Pasadena Magazine

February 2016 - Beauty, Love and Money

Pasadena Magazine is the bi-monthly magazine of Pasadena and its surrounding areas – the diverse, historically rich and culturally vibrant region that includes Glendale, the Eastside of Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley all the way to Claremont.

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2:27 PM 10:05 AM Marcel Duchamp: The Journey Though art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, Duchamp's work makes a powerful statement and has broken boundaries by reinventing how we perceive what art is—while paving the way for some of Pop Art's most acclaimed fi gureheads. STORY BY // SARA SMOLA ∫ "I PURCHASED THIS AS A SCULPTURE ALREADY MADE," ARTIST MARCEL DUCHAMP WROTE IN A LETTER TO HIS SISTER ABOUT BOTTLERACK—THE SCULPTURE HE BOUGHT FROM A SHOP IN PARIS WHERE IT SAT IN HIS STUDIO UNTIL HE DECIDED IT WAS NOT JUST A RACK USED FOR DRYING BOTTLES BUT WAS, IN FACT, ART. How do we describe art? Thanks to popular culture, we all know what art is but how do we defi ne it? Many of us would revert back to the familiar adage, "I know it when I see it," or offer up an visual example of a universally recognized and appreciated work such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Yet, artist Marcel Duchamp saw art as something that could be played with and was subject to experimentation—which he demonstrated by painting a mustache and goatee on a cheap postcard of da Vinci's Mona Lisa. "He had a wry sense of humor and he enjoyed puns and wordplay and you'll fi nd a lot of that in the way art works are titled. I think the idea of a double entendre is the way he sees the artwork and I think that's a good analogy for the readymades," explains Norton Simon Curatorial Associate Tom Norris of the museum's newest exhibit, Duchamp to Pop. Bottlerack became the pioneering work of "readymade" art, a self-evident term used to describe a piece of work which is "already made" and which the artist neither adorns or modifi es in any way, playing with context rather than form. "He went to a hardware store in Paris and bought this and it sat in his studio. At some point, he decided it was an artwork—to take the functionality out of an object and place it into the context of the art world where it no longer operates as something you would place your wine bottles or milk bottles and now it's an object to be viewed," says Norris. 6/11/15 2:27 PM 7/29/15 10:05 AM Untitled (Hand and Cigar),1967; Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968); Lithograph, Edition of 100, No. 90; 27-1/4 x 19 in. (69.2 x 48.3 cm); Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. John Coplans in hom- age to Mr. Walter Hopps; © Succession Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2016 L.H.O.O.Q. or La Joconde, 1964 (replica of 1919 original); Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968); Colored reproduction, heightened with pencil and white gouache, Edition of 35, No. 6 (Arturo Schwartz edition); 11-3/4 x 7-7/8 in. (29.8 x 20.0 cm); Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Virginia Dwan; © Succession Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2016 FEBRUARY 2016 11 T A L K A B O U T T O W N PULSE the pulse_Feb16.indd 11 1/20/16 2:18 PM

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