DeutschEnglish |

What Duchamp Abandoned for the Waterfall

___________

In 1946, Duchamp photographed the waterfall Le Forestay for Étant donnés. This volume features photographs of the landscape neighboring the waterfall.


Multilingual Edition (German, English, French)
Add to Cart
Title Details
By Caroline Bachmann, Stefan Banz
2009
Hardback
216 pages, 100 color illustrations and 1 b/w illustration
14.5 x 19 cm
ISBN 978-3-85881-261-2

During his stay in Switzerland in 1946, Marcel Duchamp (1887–1986) spent a few days at the Hotel Bellevue in Chexbres, high above Lake Geneva and overlooking one of Switzerland’s most famous vistas. The nearby waterfall Le Forestay inspired Duchamp to create his last great masterwork, the assemblage Étant donnés: 1. La chute d’eau, 2. Le gaz d’éclairage. Duchamp photographed the scenery and included the images in his enigmatic work that has been permanently installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1969. His three-dimensional environmental tableau offers an unforgettable and untranslatable experience to those who peer through the small two holes in its solid wooden door.

Years later the artist duo Caroline Bachmann and Stefan Banz set out to reverse the situation. They discovered exactly where Duchamp stood with his camera, and over several years they took countless pictures of what the artist had turned his back on, the breathtaking views over the lake. Their work What Duchamp Abandoned for the Waterfall consists of many color photographs of one of Switzerland’s most extraordinary landscapes. This companion book presents one hundred striking images as well as an essay by the art critic Luc Debraine, who examines the artists’ research in dialogue with Duchamp’s Étant donnés, analyzing how Duchamp made use of the location for his artistic intentions and what photographing this particular waterfall meant to him.

Echo

«Eine faszinierende Duchamp-Hommage, die die unfassbar gegensätzlichen Spektren des Lichts und die unendliche Vielfalt der zarten, kühlen, öligen oder dramatischen Stimmungen über dem See zur Chronologie eines fiktiven Tages vom Morgengrauen bis zum Abendrot verdichten.» Dietrich Roeschmann, artline Kunstmagazin

«Einer der schönsten Bildbände, die vom Genfersee zu haben sind.» Annabelle