Duchamp & Proust

Librarians

In 1913, Marcel Proust published the first ­volume of his seven-part novel »In Search of Lost Time«, coinciding with Marcel Duchamp s withdrawal from painting and, working as a ­librarian in Paris search for new forms of artistic expression. This period saw the birth of idea of the readymade, as well as the appear­ance of the first sketches for his masterpiece »The Large Glass«, which came, in his words, from nothing less than »a rehabilitation of ­perspective, which had then been completely ignored and disparaged.« Proust and Duchamp, two defining proponents of a radical conception of art in the early 20th century, were taking up once more the limits and possibilities of perspec­tive. Through artistic research, they approached the elementary aspects of perception, cognition, and representation that were conceptually grounded in the Renaissance s realm of ideas. Both artists, however, moved far beyond most of their contem­­poraries in their rediscovery of the era. The materials and motifs that Proust and Duchamp used for this purpose, in writing and in image, ­reveal surprising correspondences: sketches and notations, lines and glass, aligned constructions, optical devices and everyday objects, windows, doors and eyes. On the occasion of the exhibition »Perspectives. Futurisms« at Mercedes-Benz ­Contemporary ­Berlin, which presents pioneering ­artistic aproaches to the subject from the 1960s to the present, the publication of »Renaissance of Perspectives: ­Duchamp & Proust« now adds a forth volume to the series on the work and ­influence of Marcel Duchamp begun in 2017.

Exhibition:
Perspektiven. Futurismen
Mercedes Benz Contemporary Berlin, 16/9/22 28/5/23