e. dughi performance/video

tenfold

2010-03-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

two pieces from the series {i} .... [you] were featured in a group show at the Catherine Person Gallery, entitled Tenfold, that ran from july 1st to august 7th. the show was a collection of small works, primarily sculptures.

lead, video still

need, video still

need, installation detail

press

2010-03-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

images and descriptions of my series {i} .... [you] appeared in several reviews and discussions of the Cornish 2010 BFA show.

the Stranger's Jen Graves listed my "sparkling scrolling-text porn with interchangeable "I's and "You"s" on her list of the highlights.

the blogger Joey Veltkamp writes, "It was so crowded last night that I probably would have missed the video gem by E. Dughi if Sharon hadn't excitedly told me I had to see it. {i} .... [you] is a text-based exchange between the artist and her partner. This piece was presented in two ways; I first watched it in a darkened room, almost as if we were watching it in a seedy adult theater from the 70s. I preferred the second presentation of three small monitors, each under 10 inches. This forced you to step closer and created a type of intimacy I haven't felt in a while."

Sharon Arnold's review of the show speaks more to the show as a whole and the conditions of the building, but it is a thoughtful and very valid assessment. she also has some great images of the show.

artist's statement

2010-03-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

this artist's statement appeared the Cornish 2010 bfa show catalogue along with my project, {i} .... [you]

{i} am addicted to the internet because of the kinds of connections it enables- deep, intense friendships and romances, where words communicate what physical contact cannot. {i} believe that identity is flexible and that emotional experience is real, even if the experience is virtual. {i} am a product of the tension between these two forces, of intimate honesty and shifting identity.

[my partner] and {i} understand each other through text-based role-play, where {we} write stories about fictional characters, often taken from pop culture. {i} want to uncover the pieces of {ourselves} that {we} reveal even while writing fiction as we demonstrate new ways for {us} to experience the oldest emotions.

2010 video experiments: {i} .... [you]

2010-03-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

this piece, lead, has been shown at the 2010 Cornish College of the Arts BFA Show and in the show Tenfold at the Catherine Person Gallery.

it is shown on a 4"x6.5" monitor.

this piece, bait, was shown only at the 2010 Cornish College of the Arts BFA Show. it is also shown on a 4"x6.5" monitor.

2010-03-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

2009-07-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

2009 performance experiments: surrogate

2009-07-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

surrogate is a performance piece that i developed based on the ideas of self-knowledge and loneliness. i had been working a lot with embroidered and sewn muslin, and had also been experimenting a lot with self-portraiture in various forms. i felt that the combination of the medium I was engaging with and the concepts that I had been working with was inevitable. the idea started as the sculptural concept, to make a life-size copy of my body out of muslin, and i wasn't sure where the project would lead. as i started to complete the surrogate, i realized that i felt comforted by it, i felt less alone. eventually this became a performance piece, about my living with the doll, sleeping with it in my bed, carrying it to school with me, taking it to a restaurant.

more photos of surrogate are here.

2009 video experiments: people know who I am

2009-07-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

people know who i am is a short documentary film chronicling a road trip from seattle to vancouver taken by three members of the livejournal community gaeta_squee, a community dedicated to the battlestar galactica character lt. felix gaeta, and alessandro juliani, the actor that portrays him. the documentary currently contains personal information about the figures involved, so it cannot be posted to the internet.

2009 fiction: blue fire

2009-07-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

Blue fire that catches his eye, no, that’s not fire. Standards rippling in the wind, the edges carved in trails and wisps, in forked tongues. A young woman breaks away from the procession with a gazelle’s leap, and she twirls and bends, windswept and leaf-like, edges frayed. In the main square, the procession halts, and a standard slams against the hard street giving way to another, loosing the floodgates of claps and slaps, the jangles of bell-sewn hems and pack straps. The dancer circles the pack, the blue of her scant clothing and autumn hair streaking behind her, the gold patterns scrawled on her stomach glinting.

