Marcel Duchamp

"Like the influential artists of centuries past—Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Turner, Goya, Cézanne—Duchamp will take his place in art history according to the unfathomable tastes of future generations. But, despite the avalanche of scholarly dissections of Duchamp's oeuvre, precious little illuminates why he chose to perpetrate his various projects, and how brilliantly he rode the media merry-go-round of the twentieth century. The why is a matter of history intersecting with family, place and personality. The how is a saga teased out of archives, interviews and printed material. But the key to the Duchampian riddle remains the singular individual who tiptoed lightly through an altogether too serious world by never taking anything or anyone seriously, especially himself."
Alice Goldfarb Marquis, excerpted from her biography, Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare, MFA Publications.

"One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century," according his New York Times obituary, Marcel Duchamp was a key member of both the Dada and Surrealist avant garde art movements. Deliberately enigmatic and unpredictable, he was the grandson of the French painter and engraver Emile Nicolle, and brother of the artists Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti. He was equally known for his provocative "Readymade" objects, his influence on such important figures as Peggy Guggenheim and Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg and his late preoccupation with the strategy game of chess. Without Marcel Duchamp, contemporary art would not be as we know it today.

FORTHCOMING & NEW RELEASES

MARCEL DUCHAMP: THE AFTERNOON INTERVIEWS
By Calvin Tomkins.
BADLANDS UNLIMITED
ISBN: 9781936440399 | US $16.00
Pub Date: 2/28/2013
Active | In stock

THE INDEFINITE DUCHAMP
Foreword by Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Text by Thomas Girst.
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775734141 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2013
Active | In stock

MARCEL DUCHAMP & VITALY HALBERSTADT: A GAME IN A GAME
By Ernst Strouhal.
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869843278 | US $25.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2013
Active | Awaiting stock

MARCEL DUCHAMP: 1° LA CHUTE D’EAU
By Stefan Banz.
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869843285 | US $25.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2013
Active | Awaiting stock

ACTIVE BACKLIST

MARCEL DUCHAMP AND THE FORESTAY WATERFALL
JRP|RINGIER
ISBN: 9783037641569 | US $39.95
Pub Date: 1/31/2011
Active | In stock

LOOKING THROUGH DUCHAMP’S DOOR
By Hans Belting.
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783865606051 | US $49.95
Pub Date: 2/28/2010
Active | In stock

MARCEL DUCHAMP: WORKS, WRITINGS, INTERVIEWS
Text by Gloria Moure.
POLIGRAFA
ISBN: 9788434311985 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 10/31/2009
Active | Awaiting stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

MARCEL DUCHAMP: TU M'
Essay by Karl Gerstner.
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775791274 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 7/2/2003
Out of print | Not available

MARCEL DUCHAMP
Essays by Harald Szeeman, Dieter Daniels, Herbert Molderings and Jacques Caumont.
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775711951 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 8/2/2002
Out of print | Not available

MARCEL DUCHAMP: RESPIRATEUR
Edited by Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe. Essays by Gerhard Graulich, Herbert Molderings.
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775708951 | US $39.95
Pub Date: 4/2/2000
Out of print | Not available

CORNELL/DUCHAMP...IN RESONANCE
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783893224319 | US $80.00
Pub Date: 11/2/1998
Out of print | Not available

FROM THE BLOG

'Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews' Goes Global

Badlands Unlimited's newly-released best-seller, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews, is getting a lot of attention. Fans of the book have started a grassroots social media campaign, snapping photos of themselves reading the paperback (and e-book edition) all over the world.
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FROM THE BLOG

Badlands Unlimited Launches 'Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews' at Marshall Chess Club, NY

On the evening of February 26, some of the great and the good of the art and publishing worlds gathered at the Marshall Chess Club to celebrate the publication of Calvin Tomkins’ Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews.
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FROM THE BLOG

Calvin Tomkins to Sign 'Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews' at the 2013 CAA Conference

On Thursday, February 14th at 2 p.m., noted New Yorker writer Calvin Tomkins will sign copies of his new book, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews, published by Badlands Unlimited, at the ARTBOOK | D.A.P. bookstore (booth 505-507).
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Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp at the Age of 85

