The publication on the Duchamp-Symposium, presented by the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection on April 25/26, 2017, is the first substantial publication on the topic. Eight essays by well-known authors, analyzing Duchamp’s numerous curatorial gestures as well as introductions to two important German Duchamp research institutions. With contributions by Akiko Bernhöf, Eva Fabbris, Elena Filipovic, Gerhard Graulich and Kornelia Röder, Susanne M. I. Kaufmann, Eva Kraus, Katharina Neuburger, Gesine Tosin, Sandro Zanetti and Renate Wiehager.
Marcel Duchamp made exhibition practice one of the most important parts of his work. Curatorial gestures and concepts, which determined the staging of his works and allowed him to move away from canonical definitions of the artist; publications of photographic documentations of his New York studio; themes, contributions and layouts for art magazines; activity as a consultant, juror and staging curator for exhibitions in the contexts of American modernism, Dada and Surrealism; the exertion of a powerful influence on important private collections of his time – Duchamp exhausted all conceivable aspects of exhibiting and collecting. While deliberately distancing himself from given structures of artistic work, he approached a concept of curatorial practice as an aesthetic medium that is today well established. According to the pointed thesis of the symposium and the publication here, he was one of the first ‘artist curators’ and, thus, decisively influenced the reception of his own work as well as the art historical development of exhibition practice. Duchamp gave the multiple possibilities for perception and open perspectives of interpretation of his oeuvre, via the staging, reproduction and multiplication of his own and others’ works, a new conceptual direction, one which defined a turn in contemporary art. Principles of exhibition practice became decisive factors in the constitution of a work.
At Mercedes-Benz Contemporary Berlin, the publication can be acquired for a reduced price of 28,00 EUR.