Marcel Duchamp #1 (Paintings)
An archival photograph of Marcel Duchamp functions as a device of distancing, in which authorship and identity become unstable. The blur and the suspension between figuration and abstraction erode the image’s documentary authority.
Integrated into the “Gray Period” of “The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona”, it activates a museological fiction within contemporary figurative painting.
700 $
Product Details
Conceptually, this painting is inspired by a black-and-white photograph of Marcel Duchamp, produced between 1934 and 1947 and inconclusively attributed to Henri Cartier-Bresson, possibly in Paris. The historical image serves as a documentary point of departure that is subjected to a process of pictorial distancing, through which the sitter’s identity becomes deliberately blurred and unstable.
Formally, the work enters into dialogue with Gerhard Richter’s paintings based on found photographs, characterized by blur, the expressive neutralization specific to his pictorial practice, and a suspension between figuration and abstraction. Within this framework, blurring operates as a critical device that questions memory, the authority of the image, and its historical legibility, while also tangentially evoking an Impressionist sensitivity through the dissolution of form.
The painting forms part of a broader investigation into artists who founded their own museums as strategies of institutional critique, such as Duchamp, Filliou, and Broodthaers. Each work functions as an archive and museological extension of the Davis Museum Barcelona. This piece belongs to “The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona,” the only section of the project in which works are made available, and is part of the group of portraits associated with the Gray Period.
Additional information
| Weight | 2 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 3 × 30 × 30 cm |
