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    3 Marcel Duchamp and the New Geometries Jarcel Duchamp’s statements late in life on the degree of his involvement with the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry have left a curiously con- tradictory record. Robert Lebel wrote in his 1959 monograph on Duchamp, “Marcel, on his part, had drawn his own conclusions from the works of Lobachevsky and Riemann.” Yet, the attitude Duchamp expressed in subsequent interviews in the 1960s was hardly that of one who had seriously studied the new geometries. For example, in Pierre Cabanne’s 1967 Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp, Duchamp portrays himself as a mere dabbler in higher dimensions and does not even mention non- Euclidean geometry: Capanne: On this scientific side, you have considerable knowledge. . Ducuame: Very little. I never was the scientific type. "Lebel, Marcel Duchamp, trans. George Heard in Craig Adcock, “Marcel Duchamp's Notes for La Hamilton (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 27. Al Mane mise a nu par ses oflbaives, mémes: An n- ‘though Duchamp gave the impression chat he hed Dimensional Prospectus fora Life's Work” (Ph.D. dis- actually read the books of Lobachevsky and Riemann _sertation, Comell University, 1981). Duchamp could {nan interview with William Carfeld on 4 Apr. 1961 have gained a working knowledge of the ideas of Lo- (Canfield, “La Section d'Or,” p. 141), he was more bachevsky and Riemann simply by reading Poincaré specific (and selfdeprecatory) the next month ina and other secondary sources availabe in Paris letter to Serge Seaulfer. Weting on 28 May 1961 in “Dore Ashton, “An Interview with Marcel Du- anzwet to Stauffe's question on this subject, Duchamp champ,” Studio Intemational, ctx (June 1966), 245; stated, “Naturally I never read serioutly the works of and Jeanne Siegel, “Some Late Thoughts of Marcel Riemann becawe | would have been incapable off" Duchamp," Arts Magne, xu (Dec. 1968-Jan. 1969), (Serge Stuer, "100 Questions 4 Marcel Duchamp et 22. See the conclusion of the present chapter for Due 19 quesions annexes; corespondance inédites, 1957- _charp'setatements on the new geometries in these 1967" [Unpublished typescript, Musée National @Are_—_ interviews Modeme, Pais, n. pag,)). Staufe’s text is discussed 118 Q] DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES Casanne: So little? Your mathematical abilities are astonishing, especially since you didn’t have a scientific upbringing. Ducame: No, not at all. What we were interested in at the time was the fourth dimension. In the “Green Box”? there are heaps of notes on the fourth dimension. ‘Do you remember someone called, I think, Povolowski? He was a publisher, in the rue Bonaparte. I don’t remember his name exactly. He had written some articles in a magazine popularizing the fourth dimension, to explain that there are flat beings who have only two dimensions, etc. It was very amusing, appearing at the same time as Cubism and Princet. Capanne: Princet was a fake mathematician—he too practiced irony. Ducame: Exactly. We weren't mathematicians at all, but we really did believe in Princet. He gave the illusion of knowing a lot of things. Now, I think he was a high-school math teacher. Or in a public school. In any case, at the time I had tried to read things by Povolowski, who explained measurements, straight lines, curves, etc. That was working in my head while I worked, although I almost never put any calculations into the “Large Glass.” Simply, I thought of the idea of a projection, of an invisible fourth dimension, something you couldn't see with your eyes.4 Distance from the idealistic Cubist era in which the fourth dimension and the new geometries had been such major concerns, as well as simple lapses of memory on Duchamp’s part, may explain the tone of his discussion with Cabanne. Duchamp, the close friend of Princet,> certainly knew that he was an insurance actuary, but here remembers him as a “high-school math teacher.” It is Cabanne, influenced by later literature on Cubism, who suggests that Princet was a “fake mathematician.” Never- theless, Duchamp does agree with Cabanne that Princet “practiced irony,” and in an. earlier section of their interview Duchamp had described Princet as “an extraordinary being” who “played at being a man who knew the fourth dimension by heart.”* As previous chapters have demonstrated, however, such a wide variety of notions were encompassed by “the fourth dimension” that Princet could have been a legitimate » Duchamp misspoke here, for nearly al of his notes dealing with che fourth dimension are collected in A Golding, Cubism, p. 31. infiniti (The Whie Box) (New York: Cordier & Ek Duchamp, as quoted in Cabanne, Dialogues, pp. strom, 1966) and not in the Green Bos. 2.24. “Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, pp. 39- DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES 0 119 mathematician and still have only been able to “play at being a man who knew the fourth dimension by heart.” Most importantly, Duchamp affirms that “we really did believe in Princet.” Over the years Duchamp’s final, more simplified explanation