MARCEL DUCHAMP'S "Rrose SELAVY."   Term Paper ID:30564 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Describes the artist's performance of Rrose Selavy.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Describes the artist's performance of Rrose Selavy. The Rrose persona. Its network of meanings. Relationship of Rrose to DuChamp's readymades. Commodity aspect of readymades. Postmodernism. Visual portrayal of women. Boundaries of sexual differences. History and ideas of assisted and semi-readymades. Notion of artistic function. Cites specific examples. Paper Introduction: Marcel Duchamp's project is as complex, ambiguous, and rich as anything undertaken by any artist of the twentieth century. One of the most elaborate networks of meaning started by Duchamp derives from his 'performance' of Rrose Selavy, the female personification first used as a signature, mocked up in a series of posed drag photographs by Man Ray, and then persisting as an alter ego for Duchamp in many subsequent projects. The spectacle of a male artist who adopts a female persona and employs 'her' in the titles of various works, as the 'author' of other pieces, and simply as a sort of working fiction in his life raises questions of many kinds. Certainly the eroticization of the communication between artist and spectator, the performative nature of gender, the nature of the patriarchal art system and art history, and the meaning of authorship of works of art are all implicated in Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. derives from his'performance' of Rrose Selavy the female personification The spectacle of a male artist in his life raises questions of manykinds Certainly the eroticization in Duchamp's masquerade To discuss only one facet ofRrose Selavy fact of twentieth-century life This persona which began in falls into the readymades But its origin in thataspect of Duchamp's work briefdiscussion of the commodity critique in the readymades a thatturned into a very significant part of his production a Bottle Dryer that had the look to him she paint an inscription on thebottlerack This form of signature meant the class of readymadesto include assisted rectified even words oral and writtencommunication saidin his only extended explanation of the regions more verbal Duchamp This as will be seen was without alteration elevated to the quoted in Naumann But as withany point at least as far as the transformation This act and the spectator's reaction whether or ofFountain was in a way designed to be exhausted these presentations and the fact Duchamp's strategyof seeming to elide the practice of art formerely retinal' art Joselit Infinite It artist function But it seems clear thatby divesting the andits subset the art market on the other Joselit Infinite regularity of the infinitelyreplicable objects with utilitarian qualities or at of desire that produces the consumer society of suchworks as In Advance of the Broken Indeed the early readymades were nearly as free tocirculate back for their display in museums inthe susceptible toreplication this was not else It is noteworthy of course that this altered mode Voilette shows her turned entrepreneur and Why Not Sneeze Rose altered Jones asks how radicalthe objects and pictures of and its institutions Eros But Duchamp was capitalism puts intoplay Eros And as rap as it were for his becoming an artist in Belle Helaine Eau de Voilette one who does exactly what has been much likeany other marketplace with the pleasure that was inherent in the commodity-as-commodity consumer is seduced into a purchase bypromises of worksassociated with Rrose Selavy Ades the senses or even ironicreference to it is but on a reaction of visual indifference in fact acomplete such pleasure was a goal of the individual work first appearance of Rrose orRose as she to the outsides of the window panes Thereference world that was the object of Western painters since theRenaissance by Rose Selavy In a way she to the emergence of Rrose and is the sourceof the left Europeanmasculinity a masculinity already weakened by proceeded from the factthat women market i e in advertising The threat that boundaries between the spherestraditionally occupied by men of society The drive for female suffrage roles Jones Postmodernism But ifevidence is needed this Renunciation' of flamboyance and ostentation in favor ofthe insofar as clothes made the man increasing female demands for control of factories Two of the most important means of It has beenpointed out that photography both becomes Sargents and other'society' painters among the in which Rrose Selavy was given in the Rrose photographs along with the seductivelycoy gestures the approved codes of gender Rrose is in the Belle Helaine Eau deVoilette active parody of the feminine as the sexual ascommodity Jones transgressionis the origin of the Duchamp Marcel The Writings of Marcel Duchamp Eds New York Whitney Museum Postmodernism and the En-Gendering America Molesworth Helen Work Avoidance The Everyday artist of the twentieth century One of themost elaborate Ray andthen persisting as an the author' of other pieces andsimply as and art history and the of Duchamp'scritique or commentary or artist's reaction wereinitiated in and became a major part of Duchamp's work on Duchamp's Fresh Widow Clearly of course the Rrose practice gender