Its hard for him to tell at first whether this is a documentary or a fantasy movie he’s not watching; the town could be in Tibet or in Middle Earth. Huh. Its funny when the lines cross like that, when reality and fantasy are only a matter of, oh, he’s seen this one before. It’s a fantasy movie and the dancer is some kind of priestess, she’s really the leader and the guys with the standards are her mind-slaves. Either way, the music is good enough to just let it run. He’ll turn down the volume once the battle scenes start, but while he’s just going through his routine, it’s easy enough tune in and out. First things first.

Coffee’s done. Olin must have set it up before he left for work. There’s a note taped over the machine that he doesn’t bother to read as he grabs the carafe, pouring into a mug that he’s just snatched from the cabinet. Oh, he liked that one. It’s the one the guys at the labs got him for his birthday, clear with gradients on the side like a measuring beaker. Then he rummages for cereal. There’s a moment of crisis where he doesn’t see any, but then he realizes he’s looking in the wrong cabinet and feels victorious as he spots gold- Cheerios.

He carries his quarry back to the couch, where the movie is progressing and his laptop’s warmed up. The hero, some straight-laced swordsman is arguing with his friends about following the dancer’s procession; he’s clearly missed a few things because the music’s changed from the tribal warmth to something much more orchestral and it doesn’t hold him in the same way. He’ll start watching when they stop talking so much. The coffee is nice and warm in his hand and he uses the other one to man the touchpad.

He goes about his day as usual, but out of the corner of his eye, he keeps seeing blue fire.

2009 fiction: Dungeons and Dragons short story

2009-07-20T10:51:00.001-07:00

He reached behind himself to switch the song on his ipod from battle music to a waltz, and cleared the battle map.

“Will someone dirty trog-cloth this?” he asked as he sorted through the clinking glass beads behind his dungeon-master’s screen.

“Sure,” said Travis, for once, who reached over everyone. Quickly the grimy docks became a ballroom, the tense of dank, underwater combat melting into chivalry and music. Grand stairways led up the sides of the room to a balcony overlooking the dance floor, and a dazzling array of foreigners arranged themselves on the ground in an array of colored beads representing their places.

“Place yourselves. Oh, the white one is Lady Moonfire.”

“I want to go talk to her!” said Elizabeth, who floated her little paper marker from the doorway to the white bead. Sky more generally set her token down in the appropriate place, flanking Elizabeth. They both described the elaborate gowns their Eladrin characters were wearing, Elizabeth’s in a pale blue gown with silver trim, her black hair in an updo and Sky’s in a bold blue and gold dress suit, her swords highly polished. The boys were less interested in their character’s appearance, but both described themselves in their dress uniforms.

“Could I even be there?” I asked, as I was playing a notorious criminal, not a soldier like the others.

“Sure. I mean, why not?” he said, and I slid my marker into the room to declare that I was lurking, listening to a conversation unfolding before me between an animated halfling pirate and a secretive Najaren (some kind of snake person, I was informed).

Travis, the dwarf paladin of Kellemvor, conversed with the bartender about the quality and origin of the ale while Max, the Genasi warlord, kept an eye out for his arch-rival, Corporal Petrius. Sky and Elizabeth made smalltalk with Lady Moonfire and her Eladrin guests, who, as it turned out, hailed from the Feywilds.

The waltz came to a halt as trumpeters filed into the room, two at a time, playing a theme the adventurous knew only too well- Corporal Petrius had arrived. Max groaned as Lady Moonfire pretended not to notice his entrance.

The Corporal made for the bar, and the dancing resumed. Wanting to hear more conversation, as the dancers were mainly shadowy Netherese or hissing Najaren, I took hold of Corporal Max, and led him around the room, drow’s agility lending to my skill.

We’d barely begun, however, when the smirking Corporal peered over Max’s shoulder and sneered, “Do you mind if I cut in?” I almost did, for all the times he’d called me a criminal (though I was indeed).

“Do you let him?” asked the dungeonmaster.