of the fourth dimension, in terms of a three-dimensional projection or shadow may have lessened in his mind the significance of his own geometrical researches during that period, as well as those of Princet and the Cubists. In the section of the conversation quoted above, Duchamp credits himself with hardly any mathematical ability and seems almost to be “practicing irony” on his part. Discussing the popular articles by “Povolowski,” he humbly states, “{ had tried to read things by Povolowski, who explained measurements, straight lines, curves, etc.” The author whom Duchamp remembered as “Povolowski” was none other than Gaston de Pawlowski, author of Voyage ax pays de la quatriéme dimension and the single major source of literature on the fourth dimension in Paris during 1910, 1911, and 1912. Pawlowski’s importance for the Puteaux Cubists, established in Chapter 2, confirms this identification. Furthermore, Jean Clair in Marcel Duchamp ou le grand fictif has established a number of convincing analogies between aspects of Pawlowski’s science fiction and Duchamp's terminology in his notes for the Large Glass.’ The similarity of the Frenchman Pavlowski’s name to that of Jacques Povolozky, a Russian publisher established at 13 rue Bonaparte, must have caused Duchamp’s confusion. Even when his “Povolowski” is identified as Gaston de Pawlowski, however, several 1 Before the publication of Clair's Marcel Duchamp critique” on the subject as well as from ewo chapeers ‘on le grand fc, an excerpt of Clair’ text was printed in L’Arc, une (1974), 44-57, as “Les Vapeurs de la rmariée.” Although many interesting comparisons are made in Clair’ book (e.g., becween Duchamp's ter- rminology of his automobilelike Bride and Pawlowsk's ‘humanoid automobiles), ic must be read with caution. Unforcunately, Clair used the 1923 edition of Paw- Towsk's Voyage au ays de la quatritme dimension, which, contains a lengthy introductory ection not present in 1912, as well as added chapters and alterations in cer ‘ain original chapters. Pawlowski’ introductory “Ex- amen critique” (pp. 9-53 of the 1971 Editions Deno reprint, which Clair employed) was written in the wake of the popularization of Binstein and Relativity ‘Theory in the early 1920s and thus fequently differs from ideas expressed in the 1912 edition, ‘A mote subtle change in Pawlowshi's book between 1912 and 1923 wasa new emphasis on the relationship of humor to the fourth dimension, an idea to which Clair gives more attention than it is due. Clair (pp. TL) quotes from a section of the late of the 1923 edition entitled “La Naissance de Phu- rmout” and "La Revolte des singes.” These two chap- ters, however, were revised versions of two 1912 chap- ters “Le Flot qui apport” and "Les Quatre Dimensions de esprit.” In contrast to the 1923 emphasis on hu ‘mor, “Les Quatre Dimensions de esprit” in 1912 had presented a lofty argument forthe fourth dimension asthe quality that distinguishes the human mind from all other forms of being. On the problems in Clair's text relating tothe timing of the Comoe publication of episodes of "Voyage," see nn. 31, 33 below. "The Russian Jacques Povolosky (1881-1943) ar- rived in Pats around 1909, where he began publishing Russian-language books as well as translating two nov cls by Artsybachev. A prominent member ofthe Rus- sian community in Pats, Povaleaky came to know an increasing number of non-Russian artists, including Picasso, Gleizes, Severni, and Pieabia. After World ‘War I his 13 rue Bonaparte address was frequently wed asa gallery, and Picaba's works were exhibited a his Galerie “La Cible” in 1920. Povolosky also continued 120 0) DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES discrepancies remain in Duchamp’s discussion. The idea that “there are flat beings who have only two dimensions,” in the tradition of Abbott and Hinton, does not play a major role in Pawlowski’s science-fiction tales of the fourth dimension. Basing himself on Poincaré, Pawlowski merely mentions in passing the two-dimensional sphere dwellers posited by Helmholtz.’ Nor does Pawlowski explain “measurements, straight lines, curves, etc.,” as Duchamp recalled. The answer perhaps is that Duchamp, remembering Pawlowski’s importance for the Cubist painters, linked his name with subject matter that he himself derived from other sources, particularly the writings of Jouffret and Poincaré. Jouffret’s Traité élé- ‘mentaire de géométrie d quatre dimensions gives a detailed exposition of a two-dimensional world, citing both Hinton and Abbott's Flatland. ° Poincaré discusses the case of two dimensions in a variety of contexts, including Helmholte’s arguments about the ge- ometry that would be established by two-dimensional beings on a sphere, and the topological question of continua and cuts.'' And, in fact, the notes that Duchamp began making in 1912 for The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) establish conclusively that he did read Jouffret and Poincaré. In one of his notes for the Large Glass Duchamp cites Jouffret in connection with an idea basic to his final conception of the Bride of the Large Glass: “The shadow cast by a 4-dim’l figure on our space is a 3-dim'l shadow (see Jouffret ‘Géom. a 4 dim.’ page 186, last 3 lines). His references to Poincaré are more complex and suggest the more scholarly, geometrical reasoning to be found in a number of the notes for the Large Glass. On the subject of “Dedekind cuts,” Duchamp asserts of a two-dimensional being in a plane, “Therefore this line is for him a Dedekind cut (Poincaré) creating 2 distince plane fields.” Of the analogous situation in a four-dimensional continuum, Duchamp notes that “Poincaré’s explanation about n-dim’l continuums by means of the Dedekind cut of the n— I continuum is not in error." 