bibliographies
he prepared for his publishers, he notes his: [g]ofit
permanent depuis l’enfance de toutes les representations

plastiques. [cited above] (Baudelaire, BB ,438)

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Baudelaire then discusses the “joujou scientifique” as
an example of a toy that can help develop “dans le cerveau
de l’enfant le gout des effets merveilleux et surprenants.”
He refrains from judging them as good or bad (“je n’ai a
dire ni bien ni mal"), limiting himself to a description of
two types in particular: the stereoscope and the
phenakisticope. Both involve the creation of optical
illusions through rotating images; the first produces a
three-dimensional image out of a flat surface, while the
second, a distant relative of the movie camera, produces the
illusion of movement.

Another abrupt jump in the article leads to a brief
diatribe against people who either do not believe in giving
toys (a sign that “elles ne connaissent pas et ne permettent
pas les moyens poétiques de passer le temps”“) or who view
toys “comme des objets d’adoration muette” to be kept in
cabinets and never to be played with. This second tendency,
while an indication of miserliness that results in complete
deferral of play, also stems in part from the very rational
fear that toys will be treated carelessly or broken. This
motivation remains unstated in the article, but could have
been used as a transition to Baudelaire's final topic of

consideration of how “[l]a plupart des marmots veulent

surtout voir l’ame [du joujou], les uns au bout de quelque

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temps d'exercice, les autres tout de suite.” Baudelaire
sees “cette manie enfantine” as a positive indication of a
child's “premiere tendance métaphysique” despite the
violence with which the child treats the toy in order to see
what makes it tick. Baudelaire can only surmise as he
concludes: “Sont-ils pris d’une colére superstitieuse
contre ces menus objets qui imitent l’humanité, ou bien leur
font-ils subir une espece d’épreuve maconnique avant de les
introduire dans la vie enfantine? - Puzzling question!”
(Baudelaire, 205-207)

In this long discussion of “Le Morale du Joujou,” it
may seem that we have strayed far from Duchamp. Quite the
opposite is true, however, since so many works by Duchamp
echo so many questions raised by Baudelaire in the article
and related prose poem, such as: the nostalgic power of
toys; the possibility of a seemingly unmediated choice of
toys due to a conflation of action and thought; the value of
sustaining into adulthood the child’s imaginative powers;
toys as a reflection or recreation of life (“toute la vie en
miniature”); the potential for destabilizing the status of
an object through the gesture of improvisation; the
fundamental connection between toys and art objects; the use
of toys and play for rejuvenation and inspiration; the

association of movement with play; the possibility of

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creating toys and art out of anything at will; the
democratizing potential of art; the influencing of taste
through exposure to types of toys (and, by extension, art);
an interest in scientifically-oriented and optical toys and
gadgets; notions of conservation/destruction and
use/disuse/misuse of toys; and the potentially violent
nature of play. Duchamp even re-forms Baudelaire's final
“puzzling question” regarding our deep-rooted, unshakeable
curiosity to “voir l’ame du joujou”: his 1916 assisted
readymade “A bruit secret” (“With Hidden Noise”), made of a
ball of twine between two brass plates joined by four
screws, received its name due to a mystery object placed
inside by Duchamp’s friend and patron Walter Arensberg. The
readymade refuses to satisfy the curiosity of even Duchamp
himself.

Play is present in all of Duchamp’s works, but we need
focus on only a few of the works most closely related to
toys to highlight the connections to the questions listed
above. One of his earliest three-dimensional works (it is
not dated) was a veritable toy he played with as late as at
the age of 23. It is evidence of an early and enduring
fascination for toys despite Duchamp’s attempts to avoid
nostalgia. One of his friends recalls a visit to Duchamp in

1910 when they played “‘petits chevaux,’ a game with dice

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for which Duchamp himself [had] made some of the horses and
painted the cloth, based on the steeplechase course at
Auteuil.”85 (Ephemerides, 4.9.1910) “Gambit,” the toy
horse pictured in Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, is an
unabashedly fun toy: a jockey dressed in bright red and
green is riding hard his black and white spotted race horse.
Although the horse and rider appear to be galloping full
speed, they are glued to a weighted wood base labeled in
childish lettering: GAMBIT ECURIE: MARCEL. The toy — the
bright coloring, the tension between the illusion of
movement and the static base, the sloping contour of the
jockey’s back — seems to call out for a hand to move it
forward. It seems sure to outrun the race course designed
by Duchamp.

Movement is almost always a central feature in
Duchamp’s “toys” since play, by nature, is not static. When
Duchamp decided to mount a bicycle wheel on a stool to
create one of the first readymades in 1913, he was attracted
by the idea of watching it spin. Since bicycle-riding is
both a leisurely pursuit and a practical mode of
transportation, the gesture of removing the wheel freed it
from any utilitarian purpose and reserved it for play. The
gesture creates a toy at will, just as a child turns a

bottle cork into a toy soldier or a parent transforms a rat

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into a toy. Later, of course, the “Bicycle Wheel” would
also be dubbed a work of art, after the creation of the
first unassisted and official readymade the “Bottle Rack.”
This step follows the steps taken by Baudelaire in stating
that anything can become a toy and that a toy is our
“premiere initiation a l’art” — Duchamp draws the
conclusion that therefore anything can become a work of art.
This challenge to elitist notions of art levels the playing
field, just as the two boys in Baudelaire’s prose poem
succeed in breaking through, if only for one moment, the
barriers between them.

With his series of readymades that follow the bicycle
wheel, Duchamp insisted that his choices were “never
dictated by an aesthetic delectation [but] based on a
reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a
total absence of good or bad taste.” (Ephemerides,
19.10.1961) He was wary of being subject unconsciously to
the dictates of taste in the manner that Baudelaire
describes in “Morale du joujou” where an adult’s taste in
art is affected by the types of toys to which he was exposed
as a child. Duchamp's attempts to avoid developing taste
can be seen as a refusal of maturity in favor of the
privileged fresh outlook of a child who, in Baudelaire’s

words, “voit tout en nouveauté; il est toujours ivre.”

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Baudelaire’s phrase appears in “Le Peintre de la vie
moderne” where he likened Constantin Guys to a child:
“prenez-le...pour un homme-enfant, pour un homme possédant a
chaque minute le génie de l’enfance, c’est-a-dire un génie
pour lequel aucun aspect de la vie n’est émoussé.”
(Baudelaire, 462-463)86 Duchamp's delight at watching the
bicycle wheel spin was indeed childlike and yet, as we shall
see, he also drew inspiration from the activity. Duchamp
puts into practice Baudelaire’s contention that: “Rien ne
ressemble plus a ce qu’on appelle l’inspiration, que la joie
avec laquelle l'enfant absorbe la forme et la couleur.”
(Baudelaire, 462) Ironically, as a form of inspiration, the
bicycle wheel regains the usefulness that Duchamp had
bracketed.

Duchamp found that watching the bicycle wheel was akin
to watching the flames of a fire; it was both physically
relaxing and mentally stimulating. Playing with the
“Bicycle Wheel” thus can be seen to offer a rejuvenating
break from work and inspiration for further work. By turning
the wheel, one can also dream of imaginary travels and cover
as much ground as a child using a chair for a stagecoach.
Although the imagination can often carry us away, at times
we must travel in physical space: the “Bicycle Wheel” may

spin, but it is fixed in place.. Play must therefore also

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be portable. Both Duchamp’s “Sculpture de voyages” (1918),
flexible sculpture made of rubber strips and string, and his
“Pocket Chess Set" (1926; modified in 1944) illustrate his
concern to facilitate opportunities for play. By carrying
with him such toys, Duchamp adopts the creed of the flaneur:
Have Toys, Will Travel.

