Spellbound by Marcel : Duchamp, love, and art

Spellbound by Marcel Duchamp, love, and art

Ruth Brandon

Book - 2022

"In 1915, a group of French artists fled war-torn Europe for New York. In the few months between their arrival--and America's entry into the war in April 1917--they pushed back the boundaries of the possible, in both life and art. The vortex of this transformation was the apartment at 33 West 67th Street, owned by Walter and Louise Arensberg, where artists and poets met nightly to talk, eat, drink, discuss each others' work, play chess, plan balls, organise magazines and exhibitions, and fall in and out of love. At the center of all this activity stood the mysterious figure of Marcel Duchamp, always approachable, always unreadable. His exhibit of a urinal, which he called Fountain, briefly shocked the New York art world befor...e falling, like its perpetrator, into obscurity. Many people (of both sexes) were in love with Duchamp. Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood were among them; they were also, briefly, and (for her) life-changingly, in love with each other. Both kept daily diaries, which give an intimate picture of the events of those years. Or rather two pictures--for the views they offer, including of their own love affair, are stunningly divergent. Spellbound by Marcel follows Duchamp, Roché, and Beatrice as they traverse the twentieth century. Roché became the author of Jules and Jim, made into a classic film by François Truffaut. Beatrice became a celebrated ceramicist. Duchamp fell into chess-playing obscurity until, decades later, he became famous for a second time--as Fountain was elected the twentieth century's most influential artwork"--Book jacket flap.

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Subjects
Duchamp, Marcel, > 1887-1968.
Duchamp, Marcel, > 1887-1968 > Biography.
Duchamp, Marcel, > 1887-1968 > Friends and associates.
Roché, Henri Pierre, > 1879-1959.
Wood, Beatrice.
Artists > France > Biography.
Painters > France > Biography.
Authors > 20th century.
Biographies.
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York : Pegasus Books 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Ruth Brandon (author)
Edition
First Pegasus Books cloth edition
Physical Description
xii, 241 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [231]-232) and index.
ISBN
9781643138619
  • Chief Dramatis Personae
  • Introduction
  • Part 1. Prewar
  • 1. The Armory Show, 1913
  • 2. Marcel, 1912
  • Part 2. Wartime
  • 1. Marcel, 1915
  • 2. Marcel, New York, 1915
  • 3. Beatrice, 1916
  • 4. Artistic Life, New York, 1916
  • 5. Pierre, 1917
  • 6. The Blind Man
  • 7. Mr. Mutt's Fountain
  • 8. Beatrice's Sentimental Education, 1917
  • 9. The Buddha of the Bathroom
  • 10. Pierre's American Loves, 1917
  • 11. Leaving New York 1: Beatrice
  • 12. Leaving New York 2: Pierre
  • 13. Leaving New York 3: Marcel
  • Part 3. Between Continents
  • 1. Marcel, Paris, 1919
  • 2. True Love: Man Ray, Picabia, Pierre, and Marcel
  • 3. Mary
  • 4. Marcel Married: Paris, 1927
  • 5. Marcel Discovers Love
  • Part 4. Late Fame
  • 1. Beatrice
  • 2. Pierre
  • 3. Marcel
  • 4. Surviving Marcel
  • Acknowledgments
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

Brandon, biographer of Helena Rubenstein and Harry Houdini, takes an unusual approach to the famously enigmatic Marcel Duchamp by focusing on his relationships. Handsome, charming, brainy, and mischievous, Duchamp fled Paris for New York during WWI and easily attracted a "court of wealthy and cultivated lady fans" whom he relied on but kept at a strategic distance. Smitten with young artist-in-the-making Beatrice Wood but unwilling to commit romantically, he engineered an elastic ménage à trois with his fellow expat Henri-Pierre Roché, an art world networker and journalist who would later write the novel Jules and Jim. The trio, close to the generous collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg, helped launch the 1917 Independents' Exhibition, which was not radical enough to include Fountain, Duchamp's shocking readymade: a signed urinal. With clarifying details, Brandon places Duchamp's art in the context of his affairs and marriages; exhaustively chronicles Roché's obsession with conducting simultaneous love affairs, and tracks Wood's nightmare marriage to a heartless con man and ultimate triumph as a renowned ceramicist. With singular characters and rare sexual specificity and candor, this is fresh and revelatory art history.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Cultural historian Brandon (Houdini) delivers a swirling tale of two people whose infatuations with 20th century French artist Marcel Duchamp sparked their own love affair. The nexus of Brandon's narrative is New York City's Arensberg salon, where, in the months before America entered WWI, "artists and poets from both sides of the Atlantic met nightly" to "discuss each other's work... and fall in and out of love." As Brandon reveals, many of them--including French author Henri-Pierre Roché and artist Beatrice Wood--fell in love with Duchamp. Sifting through Roché and Wood's diaries and published works, Brandon plays analytical sleuth to their converging love stories, which, she reveals, are rife with discrepancies--while Wood claimed Duchamp was besotted with her, it was actually "Duchamp who introduced her to Roché in hopes that she might find another object for her romantic yearnings." Along the way, Brandon weaves in a cast of eccentric characters from Duchamp's life (including his "Wealthy Middle-Aged Lady Friends"), while also tracing the artist's path from obscurity to fame, cemented by his 1917 urinal sculpture, Fountain, which "expressed all the anger Marcel's life was otherwise devoted to denying... about the art world, about the war." Part drama, part page-turning history, this paints the complexities of art and love in a seductive light. (Mar.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The painter and sculptor as Svengali.London-based cultural historian and novelist Brandon explores how and why a large group of sophisticated, talented people fell under the spell of the mysterious, enigmatic artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), a singular mix of wit, fun, nihilism, andindifference. The author shifts back and forth between Paris and America, making the cast of characters particularly helpful in keeping track of the playersartists, writers, collectors, musicians, journalists, husbands, wives, and loversand their sexual proclivities over some 15 years. Drawing on revealing letters, diaries, and memoirs, Brandons buoyant, meticulous story begins in 1913 with New Yorks Armory Show of new European art, including Duchamps Nude Descending a Staircase. Walter and Mary Louise Arensberg, a wealthy couple, attended, and Walter, much impressed, decided to become a supporter of avant-garde art and the people who made it. Consequently, their New York City home became an influential salon. After Duchamp visited and became a close friend, their home transformed into an international hot spot. Duchamp enjoyed the attention of his new friends, the wealthy, married Louise Norton and actor and artist Beatrice Wood, a key player in this libidinous tale. At the same time, Henri-Pierre Roch, future author of Jules et Jim and a voracious connoisseur of sex, found himself under Duchamps spell. Also in town was Duchamps married friend Francis Picabia, who was smitten with Mary Louise. The plot thickens as Brandon pauses to discuss Duchamps Fountain, a groundbreaking readymade piece in the form of an upside-down urinal with puzzling R. Mutt 1917 lettering. But the author quickly returns to the world of parties, alcohol, jazz, and free-wheeling sex as she chronicles the various relationships, with Duchamp, the instigator, lurking in the background along with new player in town photographer Man Ray. Overwhelming at times, in the end, this is really the ladies story.Theres more sex than art in this elaborate, spicy, period piece tell-all. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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