10 publish books under the name “Editions ‘La Ci- ble,’ including Severin's Du Cubisme au casicisme ings of Mareel Duchamp (Marchand du se), ed Michel Sanouillee and Elmer Peterson (New York: Oxford and numerous works by Gleizes. In no phase of his careet, however, was Povolosky active as a popularize ofthe fourth dimension (Information courtesy M. Michel Kaplan, Paris). » Pawlowski, Voyage au pays de la quatitme dimen- sion, p. 28, ' See Joutre, Traité demenare, pp. 186-87 1 See, eg, Poincaré, La Science et "hypohise, pp 52.53; The Foundations of Science, p. 57. See aso Poin caré, Demis Pensées, pp. 65-65; Mathematics and Science: Last Essays, p. 29. "© See Duchamp, A infin, in Sal Seller: The Write University Press, 1973), p. 89. The Joufret quotation was fist reprinted by Arturo Schwarz, who included ic im his Notes and Projects for the Large Glass, trans George Heard Hamilton, Cleve Gray, and Schwa (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969), p. 36. Schwarz also discussed chis text in his Complete Werks of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1969), p. 23. More recently, the text has been commented upon briefly by Nicolas Calas in Minors ofthe Mind (New York: Multiples, Inc. and Castelli Graphics, 1975), pp. L-L. Duchamp, A Tinfnitif, in Salt Seller, pp. 94, 98. DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES &] 121 Duchamp’s references to Jouffret and Poincaré occur in a group of notes for the Large Glass that were rediscovered by Duchamp only in 1964 and were published in 1966 as A Pinfintif (The White Box).!* Before the publication of A linfinitif Duchamp’s reputation had been based largely upon an earlier collection of notes, the Green Box of 1934, which contained few references to geometry. Even the final collection of Duchamp’s Notes, published in 1980 does not equal A l'infinitf in geometrical interest." Indeed, A l'infinitif reveals a Duchamp quite different from his traditional image as a Dadaist practitioner of black humor. It is not at all difficult to visualize this scholarly Duchamp grappling with the ideas of Lobachevsky and Riemann. The product of the union of Duchamp’s ironical outlook and his scholarship was a “playful physics” created by “slightly distending the laws of physics and chemistry.”! ‘As Duchamp himself explained his dual role to Cabanne, “I was interested in intro- ducing the precise and exact aspect of science, which hadn’t often been done, or at least hadn't been talked about very much. It wasn't for love of science that I did this; on the contrary, it was rather in order to discredit it, mildly, lightly, unimportantly. But irony was present.”!7 The parallel between Duchamp’s “playful physics” and Jarry’s pataphysics is un- mistakable: an irreverent artist for whom nothing is sacred delves into avant-garde mathematics and science in secret so as to discredit longstanding beliefs still held by the majority of the public. The new geometries were an ideal tool for “slightly dis- tending” the laws of science, for although they had actually existed for over fifty years, "The Cordier & Ekstrom edition ofA fn con sisted of 150 boxed sets of notes in facsimile. However, the publication in 1973 of Sl Seller, an enlarged and translated version of Michel Sanouillet’s 1958 an- thology of Duchamp's writings, Marchand du se, made the A Vinfnif notes available on a wide scale. A French language version of Salt Seler is now available as Duchamp du sine, ed. Michel Sanouille (Paris: Flammarion, 1975). Since the frst dicussions of Duchamp and the fourth dimension (by the author and Jean Clait) appeared in 1974-1975, a number of other texts on this subject hhave been published. These include the essays by Clair and Ulf Linde in the four-volume catalogue L’Ocuere de Marcel Duchamp (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Porw- pidou, Paris, 31 Jan.