Monday, December 18, 2023

Venice - Peggy Guggenheim Collection - Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy


"A duplicate or a mechanical
repetition has the same value as the original." 
Marcel Duchamp

Peggy Guggenheim Collection  
Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents - Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy, - until March 18 - curated by Paul B. Franklin, a Paris-based art historian and an internationally acclaimed expert on the life and work of Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). This is the very first exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection devoted exclusively to Duchamp, among the most influential and innovative artists of the twentieth century and a longtime friend and adviser to the American patron Peggy Guggenheim.
Marcel Duchamp - de ou par - Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Selavy 
Boite-en-valiseBox in a Valise - 1935-41


Photograph courtesy Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Peggy Guggenheim Collection - Venice - Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation - New York

The show features some sixty artworks dating from 1911 to 1968. These include iconic objects from the permanent collection of the Peggy Guggenheim Collectionsuch as Nude (Sketch), Sad Young Man in a Train (1911) and the Box in a Valise (1935–41), as well as from other Italian and American institutions. The exhibition also presents several lesser-known artworks in private hands, including the artist’s estate. Furthermore, fully half of the pieces on display come from the distinguished Venetian collection of the late Attilio Codognato, who first took an interest in Duchamp’s work in the early 1970s.
Marcel Duchamp - Dedication to Peggy Guggenheim 
in her copy of the from or by
Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Selavy - Box in a valise - 1935-41  
cat.6 - deluxe edition - no. i?XX - January 1941


“I needed much help and advice, which I got from an old friend, Marcel Duchamp . . . I don’t know what I would have done without him . . . I have to thank him for my introduction to the modern art world.”
Peggy Guggenheim
 Confessions of an Art Addict - 1960

Peggy Guggenheim met Marcel Duchamp in Paris around 1923. Beginning in the fall of 1937, the artist was one of her most trusted mentors and advisors, as she set out to launch the art gallery Guggenheim Jeune, which opened in London on January 24, 1938, and soon after to build her own collection of modern art. In her memoirs - Confessions of an Art Addict - 1960 - Guggenheim recalled: “I needed much help and advice, which I got from an old friend, Marcel Duchamp . . . I don’t know what I would have done without him . . . I have to thank him for my introduction to the modern art world.” Guggenheim was also one of Duchamp’s early patrons, acquiring the first copy of the deluxe edition of Box in a Valise in 1941 - above. 
Marcel Duchamp



Marcel Duchamp - A Propos de jeune soeur
Apropos of Little Sister - front and back - October 1911


Duchamp, despite having executed some of the most recognizable canvases of the twentieth century, such as  Le Roi et la reine entourés de nus vites - The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes - 1912 - above - abandoned easel painting in 1918 at the age of thirty-one. For the next fifty years, he engaged in multiple creative acts, virtually none of which was considered high art at the time. In addition to those endeavors, he repeatedly reproduced his own work in different media and on various scales. These meticulously executed copies enabled him to disseminate his otherwise modest output without generating anything indisputably new. As a result, he also deftly circumvented the voracious art market.
Marcel Duhamp - Le roi et la reine entoure de nus vites
The King and Queen Sourrounded by Swift Nudes - May 1912




La Mariee mise a nu par ses celibataires meme
The Bride Bare by Her Bachelors, Even 
 Green Box - commonly known - 1934


Man Ray - born Emmanuel Radnitzky - Marcel Duchamp in his studio holding
Glissiere contentant un moulin a eau - en metaux voisons
Glicer Containing a Water Mill - in Neighboring Metals 1913-1915 - December 1923


Marcel Duchamp
Cover design for Transition: a Quarterly Review - no. 26 - Winter 1937 Periodical
Peigne - Comb - 1964 replica of 1916 original


On a cotton dish towel screen-printed with a kitschy reproduction of the Mona Lisa, Duchamp, added a mustache and a goatee.  In the lower  right half, he collaged a miniature paper painter's palette and brush, on which he inscribed l'envers de la pienture, the wrong side of the painting. When furthermore turned over the cotton towel - a surrogate canvas - viewed on the wrong side - the Mona Lisa would appear backwards or a' l'envers. These two Mona Lisa, one besmirched by Duchamp and the other the wrong way around - both signify - l'envers de la pienture - because neither is a faithful copy of the original.
Marcel Duchamp - L'envers de la pienture - ca. 1955
screen-printed dish towel with ink and paper additions