While Duchamp did not follow Baudelaire’s advice to the
letter in distributing toys to the needy, he did bring his
art to the public at a reasonable price through his Boites
en Valise (1938), another travel-related work. The boxes,
resembling Barbie-doll cases for adults, housed a collection
of Duchamp’s works in miniature. Outdoing Baudelaire’s “Fée
du joujou” who allows only one toy to be taken from the toy
world she has created, Duchamp offers an entire world, full
of toys, that can be entered at will.87

An earlier “toy for adults,” the “Rotoreliefs” (1935),
is even more in the spirit of Baudelaire’s generous flaneur.
Duchamp rented a stand at a “Salon des Inventions” where he
displayed his “disques optiques,” offering them practically
at cost to the public. The rotoreliefs, in sets of six, had
different images on either side for a total of twelve and
were to be placed on a gramophone set at a certain speed. He
sold only one set — the public was less appreciative of his

offerings than Baudelaire's “enfants inconnus et pauvres”

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might have been. (Baudelaire, 204) Much like the stereoscope
“qui donne en ronde bosse une image plane,” as Baudelaire
describes it, the rotoreliefs “give an impression of depth,
the optical illusion being more intense when viewed with one
eye.”(Baudelaire, 205; Ephemerides, 8.30.35)88 Duchamp’s
first optical experiment, “Rotative Plaques Verre (Optique
de Precision)” (1920) shares features of the other “joujou
scientifique” mentioned by Baudelaire, the phénakisticope “
Both mechanisms, when viewed from a specific vantage point
create a moving image (in Baudelaire’s example a dancing
figure, and in Duchamp’s invention a moving spiral) by
placing several parts at various distances along a spinning
axis.

While the phénakisticope was usually made of paper and
turned manually, Duchamp’s “Rotative Plaques Verre” used
glass and was motorized, a dangerous combination as it
turned out. Duchamp's higher tech toy malfunctioned when
he was demonstrating it to his friend and collaborator Man
Ray. One of the glass “plaques” flew off the axis when the
motor suddenly spun out of control, almost hitting and
seriously wounding Man Ray. For Man Ray’s life and
Duchamp’s reputation alike, it was an incredibly lucky

unlucky strike. Duchamp, though shaken by the experience,

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simply started over again from scratch. Play, as he knew,
like work, has its risks.

* * *
One cannot work all of the time. Play can be a rejection of
work, but it also energizes and provides inspiration for
work. Play can be, in fact, productive. Viewed in this way,
play becomes a part of the process of making art. The
paradigm that work is good and play is bad - one should show
off hard work and hide one's idleness - is reversed. The
ideal “love what you do, do what you love” is a conflation
of work and play: work is as fun as play, play is as
‘serious,’ as important as work. All activity, even the mere
act of living, thus becomes valorized and, as we shall see,

worthy of aesthetic interest.

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c. Exhibitionism

“Etre un homme utile m’a paru toujours quelque chose de
bien hideux,” writes Baudelaire in his notes for his planned
autobiographical work Mon Coeur mis a nu with which he hoped
to rivalize Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (Baudelaire, MQMN,93—9)
In another note, he reminds himself to explain later “[c]e
qu’il y a de vil dans une fonction quelconque.” Immediately
following is the sweeping statement: “Un Dandy ne fait
rien.” (Baudelaire, MBMB,97-22) Baudelaire, of course,
exaggerates. Everyone does something. But everyone has
also dreamed, at one time or another, of doing nothing.

Duchamp shared this dream, perhaps more strongly than
most people: “I once wanted to open a home for lazy people.
It’s not so easy as you think. The problem is your inner
activity, that you cannot stop. You’d be ousted as soon as
you worked — and this inner activity is work. The nature of
man is that he could not do nothing.” (Ephemerides,
8.4.1959) Since work is inevitable, strategies other than
avoidance are needed to accommodate the distaste for work in
the utilitarian sense. One can either hide work or make
light of it.

Duchamp systematically hid his work (or, more
precisely, he hid his working since most of his works were

exhibited eventually, if not immediately.) His announced

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retirement from painting in favor of chess was not an
abandonment of art; he never actually stopped working, but
continued to produce, if slowly, works throughout his life.
His final work “Etant donné” was created in relative secrecy
and purposefully destined to be shown posthumously as if to
maintain to the end of his life the illusion that he had
given up working. Duchamp, at times, even claimed to have
hidden behind his works: “J’ai vraiment vécu [en Amérique]
sans étre géné par la popularité du tableau, me cachant
derriere, m’obnubilant. J’étais complétement écrasé par ce
‘Nu’.” (Cabanne, 79) He could not have hidden, however,
behind his ‘masterpiece' La Mariée mise a nu par ses
célibataires méme since it was made of glass. This
potential difficulty was avoided during the long period he
devoted to the work: “Au vrai sens du mot, je n’ai pas eu de
vie publique puisque je n’ai jamais exposé 1e Verre.”
(Cabanne, 20)

And yet, he did have a public life, if in a different
sense. The very maneuver of concealing his artistic
activities contributed to his fame. “J’ai fait un peu comme
Gertrude Stein. Elle était considérée, dans un certain
groupe comme un écrivain intéressant, avec des choses tres
inédites.” (Cabanne, 20-21) Duchamp, like Stein, was a

persona first, an artist second. Nevertheless, he was an

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artist, and whenever hiding the fact that he worked did not
work, he fell upon the second strategy, making light of his
working by participating, for example, in few exhibitions.
Such downplaying is the strategy of a dandy as defined by
Baudelaire in “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” through such
pronouncements as “Le dandy est blasé, ou i1 feint de
l’étre, par politique et raison de caste.”(Baudelaire, 463)
Dissimulation is second nature to a dandy, as Baudelaire,
who qualifies only as an aspiring dandy, noted in a letter
to his mother: “j’éprouve naturellement 1e besoin de cacher
presque tout ce que je pense...Appelez cela Dandysme, amour
absurde de la Dignité — comme vous voudrez.” (Baudelaire,
Correspondance,448) Duchamp, an accomplished dandy,
naturally scorned exhibitions as undignified: “Vous étes
sur la scene, vous présentez vos produits; on devient acteur
a ce moment-la. Du peintre caché dans son atelier, qui fait
son tableau, a l’exposition, il n'y a qu'un pas; vous devez
vous presenter au vernissage, on vous félicite, c’est tout a
fait cabotin!” Yet, when retrospective exhibitions were
organized toward the end of his life, he did not refuse to
participate, an act which would have been undignified in

itself:

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PC Ce cabotinage que vous avez refuse toute
votre vie, vous l’acceptez maintenant de
bonne grace.

MD On change. On accepte tout en riant quand
meme. (Cabanne, 173)

Duchamp’s response was in perfect keeping with Baudelaire’s
conception of a dandy: “Un dandy peut étre un homme blasé,
peut étre un homme souffrant; mais, dans ce dernier cas, il
sourira.” (Baudelaire, 483)

In paradoxical fashion, hiding work or making light of
work can actually serve to draw attention to work. Neither
strategy constitutes a refusal of work. Baudelaire and
Duchamp are rejecting imposed work as well as imposed
notions of work in order to redefine work according to their
own terms. For Baudelaire, “[i]l n’existe que trois étres
respectables: Le prétre, le guerrier, le poéte. Savoir,
tuer et créer. Les autres hommes sont taillables et
corvéables, faits pour l’écurie, C'est-a-dire pour exercer
ce qu’on appelle des professions.” (Baudelaire, MBMB, 97-
22) Not surprisingly, creative work is ranked highly by a
son of Romanticism, although a truer Romantic might have
ranked it first. Given Duchamp’s anti-Romantic bent, one
would think that he would shy away from a similar

aggrandizement of art. But, in 1955, Duchamp ended a

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televised interview with a strong endorsement of art: “Je
crois que l’art est la seule forme d’activité par laquelle
l'homme en tant que tel se manifeste comme véritable
individu. Par elle seule il peut dépasser le stade animal
parce que l’art est un débouché sur des régions ou ne
dominent ni le temps ni l’espace. Vivre, c'est croire;
c'est du moins ce que je crois.” (Duchamp, 185)

In these statements, both Baudelaire and Duchamp
characterize unartistic work as beneath the dignity of man,
as work fit for animals. They also emphasize the liberating
quality of art. Baudelaire sees artistic creation as an
alternative to being enslaved like a work horse. The stable
from which the poet escapes is a space of confinement where
chores (corvées) rule time; it is therefore just the type of
place Duchamp wishes to avoid. In his statement, he
successfully avoids equating art with work: art is labeled
instead an activity. (Similarly, the poet in Baudelaire’s
statement creates rather than works since poetry is not a
profession to be exercised.) Duchamp's definition of art as
an activity clearly places an emphasis on process. When
suddenly he offers up the verbs “to live” and “to believe,”
he is comparing the process of art with the process of
living and believing. He believes in art as a liberating

force; one might even term it a secular religion, a way of

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living. The implication goes even further: living is also a
form of art. Note, however, that Duchamp begins and ends
his statement with the qualification “I believe”: it is
clearly an opinion, not a dictate. He is careful not to
impose his belief since he is speaking against imposition.

