How did you get the concept for Part Object Part Sculpture?
I remain fascinated by the tricky nature of Duchamp's
readymades--objects transformed into art, but not quite. They
always retain their original identity or function. This is why many
people refer to Fountain in a casual way as "the urinal." For me
this is an acknowledgment that the work is part art, part not--part
object, part sculpture.
What is new about your interpretation of Duchamp?
I insist that we see the readymades produced in the 1960s as
quite different from the readymades that were purchased by Duchamp
in the teens. They are different objects, with different sets of
rules. Hence they behave differently in the gallery and ultimately
mean different things. I have also tried to keep Duchamp's
readymades in dialogue with his lifelong interest in eros. These
two strains of his thought have been kept separate--wrongly, I
think--in the American reception of Duchamp.
The artists featured in Part Object Part Sculpture come from
different generations, different national traditions. Why do you
bring them together in this exhibition and book?
I am trying to map a genealogy of postwar sculpture that
challenges the Minimalist/Post-Minimalist sequence maintained in
most accounts of the period. The exhibition begins in the 1950s and
comes up to the present. Also, it has become increasingly difficult
to narrate postwar art as predominantly or exclusively American.
Artists have been engaging in an enormous transatlantic
dialogue.
Is there any single work in the catalogue that can be singled
out as emblematic of your intervention?
No, not at all. It is precisely the constellation of figures
like Burri, Duchamp, and Bourgeois, and then Duchamp and Hesse and
Johns, and then Duchamp and Kusama and Gober, and then Duchamp and
McElheney, that makes the exhibition so potentially
interesting.
How did you and your collaborators develop the scope and aim of
the essays in the book?
I asked writers who were working on the artists in the show and
have won my admiration for the sensitivity of their writing and the
unconventional nature of their thought. I then allowed them to
write what they pleased. The outcome is a book to be considered as
another site where the counter-genealogy is being built and argued
for.
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