“Sure,” I shrugged and allowed the Corporal to embrace me, intending to milk him for information. While the soldiers had to maintain an alliance with him, at least on the surface, I had no such motivations. It didn’t take long, however, for Lady Moonfire to abandon her guests to speak with Elizabeth and Sky, and to take Max’s invitation to dance. As they moved onto the dance floor, Corporal Petrius signaled to his musicians, and the steady waltz picked up into a much more aggressive, rural sort of music.

“Better keep up,” he advised, before practically dragging me into a test of endurance and acrobatics that could hardly be called dancing. We were well matched partners, but Max was every part his equal, and while the other dancers cleared off the floor to circle around us, he and Lady Moonfire kept up admirably.

At the peak of the song, the Corporal cast me aside and drew his sword, brandishing it at Max. Lady Moonfire stumbled back as well, and we both knew better than to involve ourselves.

“What do you say, Max? For old time’s sake?” challenged the Corporal.

“Fine. Three strikes,” agreed Max, who drew his sword in response.

Captain Arrowleaf of the Night Watch stepped forward to officiate. Petrius and Max paced to the opposite ends of the circle from each other, and at a signal from the orchestra charged inwards, swords clashing. Petrius dodged away and feinted in, but Max spun out of the way and slashed back at him.

“One, Max.”

Petrius ignored his wound and continued on, skirting and dodging until he swiped in with a leg to trip Max, and scored a point as he regained his footing. Next, Max punched the ground, his elemental scar burning gold for a second as Petrius toppled and he easily scored his second point. Petrius growled and forced him back, scoring a quick point and bringing the duelists to even.

“And roll again.”

“19.”

“Oh! Nice. Point, Max. You win.”

The crowd cheered and the orchestra resumed their initial waltz.

2009-07-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

2009 fiction: autorotic

2009-07-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

“32:10,” Michael called out as he tugged off his helmet. “Think that’s a record?”

“For that car, it sure is,” said Aaron. “You were pushing, what, 190?”

“Yeah, most of the time. Slowed down a little on the turns, but picked it up on the straights to make up for it.” He set the helmet on top of the car and arched back for a long stretch, his arms snapping up over his head. Aaron couldn’t help but notice the way it pulled his teeshirt up his well-toned stomach, or the way Michael didn’t bother to correct it. Everything looked exaggerated in the hard spotlights that blasted the track at night.

“No, that’s- that’s great, Michael. I think we should run a full test next week, not just half, for endurance.” Aaron sat in the driver’s seat to check the odometer, and suddenly had a much better view of Michael’s torso as his driver stripped off the sweaty teeshirt and wadded it up.

“Mmm, that’s better. I got all the laps, right?”

“Yeah, you did. You’re great. She give you any trouble?”

“Nope. Whatever you did the last time you had her in the shop worked out the kinks.” Michael slid into the passenger’s side, still shirtless, his helmet on his lap. “So, we’re done here?”

“Yeah, I guess so. You want a ride home?” He was doing fairly well at not staring, but their eyes met in the rearview mirror. Michael’s sharp eyes were small for his angular face, and they searched his for a moment.

“Sure. That’d be nice.” Michael frowned briefly and then reached into the back seat to rummage for his jacket, providing a nice view of his side, his hips peeking out of his jeans. Aaron did up his own seatbelt as a distraction, and then waited as Michael slid his arms into the garment, neglecting to zip it up, and then remembered his seatbelt as well.

Aaron navigated the car out of the track space, down through one of the service ramps and by the gate. He waved casually at the young tech who had let him in earlier, and pulled out onto the street.

“So how’s home life?” Michael asked, casually.

“Oh, you know. Same as always. Finn’s growing up so fast. He’s starting to ask so many questions.”

“Cute kid. When are you gonna bring him around to the tracks?”

“I dunno. Nikki doesn’t like me racing around him.”

“What about Nikki? How’s she?”

“God, Nikki. I don’t know where to start. I told you she went back to work, mornings, but she doesn’t seem to be feeling any better. Your classes going okay?” Aaron tried to change the subject, merging onto the highway.