Baudelaire is less scrupulous. He decrees: “Le Dandy
doit aspirer a étre sublime sans interruption; i1 doit vivre
et dormir devant un miroir.” (Baudelaire, MBMB,9l-5) The
true dandy does do nothing; nothing, that is, but take the
art of living to sublime heights. Duchamp pleads guilty to
having such a talent:

MD J’aurais voulu travailler mais il y avait en
moi un fond de paresse énorme. J’aime mieux
vivre, respirer, que travailler. Je ne
considere pas que le travail que j'ai fait
puisse avoir une importance quelconque au
point de vue social dans l’avenir. Donc, si
vous voulez, mon art serait de vivre; chaque
seconde, chaque respiration est une oeuvre
qui n’est inscrite nulle part, qui n’est ni
visuelle ni cérébrale. C'est une sorte
d’euphorie constante.”

PC C’est ce que disait Roché. Votre meilleure

oeuvre a été l’emploi de votre temps.

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MD C’est juste. Enfin, je crois que C'est juste.
(Cabanne, 134-135)

Baudelaire’s 24-hour prescription for a dandy seemed to
have been followed effortlessly by Duchamp. He accepts,
albeit with the careful attenuation once again of “At least,
I believe so,” the judgment that his greatest work is his
very schedule, how he used his time. “Mon art serait de
vivre,” he announces. In an uninterrupted flow, each second
constitutes an ongoing work of art — despite modest
disclaimers Duchamp is indeed claiming to be “sublime sans
interruption.” He did not seem to need much recourse to a
mirror, though, as Baudelaire had recommended. But, then,
Baudelaire did not intend for the dandy to use a mirror
merely as a grooming tool. Physical perfection was to be
strived for, yes, but moral perfection was equally
important. The dandy must live as if before a mirror,
constantly on alert to live up to standard, but to live up
to his own moral standards. To do so, the dandy must attain
the self-mastery of a philosophe, “un homme qui ait acquis,
par habitude, la force de se dédoubler rapidement et
d’assister comme spectateur désintéressé aux phénomenes de
son moi.” (Baudelaire, 251) The philosophe is his own

mirror.

163

We have quoted Baudelaire on the role of the poet (to
create), the dandy (to live sublimely), and the philosophe
(to know oneself). Each identity has distinct qualities,
but Baudelaire’s definitions often blur due to the
possibility that any one person may possess overlapping
identities. Constantin Guys, “1e peintre de la vie
moderne,” is a case in point. Guys, like Duchamp as we have
seen, shunned the label of ‘artist’: “il se défendait lui-
méme de ce titre avec une modestie nuancée de pudeur
aristocratique.” Baudelaire tries out various other labels:
Guys qualifies as a dandy except that he does not aspire to
the dandy’s insensibility; he would be a philosophe were it
not for his overriding love of the tangible that outweighs
the attraction of the metaphysical world. Baudelaire finally
settles on the term “moraliste pittoresque, comme La
Bruyere.” (Baudelaire, 463) Earlier in the text, however,
Baudelaire had already shown the difficulty of defining such
an identity: “Le génie de l’artiste peintre de moeurs est
un génie d’une nature mixte, c'est-a-dire ou il entre une
bonne partie d’esprit littéraire. Observateur, flaneur,
philosophe, appelez-le comme vous voudrez; mais vous serez
certainement amené, pour caractériser cet artiste, a le
gratifier d’une épithéte que vous ne sauriez appliquer au

peintre des choses éternelles, ou du moins plus durables,

164

des choses héroiques ou religieuses. Quelquefois il est
poéte; plus souvent i1 se rapproche du romancier ou du
moraliste; il est le peintre de la circonstance et de tout
ce qu’elle suggere d’éternel.” (Baudelaire, 457) The list
of possible identities for Guys becomes: poet, dandy,
‘philosophe, moraliste, artiste peintre de moeurs,
Observateur, flaneur, peintre de la circonstance. Guys
defining quality appears to be indefinableness.

These shifting identities, none of which excludes
another, are also assumed at different times to different
degrees by Baudelaire. Or rather, Baudelaire aspires to
these roles since, particularly in his Journaux intime , one
senses the effort he must expend to achieve his goals.
“Avant tout, Etre un grand homme et un Saint pour soi-méme,”
he exhorts himself. (Baudelaire, MQMB,105-42) The mirror
becomes an essential prop for Baudelaire. It is also an
object of interest. One of his proposed titles for his
collected critical writings was “Le Miroir de l’art.”90
During his two years in Brussels from 1864 to 1866, he chose
to stay at the Hetel du Grand Miroir, which turned out to be
almost his last place of residence. He refers to his
creative thought process as the “miroir de la pensée.”
(Baudelaire, 544) Wondering why he cannot conceive of a type

of beauty “ou il n’y ait du Malheur,” he asks himself: “mon

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cerveau serait-i1 un miroir ensorcelé?” (Baudelaire,
Fusées, 74-16) It is just such a mirror that he describes in
“L’Irrémédiable,” his poem from Les Fleurs du Mal, where the
sinner’s heart serves as his mirror in the darkness.91

Mirrors are less prevalent but not absent in Duchamp’s
works. In 1942 for a surrealist exhibition, he created a
work entitled “A la maniere de Delvaux.” It is a
photographic collage that includes an image of a reflection
of a woman’s bare breasts in a mirror. It is clearly not a
picture of Rrose Sélavy. But Duchamp’s alter-ego, though
not a work per se, can be seen as serving a mirror-like
function for Duchamp. She even signs a text entitled “Les
Hommes au miroir” as her own, although it was written by a
German woman friend. The text reverses the objectification
of woman by man and criticizes men’s narcissism while
calling into question the extent of their self-knowledge.
Duchamp’s earliest use of mirrors occurs in La Mariée mise a
nu par ses célibataires méme. In a note related to the
work, he states: “Argenter (comme un miroir) une partie du
fracas-éclaboussement. S’informer au point de vue technique.
(Duchamp, 118)

In the section of the glass where he actualized this
project, the bride's “Oculist Witnesses” appear. The

technique he used (after some experimentation) was to apply

166

a mercury background and then scratch away the silver to
‘draw’ the witnesses. By using a mirror in relation to the
witnesses, Duchamp underscored the reflexive nature of the
work, as did the title by revealing his name near the
beginning and the end: MARiée...CELibataires.

The silvering of the Large Glass blocks its
transparency, each scratch returns it. Silvering also
affects another attribute of glass, its reflective quality.
Mirrors, after all, are made of glass; silvering negates one
quality of glass in favor of another. Glass can either
reflect the gaze or let it pass through; it cannot do both
simultaneously. Duchamp’s covering and uncovering of the
Oculist Witness section of the glass is an exploration of
these attributes of glass.92 Exactly coinciding with
Duchamp’s work on the Oculist Witnesses was his decision to
do a series of windows. He began with Fresh Widow “ a
miniature French window, made to measure and fitted with
panes of black leather, which...[were] to be polished
everyday.” (Ephemerides, 20.10.1920) The pun French
Window/Fresh Widow (sans “n”/haine; without hate) and the
blackening of the panes suggest the shutting of windows in a
house where there has been a death and the mourning clothes
of a recent widow. By polishing the leather that covers the

glass panes, Duchamp is recreating the reflective quality of

167

glass. The viewer sees himself reflected back from the
work. Fresh Widow clearly draws upon Duchamp’s experiments
for the Large Glass (which in itself could be considered one
of Duchamp’s windows).93

Baudelaire looks at and through windows in a very
similar fashion. Here is the complete text of “Les
Fenétres” from Les Petits Poémes en prose:

Celui qui regarde du dehors a travers une
fenétre ouverte ne voit jamais autant de choses
que celui qui regarde une fenétre fermée. Il
n’est pas d’objet plus profond, plus mystérieux,
plus fécond, plus ténébreux, plus éblouissant
qu’une fenétre éclairée d’une chandelle. Ce qu’on
peut voir au soleil est toujours moins intéressant
que ce qui se passe derriére une vitre. Dans ce
trou noir ou lumineux vit la vie, réve la vie,
souffre la vie.