Marcel Duchamp - Trebuchet 
 Trap - replica of lost 1917 original - 1964


Paul B. Franklin
curator


Marcel Duchamp - Variations on Optical Disks - 1938


Marcel Duchamp Couverture-Cigarettes 
Front and back cover design for the deluxe edition of
La Septieme face du de: poemes-decoupages - printed May 25 - 1936



“As for distinguishing the real from the fake, 
the imitation from the copy, 
those are totally idiotic technical questions.”
 Marcel Duchamp
 1967 

In reproducing his work in different media, on various scales, and in limited editions, Duchamp illustrated that certain duplicates and the originals from which they were replicated offered comparable forms of aesthetic pleasure. In so doing, Duchamp also redefined what constitutes a work of art and, by extension, the identity of the artist. Throughout his oeuvre, he continually called into question the traditional hierarchy between original and copy.  For Duchamp, the ideas embodied in a work of art were of equal significance as the physical object itself. The importance that he accorded to aesthetic concepts inspired him to reproduce his own work repeatedly and with meticulous exactitude, beginning with the - Boîte de 1914 - Box of 1914 - 1913–14/15 - a series of photographic facsimiles of handwritten notes, and continuing into the 1960s, with replicas of his historic readymades. 
Marcel Duchamp - de ou par - Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Selavy 
Boite-en-valise - Box in a Valise - 
conceived - 1935-41 - series F - assembled 1966


Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy offers a rare opportunity to examine a significant selection of the artist’s works in relation to one another, an exercise, as Duchamp frequently argued, essential to comprehending his aesthetic project. In so doing, not only can one discern the intricate visual, thematic, and conceptual connections that unify them as an oeuvre, but also one can grasp the extent to which these whimsical, often-hybrid “items” troubled and sometimes totally escaped standard artistic classifications in use at the time of their conception. 
Marcel Duchamp - Apolinere Enameled
printer's proof - replica of 1916-17 original - 1965


Paul B. Franklin and Karole Vail













 













 

Monday, December 04, 2023

Ca Giustinan - Archivio Storico della Biennale di Venezia - Un Diavolo Amico. Luca Massimo Barbero - Exhibition


 Headquarters - La Biennale di Venezia
Ca' Giustinian
Un Diavolo Amico. Luca Massimo Barbero - Exhibition

On the Canal Grande in the headquarters of La Biennale di Venezia - Ca Giustinian - on show is the archive of critic, historian and curator of modern and contemporary art - Luca Massimo Barbero -  the exhibition entitled - Luca Massimo Barbero. Un Diavolo Amico will become part of the ever growing Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee della Biennale di Venezia. Barbero’s archive stands out as a living archive that is constantly expanding; it will be enriched with everything that its owner will produce in the future and that he himself will continue to use. It will also be a propositive archive that will inspire initiatives for the Biennale Archives themselves.


"To define Luca Massimo Barbero’s choice, I use the word ‘gesture’ in its broadest semantic meaning (movement, the expression of a feeling, an action motivated by profound reasons) because it clearly defeats the concept of an archive to which something is left for the sole purpose of conservation. In this case, something is left behind to increase its breathing capacity and grow within a context that can enhance it, making it available to the widest possible public”.
Roberto Cicutto
 President of La Biennale di Venezia

Luca Massimo Barbero, Debora Rossi and Roberto Cicutto


The exhibition, introduced by a text of Nicolas Ballario  journalist and expert on contemporary art applied to media - presents a first tranche of materials from Luca Massimo Barbero’s archive, which will be exhibited on a rotating basis in the coming months. It is a sort of ‘coring’ that reveals the many aspects of his personality and methods of study and curatorship. Drawings, photographs, notes from his sketchbooks, storyboards, catalogues, objects, all bear witness to his forty-year curatorial practice, which distinguishes his professional career at an international level.

Debora Rossi, Nicholas Ballario, Roberto Cicutto and Luca Massimo Barbero


Sala Portego
The walls of the Portego at Ca’ Giustinian host a series of historic photographs from Cameraphoto that depict events at La Biennale di Venezia from 1948 to 1981: a collection of photographs that summarise the fundamentals of Barbero’s training and bear witness to his bond with the Venetian institution through his ample photo library.