“I guess. It just makes me feel old. Everyone else is like, eighteen, nineteen-“

“And you’re, what, 25?”

“More like 29.”

“Woah. You sure don’t look it.”

“Yeah, I know. Its just hard to make friends with kids. You still fighting with her?”

“Yeah,” Aaron admitted, letting Michael fall quiet after that. He didn’t really want to get into it again. After a few minutes, Michael switched on the radio and surfed the channels, unsatisfied by anything for more than a minute at a time until they pulled up in front of his apartment building.

“So, you wanna come up for a drink or something?” Michael tried to keep the question casual, though he already knew the answer.

“I can’t, I’m sorry. I have to get home. Nikki-” Aaron knew he gave the same excuse every week.

“Its not like Nikki cares if you’re home or not,” Michael tempted with a smirk, but when Aaron didn’t respond, he sighed, the expression fading. “Look, why are you so afraid of just hanging out? Afraid I’m gonna put the moves on you or something? You don’t have to worry. I won’t do anything you can’t tell your wife about.”

“Michael, I- that’s not-“

“Nevermind, then. I’ll see you later.” Michael left his helmet and his teeshirt on the seat as he shut the car door behind himself and stalked into his apartment.

He just drove himself home, put out and frustrated. It was a terrible idea to tell Michael that the real reason he wasn’t getting a drink with him had more to do with his own actions than with Michael’s. He’d certainly pictured it enough times, what it would be like to pull Michael onto his lap, to kiss him and not let his mouth go. He was sure it was just his dick talking, but why did he feel so bad about it?

When he got in he thought he could hear the muffled sounds of his housemates, Liz and Karl, going at it. He suspected they liked to wait until it was late and the kids were asleep. They’d lived here so long he wasn’t even bothered by the couple having sex anymore. He got himself a beer and turned on the television, setting it to mute before it had a chance to make any sound.

Automatically he flipped the channel to racing, though the last thing that did was distract him from Michael. For a second, he considered waking up Nikki and trying to initiate lovemaking, but the last time he’d tried that she’d called him a pervert and chucked a pillow at him. He knew he shouldn’t, but he found himself thinking about the box he kept on a shelf in the garage, the one he’d labeled ‘Racing Videos’ in the hopes that no one would pry. When the camera showed a close-up of the winning driver with the same flushed joy he saw in Michael after a victory, he went to retrieve it. He’d told Nikki he’d thrown this out when they’d had Finn.

He didn’t spread the contents of the box on the table like he had some nights after they’d been fighting. Tonight it wasn’t defiance that got him here, but need. Bi Accident 2. That was a good one for now. A straight guy getting lured into gay action during a threesome. He put that in the player and went to work on himself, not drawing anything out, just getting much-needed release.

When he was finished, it hit him how exhausted he was, and he cleaned up, stashing the box in the bookcase for the night. It was high enough up that Finn couldn’t reach it, and he’d have time to move it back to the garage before work. With that task accomplished, he climbed the stairs to slide into bed beside his sleeping wife.

Muffled sobbing from down the hall pulled him into waking. Oh god, what time was it? He sat up, folding the blanket back on the bed so as not to disturb Nikki, and his eyes glossed over the clock. 3:04. Aaron groaned softly and slid his feet into his slippers. Nikki had never been able to hear Finn’s crying in her sleep, even when he was still a baby.

The next door down the hall was Finn’s. The rotating stars from the night-light spilled a little bit into the hallway, though they didn’t seem to be too comforting at the moment. Finn tried to calm his crying down into sniffles as he saw his father.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong, little guy?” Aaron cooed, as he ran his fingers over his son’s hair.

“The- there were robots. They broked you and mommy. I- I don’t want them to broked you and mommy.” The sobs returned in full force.

“Who told you about robots?” He turned on the bedside lamp and sat down next to Finn. It was easier to ask that question and figure out what he’d meant.

“Uh-uncle Karl… he said robots broked people up. I’on’t want them to broked you.” Finn nuzzled his head between Aaron’s chest and arm, using his shirt as a tissue.

