VIFF review: Marcel Duchamp: The Art of the Possible offers a primer on the Dada rebel
Still, the readymade master who turned a urinal into sculpture might have desired a cheekier portrait
Marcel Duchamp’s famous readymade sculpture, Fountain, signed “R. Mutt”, changed the way we see art, from the film Marcel Duchamp: Art of the Possible at VIFF.
Streams September 24 to October 7 as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, via VIFF.org.
A CENTURY BEFORE Banksy was tagging walls or Ai Weiwei was breaking Ming vases, Dadaist Marcel Duchamp was shocking the art world with ideas far ahead of their time. This thorough but surprisingly staid look at his life and work shows how he laid the groundwork for conceptualism.
It’s an art-history lesson, but a sophisticated one, tracing the Parisian shit disturber’s subversive bent back to his childhood. We find a rebel growing up with artist brothers, and later, a young man being snubbed from a cubist group show and shocking the scene with his Nude Descending a Staircase. From there, he drew from science and math, eventually shifting toward the “readymade” world of metal dog combs, snow shovels, and bottle racks.
Duchamp, a man so eager to rip down art-world pretension that he turned urinals into sculptures and drew moustaches on the Mona Lisa, might have wished for a less traditional portrait. But until we get a film bio even half as audacious as Duchamp, this will do as a fine primer on the man and his still radical--and funny--work.
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