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ICECUBE: Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg and Duchamp's VIP OPENING
The vibe was mutually and warmly humorous in the face of stoicism.
ICECUBE: Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg and Duchamp’s VIP OPENING
Marcel Duchamp is one of the most crucial artists of the 20th Century, a spiritual godfather to the Dadaist movement and the Pop Art revolution, an avidly silly man, and an adviser to some of the most important museums, curators and collectors in America before his passing in 1968. That this avant-gardener’s most notorious works reside in a wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art — now dedicated to the heroic Anne d’Harnoncourt our museum’s late great director until 2008 — has forever made this city magnetic north for any experimental artist worth his salt. Pre-Pop painters Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg visited Philly’s Art Museum often throughout the ’50s, intersected with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham and together formed a perfect union of where the American avant-garde would go. Starting last week and running through January 2013, the exhibition “Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg and Duchamp” celebrates that union.
Curator Carlos Basualdo and project assistant Erica F. Battle, with the aid of over 100 objects, have done a noble job of re-creating the joie de vivre of that cross-fertilization. From Duchamp’s creaky old electro-induced chess game to Cage’s Wild Edible Drawing #3 of hibiscus, barley and kudzu, the vibe was mutually and warmly humorous in the face of stoicism.
During the exhibition’s opening soiree, the work of Cage, Cunningham, Johns and Rauschenberg was seen and heard in glorious display as was that of numinous object boxer and Duchamp collaborator Joseph Cornell, so much so that his name should have been part of the credits. One long corridor between the Dancing’s primary gallery and the Duchamp/d’Harnoncourt space consisted solely of Cornell’s works. There you can tell that there was an easy repartee and co-mingled inspiration between the two artists.
The largest of Dancing’s rooms featured French artist Philippe Parreno’s sound-scape installation involving Cage’s still life musicality with a dance floor space hosting performances of Cunningham’s loopy choreography such as Walkaround Time, a dance piece inspired by Duchamp’s The Large Glass with sets by Johns. Rauschenberg’s best Duchamp-ian moments can be found in the ghostly Bride’s Folly and larger works like the Minutiae screen of newspapers, fabric, string and plastic. Yet it’s Johns’ work is that easily the most noticeably Duchamp-like in this setting. Lots of descending sketchiness and chocolate grinders in dedication to the master.
The most radical aspect of the night, for me, was walking into the Anne d’Harnoncourt gallery. 1917’s Urinal and several other seminal works have been moved into the Dancing gallery for the time being (one hopes) with totemic items such as the darkly sexual cubby hole of Étant Donnés: 1. La Chute D’Eau, 2. Le Gaz D’Éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) and the potently odd The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. The symmetry of this room, the way the light from its single window would stream into the space, was the most dramatic part of returning visits. That theatrical play of light against the grain of Duchamp’s work — the marble cubes, thermometer, etc. of Why Not Sneeze, Rose Selavy? for example — is missing from the room’s present configuration even though it is nice seeing items such as Duchamp’s Torture-morte painted plaster foot with synthetic flies amongst his greatest hits. I’ll get used to these changes. That’s what this group of men were dedicated to.
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