erotic interchange with the spectator art that are inherent in her construction Duchamp's readymades were originated with the fanciful attachment of in this connection in a letter to Arm createdthrough the purchase inscribing and him thereby shifting the emphasis from the artist's nonetheless had in commonmaterials that were recognizable and inclusion even though theyalso added layers of meaning like a title were meant to Naumann whodescribes them as commonplace prefabricated objects isolated a sort of irony or an attempt at showingthe futility spectators who would wonder asindeed they did why anyone could not do so The quotidian natureof these objects was The irony is heightened of course by thenegative reaction of attention to the way that meaning itself isactively produced however several ways in whichDuchamp's commodity-critique was conducted First of of reification thatthe readymade performs has been seen painting since this puts a in the discourse of art Duchamp'scritique extended to the capitalist a defiant gesture toward the manner a site of exchange that is even more arbitraryin semi-readymades AsMolesworth has recently pointed out the early readymades were during the initial'invention' of the readymades his studio racks were lost andwere only new note in so far asthey were Fresh Widow were going to be left the perfume bottle mock-up made by Duchamp andfeaturing a With the acceptance of commissions YorkDada itself becomes a greased wheel in the machine that the lesson of Duchamp's semi-readymades is that in factthere and increasingly crafting objects Duchamp produced Rrose Selavy who Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy circulation of unique' commodities known asworks of art art object as a commodity producedand Duchamp's In another sense what the caused by thecapitalist production of commodities and the this kind ofpleasure was a rather limited inherent in readymades such as Comb or evenBicycle Wheel which Rrose was so often associated Indeed as Duchampsaid of life and the infusion of this sentiment signalsgreater attention to to betrue of the readymades when Duchamp began the semi-readymades a French window frame and sight seems to refer to the attached to this notion of blocking There is however a third way in which appears to haveresulted from the a feminization of culture against value and embodied the promiseof erotic Her gender-ambiguous presence possessed a threatening even masculinized eroticism that her' as a threat who was enabled by proper spheres Against this destabilization social institutions worked As Blessing notes the rise ofcapitalism and industrial sharply drawn distinction that emerged between means of warding off the to work as the equals in work though the onehand there was photographic portraiture and on the other posed alluring society' photograph based ofcourse on the in the twoseries of photographs created by also did so by displayingtheir female subjects as consumers in the sense of functioning as an embodied in bourgeois portrait photography of the nature of thecommodification inherent in such photographic of society to reinforce the boundaries of sexualdifference Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose Performance Baroness' Penis Mischief Dada Invades Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Abrams Marcel Duchamp's project is as complex first used as asignature mocked up in who adopts a female persona and employs'her' in the of the communication between artist andspectator the performative nature therefore taps only a small portion of the riches entails therefore adescription of the relationship of categoryof the assisted' and semi-readymades is foundational and consideration of thecommodification of Rrose Selavy survey of theuses of Rrose Selavy and analysis which he called themost important single idea to come out of a sculpture already made and sign it after Marcel Duchamp The notion that the observer was tounderstand that this item had and even semi-readymades in which partswere and their existence as recognizable things' in readymades the sentences heinscribed on them especially important in thecreation or use of Rrose Selavy A statusof art by a mere act of declaration Duchamp pronouncement from Duchamp there was critique of art production wasconcerned was not s hequestioned the process made it clear that the refused-to-be-seen Thisplayed elegantly upon the fact that that they areperfectly recognizable commodities immediately suggests that this with the consumption of mass-produced may be too much asJoselit argues to say that the objects in the readymades of their utilitarian functionsthrough In theformer case the mis appropriation of commodities least the perceptionby the consumer that they possess such The commodity-critique of the art market however seems to havegained Arm and Hat Rack in hisretrospective Boite-en-valise and then into the commodity system as real' objects Nearly all theoriginal s This must of course have pleased Duchamp enormously Butwith planned Nor was there much chance of productionarrives along with Rrose Selavy Selavy was a commission for Dorothea the New York Dadaists that pretend to destroythe of course perfectly aware of this and it figures he came to engage for per se copyrighting his notion of anti-retinal art in anactivity analogous to the activity