Par-dela des vagues de toits, j’apercois une
femme mure, ridée déja, pauvre, toujours penchée
sur quelque chose, et qui ne sort jamais. Avec
son visage, avec son vétement, avec son geste,
avec presque rien, j’ai refait l'histoire de cette
femme, ou plutét sa légende, et quequefois je me

la raconte a moi-meme en pleurant.

168

Si c’eut été un pauvre vieil homme, j’aurais
refait la sienne tout aussi aisément.

Et je me couche, fier d'avoir vécu et
souffert dans d’autres que moi-meme.

Peut-étre me direz-vous: “Es-tu sfir que cette
légende soit la vraie?” Qu’importe ce que peut
étre la réalité hors de moi, si elle m’aide a
vivre, a sentir que je suis et ce que je suis?

(Baudelaire, PPP,129)

 

A closed window is more interesting — the mystery of the
hidden attracts interest, just as hiding work can be a more
effective magnet. The emphasis on dark and light
(ténébreux/éblouissant; un trou noir ou lumineux) suggests
an interplay between hiding and disclosure. It is quite
like Duchamp’s window where the darkened panes are also
luminous because they are polished. The old woman
Baudelaire sees in the window is not named as a widow, and
yet several details recall an earlier poem in the volume
“Les Veuves” where the narrator follows widows often as poor
and wrinkled as the old woman in the window. The stories
about the widows that the narrator constructs in “Les
Veuves” are also referred to as legends.

The narrator needs very little here to decipher the

story of the old woman, “presque rien” in fact. He then

169

brags that he could do the same with an old man. Finally,
it becomes clear that what he sees is of little import; the
window is a pretext to allow him to exercise his
imagination. He claims to be living vicariously, but he is
actually seeing himself reflected in the window just like
the viewer of Fresh Widow, with the distinction that in
Duchamp’s work the viewer can see his reflection literally
whereas Baudelaire’s narrator interprets figuratively
whatever he happens to see in the window — even a slight
detail — as a reflection of himself.

In the crowded modern city, the flaneur’s voyeurism
helps him to live, to feel alive, to comprehend who he is.94
The act of living draws his gaze, offering aesthetic
distraction; in turn, the act of observing is an aesthetic
activity, an act of art. On display, to others and to
himself, modern man is the subject and object of
interpretation. He is art and artist. The heightened
sensibilities of the observer, developed through practicing
the art of observing others aesthetically, also serve him
when observing physical works of art produced by others.
The resulting reciprocality is expressed in Baudelaire
description of Parisian viewers viewing Constantin Guys
views of Parisians: “Le spectateur est ici 1e traducteur

d’une traduction toujours claire et enivrante.”

170

(Baudelaire, 470)95 Duchamp also underscores the
spectator’s active role: “[I] y a le pale de celui qui fait
une oeuvre et le péle de celui qui la regarde. Je donne a
celui qui la regarde autant d’importance qu’a celui qui la
fait.” (Cabanne, 130)

The primary function of windows is to facilitate
seeing. Whether the spectator looks in or out, windows are
there to be looked through. They draw his gaze. It is
fitting that Duchamp should have wished to do a series of
windows: “I could have made twenty windows with a different
idea in each one, the windows being called ‘my windows’ the
way you say ‘my etchings.’” (Ephemerides, 22.9.1935)96 By
multiplying the number of his windows available to the
spectator, Duchamp could rival the windows offered by the
city to the flaneur. A window frames life like wood frames
a painting, but a window creates a moving picture with the
flaneur as a moving audience.

Glass can frame not only the visible, but also the
invisible. As a gift from Paris for the Arensbergs, Duchamp
bought a “small glass ampoule” which he had “emptied of its
‘physiological’ serum (but still labelled) and resealed by
the pharmacist.” (Ephemerides, 27.12.1919) He entitled the
readymade “Air de Paris” and it was a perfect gift from

someone who preferred living and breathing to working and

171

who would later claim every breath he took to be a work of
art. It is an offering of love less to the Arensbergs than
to Paris. The very air of Paris, it seems to say, whether
polluted or pure, is worth owning and preserving. The
nostalgic work represents almost a Baudelairean celebration
of Paris, but with an ironic twist created by the use of a
scientific implement: Duchamp is suggesting that progress
will lead to the commodification of even the air we
breathe.97

“Air de Paris” is related to another work in glass by
Duchamp that offers a whiff of Baudelaire: the perfume
bottle “Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette.” This assisted
readymade “is a bottle of Rigaut perfume, ‘un air embaumé,’
upon which Rrose Sélavy has affixed her own label decorated
with one of her portraits by Man Ray.” (Ephemerides,
6.2.1930) The title contains a multiplicity of puns. “Belle
Haleine” immediately evokes poetry, love poetry devoted to
“la Belle Héléne,” whose beauty is so strong, the pun
suggests, that she breathes it. “Eau de Vbilette” plays on
“Eau de Toilette” and “Eau de Violette.” A “voilette” is
also a veiled hat, not unlike the one Rrose (a flower
herself) wears in the picture. A widow might wear a
“voilette,” but most certainly would wear a “voile” in her

suffering; thus, “voilette/violette” is an unhappy flower,

172

or even, dare we say, a Fleur du Mal(heur). This air of
mourning is enhanced by Rigaut’s slogan “un air embaumé.”
The suggestion is that the perfume bottle reeks of death:
glass may contain the perfume, but as Baudelaire knew “[i]l
est de forts parfums pour qui toute matiére/ Est poreuse.

On dirait qu’ils pénétrent le verre.” (Baudelaire, FDM,

 

XLVIII) An air of Baudelaire certainly seems to penetrate
“Belle Haleine”; he did say, after all, that he would come
back as “Le Flacon” to haunt us.

At his death, Baudelaire left behind enough unfinished
works to haunt generations of critics. Perhaps the most
cryptic of all is the one that purported to be most
transparent: Mon Coeur mis a nu. To out-confess Rousseau
and his confessions, Baudelaire decided to follow Edgar
Allan Poe’s advice: “Tell the absolute truth, lay bare your
heart, and you’ll write a book that earns immortal
renown.”98 Despite his title (borrowed from Poe) and the
fact that his notes for the work contain shocking statements
such as “Belle conspiration a organiser pour l’extermination
de la Race Juive,” Baudelaire’s style is neither
confessional nor straightforward, but rather epigrammatic.
(Baudelaire, BBBB,120-82) Revelation and concealment are at
work simultaneously; the reader even suspects that the

confessions are occasionally tongue-in-cheek.

173

A late self-portrait by Duchamp “With my Tongue in my
Cheek” (1959) illustrates the difficulty of self-revelation.
It is a plaster cast of the side of Duchamp face with his
cheek bulged out that covers a drawing of his profile. The
opacity of the thick plaster represents Duchamp and yet
hides him, in the same way that a tongue-in-cheek statement
reveals and hides one’s true thoughts. Just as self-
knowledge has its limits, so too does self-revelation. Like
a darkened window that both blocks and attracts the gaze,
like glass that is alternately reflective and transparent,
there is an interplay of opacity and transparency that
allows us glimpses into the hearts of Baudelaire and
Duchamp. Their works are telling, but all too often we
cannot tell what they are telling, tales or truth. Insight
is possible, omniscience is denied.

Duchamp’s earlier and most elaborate self-portrait, Lg
Mariée mise a nu par ses Célibataires meme, is a highly
mysterious, deliberately mystifying work. It promises to
explain the laying bare of Mar-Cel, but the multiplication
of pseudo-scientific explanations are daunting. Like Mpp
Coeur mis a nu, the self-portrait is unfinished. But then,
if the spectator is indeed half the equation, all works of
art are unfinished, at least until completed by the

spectator. The gesture of baring one’s heart is one of

174

trust. One must trust in the other's ability and
willingness to receive it. Since there is no guarantee that
the other is able or willing, however, the gesture is often
accompanied by a certain defensiveness.

Perhaps the final portrait of Duchamp is a photograph.
He sits in a garden looking away from the camera with an
inscrutable expression on his face. He holds, exactly in
the place of his heart, his work Coeurs Volants (Fluttering
Hearts). The large collage of superposed hearts resembles a
target, a rather easy target, and Duchamp appears as
confident in our skill to hit it as William Tell’s son was
confident in his father’s skill to hit the apple. Not
surprisingly, though, since the hearts flutter, he is
presenting us a moving target. Baudelaire and Duchamp may
have laid bare their hearts, but the bull’s-eye is hard to
hit. Were the task easy, however, we might not hearken

still to the beating of their tell-tale art.

