Looking Through Duchamp's Door

by Belting, Hans

• ISBN13: 9783865606051
• ISBN10: 3865606059
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-02-28
• Publisher: Walther Konig

Summary

In this new book by Hans Belting, three monographic essays are united by one common problem the need for perspective after the end of perspective in modern art. Hans Belting not only opens up new ways of looking at the works of Marcel Duchamp, Hiroshi Sugimoto and JeffWall, but also deals with the concept of perspective in their work. The door that Marcel Duchamp installed in Philadelphia is a metaphor for a brilliant strategy that redirects the worn-out view of perspective back to ones self. Hiroshi Sugimoto and JeffWall, two protagonists of photography in contemporary art, both looked through this door as they became artists and have both referenced Duchamp time and again. Beltings analysis and surprising discoveries also open up a new way of looking at Duchamp a lifelong experiment, in which art, in the name of perspective, is freely negotiated with the viewer. It was a bout of seasickness on a trip to Buenos Aires that gave Duchamp the impulse for his highly original reflection on horizon, perspective and gravity. Hans Beltings very knowledgeable and coherent reasoning makes for a highly captivating book, embellished with 65 illustrations to help lead the reader through the pictorial art of perspective.

Author Biography

Hans Belting is an historian of Medieval and early modern European art, as well as contemporary art and theory.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Gaze in the Mirror of Art	p. 7
Marcel Duchamp: Glass and Keyhole	p. 17
The Work on Perspective
The Large Glass and Étant Donnés
The Seasick Duchamp
The Small Glass from Buenos Aires
The Installation on the Balcony
The Fourth Dimension
"Nominalism" in the Arts and Sciences
The "Unhappy Ready-Made"
"Mona Lisa" and "Rrose Selavy"
The Rotating "Glass" as Optical Illusion
The Bride in the Store Window
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time's Mirror	p. 77
An Early Migrant Artist
Photography as Conceptual Art
Light Pictures and Film Lighting
Time Exposed
Cyclical Time by the Sea
"Time's Arrow"
The Thousand Temple Figures
Portraits of Wax Figures
The Return to Duchamp
Concepts as Models
Jeff Wall: The Staging of the Gaze	p. 137
Conceptual Art in Images
Duchamp's Keyhole and Perspective
"Destruction" on a Stage
Manet's Work-Crisis
The Camera in the Mirror
The Double Self-Portrait
Movie Audience
The Invisible Man
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