The Lovers’ Chronicle 28 July – regret – art by Marcel Duchamp

28 July 2023 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie, Here is Mac Tag‘s Lovers’ Chronicle to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

i have been wantin’ to write to you, but i never have time, so absorbed i am in writin’ verse; i think, i write night and day; nothin’ interests me more than findin’ the right line for you, so you will need to search through these words in order to understand how i feel

a connection, long before

the distaste for the life

we found ourselves livin’,

the opposite of what

we talked about those

years ago, damned near

consumed us

we tried, mostly self

destructively, to escape

to get away at all costs

where to

did not matter,

what to did

not goin’,

but leavin’

quite different…

a connection, long before

the distaste for the life

we found ourselves livin’,

the opposite of what

we talked about those

years ago, damned near

consumed us

we tried, mostly self

destructively, to escape

the incompatibility

with the growin’ milieu,

to get away at all costs

where to

did not matter,

what to did

you to Rocky Top

and your art,

me to the desert

and my verse

where we knew,

where hope, enabled

to breathe, leadin’ life

as it needs to be

feelin’ what is real

i should have come back
i wish i had, i wanted to
i guess i was too weak
i still see you standin’ there
as you were, after that last kiss

i know sorry does not git it done
and i ain’t lookin for forgiveness
i expect it was the mistake of my life
just wanted you to know

Marcel Duchamp
Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1920–21, by Man Ray, Yale University Art Gallery

Today is the birthday of Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (Blainville-Crevon; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968 Neuilly-sur-Seine); painter, sculptor, chess player and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, conceptual art and Dada. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Duchamp has had an impact on twentieth-century and twenty first-century art. By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists as “retinal” art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted to put art back in the service of the mind.

Throughout his adult life, Duchamp was a passionate smoker of Habana cigars.

In June 1927, Duchamp married Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor; however, they divorced six months later. It was rumored that Duchamp had chosen a marriage of convenience, because Sarazin-Lavassor was the daughter of a wealthy automobile manufacturer. Early in January 1928, Duchamp said that he could no longer bear the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and soon thereafter they were divorced. Between 1946 and 1951 Maria Martins was his mistress. In 1954, he and Alexina “Teeny” Sattler married, and they remained together until his death.

Duchamp died suddenly and peacefully in the early morning of 2 October 1968 at his home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. After an evening dining at home with his friends Man Ray and Robert Lebel, Duchamp retired at 1:05 A.M., collapsed in his studio, and died of heart failure. He is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France, with the epitaph, “D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui meurent” (“Besides, it’s always the others who die”). Even in his death, Duchamp retained a sense of humor.

Gallery

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Three Duchamp brothers, left to right: Marcel, Jacques Villon, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon in the garden of Jacques Villon’s studio in Puteaux, France, 1914, (Smithsonian Institution collections)

Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train (Nu [esquisse], jeune homme triste dans un train), 1911–12, oil on cardboard mounted on Masonite, 100 x 73 cm (39 3/8 × 28 3/4 in), Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. This painting was identified as a self-portrait by the artist. Duchamp’s primary concern in this painting is the depiction of two movements; that of the train in which there is a young man smoking, and that of the lurching figure itself.

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912). Oil on canvas. 57 7/8″ x 35 1/8″. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

L.H.O.O.Q. (“Elle a chaud au cul”. “She has a hot ass” or “there is fire down below” (1919)

Rrose Sélavy (Duchamp). 1921. Photograph by Man Ray. Art Direction by Duchamp. Silver print. 5-7/8″ x 3″-7/8″. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Man Ray, 1920, Three Heads (Joseph Stella and Marcel Duchamp, painting bust portrait of Man Ray above Duchamp), gelatin silver print, 20.7 x 15.7 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Étant donnés, 1946–1966, mixed media, Philadelphia Museum of Art. This was posthumously and permanently installed in the museum in 1969

1910, Joueur d’échecs (The Chess Game), oil on canvas, 114 x 146.5 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art
1911, Coffee Mill (Moulin à café), oil and graphite on board, 33 x 12.7 cm, Tate, London. Reproduced in Du “Cubisme”
1911, La sonate (Sonata), oil on canvas, 145.1 x 113.3 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Exhibited at Exposició d’Art Cubista, Barcelona, Galeries Dalmau, Barcelona, 1912 (reproduced in catalogue)
1912, Le Roi et la Reine entourés de Nus vites(The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes), oil on canvas, 114.6 x 128.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art