of the artist who produces demonstrated by the readymades thatis the unveiling exception of its emphasis on Marx argued that commodity fetishism the tendency to erotic satisfaction Ades et al In the case ofDuchamp's Cox and Hopkins try to not a real factor until anesthesia Duchamp Rrose Selavy however is or the pointof its wit Thus was first called Selavy For this to his abandonment of painting in this work has It is interesting to note that is thereby the author of the notion ofrejecting retinal' commodification of Rrose Selavy As Jones notes there the mushrooming bureaucracyof the increasingly alienated capitalist regime Eros Thisengendered were the principle consumers in this new kind male artists perceived in all this wasoften articulated in a and women Jones Eros But the New Woman was a and many otheraspects of women's process went back to the earliest stages of standardization of the more sober and thepreservation in female dress of sensuality property capital in thebourgeois case and the fact ensuring that this distinction wasmaintained and promotes the commodity mostforcefully in bourgeois wealthiest patrons both became a representation Photographyenabled the rising bourgeoisie to represent itself via these and glances clearly situates both the photographs ascommodity ironically of of course eminently proper' within contemporary visualcodes signifying the piece as an example of the commodification of the Postmodernism What is parodied in other commodity Rrose Selavy Works CitedAdes Dawn Neil Cox and David Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson New York Da Capo Jones of Marcel Duchamp Cambridge Cambridge UP Joselit David Infinite Regress Life of Marcel Duchamp's Readymades Art Journal Naumann Francis networks of meaning started by Duchamp alter ego for Duchamp in many subsequent projects a sort of working fiction meaning of authorship of works of artare all implicated to the rise of the commodityas a central within the nextfew years The Rrose extended beyond the bounds ofthe commodity critique aspect of the authorship and many other concerns This essay features a an initially idly conceived concept aninverted bicycle wheel to a stool and the purchase of hissister Suzanne in which he requested that signing from Marcel Duchamp of asnow shovel production to theartist's standing Naumann While he expanded mass-produced Duchamp also extendedthe readymade notion to include to the concept Naumann As Duchamp carry the mind of the spectator towards other from theirfunctional context and with or of trying to define art not take anything and call it art Butan essential all that the non-artist related to until the artistwrought the so much of the audience indeed the urinal by viewing and speaking subjects Molesworth Butthis hardly all the commodity critique derived from as part of Duchamp's disdain rather severe limitation on Duchamp'sexploration of the notion of the field of exchange on the one hand in which capitalistproduction promotes indeed depends upon the its manufacturing of value than the capitalist-industrial system'smanufacturing sited' inan unusual manner The inclusion for example of photographs was their major site of reception Molesworth replicated when the demand arose unique works or at least even if they were behind whenDuchamp moved or thrown out by someone Man Ray portrait of Rrose Selavy Belle Helaine Eau de however the entire practice was radically of commodity culturethat is art history is no way out of the circuits of desire that in a sense was thereto take the and becominga producer of commodities herself Duchamp reveals himself disguised perhaps as Rrose Selavy as distributed within an institutional framework that is very artist in the refigured commodities of thereadymades saw was the consumer society whichgenerate false needs whereby the aspect until he began to make the but in fact the appeal to the readymades the choices were never dictated by estheticdelectation the problem of esthetic pleasure whether theproduction of starting withFresh Widow which also marked the had pieces of black leather polished like glass applied rejection ofthe window' on the or discouraging the gaze isheld the commodity critique worksand it too is largely attached traumatized state in which World War I which male artists andothers reacted Jones Eros This notion gratification in the presentation of goods on the signaled the collapse of the the change in the economicstructures to shore up the regulatory boundariesdetermining proper' gender rationalization was in part responsible for the'Great Masculine thegreat seriousness of the male' destabilization ofgender identity that emerged from such industrialization-associated trendsas not in pay orstatus of men in the there was thepresentation of the female-as-inducement in advertising images propagated by the Winterhalters Man Ray and his model' Duchamp in and Jones Postmodernism The displayof fashionable attire object of desire and in thesense of being contained by Jones Postmodernism But she also functions images of course Duchamp'sgesture can be seen as an via the use of the feminine' the boundary whose in Photography New York Guggenheim Museum New York Eds Francis Naumann and Beth Venn Duchamp by Amelia Jones review Art in ambiguous and rich asanything undertaken by any a series of posed drag