An Icon of Conceptual Photography

Text by Herbert Molderings, Friedrich Kiesler. Photographs by Percy Rainford.
Published by Walther König, Köln

In 1945, Marcel Duchamp published a photographic self-portrait in the American magazine View which depicted him--according to the caption--“at the age of 85.” In reality he was, at the time, only 58 years old. In other words, the camera was being used as a “time machine,” but not, as customary, to capture a present moment, but rather to look into the future. Until now, the circumstances surrounding this early instance of the “staged photograph” were unknown. This book includes a recently discovered script by Friedrich Kiesler, published here for the first time, in which Kiesler describes in full detail how he assisted his friend Duchamp in styling himself as a senile artist–philosopher for the lens of New York photographer Percy Rainford. The well-known Duchamp expert Herbert Molderings interprets Duchamp’s self-portrait as an innovative, conceptual use of photography.

Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

By Calvin Tomkins.
Published by Badlands Unlimited

In 1964, Calvin Tomkins spent a number of afternoons interviewing Marcel Duchamp in his apartment on West 10th Street in New York. Casual yet insightful, Duchamp reveals himself as a man and an artist whose playful principles toward living freed him to make art that was as unpredictable, complex, and surprising as life itself. Those interviews have never been edited and made public, until now. The Afternoon Interviews, which includes an introductory interview with Tomkins reflecting on Duchamp as an artist, guide and friend, reintroduces the reader to key ideas of his artistic world and renews Duchamp as a vital model for a new generation of artists.
Calvin Tomkins was born in 1925 in Orange, New Jersey. He joined the New Yorker as a staff writer in 1960. His many profiles include John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Leo Castelli, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Cindy Sherman and Jasper Johns. Tomkins is the author of 12 books, including The Bride and the Bachelors (1965), Living Well Is the Best Revenge (1971), Lives of the Artists (2008) and Duchamp: A Biography (1996).

The Indefinite Duchamp

Foreword by Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Text by Thomas Girst.
Published by Hatje Cantz

In 2009, 12 years after acquiring the Duchamp collection of Ronny van de Velde, the Staatliche Museum Schwerin launched a Duchamp Research Center. This publication is the second volume of the Center’s Poeisis series, inaugurated in 2011 with Impuls Marcel Duchamp. The Indefinite Duchamp assembles essays by Duchamp expert Thomas Girst, interviews with Duchamp’s contemporaries and quotations from peers.

Marcel Duchamp & Vitaly Halberstadt: A Game in a Game

By Ernst Strouhal.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

In 1932, Marcel Duchamp published Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled, a collaboration with chess champion Vitaly Halberstadt on endgames in chess. Ernst Strouhal’s illustrated study approaches this volume as an “almost utopian treatise on chess endgames” and as a trilingual artist’s book. (French/German/English).

Marcel Duchamp: 1° La Chute D’eau

By Stefan Banz.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

In this extended, illustrated essay, Swiss artist and author Stefan Banz (born 1961) describes Marcel Duchamp’s discovery of the Forestay Waterfall near Chexbres, Switzerland, in the summer of 1946, and how it became the starting point for his famous final masterpiece, “Étant Donnés.” Trilingual (French/German/English).

Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall

Edited by Stefan Banz. Text by Paul B. Franklin, Dalia Judovitz, Michael Lüthy, Bernard Marcadé, Herbert Molderings, Francis M. Naumann, Mark Nelson, Molly Nesbit, Dominique Radrizzani, Michael R. Taylor, Philip Ursprung.
Published by JRP|Ringier

In August 1946, Marcel Duchamp spent five weeks in Switzerland, and stayed at the Hotel Bellevue (today, Le Baron Tavernier) near Chexbres, on Lake Geneva. It was here that he discovered the Forestay waterfall, which was to become the starting point for (and ultimately the landscape of) his enigmatic and final masterpiece, "Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau, 2° le gaz d'éclairage" ("Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas"). Now, for the first time, the full significance of the choice of this waterfall is explored. Among the contributors to this volume are Caroline Bachmann, Stefan Banz, Etienne Barilier, Lars Blunck, Ecke Bonk, Paul B. Franklin, Antje von Graevenitz, Dalia Judovitz, Michael Lüthy, Bernard Marcadé, Herbert Molderings, Adeena Mey, Stanislaus von Moos, Francis M. Naumann, Mark Nelson, Molly Nesbit, Dominique Radrizzani, Roman Signer, Michael R. Taylor, Hans Maria de Wolf and Philip Ursprung.

