Queer Places:
210 W 14th St, New York, NY 10011
Cimitière Monumental de Rouen, Rue du Mesnil Gremichon, 76000 Rouen
Henri-Robert-Marcel
Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French-American painter,
sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada,
and conceptual art.[2][3][4] He
was careful about his use of the term Dada[5] and
was not directly associated with Dada groups. When Frank Lloyd Wright tried to
tar Modernism with the brush of homosexuality, asking his audience – at the
Western Round Table on Modern Art, in 1949 – ‘if this movement which we call
modern art and painting has been greatly, or is greatly in debt to
homosexualism’, Marcel Duchamp responded: ‘I believe that the homosexual
public has shown more interest or curiosity for modern art than the
heterosexual’.
One of the most unusual aspects
of the Stettheimers’ salon
was the large number of their gay, bisexual, and lesbian friends and
acquaintances, who were comfortable being their authentic selves among their
straight friends.
Several of the sisters’ closest friends, including
Charles Demuth,
Marsden Hartley,
Henry McBride,
Virgil Thomson, and Baron
Adolph de Meyer (married to a lesbian,
Olga Carracciolo) were homosexual;
Carl Van Vechten,
Cecil Beaton, and
Georgia O’Keeffe were bisexual;
Natalie Barney and
Romaine Brooks were lesbians; and
Alfred Stieglitz,
Marcel Duchamp,
Gaston Lachaise, Marie Sterner, and
Leo Stein were heterosexual. This open, natural mix of friends with different sexual preferences continued when Stettheimer held salons in her studio in the Beaux Arts building in midtown Manhattan, although later in life she also had parties where most of the guests were strong feminist women.
Duchamp is commonly regarded,
along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who
helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic
arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for
significant developments in painting and sculpture.[6][7][8][9] Duchamp
has had an immense impact on twentieth-century and twenty first-century art,
and he had a seminal influence on the development of conceptual art. By World
War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists (such as Henri
Matisse) as "retinal" art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp
wanted to use art to serve the mind.[10]
by Carl Van Vechten
Marcel Duchamp and Rosa Selavy by Florine Stettheimer
Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Beatrice Wood at the Broadway Photo Shop, New York City, 1917
Lit de Marcel [Marcel's Bed] (1917): watercolor (Beatrice Wood,
Marcel Duchamp, Charles Demuth, Aileen Dresser, and Mina Loy)
Marcel Duchamp, 1939, by Gisèle Freund
Tate Modern
In June 1927, Duchamp married Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor; however, they divorced
six months later. It was rumored that Duchamp had chosen a marriage of
convenience, because Sarazin-Lavassor was the daughter of a wealthy automobile
manufacturer. Early in January 1928, Duchamp said that he could no longer bear
the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and they were soon divorced.[59]
By the mid 1940s Jean Connolly
had dropped
Clement Greenberg and was
involved with Laurence Vail, the Surrealist artist and former husband of
Peggy Guggenheim, heiress,
angel of expatriate European artists, and owner of Art of This Century
Gallery. With bohemian aplomb, however, it was the two women who began living
together in Guggenheim's duplex at East 61st Street, New York. Thank to this
arrangement, Rupert Barneby and
Dwight Ripley
found themselves frequently in New York at the center of Upper Bohemia. "Jean
Connolly, Dwight Ripley, Matta, Marcel Duchamp
were around a great deal," recalled Lee Krasner, the painter who was Jackson
Pollock's wife. "They were at all the parties." Rupert and Dwight were at the
now famous party during which Pollock's Mural was first shown and Pollock
relieved himself in the fireplace. Barneby remembered Marcel Duchamp, the
avatar of cool in the art world today, as a "pompous pundit." He recalled
Guggenheim herself as "mean"; she "dressed like a hag," her stagy
consersational asides were "like a dagger in the heart."
Between 1946 and 1951 Maria Martins was Duchamp's mistress.[60]
In 1954, he and Alexina "Teeny" Sattler married. They remained together until
his death.
Duchamp became a United States citizen in 1955.[58]
Duchamp died suddenly and peacefully in the early morning of 2 October 1968
at his home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. After an evening dining at home with
his friends Man Ray and Robert Lebel, Duchamp
retired at 1:05 am, collapsed in his studio, and died of heart failure.[64]
Duchamp was an atheist.[65] He
is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France, with the epitaph,
"D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent" ("Besides, it's always the
others who die").
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