-2 May 1977), Clar’s book Due ump et la phowgraphie (Paris: Editions du Chéne, 1977), and his article, “L'Echiquier, les modemes et la quatri8me dimension,” Rewue d'Art, no. 39 June 1978), pp. 59-68. In addition to Craig Adcock’s 1981 dissertation on “Marcel Duchamp's Notes,” another important contribution to the study of Duchamp and. the fourth dimension is John Dee's 1977 essay, "Ce Faconnement symétrique.” Dee's study of Hinton has suggested important parallels with Duchamp, which were previously overlooked. Dee does overstate the case for Hinton’s importance in this era somewhat, however, when he compares the Englishman's cont bution to the early ewentiech century with that of Marlo Ficinos to the Renaissance. Since Hinton's books were not even owned by the Bibliotheque Na- tionale or the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, is in- fluence must be recognized as limited to a relatively small audience in Pats See Mareal Duchamp: Nows, ed. and trans. Paul Matisse (Paris: Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, 1980). The new notes, which in- troduce Duchamp's notion of “inframinee" (discussed below), are analyzed in depth by Adcock in "Marcel Duchamp's Notes,” ch. 3. % Duchamp, Green Bos, in Sale Seller, pp. 49, 71 Duchamp, as quoted in Cabanne, Dialogus, p. 39, 122 0) DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES serious information about the n-dimensional and non-Euclidean geometries and their possible scientific ramifications was only gradually becoming available to nonspecialists in this period. In the minds of most people, conditioned by the overriding positivism of the nineteenth century, the world was still clearly three-dimensional and Euclidean. How revolutionary and subversive, then, the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry must have seemed to Duchamp and Jarry. Yet both men retained their ironical distance and neither professed absolute loyalty to the new geometry and science, knowing that its truth, too, was relative and would someday have to be “slightly distended” as well. Duchamp's admiration for Jarry is well known,'® and the latter’s Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll must have had a profound impact upon Duchamp on its first appearance in 1911. However, Duchamp was to go much deeper into the new ge- ometries than had Jarry. While n-dimensional geometry figures in only one chapter of Gestes et opinions and Jarry’s discussion of non-Euclidean geometry in his “Com- mentaire pour servir a la construction pratique de la machine & explorer le temps” is relatively brief, Duchamp has left a detailed record of his ponderings on the new geometries. From the evidence available, it seems that Duchamp spent much more time than Jarry patiently working out the applications of the new geometries for his, art, Jay, on the contrary, explored a wider range of contemporary science than Duchamp, but he then quickly tured his initial findings to humorous purposes. Duchamp's intellect is laid bare in the sections of A Vinfinitif on'“Perspective” and “The Continuum.” In these notes Duchamp was attempting to work out the mechanics of portraying the fourth dimension, and his seemingly ever-present ironical stance disappears temporarily. Here is the scholar Duchamp, laboring in private to do the necessary background research and reasoning for a work that would astound and mystify the public. Decades later, the notes themselves possess an air of mystery and require of the reader a preparation similar to Duchamp's in order to penetrate their forbidding exterior. Duchamp’s Introduction to n-Dimensional and Non-Euclidean Geometry While the fourth dimension may have been brought to Duchamp’s attention by popular literature like that of Pawlowski and perhaps even by his brothers’ neighbor Sce Schware, Complete Works, p. 9. Duchamp joined the Jaryesque College de ‘Pataphysique in. 1959 DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES (123 at Puteaux, Kupka, the connection of the fourth dimension with Cubism would only have been discovered once Duchamp met members of the Cubist circle around Met- zinger and Gleizes. For the more mathematical side of the new geometries and an introduction to the writings of Jouffret and Poincaré, Duchamp, like the Cubists themselves, was probably indebted to Princet, of, initially, to secondhand accounts of his ideas on Cubism and n-dimensional geometry. Once the fourth dimension became an artistic interest at Puteaux, however, the hyperspace philosophy with which Kupka may have already been acquainted through Theosophical literature would also have taken on a new relevance for Duchamp. In the spring of 1911 Duchamp, along with his brothers, Jacques Villon and Ray- mond Duchamp-Villon, and certain other members of the Société Normande de Peinture Moderne, had seen the first public manifestation of Cubism in salle 41 of the Salon des Indépendants. Although Duchamp- Villon was a member of the Salon d’Au- tomne hanging commitcee that placed works by members of both groups together in salle 8, few of the painters had actually met those in the other group before the Salon d’Automne itself. Gleizes, for instance, states in his memoirs that he did not know Duchamp and Villon until the conclusion of the Salon d’Automne. Duchamp con- firmed Gleizes's view in the course of his conversations with Cabanne, asserting, “At the end of 1911 I met Gleizes, Metzinger, and Léger, who moved in the same circle.” ‘After the closing of the Salon d’Automne on 8 November, the two groups began to meet jointly for their discussions at Puteaux and Courbevoie. With such nonartist friends of the Gleizes and Metzinger circle as Princet and Apollinaire invited to the gatherings, Duchamp would soon have met Princet. The fourth dimension must have quickly become a shared concem, for at the subsequent joint exhibition at the Galerie d'Art Ancien et d’Art Contemporain (20 