Marcel Duchamp by Octavio Paz
Critics who loved Duchamp’s ‘Large Glass’ laughed and scoffed when they saw ‘Given’ unveiled after his death in 1969. The ‘Large Glass’ was esoteric and encoded while ‘Given’ was like a carny freak show equipped with a peephole, a naked female body and fake edenic…
Duchamp, love and death, even by Juan Antonio Ramirez
I have lost track of how many books I have read on Marcel Duchamp but it is approaching double digits. To say that I am obsessed with him is an understatement. He has changed my life by providing a channel, a groove, a way of…
The Art of Mesoamerica by Mary Ellen Miller
This volume is part of a series of art from around the world and through history. This one focuses particularly on the Mayan period with some Aztec art thrown in at the end. They are a few things that attract me right now to this…
Marcel Duchamp, The Afternoon Interviews by Calvin Tomkins
This slight volume takes less than an hour to read but my Duchamp obsession knows no bounds so I snatched it up greedily. The interviewer Calvin Tomkins wrote the definitive biography on Duchamp and it is definitely worth reading. There are obvious gems here but…
Marcel Duchamp and the Art of Life by Jacquelynn Baas
Recently an art critic for the Washington Post wrote glowingly of Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending’ that he painted in 1912. However, this critic then said it was the last thing Duchamp painted and implied that this served as the end of his career as an artist…
Bob Thompson, This House is Mine, Diane Tuite editor
On an unusually cloudy Los Angeles day I saw this exhibition of Bob Thompson’s work at the Hammer museum. I had no idea who he was but his large, colorful, magistral canvases provided all the sunlight I needed that day. The paintings are arrestingly original…
Hopper by Mark Strand
This book could serve as meditation prompts because the focus of both the paintings poet Mark Strand chooses and his essays is to, ‘locate the viewer in a virtual space.’ He isn’t interested in the social and cultural aspect of Hopper’s work but in how…
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher De Hamel
As a physical object, this is a book to relish and step into as if it were well manicured hot house. Bound in a creamy, white vinyl like substance it feels great in my hands and it contains gorgeous photos of pages from the dozen…
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin
This short essay packs a punch because Benjamin isolates the essence of both the uniqueness of a work of art and also the particular characteristic that technology brings to reproduction. For example, a photo of a painting may convey more detail than what the human…
Black Mountain College Dossiers, Ray Johnson
It feels pointless to categorize Ray Johnson as an artist. This small, quiet, intimate portrait of him makes that clear. His life was his art and his output was simply the way he breathed his art. There are a few moments that make it his…
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