Marcel Duchamp (World of Art)

As advertised

Fabulous

Really interesting read, the book is very well written and informative.

Fantastic purchase from a fantastic seller

Yes

The strength of this book is also its weakness - namely, its scope and ambition. It does the basic staff on Duchamp very well (biographical detail, the survey of his work etc) - despite a few factual errors which may irritate Duchampian scholars. For example Duchamp left Paris for Munich on the 18th June 1912 not July as it says here. And in a discussion of Picabia's work 'ANE'-the writers get confused between aeroplane propellors and those of ships (the title is the clue). Also, be aware that in the diagram of the Large Glass reproduced here, the labelling for the 'malic moulds'is also in error in that the identities of the 'Policeman' and the 'Stationmaster' have been transposed. There are other errors as well which should have been picked up at the editing stage...However these gripes apart, this book is recommended as a good introduction to the student new to Duchamp - whilst also attempting to bring some more unusual and less acknowledged interpretations to Duchamp's life and work -through comparisons with, for example, 'symbolist' artists like Johannes Thorn Prikker and Jan Toorop and the Pre-Raphaelite, Edward Burne Jones. There is also an attempt here to foreground the potent mix of Duchamp's background in Catholicism and his immersion in the vicissitudes of eroticism. Less successful is a focus on Duchamp's alleged attraction towards Rosicrucianism - which tends to gloss the fact of the artist's profound Cartesian scepticism.