175

CONCLUSION

In 1968, just past the centennial of the death of
Baudelaire, Duchamp passed away. Or did he? His epitaph
teases us: “D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui
meurent.”99 A flurry of recent full-length studies devoted
to Duchamp attest to his very real presence in current
thought.100 His ability to spark controversy even does not
seem to fade. A March 20, 1999 article in the New York
Iimpp “Taking Duchamp to Another Level” describes the
reactions of Duchamp scholars to the efforts of Rhonda
Roland Shearer, an artist who, with the help of ten research
assistants, a host of computers and significant funding, is
launching a campaign to prove that Duchamp’s readymades were
an elaborate hoax: she claims that rather than simply
finding them, he commissioned them or fabricated them
himself. While the reactions to her often outrageous claims
range from bemused to scoffing, few if any scholars dismiss
out of hand the possibility that Duchamp, so often a
jokester, might have created a fake readymade. They are too
well aware of the propensity in Duchamp and his works for
allowing unending interpretation: look for something and you
will find it in Duchamp.

We have seen Baudelaire in Duchamp. Through the prism

of Baudelaire, Rrose Selavy in Man Ray’s photographs seems

176

to “darde son regard sous son chapeau, comme un portrait
dans son cadre,” and even to hint of “un parfum de
fourrure” so affecting to the poet who admitted: “Je
confondais l’odeur de la fourrure avec l’odeur de la femme”
(Baudelaire, 496; Baudelaire, Fusées) As we have seen, an
air of Baudelaire seems to permeate much of Duchamp’s
thought and work. Their affinities are particularly evident
in their conceptualization of the creative act. Often,
however, Duchamp appears to realize more fully the ironic
stance Baudelaire strived to achieve. The source of this
difference, one of many areas we have not explored here, may
lie less in the historical time periods they lived in than
in their attitude toward religion. Duchamp's atheism
contrasts greatly with the passion for religion expressed in
Baudelaire’s “Journaux intimes.” Ultimately, though, as
Bernard Howells has asserted recently in his collection of
essays Baudelaire: Individualism, Dandyism and the
Philosophy of History, Baudelaire did not embrace “any kind
of totalizing belief - in God, Nature, History or
consciousness.” (Howells, 149) Nor did Duchamp.

Other promising subjects of study insufficiently
examined in our comparison of Baudelaire and Duchamp include
explorations of gender and gender ambivalence, the influence

of Baudelaire on Duchamp as filtered through Mallarmé,

177

Laforgue and other writers listed by Duchamp as belonging in
his ‘ideal library,’ and the interplay between the visual
and the verbal (and all the senses). The latter topic is
perhaps the richest: Duchamp’s verbal wit often puts into
practice Baudelaire’s formula “Raconter pompeusement des
choses comiques” (Baudelaire, Fusées, 68-4); Baudelaire
shares Duchamp’s respect for language as almost a conscious
force, such as when he notes the similarity between the
names of the painters Leys and Lies: “Presque le meme
peintre, presque 1e méme nom. Cette lettre déplacée
ressemble a un de ces jeux intelligents du hasard, qui a
quelquefois l’esprit pointu comme un homme.” (Baudelaire,
311); Duchamp is intrigued by correspondences among the
senses, using all of them in his works (e.g., smell in an
installation for a Surrealist Exhibit).

Just as sensory boundaries are blurred for Baudelaire
and Duchamp, so too did they fail to distinguish work from
play or life from art. Their theory and practice (yet
another distinction they blurred) offer possibilities for
renewal in an era where there is a growing awareness, even
in corporate “culture,” of the need to foster creativity in

the activities of daily life.

178

NOTES

Charles Baudelaire, Curiosités esthétigues; L’Art

romantigue et autres oeuvres critigues, ed. Henri

Lemaitre (Paris: Garnier, 1962) 219. Further page
references to this work (abbreviated as “Baudelaire”)
will be given in the text.

Marcel Duchamp, Duchamp du signe: Ecrits, ed. Michel
Sanouillet (Paris: Flammarion, 1994) 238. Further page
references to this work (abbreviated as “Duchamp”) will
be given in the text.

In his recent biography of Duchamp, Calvin Tomkins
underscores that the figure of the dandy applies only
to certain aspects of Duchamp: “Duchamp has been
described as a dandy...and to a certain extent he was
one——for example, in his dedication to the ‘beauty of
indifference.’ The analogy explains very little about
his complex character, however, and it certainly does
not account for the relaxed and uncompetitive openness
that made people feel instantly drawn to him--
qualities the poet André Breton would later sum up as
‘a truly supreme ease.’” (Tomkins 164)

Seigel offers the following links: “The title of the
Large Glass may echo that of Baudelaire’s intimate

journal “Mon Coeur mis a nu" (usually translated as My

179

Heart Laid Bare). Interest in the poet was reviving in
the decades before the Great War, and Duchamp’s brother
Raymond sculpted a portrait of him in 1911 (it can now
be seen in the Philadelphia Museum). Another
participant in the Baudelaire revival was Jules
Laforgue, whose titles Duchamp attached to several of
his drawings, and who wrote a well-known encomium that
Duchamp may have read.” (Seigel, 99)

Duchamp’s section on Duchamp-Villon states: “His
Baudelaire and Seated Woman are two fine examples of
his simplification which at the time the work was done,
about 1908, even exceeded Rodin’s synthesis of the
walking Man, and are still in advance of much of the
sculpture of today.”

Pierre Cabanne, Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp, (Paris:
Belfond, 1967) 51-52. Further page references to this
work (abbreviated as “Cabanne”) will be given in the
text.

In his introduction to Baudelaire: A Collection of
Critical Essays, Peyre states: “Another great poet,
Jules Laforgue, dead at twenty-seven, left a few
posthumous notes on Baudelaire, first published in
1891, evincing an insight into his genius unparalleled

then, and for years to come, in professional critics.”

180

(Peyre, 1) With regard to these notes, Jerrold Siegel

describes how affinities between Baudelaire and Duchamp
may be due to Duchamp having read them: “When Jules
Laforgue celebrated Baudelaire at the turn of the
century he emphasized the older writer’s exemplary
discovery of the poetic possibilities hidden in
everyday objects and experiences, many of them long
kept at bay by the border guards of literary and
artistic life because they were said to inhabit the
realms of evil and immortality. Baudelaire
acknowledged that horrors lurked in these depths, but
he also found some of his most exotic flowers there,
objects and situations where it was sometimes possible
to experience what he called in one prose poem ‘an
infinity of pleasure in a single moment.’ Duchamp took
Baudelaire several steps further, creating an art whose
language and materials receded into deeper recesses of
privacy, finding joy in puns and tricks of language
that turned objects into solvents of their own
stability, and euphoria through inscribing the breath
of his spirit in the ‘nowhere’ that allowed the
imagination to attach itself to objects on terms that

were wholly its own.” (Seigel, 183)

181

10.

11.

12.

To Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp states that he made “une
dizaine” of illustrations based on Laforgue. (Cabanne,
48)

To Cabanne, Duchamp adds that Laforgue’s Moralités
légendaires, in which the tale “Hamlet” appears,
represented “une porte de sortie du symbolisme.”

In his contribution to the collection Marcel Duchamp
which he co-edited, Kynaston McShine, like many others
as we have seen, sees Duchamp as a dandy, “true to
Baudelairean definition.” He then states that Duchamp
“had great admiration for Baudelaire” without supplying
any source for his claim. Like many critics, McShine
links Baudelaire and Duchamp instinctively without
relying on hard evidence. (D’Harnoncourt and McShine,
208)

Cited by William C. Agee in his “Notes” in Raymond
Duchamp-Villon (New York: Walker and Co., 1967). The
account by Rodin was published in 1892; reprinted in

Albert Elsen, Rodin, New York, 1963, 125.

 

Baudelaire was, of course, more than a model for one
work - he was a model for Duchamp-Villon’s artistic
practice as a whole as William C. Agee explains: “Amid
the emergent social ideals at Puteaux, Duchamp-Villon

became intensely conscious of the need for an art

182

13.

14.

15.

16.

appropriate to the twentieth century. His sense of the
continuity of history focused on Baudelaire, his
spiritual ancestor, who had proclaimed the advent of a
modern era a half century earlier...Baudelaire had
defined the special qualities of the age and called for
an art that would interpret the age to itself on its
own unique terms. It is fitting that Duchamp-Villon’s
first mature work linked him with the poet whose call
he was to answer.” (Agee, 56-57)

People don’t say “béte comme un musicien" because they
think that painting is naive representation whereas the
composition of music involves processing and
organization.