November to 16 December 1911) Apollinaire gave his first lecture discussing the new art in relation to a fourth dimension. Although Gleizes has indicated that he did not meet Duchamp and Villon until after the Salon closed in early November, it is probable nevertheless that others in the two groups were introduced to one another during the course of a Salon in which their works hung together. In addition, La Fresnaye and others may also have served during the summer of 1911 as channels for the exchange of ideas between the Mercereau circle and the Duchamp family. By October 1911 Duchamp had very likely heard from ‘one of Princet’s artist friends about Jouffret’s Traité élémentaire de géométrie a quatre dimensions. In that month he began making drawings for his highly subjective Portrait withthe rank of “Transcendent Satrap." See the chro and The Museum of Modem Art, New York, 1973), ‘nology included in the catalogue for the exhibition p28, Marcel Duchamp, ed. Anne d'Hamoncourt and Kyn- Gleices, Souvenis: Le Cubiime 1908-1914, p. 28: swton McShine, ex. cat. (Philadelphia Museum of Art Duchamp, as quoted in Cabanne, Disloues, p- 24 ee 124 Q DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES of Chess Players (Fig. 33) and the metaphor of chess had been employed by Jouffret himself in his introductory discussion of the possible reality of the fourth dimension. If Duchamp did not know of Jouffret when he commenced his studies, he surely did so when he painted the final version in December 1911 (Fig. 34). By that time the parallels with Jouffret would have been obvious to Princet and to geometry-oriented ‘Cubists like Metzinger, who had read Jouffret. In his introduction to the Traité élémentaire, Jouffret explains his opinion that, despite the great mathematical value of n-dimensional geometry, it is virtually im- possible to “see” in one’s mind the n-dimensional bodies that are its subject matter. He nevertheless recounts Hinton's assertion to the contrary and compares this mar- velous faculty to that of a blindfold chess player. Jouffret begins with a quotation from Hinton: There is really no more difficulty in conceiving four-dimensional shapes, when we go about it in the right way, than in conceiving the idea of solid shapes, nor is there any mystery at all about it. When the faculty is acquired, or rather when it is brought into consciousness, — for it exists in every one in imperfect form—a new horizon opens. The mind acquires a development of power, and in this use of ampler space as a mode of thought, a path is opened by using that very truth which, when first stated by Kant, seemed to close the mind within such fast limits. Our perception is subject to the condition of being in space; but space is not limited as we at first think. Jouffret himself then continues, ‘Some rare chess players have the ability to conduct several games simultaneously without looking. Without even a piece of paper to make notes, the player who accomplishes this tour de force is placed so as not to see his opponents, who themselves are placed before as many chessboards; an intermediary makes the moves on the chessboard which are ordered by the single player and tells him the responses. . . ~ How does his mind work? To this question some respond that itis a matter ‘of memory and method; almost all say that they visualize a chessboard with players, drawn in their thought as in an interior mirror, according to the expression of Taine; they will make you a sketch of it, if you desire. . . . M. Poincaré has said, no doubt ironically: “One who devoted his life to it could perhaps eventually be able to picture the fourth dimension.” For our part, we have already stated our opinion. It is that the reader should not hope to objectify, as does the blindfolded chess player with the pieces on his DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES () 125 mental chessboard, either the four-dimensional beings which are the object of this study, or the movements that we impart to them; he would exhaust his telligence in vain efforts seeking to break through the infinitely thin plane {la tranche infinitesimale], which extends between those beings and himself. If there are really four dimensions, our mind is confined in the first three.2? The Cubists had adopted Poincaré’s opinion on this matter rather than Jouffret’s more pessimistic view. For Duchamp, who was an enthusiastic chess player himself and who in 1910 had already painted a quite naturalistic Chess Game (Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection), a reinterpretation of the chess theme in a four-dimensional Cubist idiom would have been an exciting challenge. Because Princet, too, was a chess player, Duchamp’s effort may have quickly established a bond between the two men and a grounding for their developing friend- ship.?! The six preparatory drawings, executed in October of 1911, and the painted sketch of November-December 1911 (Musée Nationale d’Art Modeme, Paris) contribute im- portant clues to the iconography of the final Portrait of Chess Players.” While the definitive version shows chessmen located only on a plane between the heads of the two players and grasped in one player's hand, the earlier drawings and the painted sketch are pervaded by a multitude of chessboards, chessmen, and even additional heads seemingly representing the “minds” of the players at various stages of the game. The subject of Portrait of Chess Players is, in fact, the mental processes involved in a chess game, the succession of psychological states of the players. Although it is not a blindfold match that is being played, Duchamp has succeeded in portraying the “mental chessboard” and “interior mirror” of the chess player described by Jouffret.”