Looking through Duchamp’s Door

Art and Perspective in the Work of Duchamp, Sugimoto and Jeff Wall

By Hans Belting.
Published by Walther König, Köln

In this new book by Hans Belting, three essays are united by one theme—the persistence of perspective after its supposed demise in the hands of modernism. Belting addresses perspective in the works of Marcel Duchamp, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Jeff Wall, in the process opening up new approaches to their work. According to Belting, the door that Marcel Duchamp installed for his final masterpiece, “Etant Donnés” (which Belting tells us was inspired by a bout of seasickness on a trip to Buenos Aires) was a decisive touchstone for both Sugimoto and Wall in their formative years, and he demonstrates how they have referenced its maker many times since. Belting's argument, embellished with many illustrations, makes for a thorough reassessment of perspective.

Marcel Duchamp: Works, Writings, Interviews

Text by Gloria Moure.
Published by Poligrafa

By his own testimony, Marcel Duchamp considered painting a "means of expression, not an end in itself. One means of expression among others, and not a complete end for life at all." His legendary "Large Glass," for example, can be seen as simply the culmination or sum of numerous experiments conducted over an eight-year period. For this reason, every aspect of his oeuvre--painting, installation, writing, interviews--is of potentially equivalent interest, and any Duchamp primer needs to present his more ephemeral contributions, in aphorisms, diagrams and conversation, alongside his visual experiments. Works, Writings, Interviews does this job splendidly, exploring the artist's many-faceted activities, analyzing his work as an entirety and gathering his key interviews and writings.

Marcel Duchamp: Tu M'

Puzzle Upon Puzzle

Essay by Karl Gerstner.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

The oeuvre Duchamp left us is small and repeatedly subject to multiple interpretations of the art historical, psychological, socio-critical and alchemical persuasion. And yet, how odd: Duchamp's last painting, Tu m' from 1918, has never drawn extensive attention among his exegetes. The title itself poses a riddle: Does it mean "tu m'aimes" (you love me), "tu m'emb'tes" (you bore me) or "tu m'emmerdes" (you can kiss my ass)? Karl Gerstner, a prominent Swiss graphic designer who knew Duchamp personally, was taken aback the first time he saw Tu m', but also intrigued. Having acquired a reproduction of the picture, Gerstner proceeded to penetrate its meanings and surfaces more and more deeply; as his surprise faded, his fascination grew. Enter this book, encouraged by artist Richard Hamilton (perhaps the most intimate of Duchamp connoisseurs), and its 20 analytical essays of riddle-solving.

Marcel Duchamp

Essays by Harald Szeeman, Dieter Daniels, Herbert Molderings and Jacques Caumont.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

A one-time Fauvist, Cubist, Dadaist, and Surrealist, but an eternal chess player, Marcel Duchamp remains the avant-garde figure beyond all avant-garde figures of the past century. Provocative and brilliant, he radically challenged and changed accepted notions of art and its manufacture, and of the relationship between art and life. Marcel Duchamp, published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel under the curatorship of Harald Szeeman, endeavors to trace the different periods of Duchamp's oeuvre by means of a selection of his work focused mainly on those aspects that influenced Tinguely's own oeuvre. Additionally, the publication contains statements by Duchamp and essays by renowned Duchamp scholars on such topics as the emergence and development of the ready-made concept and its impact on the art of the 1960s.

Marcel Duchamp: Respirateur

Edited by Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe. Essays by Gerhard Graulich, Herbert Molderings.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Cornell/Duchamp...In Resonance

Artwork by Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp. Contributions by Walter Hopps. Text by Susan Davidson, Ann Temkin.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

This book chronicles the friendship and working relationship between two of the twentieth century's most innovative and influential artists--Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. The focus of this book is the box compiled by Cornell and dedicated to his friend Duchamp: the Duchamp Dossier, c. 1934-53, a hitherto publicly unknown artwork discovered in the artist's estate following his death.