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DUCHAMP'S ENDGAME : D rer, da Vinci, Poussin and Ingres
, Mercatorfonds, 2024 HB, 250 x 190 mm, ENG. edition, 194 pages , NEW, 200 illustrations in color / b/w. . ISBN 9789462303737.
In 1912 Marcel Duchamp was disillusioned with the French art scene, so leaves Paris and spent 3 months in Munich. He describes this period as the scene of his "complete liberation" and it set the tone for the rest of his life. It was in Munich that he decided to stop painting and instead create readymade works of art. The entire course of twentieth century art history changes as a direct result of this "complete liberation" and yet we know absolutely nothing about what happened, except that Duchamp created 2 small paintings and a few drawings. One hundred years later, South African artist Kendell Geers was in Munich to install a retrospective at the Haus der Kunst, and fell into a depression on account of his own disillusionment with the art scene. "Duchamp's Endgame" is a personal book about one artist looking at the work of another artist, trying to make sense of a century old enigma, trying to make sense of what it means to be an artist. Geers offers a unique reading of Duchamp that takes the reader on a labyrinthine journey through art history, revealing how one generation of artists secretly looked at another generation artists, all the way back to Leonardo da Vinci via Cranach, Poussin, Ingres and Durer. "Duchamp's Endgame" is a passionate story about art and the real life art historical version of the "Da Vinci Code" written by a contemporary artist with his tongue firmly in our cheek. A century after Duchamp declared painting is dead, nobody has yet offered any evidence beyond conjecture what he meant by that statement. Kendell Geers uses the works of art themselves as visual evidence to explain what Duchamp was looking at and researching during his 3 month stay in Munich. The book follows the links between works of art created by 5 generations of artists, explored through the eyes of the artists themselves.