* ® Jouffret, Trae élémenaine, pp. xiv-xvi. Hinton himself had compared his system for learning to vis: ualie the four-dimensional texseract to is method for teaching boys to play blindfold chess in three or four lesons. See Charles Howard Hinton, Scientific Ro- ‘mances, 2nd ser. (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1896), p. 18, 2 Clair has dealt with the higher dimensional as sociations of chess and chessboard configurations in carly tweneieth-century aft in “L'Echiquier, les mo- deme, et la quatidme dimension.” The painter Ca- rmoin refers to his own chess games with Princet in CCrespelle, Montmartre vivant, p. 111. 2 The six drawings and the oil sketch are ilustrated in Schwarz, Compete Works, us. 41-47 (cat. nos 165-170 and 176). Schwarz includes as Illus. 45 (ct. ‘no, 169) a drawing known only through a photograph, in the Box of 1914, ® Duchamp himself never played blindfold chess, bur later he did become a friend of George Kolta- rnowski, who was at one time a blindfold chess cham- pion. See Schwars, Complete Works, pp. 57-70, for Duchamp's chess career. Dee has noted an additonal association of chess, mirrors, and higher dimensions ‘Ac the beginning ofa chess game, the opposing halves are arranged az mirror images of one another ("Ce Fagonnement symétrique,"p. 354). In Lewis Carol's Through the Looking Glass, Alice's adventure occurred con a chessboard. On the higher dimensional aspects of this tale, see agnin Taylor, The White Knight, pp 85-116, as well a5 Chapter 1, n. 50, above 126 0] DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES In a 1964 lecture Duchamp described the painting as follows: “Using again the technique of demultiplication in my interpretation of Cubist theory, I painted the heads of my two brothers playing cheis, not in a garden this time, but in indefinite space.” Indeed, the “indefinite space” of Portrait of Chess Players may well represent Duchamp’s major essay in the Cubist approach ‘to the fourth dimension. A similar ambiguity produced by Cubist faceting had elicited Princet’s initial suggestion of the similarity of Cubist painting to n-dimensional geometry. Artists like Metainger had then worked specifically at breaking objects into facets in order to destroy any clear sense of three-dimensionality and to “insert” an extra dimension. It was, in fact, at the time Duchamp was working on the Portrait of Chess Players that Princet is supposed to have introduced him to Picasso and Braque,® the original sources for the Cubist mode reinterpreted in terms of the fouth dimension by Princet and Metzinger. If Duchamp’s Portrait of Chess Players was somehow connected with Jouffret’s sug- gestion that the operation of the chess player’s mind is similar to the visualization of the fourth dimension, this painting was already more sophisticated than the majority of Cubist paintings seeking to portray the fourth dimension. Whatever the case, Duchamp was not satisfied for long with the Cubist technique for evoking the fourth dimension. During the fall of 1912 he was to embark on a serious study of the question, of dimensions and the related problem of perspective. Before that step and Duchamp’s simultaneous rejection of conventional oil painting, however, he may have tried to incorporate the fourth dimension in painting by means of motion studies similar to those of Kupka. As discussed in Chapter 2, Kupka seems to have associated his own paintings of movement, based on the chronophotography cof Marey, with the “four-dimensional displacement” described by Pawlowski in his 1912 “Voyage au pays de la quatriéme dimension.” If Kupka had discovered the hyperspace philosophy of Hinton through Theosophical publications, Duchamp’s read- ing of Jouffret, who quoted Hinton at the beginning of his blindfold chess discussion, would have encouraged him to look further at Hinton’s approach. Duchamp's studies of the ‘static representation of movement” began in December 1911 with the schematic action of the Coffee Mill (Collection Mrs. Robin Jones, Rio de Janeiro), painted for Duchamp-Villon’s kitchen. That same month he painted Sad Young Man on a Train (Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, Venice) and the first of the two versions of Nude Descending a Staircase (Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise * Duchamp, “A Proposof Myself," unpublishele- Golding, Cub, p. 164 ture delivered at the City Art Museum of St. Lou Duchamp, ax quoted in Sweeney, “Eleven Euo- Misour, 24 Nov. 1964. For this quotation, seedHae’ _peans in Americ,” p. 20. rnoncour and MeShine, eds, Marl Duchamp p. 254 DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES (1 127 and Walter Arensberg Collection). Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Fig. 35) fol- lowed in January 1912, with The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (Phila- delphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection) completed in May 1912.” Speaking to Cabanne of Sad Young Man on a Train, Duchamp described the procedure used in these works: “Then, there is the distortion of the young man— Thad called this elementary parallelism. It was a formal decomposition; that is, linear elements following each other like parallels and distorting the object. The object is completely stretched out, as if elastic. The lines follow each other in parallels, while changing subtly to form the movement, or the form of the young man in question. I also used this procedure in the ‘Nude Descending a Staircase.’ "5 Duchamp at times used the term demuutplication to describe this process as well, as in his discussion of the Portrait of Chess Players quoted above. However, in the end “elementary” or “elemental parallelism” was to be a more useful approach. In its purest geometrical sense elemental parallelism would figure in some of the more complex theorizing in the notes for the Large Glass. One such note provides a clearer statement of Duchamp’s interpretation of the term: “Elemental parallelism: repetition of a line equivalent to an elemental line (in the sense of similar at any point) in order to generate the surface. Same parallelism when passing from plane to volume: Sort of parallel multiplication of the n-dim’l continuum to form the n + 1 dim’l continuum.” With an “element” understood in mathematics as, for example, every position of a straight line as it moves to generate a surface, Duchamp's talk of “elemental par- allelism” comes close to Hinton's method of generating a hypercube by moving a cube through space in a new fourth direction.» That Duchamp in a conversation with Cabanne also connected elemental parallelism with Marey confirms that he and Kupka were thinking of their recording of successive phases of movement as a means to create 2 One earlier work of 1911, Portait (Dudinea) (Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection), depicts five discrete positions cof walking woman (in progressive stages of undress). Portrait was completed in time for the Salon q’Au- tomne of 1911 and may well represent Duchamp'sini- tial response to the Cubist work of ale 41 in the spring of 1911, of even ro Kupka's motion studies. Dee has suggested that another work of 1911, Yeonne and Mag- deleine Tom in Tatters (Philadelphia Museum of Art, ‘The Louise and Walter Arenaberg Collection), maj hhave been influenced by Hinton and hyperspace phi- losophy’s suggestion that the passage of time is simply ‘ur lower dimensional reading of four-dimensional lity (°Ce Fagonnement symécique,”p. 364). IF these works were indeed motivated by interest in the fourth di mension, itis most likely that La Fresnaye ot another artist brought word of the Mercereau circle Cubist? explorations to Puteaux before the 1911 Salon d’Au- tomne. See again Chapter 2, n. 180, and the related text forthe problems with Dee's earlier date for Kua’ artistic interest in the fourth dimension. ™ Duchamp, as quoted in Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 29, Duchamp discusses elementary parallelism in con- nection with Marey in ibid, p. 34. ® Duchamp, A Tinfnif, in Sal Slr, p. 92 % Dee has noted Joufret’s use of the term “paral- lelism” in discussing this generational process ("Ce Fagonnement symérique,” p. 7). 128 (J DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES higher dimensional “virtual volumes.” As Duchamp had explained earlier in the same conversation, “The movement of form in time inevitably ushered us into geometry and mathematics.” Both Kupka and Duchamp, however, became dissatisfied with this approach and turned to depictions of complex space in order to evoke the fourth dimension. During July and August 1912 Duchamp traveled to Munich, where he made his first studies for The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even and painted The Passage from Virgin to Bride (The Museum of Modern Art, New York). In Munich he also made the first of the large group of notes for the Large Glass, which he would later publish in the collections, the Box of 1914, the Green Box (1934), and A linfinitif (1966). When Duchamp retuned from Munich, he painted The Bride (Fig. 36) in August 1912, where he later claimed he “first glimpsed the fourth dimension in his work.”