With any luck, the viewer also buys, allowing the
painter to continue seeing and painting. We shall
examine the addition of economic factors into the
equation in Chapter 3.

In an article “Courbet and Baudelaire,” Alan Bowness
surmises that they met in 1847, basing himself on
Charles Toubin’s Souvenirs d’un septuagénaire in which
the memorialist recounts his experiences with the two
during the February days of 1848. (Bowness, 189-191)
See Jack Lindsay, Gustave Courbet: His Life and Art, p.

49.

183

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

The list may simply have been dictated by Courbet.
Following the annotation of one work is an unattributed
poem in blank verse.

Bowness offers the following speculation regarding this
statement: “In 1855, then, the friendship of Courbet
and Baudelaire comes to an end, and so far as we know
the only later contact between the two men was a brief
meeting at Honfleur in 1859. Perhaps this accounts for
the more conciliatory reference to Courbet which
appeared in Le Boulevard for 14th September 1862.”
(Bowness, 198)

Bowness believes it may be a response to Champfleury’s
article “Du Réalisme, Lettre a Mme Sand” published in
1855. (Bowness, 198)

Later in the notes when he turns to a “discussion
sérieuse" of realism, Baudelaire states: “Tout bon
poéte fut toujours réaliste” suggesting that he views
the term as redundant rather than as describing a new
school of art.

La Belgigue déshabillée was chosen as the title over
Pauvre Belgigue in the most recent edition of the work
(1986). Both were listed as possible titles by

Baudelaire.

184

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

As we shall see, Duchamp wishes to undo this hierarchy
by focusing on a possible etymology of “art” as being
derived from the Sanscrit for “to do/to make.”
Duchamp admires a similar lack of formalism in
Apollinaire’s art criticism: “J'aime quand meme
beaucoup ce qu’il a fait parce que ca n’a pas le cété
formel de certains critiques.” (Cabanne, 49)

That is to say, artists are purported to have an
“esprit primaire” or primitive mentality, a strong
condemnation.

The consensus seems to be that Duchamp was never a
writer, yet was always writing. In addition to his
strategy of working with verbal and non-verbal media,
he avoided developing “la patte” of a professional
writer through the use of puns (further doubling the
double entendres by combining English and French).
Note that here as in Delacroix’s formula the image is
one of falling - here an idea out of the blue, in
Delacroix a suicide falling from a window. Both
suggest the importance of speed in capturing the idea
or the sight.

The charge of having “1e style coulant” is among

Baudelaire’s many criticisms of George Sand.

185

28.

29.

30.

31.

By equating mediocre artists with sloppy dressers,
Baudelaire affiliates the true artist to the dandy.
Baudelaire's question “est-ce bien 1e mot?” with regard
to “audace” suggests that merit should not be awarded
the etcher for the work of his hand alone. To second
guess Baudelaire, for “daring” one might substitute
“laziness, ” “self-indulgence” or, in the case of more
successfully executed etchings, even “luck” (if one
thinks of how Baudelaire sees his prose poems as a form
of “accident”).

This statement is attenuated in the final version of'
the study (“Peintres et aqua-fortistes”): “Non
seulement l’eau-forte sert a glorifier l’individualité
de l’artiste, mais il serait méme difficile [as opposed
to impossible in the initial version] a l’artiste de ne
pas décrire sur la planche, sa personnalité plus
intime.”(Baudelaire, 415)

The final version varies slightly: Baudelaire changes
“peintre” to “artiste” (perhaps a subtle attempt both
to emphasize his admiration of Yongkind by using the
term with a more positive connotation for Baudelaire
and to give greater credit to Yongkind’s conscious
control of the medium since, as we have seen, “artiste”

is linked more closely with idea and intention while

186

32.

33.

34.

35.

“peintre” is closer to the physical act of painting,
i.e. the verb “peindre.”) (Baudelaire, 414)

An additional attraction of the eau-forte for
Baudelaire is precisely its inaccessibility for the
uninitiated: “Mais je ne voudrais pas affirmer
toutefois que l’eau-forte soit destinée prochainement a
une totale popularité. Pensons-y: un peu
d’impopularité, c’est consecration. C’est vraiment un
genre trop personnel, et conséquemment trop
aristocratique, pour enchanter d’autres persones que
celles qui sont naturellement artistes, trés amoureuses
des lors de toute personnalité vive.” (Baudelaire, 415)
Baudelaire seems to ascribe a mystical agency to these
modes of expression through personification and a
repeated use of action verbs.

Baudelaire names the painter Troyon as “le plus bel
exemple” of this ailment.

“La classe des singes” to which the mediocre painter
belongs remains a category throughout Baudelaire’s art
and literary criticism. Baudelaire’s use of “singe”
combines Duchamp’s concepts of “béte comme un peintre”
and “la patte”: animality, inferior intelligence,
dexterity as in the expression “étre agile comme un

singe”, and imagination replaced by imitation as in

187

36.

37.

38.

“singer.” Not surprisingly, in 1915 Duchamp also
labeled as monkeys some of his contemporaries whom he
considered mediocre cubists: “Now we have a lot of
little cubists, monkeys following the motion of the
leader without comprehension of their significance.
Their favourite word is discipline. It means
everything to them and nothing.” (Hill, Passim,80)

A charge of opportunism could also be made here since
Duchamp admits to having traded on his grandfather’s
talent by offering copies of the etchings to the
members of the exam committee: “Ils ont été enchantés.
Ils m’ont donne 49 sur 50. J’ai donc ete dispense de
deux ans de service at verse dans le peloton des
eleves-officiers.” (Cabanne, 26-27)

Duchamp often emphasized how slowly he worked: “Chaque
chose que je faisais me demandait une precision et une
durée assez longues, aussi je trouvais que cela valait
la peine de la conserver. Ma facon de travailler était
lente; pour consequent j’y attachais une importance
comparable a celle qu’on accorde a ce qu’on fait avec
beaucoup de soin. (Cabanne, 147)

This preoccupation leads to “la peur de n’aller pas
assez vite....cette terrible peur qui possede tous les

grands artistes et qui leur fait desirer si ardemment

188

39.

40.

41.

de s’approprier tous les moyens d’expression, pour que
jamais les ordres de l’esprit ne soient alteres par les
hesitations de la main; pour que finalement
l’execution, l’execution idéale, devienne aussi
inconsciente, aussi coulante que l’est la digestion
pour le cerveau de l’homme bien portant qui a dine.”
(Baudelaire, 471)

Duchamp admits that he enjoys simply working with his
hands, even when not connected to craft, as he states
to Cabanne: “Je suis tout a fait manuel. Je repare
souvent des objets. Je ne suis pas du tout effraye
comme les gens qui ne savent pas reparer une prise
d’electricite.” He explains further: “Cela m’amuse de
faire des choses a la main. Je m’en mefie, parce qu’il
y a le danger de la “patte” qui revient, mais comme je
n’applique pas cela a faire des oeuvres d’art ca peut
aller.”

The act which Baudelaire had mystified.

Whether a blank canvas qualifies as a work of art is
the question that motivates the plot of App,Jasmine
Reza’s 1994 play that has had successful runs in Paris
and New York. (The climax occurs when the artist’s

friend “ruins” the work by marking it.) Reza, of

189

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

course, lags behind (as do her public) the debate
opened by Malevich’s “Black Square.”

See Yves Bonnefoy’s attempt at a reconciliation
“Baudelaire contre Rubens”in Le Nuage rouge (Paris:
Mercure de France, 1977) 9-80.

As Delacroix’s many major commissions still extant in
Paris attest.

As we shall see in the next section, “Le Grand Verre”
cracked in transit, and Duchamp reacted by accepting
the damage as an aleatory part of its composition.

Le Grand verre also incorporates lead in less evident
form as a component in producing glass.

