Spatial uncertainty and military avoidance
Duchamp, direct and indirect strategies
pp. 182-185
in: Roy Ascott, Gerald Bast, Wolfgang Fiel, Margarete Jahrmann, Ruth Schnell (eds), New realities, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
Marcel Duchamp's preoccupation with military failure in the context of the French preparations for war in 1914 can be seen in a selection of disquieting notes, readymades and paintings between 1911 and 1915. With hindsight, we can identify this in his small painting the "Coffee Grinder' (1911) with its sly reference to the French machine guns, derisively called moulins à café and pulled out of service by 1915. (Lyons 2006: 10) We can also find notes that refer to aerial bombing and surveillance [Matisse], and in a provisional gesture, typical of soldiers forced to make do with limited means, he uses his bayonet as a makeshift pivot for the workings of his "bachelor apparatus' in the Large Glass. Next to this contraption, he places his dismal "cemetery of uniforms' with its allusions to French regimental traditions in the form of the cuirassier, which while splendid in appearance and enjoying popular approval, was in fact ill-equipped to fight the mobile war that would rip through northern France in August 1914. A British army report in 1912 suggested that French uniforms such as these were more appropriate to the operatic stage than the field of battle.