“And why was Karl telling you about robots?”

“Go’zilla was gonna smash em, and ‘andra cried. She didn’t want Go’zilla to smash the robots.”

“Godzilla? Was Karl showing you Godzilla movies last night?”

“Yah. ‘andra too.”

3:13 was the wrong time to get into an argument with his housemates. He could save it for the morning. Why the Norths were showing their five-year-old girl monster movies before bedtime… well, that was their choice, but they weren’t the ones who had to deal with his three-year-old in the middle of the night.

“So, are you ready to go back to sleep?”

“No.” Finn pouted up at him through his tears. “Read a story?”

“Okay. How about…” Where the Wild Things Are? No, that was a bad idea, seeing what the threat of robots did. Dr. Seuss? Too late to attempt rhyming. Love You Forever? That looked like a winner. It was sappy and with any luck it would put him out like a light. “Love You Forever?”

“Kay. Mommy doesn’t read that one.”

It wasn’t a wonder why. The book was about a mother who took obsessive, almost creepy care of her son and liked to watch him while he slept. It had been a hand-me-down from Liz. Liz was that kind of a mother, but Nikki wasn’t. He hummed the melody of the poem in the book as he tucked Finn into his bed and turned out the light. He’d been right; it had only taken three pages to get Finn back to sleep.

The next morning, while Nikki was toweling her hair dry and he was shaving, Aaron happened to mention, “Did you hear Finn crying last night?”

“No. Did you get up?” She frowned, rubbing the towel over her scalp.

“Well, yeah, of course-“

“Sorry. I didn’t hear him. I guess dinner with Mom wore me out.” She frowned softly, mostly at her imagined crow’s feet.

“He was up ‘cause Karl and Liz were watching MechaGodzilla last night and it gave him nightmares.”

“Wait, why didn’t you stop them?”

“I thought I told you. I was down at the track with Michael. I called Liz, she said it was okay and she’d feed Finn-“

“You’re always at that stupid track. You don’t spend any time with us anymore, Aaron.” Nikki jerked the hangers to one side suddenly as she poked through the closet.

“That’s not true at all. I take Finn to school in the mornings and I’m around most evenings. Its just lately-“

“Lately you’re not even around evenings. You want me to go tell Karl how to raise our child? Because I’ll do it.”

She left the bedroom. He could practically count the beats of silence to five until he heard a raised voice, Nikki’s, the murmur of a calm one, Liz’s, and some more tense words from Karl. It seemed like a good idea to tug his socks on slowly, one by one, and lace up his work boots. Oh look, he’d gotten better at tying bows since he’d been teaching Finn. And then he remembered where he’d left his stash.

“AARON!” Nikki demanded. “What is this box doing down here?”

Aaron jogged down the stairs to catch Nikki fuming over the box, the case for Bi Accident 2 accidentally left out next to the television.

“You fucking pervert!” she hissed at him. She grabbed the box by the handles and hauled it out to the curb, ducking his attempts to snatch it out of her hands. “How could you even have this in the house while there are children living there?! Our child, Aaron, he could have seen this.”

Once she got to the street corner, she began to chuck DVD cases out into the street, one by one. 100% Amateur NASCAR Moms was followed by Girls Hunting Girls 15 and a pile of magazines that came down in a flutter of pages and advertising leaflets instead of skidding across to the other curb like the boxes did.

“Asia Dreams 7? Really?” This almost brought her to sobbing, which gave him an opportunity to start collecting his videos from the pavement. She hadn’t actually damaged anything, and he was relieved she hadn’t gotten to Autorotic or Bi Accident 2. “Are you still in love with Liz? Is that what this is about?” She let the box slip from her hands, and its contents, explicit boxes and the rest of the magazines, spilled over the grass for the whole neighborhood to see.

“Mekkago’zilla gonna smash you!” hollered three-foot terror Alexandra, as she chased Finn out onto the lawn. If he hadn’t seen the porn collection before, he did now.