Drawing on Marc Eigeldinger’s Le Platonisme de
Baudelaire (112—113), an editor's note to Mon Coeur mis
a_pp makes the clarification that Baudelaire’s idealism
is not purely Platonic: “L’idealisme baudelairien n’est
d’ailleurs pas, en tout point, un pur
platonisme...[P]our Platon, “l’Idee et la Forme sont
identiques”, pour Baudelaire l’idee et la forme sont
deux etres en un: et “la forme implique une division,
un morcellement partiel de l’idée.” (Baudelaire, MQMB,
616)

Duchamp might fall in the same category of artists as

Samuel Cramer in La Fanfarlo: “Ils sont d'ailleurs si

190

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

heureux dans chacune de leurs metamorphoses, qu’ils
n’en veulent pas le moins du monde a tous ces beaux
genies de les avoir devances dans l’estime de la
postérité. - Naive et respectable impudence!”
(Baudelaire, BB, 19)

Cited in Pontus Hulton, ed., Marcel: Duchamp: Work and
Blip (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).

Baudelaire was heavily influenced by Poe’s insistence
on conscious choice in the creation of art as outlined
in such essays as “The Philosophy of Composition”
(1846) and “The Poetic Principle” (1850).

In addition, Duchamp stipulated that the work was not
to be photographed. The stringency of the restrictions
is offset by an ironic tone - the “totalitarian”
aspects of the work are intentional.

Not having meaning is, of course, in itself a form of
having meaning.

The humor in it, of course, is that one might also
break one’s arm shoveling snow, that is to say, in the
very attempt to avoid breaking one’s arm. The title
thus signifies the impossibility of insuring oneself
completely against chance. A fanciful extension (!) of

this interpretation would be to see the shovel as an

191

53.

54.

55.

extended arm with the handle as a fist, a “bras
d'honneur,” offering a defiant gesture toward

fate.

Among the possibilities for wordplay included in
“retard en verre”: “retard” pronounced backwards (“a
l'envers”) becomes “rater,” a reference perhaps to the
thwarting of fate; “retard” might also be seen as “en

II

vers, a reference to its poetic nature.
For the prose poem freedom from rhyme and the rhythms
of meter represents freedom in timing: “Quel est celui
de nous qui n’a pas, dans ses jours d’ambition, reve 1e
miracle d’une prose poétique, musicale, sans rythme et
sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtee pour s’adapter
aux mouvements lyriques de l’ame, aux ondulations de la

reverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience?”

(Baudelaire, PPP, 31-32)

 

The order of the poems is not, in fact, entirely
random: it offers glimpses of an artistic consciousness
at work. For example, the twelfth poem “Les Foules” is
followed by “Les Veuves” which ends with the
description of how a particularly striking widow stands

out from the crowd that surrounds her.

192

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

Baudelaire’s interest in chance encounters is one
instance of his influence on surrealism, e.g., on
Breton’s ngjg.

The statement is made in the context of Duchamp’s
explanation of why he allows his works to be housed in
museums, institutions he often criticizes: “J’ai
accepte [d’avoir mes oeuvres dans les musees] parce
qu’il y a des choses pratiques dans la vie qu’on ne
peut pas empecher. Je n’allais pas refuser. J’aurais
pu les déchirer ou les casser, cela aurait ete aussi un
geste idiot.” (Cabanne, 132) Duchamp understood that
the destruction of one work always potentially creates
another or makes art out of non-art. The “Readymade

II

malheureux, a geometry textbook hung outside in the
rain, provides a classic example.

The strength of the desire to leave is reflected by
abandoning French for English in the title.

Cp. Proust. (Note: This later formulation is quoted at
the beginning of this section.)

It is a worry similar to the one expressed above by
Baudelaire with regard to the perpetual cycle of
inventing and abjuring systems of thought. Duchamp was

not fond of systems either. His dislike is one reason

he did not embrace surrealism wholeheartedly, as the

193

61.

62.

63.

64.

following statement to Cabanne attests: “Rigaud n’avait
pas le rigorisme de Breton, cette espece de desir de
tout monter en formules et en theories. C’était
beaucoup plus gai chez lui que chez les autres qui,
dans leur entreprise de destruction, étaient tres
systematiques. (Cabanne, 113)

Ironically, constant renewal is itself a form of
repetition.

The title of an experimental film Duchamp made in
collaboration with Man Ray “Anemic Cinema” expresses
disdain for the medium, suggesting its weakness is
inherent since anemic is an anagram for cinema. The
film intentionally makes little use of the potential of
cinematic technology. Man Ray and Duchamp simply filmed
disks glued to records turned by a gramophone.

Duchamp is referring to his statements from page 130 of
the interviews that I have just quoted above.

In La Vie Illustree de Marcel Duchamp, a children's
picture book published by the Centre National d'Art et
de Culture Georges Pompidou in 1977, Jennifer Gough-
Cooper and Jacques Caumont note that the source of the
chocolate grinder was Duchamp’s rediscovery on New
Year's Day 1913 of a chocolate store in Rouen that he

had visited as a child. The accompanying illustration

194

65.

66.

shows Duchamp and a child both staring into the shop
window at the grinder. Duchamp’s meditative expression
contrasts with the child’s look of pure fascination.
It is important to make the distinction here that
Baudelaire was not espousing bourgeois ‘family values,’
so to speak, but rather the regular hours and work
schedule of a bourgeois. In Mon Coeur mis a nu, he
proposes to trace the progression of his “Grande
Maladie de l'horreur du Domicile.” (Baudelaire, MBBB,
103-36) Likewise, Duchamp conscientiously avoided the
trap of “[l]a famille qui vous force a abandonner vos
idees reelles pour les troquer contre des choses
acceptees par elle, la société et tout le bataclan!”
(Cabanne, 143) He also noted: “il fallait choisir entre
faire de la peinture ou autre chose. Etre homme de
l’art, ou se marier, avoir des enfants, une maison de
campagne...” (Cabanne, 55)
Examples include:
p. 79-20: Un peu de travail, repete trois cent
soixante-cinq fois, donne trois cent soixante-cinq
fois un peu d’argent, c'est-a-dire une somme
énorme. En meme temps 1a gloire est faite.

De meme, une foule de petites joissances

composent 1e bonheur.

195

p. 80-21: Le travail, n’est-ce pas le sel qui
conserve les ames momies?
p. 85-86: Plus on veut, mieux on veut.
Plus on travaille, mieux on travaille, et plus on
veut travailler. Plus on produit, plus on devient
fecond.
p. 85-86-88: A chaque minute nous sommes ecrases
par l’idée et la sensation du temps. Et il n’y a
que deux moyens pour échapper a ce cauchemar, —
pour l’oublier: le Plaisir et le Travail. Le
Plaisir nous use. Le Travail nous fortifie.
Choisissons.

Plus nous nous servons d’un de ces moyens,
plus l’autre nous inspire de repugnance.
On ne peut oublier le temps qu’en se servant.
Tout ne se fait que peu a peu.
p. 114—65: Etudier dans tous ses modes, dans les
oeuvres de la nature et dans les oeuvres de
l’homme, l’universelle et éternelle loi de la
gradation, du peu a peu, du petit a petit, avec
les forces progressivement croissantes, comme les

interets composes, en matiere de finances.

196

67.

68.

11 en est de meme dans l’habileté artistique
et littéraire, il en est de meme dans le tresor
variable de la volonté.
p. 96-18: 11 faut travailler, sinon par gout, au
moins par désespoir, puisque, tout bien verifie,
travailler est moins ennuyeux que s’amuser.
p. 102-33: Dandysme.
Qu’est-ce que l’homme supérieur?
Ce n'est pas le spécialiste.
C’est l’homme de Loisir et d’Education générale.
Etre riche et aimer 1e travail.
[& “L’Horloge” - in BBB, etc..]
Mocking capitalist concerns with supply and demand,
Duchamp even considers the need to: “Limiter le nombre
de readymades par annee (?)” (Duchamp, 50)
Jouve also accuses Baudelaire of bad faith with regard
to his business associates who suffered from his
irresponsible behavior: “Les affaires d’edition portent
le meme caractere equivoque. Ce ne sont que démarches
malaisees, promesses, manuscrits non livres, épreuves
non corrigees, avances sollicitees non suivies de
travail, traites impayees. ‘11 y a des retards,
toujours des retards.’ A la suite du detournement d’un

billet de Poulet-Malassis, B est oblige de se livrer

197

73.

MD Si. Une chose amusante ..... mais ce truc-la que je
lui [a Roche] avais donne il l’a revendu un prix
fou a ma femme. Car c’est elle qui l’a rachete,
ce n’est pas moi!” (Cabanne, 140)

One senses a hint of envy in Cabanne’s other writings

on Duchamp: "On the other hand, Duchamp's work was a

constant challenge to the public and to dealers. At

the time of his New York fame, he stubbornly refused to
collaborate with any gallery. Thanks to his beautiful
rich women friends, to Arensberg, and to his trade in
other people's work, he had no great financial problems
and no need to burden himself with obligations.

