Through his use of machines in the production of art, and his portrayal of machines within his works, Marcel Duchamp sought a perfect objectivity and an escape from judgment, aesthetics, and emotion. Machines, in their pure indifference, appealed to Duchamp as manifestations of pure objectivity.
Chocolate and Bachelors
An early example of Duchamp's attraction to machine form is Chocolate Grinder. Duchamp painted this image in 1913, again in a modified form in 1914, and later incorporated it into his überwork, The Large Glass. In their obedient, endless trek around the axis of the machine, the rollers of the chocolate grinder resemble the bachelors trapped within the glass, endlessly circling to end up back where they were before, in useless repetition. This repetitious circling appealed to Duchamp. “Always there has been a necessity for circles in my life, for...rotation. It is a kind of narcissism, this self-sufficiency, a kind of onanism. The machine goes around and by some miraculous process that I have always found fascinating, produces chocolate.”
Chocolate Grinder was one of a series of works which expressed Duchamp’s fascination with rotation, along with Coffee Mill, Bicycle Wheel, Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics), Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics), and the Rotoreliefs. In conversation with Arturo Schwarz, Duchamp, referring to his readymade work Bicycle Wheel, said that “the wheel must have had a great influence on my mind, because I used it almost all the time from then on, not only there, but also in the Chocolate Grinder and later on in the Rotoreliefs.”
Rotoreliefs – Optics, Art, and Repetition
The Rotoreliefs were a series of cardboard discs with geometric designs on them. They were intended to be “played” on a phonograph turntable, creating three-dimensional effects as the viewer watched them from above with one eye.
The Rotoreliefs are characteristic of much of Duchamp’s work in their synthesis of playfulness and serious inquiry. At one level they were an amusing novelty, at another an inquiry into the nature of perception. Duchamp had an abiding interest in dimensional theory, and had read the writings of theorists such as Henri Poincaré. He was particularly interested in the “shadowing” of the fourth dimension into the third (a concept which was central to the development of The Large Glass), and the Rotoreliefs were no doubt related to this interest in their reversed transformation of two dimensions into three. This curious juxtaposing of childlike humor and curiosity with fairly abstruse theoretical content was a reflection not only of the breadth of his mental ability, but also, perhaps, of his lack of concern for the reactions of an audience to his work.
Uselessness (click here for another article on Duchamp and Uselessness)
When confronted with a work of art which has no referent, be it abstract, absurdist, or something beyond label, the mind recoils from this foreign experience. Existing within a world of cause and effect, we want to find a connection, an explanation, a handle with which to connect this sensory input with what is already known. In other words, existing in a world of usefulness, we want to use art for something else.
Duchamp, along with other artists of the time who were, with greater or lesser accuracy, labelled Dadaists or Surrealists, set out to intentionally undermine this dependence on rational progression, to knock the mind out of its cognitive rut, or to stop it in its tracks. What we are confronted with is an end result, a thing with no further purpose, no effect. This resting detachment is an appealing alternative to the bellicose world envisioned by such contemporaries of Duchamp as F.T. Marinetti and the Futurists.
In Duchamp’s vision, the excess productive forces of society are not used in war as hailed by Marinetti and denounced by Walter Benjamin; they are instead digested and transformed by unaffiliated individuals, benevolent technicians, for the manifestation of idiosyncratic states of being, rather than for the fascistic oppression of others. Each of us can be a harmless breather, engaged in harmless pursuit of our idiosyncratic visions, without concern for the impressions or obedience of others.
The human mind has the capacity to acknowledge this and rest in peace. Most instead choose to run away screaming, back to their problems and their wheel of misfortune, devoting each moment to controlling the next, running to their graves in pursuit of the useful. Marcel Duchamp remains behind, happy, useless to everyone, and genuinely free. If he is spinning in his grave, he is no doubt finding it amusing.
Sources
- Naumann, Francis M. Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.
- Tomkins, Calvin. Duchamp. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1996.
- Tomkins, Calvin. The World of Marcel Duchamp. New York: Time Life Books, 1966.