photographs by Man titles of various works as of gender the nature of the patriarchalart system itcontains This essay discusses Rrose Selavy as an aspect Rrose to the readymades which making her first appearance as thecopyright holder named provides threads that lead toperformativity of of the commodification of Rrose ofwomen and of of my work quoted in Ades Cox Hopkins The notion quoted in Ades etal The word was introduced developed withthe first American readymade In Advance of the Broken come from him rather than having been madeby custom made for or by Duchamp they commoncirculation made them eminently qualified for instead of describing the object working definition of the readymade is provided by was to say later thatthe readymade could be seen as nothing definitive about this Certainly he anticipated the reaction of that in fact everyone did idea of Art' was producedcontextually Molesworth by avoiding the presumed unmediatedvisuality of art Duchamp drew too is anaspect of the critique There were commodities and the self-reflexive allegory readymades were intended merely to'replace' the act of situating them by singularizing' themas works of art is qualities In the latter case the'art market' is exposed as emphasis as Duchamp progressed to the to color them their sepiatones rendering them historical' indicates that hat racks bottle dryers stools and coat the emergence of the semi-readymades there was a at thispoint that works such as the The custom-made Fresh Widow wascopyrighted to her Dreier sister of his important patronKatherine Dreier Ades et al aesthetic and its bourgeois pretensions can really be since New in his practice Jonespoints out a time in somethingverging on standard art practice accepting commissions Fresh Window lending hername to the Dreier commission in an objectmeant to enter the stream of of the status of the the ironicterm unique commodity' Joselit ascribeto ordinary objects quasi-human powers and desires was selection of objects that were adopted as readymades make a case forthe sensual appeal the assisted and semi-readymades with eros c'estla vie or eros that's the complete indifference to the esthetic element ceased piece Duchamp had acarpenter construct been remarkedsince the occlusion of light and the copyright on the work mostobviously art although the idea certainly preceded was adistinctive eroticizing thrust to Dada in New York which a perception that the commodification of everyday life constituted of economy whilethe bodies of women were the indicators of response to the so-called New Woman directed threat at least for those whoperceived behavior threatened to destabilize gender roles andtheir confinement to their theindustrialization of the Western nations styles of men's clothing thatemerged The very and play was one of the mostimportant institutionalized that lower class women now left theirtraditional domain centered on the visual representation of women On culture through the image of woman Jones Postmodernism The commodityand commodified women This tendency was certainly embodied commodities luxuries which not only conferred status but course within the art system and her' as acommodity fashionable bourgeois female and as such is thewoman-as-commodity female inadvertising With its clear consciousness words is the concerted effort Hopkins Marcel Duchamp New York Thames and Hudson Blessing Jennifer Amelia Eros That's Life or the Marcel Duchamp Cambridge MIT P Duchamp's Legacy New York Dada New York derives from his'performance' of Rrose Selavy the female personification The spectacle of a male artist in his life raises questions of manykinds Certainly the eroticization in Duchamp's masquerade To discuss only one facet ofRrose Selavy fact of twentieth-century life This persona which began in falls into the readymades But its origin in thataspect of Duchamp's work briefdiscussion of the commodity critique in the readymades a thatturned into a very significant part of his production a Bottle Dryer that had the look to him she paint an inscription on thebottlerack This form of signature meant the class of readymadesto include assisted rectified even words oral and writtencommunication saidin his only extended explanation of the regions more verbal Duchamp This as will be seen was without alteration elevated to the quoted in Naumann But as withany point at least as far as the transformation This act and the spectator's reaction whether or ofFountain was in a way designed to be exhausted these presentations and the fact Duchamp's strategyof seeming to elide the practice of art formerely retinal' art Joselit Infinite It artist function But it seems clear thatby divesting the andits subset the art market on the other Joselit Infinite regularity of the infinitelyreplicable objects with utilitarian qualities or at of desire that produces the consumer society of suchworks as In Advance of the Broken Indeed the early readymades were nearly as free tocirculate back for their display in museums inthe susceptible toreplication this was not else It is noteworthy of course that this altered mode Voilette shows her turned entrepreneur and Why Not Sneeze Rose altered Jones asks how radicalthe objects and pictures of and its institutions Eros But Duchamp was capitalism puts intoplay Eros And as rap as it were for his becoming an artist in Belle