Roy Lichtenstein - 1965 - Robert Rauschenberg -1975 -  Jasper Johns - 1962
Robert Rauschenberg -1974 - Robert Rauschenberg -1975 - 
Interior - U.S. ex-consulate Venice -1964


A sailor in front of a painting by Kenneth Noland
XXXII Biennale di Venezia -1964


Luca De Michelis and Cristiana Costanzo


Roberto Cicutto, Manuela Luca Dazio, Luca Massimo Barbero and 
Emanuela Bassetti


Luca Cipolletti and David Tremlett



Sala Portego
 Russian Pavilion - La Biennale di Venezia - 1960  
Romolo Bazzoni, Rodolfo Pallucchini and Giovanni Ponti - 1948
A model in front of paintings by Giuseppe Capogrossi - 1962 
Visitors - XXVI Biennale di Venezia - 1952


Sala Portego
Pablo Picasso - 1947/1948 -  Rodolfo Pallucchini and Pablo Picasso  
Palma Bucarelli - sculpture by Alberto Viani - XXIV La Biennale di Venezia - 1948
Henri Matisse - 1948 - Henry Moore - 1948 - 
Henry Moore - XXIV La Biennale di Venezia - 1948


“I consider archives a cradle and I owe a great deal of my roots to La Biennale di Venezia, which I believe is a vital construction site for contemporary art. Ever since I was a student it has been a unique place that has given many of us the opportunity to study and learn, as I like to say, “travelling without moving”. I am very pleased with this opportunity because it allows me to give back and share my 
imageryfrom cinema to art and photography, which has taken shape inside that same archive. At this historic moment when memory is being shortened, it has become vital to give La Biennale material that is anchored in the present and make documents available to scholars so they can be consulted in their original version”.
Luca Massimo Barbero


Maria Luisa Frisa and Mario Lupano


Manuela Luca Dazio


Mattia Berto


Luca Massimo Barbero and Karole Vail


Sala Mostre
The two rooms at the far ends  the ends of the Portego display Luca Massimo Barbero's curatorial method and practice, in the almost obsessive attention he paid to the slightest detail in his exhibitions and publications, which shares the “originality” which has led him to be considered one of the most authoritative figures in art history today. The Sala Mostre presents several past exhibitions, from the one dedicated to Peter Greenaway at the Fortuny Museum in 1993, to a mosaic of images and materials relative to the installations of works by artists such as Lucio Fontana, Carla Accardi, Anthony Gormley, Shirin Neshat, Tomas Saraceno and Arcangelo Sassolino, organized from the 1990s to the present at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, at the Macro of Rome, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and at the Kunsthaus in Zurich.


Sala Mostre


Sala Mostre


Manfredi Bellati, Fabrizio Plessi
and Manlio Brusatin


Fabio Pacifico, Cristiana Costanzo and Elisabetta Barisoni


Pamela Berry and Maria Grazia Rosin


 “All these materials will resound through their vicinity to the present, in a place that is open to all, in contact with young people who can study and become acquainted with them and who knows, from students they might become scholars one day.”
Luca Massimo Barbero

Sala Bimbi
The room that has always been known as the Sala Bimbi - kid's room -  presents a world that is known to very few, it depicts a man critics have defined “the art historian who hunts images”: a selection of sketches and drawings, texts and lectures from his work as a teacher at the Scuola Holden in Turin; a previously unknown Barbero, a photographer for the national Greco-Roman wrestling team; portraits from a decade-long photography project entitled Candidi Come Colombe Astuti Come SerpentiWhat emerges is an intimate relationship with photography and images, an activity he has practised since he was a teenager and has refined over the years into a method that become indispensable even to his work as an art historian. “All these materials – said Barbero – will resound through their vicinity to the present, in a place that is open to all, in contact with young people who can study and become acquainted with them and who knows, from students they might become scholars one day.”
Luca Massimo Barbero - photographs - 2006


Sala Bimbi
Luca Massimo Barbero -  Nothing Special - photographs - 2006


Sala Bimbi


Sala Bimbi
Luca Massimo Barbero 
Candido Come Colombe Astuti Come Serpenti - 1994-2003


Ca' Giustinian - Sala Portego
Un Diavolo Amico. Luca Massimo Barbero - Exhibition