unrelated note to all the crap down below: the accountant/pirate hostage dude in The Life Aquatic is none other than… Harold! from Harold and Maude. He didn't age so well… and now on to your regularly schedule self-indulgent entry.
(feel free to submit this for me maria or mel, if the student show isn't closed yet…)
Take one chess pawn and inscribe upon it in white “Epignone (time and date of inscription) Christopher McCulloch.”
I've been doing far far too much research on Duchamp, so much that it's connecting to everything. Bjork thinks Duchamp is a “genius.” Warhol knew of him, but didn't “know he was that famous or anything” (sidenote: Warhol is really vacant, but I knew that already). In my internet research, I have found that Duchamp's main piece The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even is on display at the Tate Modern, which is something I don't remember at all. That's going to be an interesting second trip. I might make an appointment to get into the print room, so I can look over Duchamp's notes in his Green Box. Merde, those are in French. Duchamp has a piece called “Solipcistic Machine.” He was a big fan of non-Euclidean geometry. He was French! But hung out in New York and became more less Americanized. Lotsa chess stories. Blagh… Marxist critiques of Duchamp make my head hurt and make me not like art criticism.
SOLIPICISM! (there is no spoon)
SOLIPCISTIC CRITIQUE! (there is no spoon, but what matters is your reaction to said spoon. wait.)
Oh yeah, more weird things. My Duchamp studies are relating to the theoritcal concepts we're discussing in art of the memoir. There's far too much solipcism, for one thing. Also, someone started talking about Socrates (agh!) and discussing how since Duchamp's work provokes questioning, you're engaging in a dialogue with it, thus learning is enhanced + creativity by this process of questioning. I plowed through a theoretical essay comparing Duchamp's invented meanings behind Large Glass to James Joyce's invented language in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Finnegan's Wake needs to stay the hell away from me (even though I will probably try and read it soon). Duchamp wanted to create a book that was without beginning and end (perhaps bound spirally, so the pages keep turning without a cover). Finnegan's Wake's last sentence leads to its first. In short stories we were trying to figure out if circular plots exist, but we couldn't think of examples. We even looked at Finnegan's Wake. Bridget!!
I still can't figure out modernism and postmodernism. The glut of theses I am reading are leading me to compose my own. Ack. I blame you Linda Miller Cleary!
This paper is now 18 pages and still growing… I need help.
… When I was in Prague I started talking to Mike about math stuff. I wanted to know if the fact that parallel lines intersect at the horizon (perspective!) had any bearing in math. He said it didn't really, as its perspective, but that there's a theory that two infinite parallel lines eventually intersect (since they're infinite). GUESS WHAT A CRITICAL ESSAY ON DUCHAMP AND GEOMETRY IS TALKING ABOUT?! This is too weird.
“In Euclidean geometry, parallel lines do not intersect. The mathematical convention that they do intersect at infinity was one of Desargues' important contributions. (Parallel lines do seem to intersect at the vanishing point of a perspective system, which may have given Desargues his idea.) Thinking of parallel lines as meeting at infinity eventually contributed to the development of non-Euclidean geometries in the nineteenth century. The conceptual point where parallel lines meet cannot be seen, any more than the curvature of space can be perceived directly. If the curved lines in the Three Standard Stoppages are taken as references to non-Euclidean lines of sight, then they are fundamentally hidden in “garments” of the Bride, just as the vanishing point in Tu m' seems to disappear off the edge of its hyperspatial expanse.”
I also found out that there's going to be a “Reconsidering Marcel Duchamp” lecture at the Tate Modern in May… I just paid £15 online to go. I have been eaten by this paper.
It has just occurred to me that one of the basic concepts Duchamp was getting as was the interrelationship of form and meaning (though he emphasized the second, cerebral).
That was the focus of my Art and Museums course. AGH.
I leave you with a quote from my comp professor…
“JUST MAKE SURE YOU GET SOMEONE GOOD TO PROOF IT FOR YOU, 18 PAGES IS A LOT OF ROOM FOR MISTAKES, NO MATTER HOW FASCINATING.”