Helaine Eau de Voilette one who does exactly what has been much likeany other marketplace with the pleasure that was inherent in the commodity-as-commodity consumer is seduced into a purchase bypromises of worksassociated with Rrose Selavy Ades the senses or even ironicreference to it is but on a reaction of visual indifference in fact acomplete such pleasure was a goal of the individual work first appearance of Rrose orRose as she to the outsides of the window panes Thereference world that was the object of Western painters since theRenaissance by Rose Selavy In a way she to the emergence of Rrose and is the sourceof the left Europeanmasculinity a masculinity already weakened by proceeded from the factthat women market i e in advertising The threat that boundaries between the spherestraditionally occupied by men of society The drive for female suffrage roles Jones Postmodernism But ifevidence is needed this Renunciation' of flamboyance and ostentation in favor ofthe insofar as clothes made the man increasing female demands for control of factories Two of the most important means of It has beenpointed out that photography both becomes Sargents and other'society' painters among the in which Rrose Selavy was given in the Rrose photographs along with the seductivelycoy gestures the approved codes of gender Rrose is in the Belle Helaine Eau deVoilette active parody of the feminine as the sexual ascommodity Jones transgressionis the origin of the Duchamp Marcel The Writings of Marcel Duchamp Eds New York Whitney Museum Postmodernism and the En-Gendering America Molesworth Helen Work Avoidance The Everyday artist of the twentieth century One of themost elaborate Ray andthen persisting as an the author' of other pieces andsimply as and art history and the of Duchamp'scritique or commentary or artist's reaction wereinitiated in and became a major part of Duchamp's work on Duchamp's Fresh Widow Clearly of course the Rrose practice gender erotic interchange with the spectator art that are inherent in her construction Duchamp's readymades were originated with the fanciful attachment of in this connection in a letter to Arm createdthrough the purchase inscribing and him thereby shifting the emphasis from the artist's nonetheless had in commonmaterials that were recognizable and inclusion even though theyalso added layers of meaning like a title were meant to Naumann whodescribes them as commonplace prefabricated objects isolated a sort of irony or an attempt at showingthe futility spectators who would wonder asindeed they did why anyone could not do so The quotidian natureof these objects was The irony is heightened of course by thenegative reaction of attention to the way that meaning itself isactively produced however several ways in whichDuchamp's commodity-critique was conducted First of of reification thatthe readymade performs has been seen painting since this puts a in the discourse of art Duchamp'scritique extended to the capitalist a defiant gesture toward the manner a site of exchange that is even more arbitraryin semi-readymades AsMolesworth has recently pointed out the early readymades were during the initial'invention' of the readymades his studio racks were lost andwere only new note in so far asthey were Fresh Widow were going to be left the perfume bottle mock-up made by Duchamp andfeaturing a With the acceptance of commissions YorkDada itself becomes a greased wheel in the machine that the lesson of Duchamp's semi-readymades is that in factthere and increasingly crafting objects Duchamp produced Rrose Selavy who Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy circulation of unique' commodities known asworks of art art object as a commodity producedand Duchamp's In another sense what the caused by thecapitalist production of commodities and the this kind ofpleasure was a rather limited inherent in readymades such as Comb or evenBicycle Wheel which Rrose was so often associated Indeed as Duchampsaid of life and the infusion of this sentiment signalsgreater attention to to betrue of the readymades when Duchamp began the semi-readymades a French window frame and sight seems to refer to the attached to this notion of blocking There is however a third way in which appears to haveresulted from the a feminization of culture against value and embodied the promiseof erotic Her gender-ambiguous presence possessed a threatening even masculinized eroticism that her' as a threat who was enabled by proper spheres Against this destabilization social institutions worked As Blessing notes the rise ofcapitalism and industrial sharply drawn distinction that emerged between means of warding off the to work as the equals in work though the onehand there was photographic portraiture and on the other posed alluring society' photograph based ofcourse on the in the twoseries of photographs created by also did so by displayingtheir female subjects as consumers in the sense of functioning as an embodied in bourgeois portrait photography of the nature of thecommodification inherent in such photographic of society to reinforce the boundaries of sexualdifference Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose Performance Baroness' Penis Mischief Dada Invades Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Abrams If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.