All things told, it had been a long morning. It was afternoon by the time he’d gotten down to the shop. He’d started to work on an engine replacement but found himself too agitated to focus properly on anyone else’s car. It was easier to just work on his personal projects. Right now, that meant airbrushing a pinup of the track car’s namesake, Mayor Mary Evans, on her side. She’d donated the body of her Ferrari to him when she’d wrecked it, with the promise he’d name the resulting product after her.

It wasn’t much of a shame, really. She was pretty hot, for her age. He’d taken a picture from the local paper and done some sketches from it, lowering her shirt neckline, and was currently adding highlights to her cleavage.

“Hey, looks good. Bet Mary’s gonna get a kick out of it.”

He hadn’t heard Michael come in, and tensed when he felt him lean against his back to better view the paint job. He still hadn’t gotten used to how close he liked to be, or how nice casual contact could feel.

“I think so. Maybe it’ll get her down to the tracks sometime. She keeps talking about it.”

“Well, if I was her, I’d like this a lot.” He could almost feel Michael’s eyes on his neck instead of the drawing. It looked like their argument yesterday hadn’t changed anything.

“Yeah, I hope she does.” He stilled his hand, as it was too difficult to paint with Michael so close. He’d never found Karl, or even Nikki this distracting to just be around.

Michael took the hint and stood to pace around the shop, glancing over the other car he’d been attending to earlier. It didn’t hold his attention for long, as the only car-related interests he had involved making them go fast.

“Hey, what are all these boxes doing in here?” Michael had peeked into the office attached to the shop.

“Moved my stuff in.” He pulled back to examine the painting. Hm, her glasses could use a glint across them. Enhance the sexy librarian thing.

“You’re… leaving Nikki?”

“I dunno. I just had to get out.” It was a little tough to discuss with Michael, mostly because he and Nikki hated each other, and Michael had been advocating him to leave Nikki since they’d met.

“That’s good to hear. At least you- wait, what’s all this?” Michael sounded like he’d just hit the jackpot, and began eagerly pawing through the box. “Oh man, Aaron, this is a serious collection.”

“Yeah, Nikki was tossing it in the street. Then Finn saw it.”

“Wow, no wonder you left.”

He decided to just continue painting. It wasn’t worth going into details. Wasn’t worth the custody battle he was already thinking about, whether he wanted to fight to get Finn for himself or leave him with Nikki.

“Ohh, hey, Aaron, I didn’t know you were into this stuff.”

“What stuff?” he asked, knowing exactly which disk he’d picked up.

“The only thing these men love more than their cars… is a hard dick up their ass? Watch as our studs… grind each others gear boxes? Christ, man, this is hilarious.”

He finally looked up from his airbrushing to catch Michael leaning against the door to the office, the case of Autorotic in his hands. His eyes were curious, lips slightly parted, and his hips were tilted forwards to make them all the more obvious. The afternoon sun hit him just right, making him look too good to be real.

“So, is it any good?”

“Michael, I don’t -“

“Look, I’m… trying to help. Bet you’re dying to. You said Nikki hasn’t put out since…“ Michael trailed off awkwardly.

“I shouldn’t.” But he wanted to. He didn’t want to give that answer today, to shove off his desires because of his wife anymore. Finn would love him anyway.

“I’m gonna go watch this in your office. You can come with me, or not. But it’d be good for you. And if you want, I’ll pretend you’re the racecar.”

Michael disappeared into his office. But between the bad joke and the wolfish grin he’d given him… it wasn’t a tough decision. He glanced between Mary’s cleavage and the empty doorframe, and followed.

They lay in each other’s arms, Michael draped across his chest, the movie still playing itself out on the computer in the office. They were silent, watching each other’s faces, and Michael murmured, “Move in with me. Don’t stay here. Don’t go back to Nikki.”

“What about Finn?”

“Bring him along?”

“Yeah.” Aaron exhaled against Michael’s shoulder, wrapping his arms more securely around his waist.

