Duchamp and Sturtevant: Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs 7 Shows to See in Milan Right Now

By Ana Vukadin

Since opening its new Milan space last autumn, Thaddaeus Ropac has excelled at curating exhibitions that pair artists in ways that lead to new conversations around their practices. ‘Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs’ brings together two pioneering 20th-century figures: Marcel Duchamp, father of conceptual art, and Elaine Sturtevant, mother of appropriation art. The starting point is Sturtevant’s numerous reinterpretations of Duchamp’s works, whereby her acts of radical repetition continue his subversion of what constitutes art and originality – a prescient question in the age of AI. Highlights include one of nine existing examples of Duchamp’s first readymade, Porte-bouteilles (Bottle Rack, 1914/64), hanging from the ceiling, and Sturtevant’s gorgeous black and white photograph Duchamp descendant l’escalier (Duchamp Descending the Staircase, 1992), which recreates Duchamp’s famous 1912 painting by deconstructing the movement of the artist as she walks down a flight of stairs.