The most fetishist Marcel Duchamp

This gallery exhibition Thaddaeus Ropac of Paris presents a very specific point of view on the work, complex and full of density, of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). The title, in French Toucher Priore (Please touch), used in one of his pieces by the artist himself, expresses an inversion that alludes to and questions the indication that is commonly used in museums so that the public does not touch the works: Please do not touch.

Fetishism, in all its varieties, some of them not expressly physical, always implies contact. And by placing ourselves in this area, what Paul B. Franklin, curator of the exhibition, intends to highlight is theThe central importance of fetishism in the life and work of Marcel Duchampwho always wanted the diverse public not to be “outside” his pieces, but rather in intense and free contact with his pieces.

In the exhibition's presentation text, the curator says that “it is the first time that the importance of fetishism and fetishism in the work of Marcel Duchamp has been examined”. This requires a little qualification, as in 2016 the Tinguely Museum in Basel presented an exhibition with the same title: please touchand the subtitle the touch of art, curated by Roland Wetzel. Of course, although on that occasion the starting point was Duchamp, the exhibition was not designed so specifically around fetishism and was also presented with an open approach to the presence of other artists.

This version of please touch from Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in Paris, was presented for the first time in their London space. It is, without a doubt, a sign of great interest that through 34 works graphics, objects, photographs and reproductions in small formats, delves into some of the questions that made Duchamp one of the most important artists of our time. The irradiation of fetishism is articulated in five sections: the consideration of the ready-made as a fetishistic object; its presence in miniature replicas and reproductions; his role in the genre game: the use of fetishistic materials such as leather, vinyl, rubber and metallic paper, and the unfolding of his artistic identity (in Marcel and in Rrose Sélavy).

Small-format reproductions, made by Duchamp himself, and contained in boxes of multiple editions and in deluxe editions of catalogues, raise the question of how they can be valued in relation to original works, since, as Walter Benjamin raised in In the thirties of the last century, the character of works of art would have undergone a profound transformation from the moment their technical reproduction became possible.

Regarding this issue, Paul B. Franklin includes in the exhibition catalog what Duchamp said, in the last years of his life: “Distinguishing the real from the false, imitations from copies, are totally meaningless technical questions” (1967). “A duplicate or mechanical repetition has the same value as the original” (1968). And after that, he concludes: “In Duchamp's consideration, the ideas embodied in a work of art were of equal or greater importance than the physical object itself.”

This opens up the character of the sample set of parts precisely. We are placed before a kind of viewing microscope to place before our eyes and minds a central feature of Duchamp's artistic work: the predominance of the idea over physical supports. And, from there, the importance that the notion of fetishism has in both his life and his work.

The term fetish has its etymological roots in cult objects to which supernatural powers were attributed in certain cultures. But in the development of European culture, and with the intense display of technology that gave rise to mass populations and cultures, in the approaches of psychology and psychoanalysis, the term fetishism was coined as an expression of what was then considered a “sexual deviation”. consists of taking a part of the body or clothing as an object of excitement and desire.

The most important thing, as Paul B. Franklin constantly emphasizes, is that the notion of fetishism has a positive and open character in Duchamp. With it, we seek to situate the idea of attraction, whether or not there is physical contact, both in life and in artistic works, which allows the unfolding of desire as an erotic force. And so, to conclude, we can share with Duchamp the idea that both life and art are eros... This is what Marcel's developments in Rrose Sélavy tell us, words that sound in French, are a homophony, like Eros c'est la vie. In Spanish: Eros is life.

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