2008 video experiments: lese's story

2009-07-19T12:59:00.000-07:00

lese's story from eddy dughi on vimeo.

lese's story is a machinima created using adobe after effects and world of warcraft. the story told in the video is a very personal one to me- the backstory of my main character in world of warcraft. creating this video helped me understand who he was as a character and has enhanced my experience of playing world of warcraft immensely. it is a first attempt at machinima with a number of technical errors, but overall i'm very pleased with how it turned out (especially considering it was made entirely from still images, which was the class assignment)

2009-07-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

2009-07-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

2009-07-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

2009-07-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

2009-07-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

2008 art history writing: Dada's Daddy: Marcel Duchamp's Legacy

2009-07-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

In April of 1952, Winthrop Sargeant published an article in Life Magazine entitled, “Dada's Daddy, A New Tribute to Duchamp, Pioneer of Nonsense and Nihilism,” an interview that, by its title, credited the genius of the Dada art movement to Marcel Duchamp.1 This wording alone suggests that by the 1950’s, Duchamp’s legacy as the most highly-regarded Dadaist was well cemented; a modern textbook, Gardner’s Art Through The Ages, identifies him as “perhaps the most influential of all the Dadaists.” However, Duchamp’s prominence as the most influential Dadaist was no mistake, nor was it based solely on the virtue of his artwork or strong historical record; Duchamp had an active hand in his own rediscovery and newfound prominence in the revival of the Dada movement. Marcel Duchamp is the most influential of the Dada artists because of his own involvement with the media, with gallery owners, and with prominent artists of the 1950s. This is not to say that his legacy is not well-deserved or that his artwork is inferior to that of other Dada artists, but that his influence is one of his own making, a legacy that he had intentional hand in. His massive influence is the result of having known the right people to secure a legacy.

In 1951, a year previous to the Life Magazine article, Robert Motherwell published a book entitled, “The Dada Painters and Poets,” a survey of the Dada movement, an anthology composed of numerous Dada writings, retrospective assessments as well as manifestos from the height of the movement. A number of the writings in this book are Duchamp’s own, and Duchamp “in fact helped Motherwell selecting and organizing material for the collection,” as he was one of the sources available to him in New York who had witnessed the original Dada movement.2 “He examined proofs of the book as it progressed, made suggestions for the inclusion of pieces,” and played an incredibly important role in what remains a very important literary work defining the Dada movement.3 This is not to suggest that Duchamp’s writings have no place in such a book, but only to highlight his role in their inclusion. It is no accident of history that Marcel Duchamp has become synonymous with Dada- his cooperation with Motherwell guaranteed for himself influence for the future. Providing his works for such a thorough historical record provided them with prominence and weight, with historical importance, and were certainly important in building his legacy.

Not long before the Life Magazine article was published, his work also figured prominently into a number of art shows, most notably the showings of the Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection in Chicago, and the Sidney Janis collection in New York. Again, Duchamp had an active hand in the arrangements that landed him an “unprecedented total of thirty of his works were shown” in the Chicago showing, and “thirteen of the twenty-seven New York Dada items listed in the catalogue were by Duchamp” in the New York showing.4 His involvement and prominent placement in both shows may have been because he and the curators in both cases were close friends; he had stayed at the Arensberg home in New York upon first arriving in the city, and had known Sidney Janis for a “number of years,” having personally authorized Janis with creating a pair of replicas of his Fountain.5 This is another instance of Duchamp’s direct involvement with his repositioning into the center of the Dada movement during its revival in New York in the 1950s. The ability to not only attend his own retrospective exhibitions, but to assist in designing them, provided him his opportunity to include Fountain where he thought it should be. This time, no exhibition committee would reject it, unlike when the original was rejected from a group show in 1917.6 The replicas of Fountain included by these retrospective shows are of critical importance to his repositioning; they allow him to correct historical record, to include Readymades in Dada when the other Dadaists had rejected them.

