Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp
Regular price
€44.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
20th century
A01=Elena Filipovic
action
archive
art
artist
Author_Elena Filipovic
Category=AGA
Category=AGB
contemporary
cultural studies
curation
curator
curatorial studies
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
exhibition history
history
modern
modernism
non-art
surrealism
twentieth century
Product details
- ISBN 9780262058780
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 05 May 2026
- Publisher: MIT Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A new understanding of Marcel Duchamp and his significance as an artist through an investigation of his non-art activities archiving, art-dealing, and, most persistently, curating. This groundbreaking and richly illustrated book tells a new story of the twentieth century's most influential artist, recounted not so much through his artwork as through his non-art work. Marcel Duchamp is largely understood in critical and popular discourse in terms of the objects he produced, whether readymade or meticulously fabricated. Elena Filipovic asks us instead to understand Duchamp's art through activities not normally seen as artistic from exhibition making and art dealing to administrating and publicizing. These were no occasional pursuits; Filipovic argues that for Duchamp, these fugitive tasks were a veritable lifework. Drawing on many rarely seen images, Filipovic traces a variety of practices and projects undertaken by Duchamp from 1913 to 1969, from his invention of the readymade to the release of his last, posthumous work. She examines Duchamp's note writing, archiving, and quasi-photographic activities, which resulted in the Box of 1914 and the Green Box; his art dealing, marketing, and curating that culminated in experimental exhibitions for the Surrealists and his miniature museum, The Boite-en-valise; and his administrative efforts and clandestine maneuvering in order to posthumously embed his Etant donnes into a museum. Demonstrating how those activities reflect the artist's questioning of reproduction and originality, as well as photography and the exhibition, Filipovic proposes that Duchamp's non-art labor, and in particular his curatorial strategies, more than merely accompanied his more famous artworks; in a certain sense, they made them. Through Duchamp's elusive but vital activities he revised the idea of what a modern artist could be. With this fascinating book, Filipovic in turn revises the very idea of Duchamp.
Elena Filipovic is Director and Curator of Kunsthalle Basel. She is the author of David Hammons: Bliz-aard Ball Sale (Afterall Books/MIT Press) and The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press).