Besides, he was lazy. Before the Second World War, the

American market was completely different from the

French; afterwards, needled by Villon's fame which he

both envied and disapproved of, Duchamp ended up by

accepting the museum retrospectives, the fame and money
he had always refused. But, like his older brother, he

did not change his life style and he never worked

unless he wanted to. Though he adapted to some

obligations, he had no illusions and forestalled
criticism by pretending to make fun of himself. After

taking part in a debate at the University of Houston in

199

74.

75.

76.

1957, he commented on his acceptance: 'I played my
role of artist buffoon.'

When any of his shortcomings were criticized,
he answered, 'I did it for fun.‘ He once told me:
'I didn't take myself seriously. I set out to
make money. That has never diminished anyone,
whereas seriousness...'" (Cabanne, The Brothers
Duchamp, 220)
In his “Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs,” Baudelaire
defines lost time as “la chose du monde la moins
precieuse.” (Baudelaire, 540)
Duchamp came to realize that he had no natural
inclination for gambling and was therefore
constitutionally incapable of becoming a professional
gambler, as he explains in a letter to his friend
Jacques Doucet who was helping fund his project: “I
spend afternoons in the casino without the slightest
temptation.” (Ephemerides, 31.3.1924) Of course, by
admitting to temptation, Duchamp would be contradicting
his avowed indifference to money.
Later, once he felt he had perfected his system, he
boasted of controlling chance to reassure Jacques
Doucet who was helping him finance his project: “Don’t

be too skeptical...because I believe in this case to

200

77.

78.

79.

have eliminated the word chance. I want to have forced
roulette to become a game of chess.” (Ephemerides,
16.1.1925) In this project, chance oscillates between
being Duchamp’s collaborator and his opponent just as
it does in his other works as we have seen in the
previous chapter.
Duchamp viewed chess, too, as an art form. “Une partie
d’echecs est une chose visuelle et plastique, et si ce
n’est pas geometrique dans le sens statique du mot,
c’est une mécanique puisque cela bouge; c’est un
dessin, c’est une réalité mécanique...dans le sens, par
exemple, d’un Calder.” (Cabanne, 24)
In his Journaux intimes, Baudelaire writes: “A chaque
lettre de creancier, écrivez cinquante lignes sur un
sujet extra-terrestre et vous serez sauve.”
(Baudelaire, Fusées,72-13) Baudelaire's self-
exhortation views artistic work as a method of
instant payment.
In a letter to Katherine Dreier, Duchamp gives into
harsh, direct criticism:
“The more I live among artists, the more I
am convinced they are fakes from the minute they

get to be successful in the smallest way.

201

80.

This means also that all the dogs around the
artist are crooks — if you see the combination of
fakes and crooks how have you been able to keep
some kind of faith (and in what?). Don’t name a

few exceptions to justify a milder opinion about

the whole ‘art game’. In the end, a painting is
declared good only if it is worth ‘so much’. It
may even be accepted by the ‘holy' museums — so

much for posterity.

Please come back to the ground and if you
like some paintings, some painters, look at their
work, but don’t try to change a crook into an
honest man, or a fake into a fakir.”

As if he regretted speaking so earnestly and revealing
the depth of his distaste, Duchamp backtracks by
ascribing friendship as having motivated his zeal:
“This will give you an indication of the kind of mood
I am in — stirring up the old ideas of disgust - But
it is only on account of you. I have lost so much
interest (all) in the question that I don’t suffer
from it — You still do.” (Ephemerides, 5.11.1928)
Baudelaire nicknamed his mother’s home in Honfleur “la

maison Joujou.” (Pichois, Album Baudelaire,191)

202

81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

86.

The owner of the house is remembered by Baudelaire as
“la Fee du joujou” rather than simply as an adult.
(Baudelaire, 202)

Baudelaire is also able to satisfy indirectly his
fantasy of knowing all the other little boys who chose
a toy from the toy room.

In his famous introduction to the Salon de 1846, “Aux
Bourgeois,” Baudelaire declared art to be a corrective:
“L’art est un bien infiniment precieux, un breuvage
rafraichissant et rechauffant, qui retablit l’estomac
et l’esprit dans l’equilibre naturel de l’ideal.”
(Baudelaire, 98)

Baudelaire expresses a very personal dislike for such
people: “Quand je pense a une certaine classe de
personnes ultra-raisonnables et anti-poétiques par qui
j’ai tant souffert, je sens toujours la haine pincer et
agiter mes nerfs.” (Baudelaire, 206)

The work prefigures Duchamp’s later investigations in
gambling.

We have quoted previously, Baudelaire’s definition of
genius in his study of Guys: “le genie n’est que

l’enfance retrouvée a volonté.” (Baudelaire, 462)

203

87.

88.

89.

90.

91.

92.

93.

For an in-depth study of the “Boites en Valise,” see
Dalia Judovitz, Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

Le Petit Robert offers a more exact description of the
“stereoscope”: “Instrument d’optique ou l’observation
des deux images simultanees prises par deux objectifs
paralleles (dont la distance est voisine de celle des
yeux) donne la sensation de la profondeur et du relief
a des images a deux dimensions.”

Le Petit Robert definition gives a simpler description:
“Appareil forme de deux disques, qui donne l’illusion
du mouvement par la persistance des images
rétiniennes.”

It is the title of an English translation.
“Tete-a-tete sombre et limpide/Qu’un coeur devenu son
miroir!” (Baudelaire, BBB LXXXIV)

As we have seen in the sections “Breaking Glass” and
“Playtime,” two other attributes affected Duchamp’s
works: glass breaks and glass cuts.

Other windows include a series of shop window displays
Duchamp collaborated on in New York with others such as
Breton and “La Bagarre d’Austerlitz.” Among the many
aspects of the latter is the drawing of attention to

the transparency and fragility of glass. The window

204

94.

95.

panes are “rubbed with flourishes of whitewash.”
(Ephemerides, 22.9.1935) As in newly installed windows,
the whitewash serves to remind one that the glass is
there: otherwise its transparency might make it appear
invisible and an unsuspecting victim might break it and
cut himself.

Among Baudelaire’s poetic evocations of the ‘splendors’
of the modern crowded city are the following two
examples: “Le spectacle de la vie elegante et des
milliers d’existences flottantes qui circulent dans les
souterrains d’une grande ville...nous prouvent que nous
n’avons qu’a ouvrir les yeux pour connaitre notre
heroisme.”; “un genre que j'appellerais volontiers le
paysage des grandes villes, c’est-a-dire la collection
des grandeurs et des beautes qui resultent d’une
puissante agglomeration d’hommes et de monuments, 1e
charme profond et compliqué d’une capitale agee et
vieillie dans les gloires et les tribulations de la
vie.” (Baudelaire, 195, 334)

Baudelaire offers a similar point of view in a review
of Louis Menard’s Promethee delivre. Employing a mock
dialogue, as if he were speaking to a friend or even
himself, Baudelaire writes: “la poesie d’un tableau

doit etre faite par le spectateur. — Comme la

205

96.

97.

98.

99.

100.

philosophie d’un poeme par le lecteur. — Vous y etes,
c’est cela meme.” (Baudelaire, 811) Here, though, he
is stressing that the intentional rivalry within one
genre of another genre (e.g., philosophy in poetry,
poetry in painting) is doomed to failure.

Duchamp seems to be alluding to art as a form of
seduction: to look through a window is to be a peeping
Tom in a certain sense; there is also the cliche of the
artist using his works as a sexual lure: “Why don’t you
come up and see my etchings?”

A note from the Green Box supports this interpretation:
“Etablir une societe dont l’individu ait a payer l’air
qu’il respire (compteurs d’air); emprisonnement et air
rarefie, en cas de non paiement, simple asphyxie au
besoin (couper l’air)." (Duchamp, 47)

A reformulation in Baudelaire’s own words appears in

Fusées: “La franchise absolue, moyen d’originalite.”

(Baudelaire, Fusées, 68-4)‘
Once a punster, always a punster: “Diers say...”

With more to come such as Francis Naumann’s forthcoming

Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Ar; in an Age of

Mechanical Reproduction.

206

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