The final factor that secures Duchamp’s legacy is his close friendships with the artists of the Fluxus movement, particularly John Cage, “who saw in Duchamp a Zen master, a great liberator from any traditional concept of art, who creatively opened the way to new possibilities.”7 While there is nothing manipulative about these friendships, it is these artists who learned most heavily from Duchamp, who studied heavily from him. Cage served as an “intermediary” between Marcel Duchamp and the “[younger] generation of artists after the Second World War,” as he had begun their acquaintance in 1942.8 The influence that Duchamp had on the next generation of modern artists, on the Fluxus movement that had so many similarities to the Dada movement, was a much more personal influence than that the Fluxus artists were reading his writings in Motherwell’s book. Duchamp secured his legacy with his friendship of the younger generation.

Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image. Contemporary artist Robert Smithson goes as far as to say, “I think there is a very false view of art history, an attempt to set up a lineage,” about Duchamp’s later positioning of himself into prominence.9 This seems overwhelmingly harsh. Marcel Duchamp’s work is remarkable, his readymade sculptures may have been only ahead of their time, not ready to be recognized as art until they were rediscovered in the early 1950s. He is eloquent about his own work, and deserves a chance to leave his opinions on it, as artists have before there was a legacy of art history to be considered. Leonardo DaVinci, another artist before his time, would not be recognized as nearly the genius he was if not for his attempts to seek patronage, or his incredibly thorough journals. Much of art history is about established legacy and, while his is transparent, he can hardly be considered the only artist to have ensured his own fame. And if intentional changes to the history of art were his aim, then he not only succeeded, but his success is in the spirit of the Dada movement; his only reaction to a movement that made no sense, one that was interested in artistic exploration and yet rejected his works, was to go back later and get the last say about what was and wasn’t art. In this, Marcel Duchamp may really have been the best Dadaist, and not only the most influential, as he was the very last of the fathers of Dada to practice his art, and continued it to the end.

Roth, Moira, Jonathan D. Katz, and Saul Ostrow. Difference / Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. Routledge, 1998.

Martens, Klaus. Pioneering North America: Mediators of European Culture and Literature. Königshausen & Neumann, 2000.

Craft, Catherine. New York Dada? Looking Back After a Second World War. The Museum of Modern Art, 2006.

Kuenzli, Rudolf, Francis M. Naumann. Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the Century. MIT Press, 1989.

Kleiner, Fred S., Christin J. Mamiya. Gardner’s Art Through The Ages. Wadsworth/Tomson Learning, 2005.

National Gallery of Art, "NGA - DADA." NGA-DADA. 30 11 2008. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 1 Dec 2008 http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/cities/index.shtm

Elisofon, Eliot, Gordon Parks. Marcel Duchamp Painter, and Artist Marcel Duchamp walking down a flight of stairs in a multiple exposure image reminiscent of his famous painting "Nude Descending a Staircase". 1952. LIFE photo archive hosted by Google.

http://images.google.com/images?q=Duchamp&q=source%3Alife

2009-07-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

2009-07-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

2009-07-10T13:18:00.000-07:00

2009-07-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

2009-07-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

2007 sculpture experiments: prototype

2009-07-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

prototype is an aluminum and found-object sculpture created in the spring semester of 2007. it was the first piece i made in art school that wasn't in direct response to a prompt, and i include it here because of its relevance to my personal interests. prototype is heavily inspired by science fiction, and is shown next to a journal full of drawings of specific robots from pop culture and quotes about artificial intelligence.

2009-07-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

2009-07-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

2006 video experiments: mhs vietnam oral history project

2009-07-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

the MHS Vietnam oral history project is a product of two semester's worth of work done by my AP American history class in highschool. as part of the class project, a team of nine students conducted interviews with a dozen members of the Madison, New Jersey community, particularly Vietnam war veterans and war protesters. i assisted every interview, recording the conversation between the student and the community member, and led the team in processing the footage to assist the editing process. after the class ended in the spring of my junior year, i continued to edit the project, creating an introductory slideshow and polishing the project into an hour long record of the Vietnam war.

this project was commended by the American Legion.

2009-07-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

2009-07-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

2009-07-01T13:40:00.000-07:00