Abstract

Marcel Duchamp's stature in the history of art has grown steadily since the 1950s, as several artistic movements have embraced him as their founding father. But although his influence is comparable only to Picasso's, Duchamp continues to be relatively unknown outside his narrow circle of followers. This book seeks to explain his oeuvre, which has been shrouded with mystery.

Duchamp's two great preoccupations were the nature of scientific truth and a feeling for love with its natural limit, death. His works all speak of eroticism in a way that pushes the socially acceptable to its outer limits. Juan Antonio Ramirez addresses such questions as the meaning of the artist's ground-breaking ready-mades and his famous installation Etant donnés; his passionate essay reproduces all of Duchamp's important works, in addition to numerous previously unpublished visual sources. Duchamp: Love and Death, even is a seminal monograph for understanding this crucial figure of modern art.
"Ramírez . . . takes a narrower yet no less revealing angle, charting Duchamp’s overlapping fascinations with scientific truth, love and death. Ramírez makes a particularly detailed commentary on the erotic imagery in the work and on the related schema between particular works." — Art Monthly
Juan Antonio Ramírez is Professor of History of Art at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain, and the author of several books on art, architecture and film.