By April MacIntyre Sep 3, 2008, 2:31 GMT
Marcel Duchamp once said, “… Art is an outlet toward regions which are not ruled by time and space."
The best little art museum in all of southern California is the easily accessible Norton Simon Museum, home to the Marcel Duchamp Redux exhibit until December 8, 2008.
The Marcel Duchamp Redux is an installation commemorating the 45th anniversary of Marcel Duchamp’s now legendary Pasadena Art Museum retrospective.
Oby Director Walter Hopps in 1963, by or of Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy—the first-ever retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre—featured 114 works of art, including major loans from Europe and the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Arensberg collection.
The organizing of this groundbreaking exhibition back then was a major coup for what would become the Norton Simon Museum. The Museum’s challenge to East Coast authority was widely touted, and Hopps went on to organize a series of innovative exhibitions there.
From the press release:
Marcel Duchamp Redux features a dozen Duchamp works acquired by the Museum during and after the 1963 exhibition, as well as photographs and ephemera from the retrospective. Ready-mades (everyday or found objects that become art, thanks to the artist’s idea and designation thereof) perfectly illustrate Duchamp’s irreverent wit and subversive relationship to art history.
Two of them, The Bottle Rack, 1963 (original 1914), and L.H.O.O.Q. or La Joconde, 1964 (original 1919), included in the installation, exemplify the idea that what constitutes art is defined by the artist.
The Bottle Rack is a utilitarian object and L.H.O.O.Q. is a poster of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa on which the artist has drawn with pencil and gouache. Duchamp had a long-standing interest in optical illusion and movement, particularly as applied to painting. One of the results of this preoccupation is a set of “rotoreliefs” from 1953: motor-driven constructions with rotating color disks that give the impression of three-dimensional form in movement.
This will be the first time since the 1963 retrospective that they are on view. Boite-en-Valise, 1941–42 (original 1938), represents an entirely new and different attitude by an artist about his artwork. This portable assemblage contains examples of Duchamp’s works, reproduced in miniature, and packed in a customized case that presents the artist’s idea for a traveling mini-museum.
Duchamp’s retrospective occurred at a moment when the Southern California art community was exploding with new talent and boasted a number of galleries to host it.
Interest in the art of such an experimental and nonconforming artist was high. The opening reception was attended by Duchamp himself and such well-known artists as Edward Ruscha, Robert Irwin and Andy Warhol. A selection of photographs from the opening and other events during Duchamp’s Pasadena visit are included in the installation.
Marcel Duchamp Redux is organized by Gloria Williams Sander, Curator, Norton Simon Museum. A series of educational programs will accompany the installation.The Norton Simon Museum is known around the world as one of the most remarkable private art collections ever assembled. Over a thirty-year period 20th-century industrialist Norton Simon (1907–1993) amassed an astonishing collection of European art from the Renaissance to the 20th century and a sand Southeast Asian art spanning 2,000 years.
Also it is home to 20th century masterpieces include works by Pablo Picasso, Modigliani and Brancusi. Highlights from the Asian collection include the bronze sculptures Buddha Shakyamun, India: Bihar, Gupta period, and Shiva as King of Dance, c. 1000, India: Tamil Nadu; and the giltbronze Indra, 13th century, Nepal.
The Norton Simon Museum is located at 411 West Colorado Blvd. at Orange Grove Blvd. in Pasadena, California 91105 . The Museum is wheelchair accessible. Parking is free and no reservations are necessary.
For more information about the exhibit, please visit: here
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