Marcel Duchamp & Sturtevant Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs

Thaddaeus Ropac Milan presents an unprecedented artistic and intellectual exchange between two pioneers: Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), the father of Conceptual art, and Sturtevant (1924–2014), whose groundbreaking practice critically interrogated the conceptual structure of art in a post-Duchampian world. A ‘one-man movement’ as Willem de Kooning described him, Duchamp initiated an artistic revolution with his readymades: ordinary objects that he elevated to the status of masterpiece by virtue of his simple choice. Much like Duchamp repudiated ‘retinal art’, Sturtevant’s radical repetitions, from memory, of artworks by her peers sparked a further ‘leap from image to concept’. Over the course of four decades, Sturtevant repeatedly employed Duchamp’s own style as a medium in order to investigate the ‘understructure’ of his oeuvre: how it was made, consumed and, crucially, canonised. Titled after Sturtevant’s ironic remark, Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs reflects Duchamp’s penchant for witticisms. From Duchamp’s first readymade, Porte-bouteilles (Bottle Rack, 1914/64), through both artists’ erotic objects to Sturtevant’s repetitions of Duchamp’s seminal Fountain (1917), this first-ever exhibition dedicated to both inimitably provocative artists highlights the prescience of their practice in the age of digital reproduction and AI reproducibility.

Images: (Left) Irving Penn, Marcel Duchamp (1 of 2), New York, 1948. Gelatin silver print. © The Irving Penn Foundation. (Right) Portrait of Sturtevant. © Sturtevant Estate. Published in Frog Magazine, April 2012. Photo: L. Muzzey.