? This is a surprising statement, considering the theoretical connections with the fourth dimension that lay behind the Portrait of Chess Players and the 1911-1912 motion studies. Although there is a dark and elusive depth within The Bride, it seems more probable that its four-dimensional association for Duchamp in later years was simply an extension of his subsequent theorizing on the four-dimensional Bride of the Large Glass. % Duchamp, in Cabanne, Dialogs, pp. 34, 31. Ulf Linde, in his esay "La Roue de bcyclete,” in L’Ocwe de Marcel Duchamp (u, 36-37), provides a good dis cussion of “demultipliation” as a means to indicate an n + 1 dimensional unity, beyond n-dimensional multiplicity. Linde also quotes from a chapter of Paw- lowski’s Voyage au pays dela quatiome dimension, “La Diligence innombrable," which Clair had cited in Marcel Duchamp oulegrand ici (pp. 103-5). Asan illustration of the magic ofthe fourth dimension, Pawlowski had given the example ofa stagecoach route on which the ‘coach was replaced by a modem automobile. Ifthe speed of the automobile were increased to infinity, Pawlowski reasoned, the same auto might then be at all point ofthe route at the same time. Impossible in the world of three dimensions, this “simultaneity” could easly be realized in the fourth dimension. ‘Although Linde's use of the passage in comparison with Duchamp's 1913 Bicycle Wheel is acceptable, problems of chronology make it inapplicable for Du- cchamp's studies of motion during 1911-1912. "La Di- ligence innombrable” was not among the chapters of Voyage au pays de la quatiéme dimension serilized in ‘Comoe berween February and December 1912. Thus, Duchamp would not have seen Pawlowski text until {ic was published in book form in December of that vear, long after he had completed the series The King ‘and Queen Surrounded by Suift Nudes (Mat.-May 1912) to which Clair compares the passage. 5 Duchamp, 1956 interview, as paraphrased in Law rence D. Steefel, “The Position of La Marge mise & ru pres clbaaites, méme (1915-1923) in the Seyisic and Iconographic Development of the Arc of Marcel Duchamp” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1960), p. 110. See also Stefel’s article, “The Art of Marcel Duchamp: Dimension and Development in Le Passage del Vierge da Marge,” Art Journal, x0 (Win ter 1962-63), 78. » In Marcel Duchamp ou le grand ff (pp. 113-14) (Clair compares the Bride to a passage from Pawlowsk’s Voyage au pays de la quaritme dimension about the “grave disorders" that came about inthe fist stages of the introduction of the fourth dimension: “Without apparent wound or vsble opening, certain organs found. themselves transported outside ofthe body and, under the natural pressure of the muscles, grouped themselves in an indescribable mast, avoiding every known rule and defying established anatomy.” However, this chapter ‘of Pawlowski’ novel, “Au-delA des forces naturelles,” did not appear in Comoedia until 11 Nov. 1912, three ‘months after Duchamp painted the frst version ofthe Bride in August. Clair’ comparison i cited numerous DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES (1 129 Before his departure for Munich, Duchamp had been a regular participant in the discussions of the Puteaux artists and had formed his friendship with Princet. However, Duchamp’s relationship with Gleizes and the other more orthodox Cubists cooled, at least temporarily, after Gleizes and others requested that Duchamp remove his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 from the 1912 Salon des Indépendants. Even if it at- tempted to evoke the fourth dimension, Duchamp’s painting of motion must have made the elder Cubists worry that their style would be confused with that of the rival Talian Futurists. After Duchamp's return from Munich, he spent more time with Picabia and Apollinaire than with his companions of the earlier part of the year, except, perhaps, for Princet. Nevertheless, he did participate in the crowning achieve- ment of the Puteaux group, the ‘Salon de La Section d’Or’ of 10-20 October 1912, and on this occasion his fellow artists were willing to include the Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2. Duchamp’s post-Munich rethinking of dimensions and perspective was accompanied by a reevaluation of the content and technique of painting, which led him to give up conventional oil painting altogether toward the end of 1912. Reacting against an art that he believed had become purely “retinal,” Duchamp wished to put painting once again “at the service of the mind.” By November 1912 he had taken a job as a librarian at the Bibliothéque Sainte-Genevitve in order to support himself. But the atmosphere of a library and the ready availability of such a vast amount of information cannot have been unwelcome for one who was determined to “intellectualize” painting. It is difficule to estimate the rate of Duchamp progress in the new geometries during the course of 1912, until the notes for the Large Glass begin. Even then, dating remains a major problem. Undoubtedly, throughout 1912 Princet continued to coach Duchamp and to suggest sources for his study. From the A l'infnitif notes, itis also clear that Duchamp did take advantage of the resources at Sainte-Geneviéve. His enthusiasm for his new project is reflected in a 1913 letter from Gererude Stein to Mabel Dodge, times in essays in LOewre de Marcel Duchamp, ine cluding Clair’s own otherwise excellent essay, "Marcel Duchamp et la tradition des pespecteurs” (us, 144). ‘There, he also speaks of a four-dimensional being’s abil to see inside a dhree-dimensional body. In con- trast to the notion of a body turing inside out, the \dea of seing through an object has more of ahistorical ass in the popular tradition of “the fourth dimen- sion,” which often compared four-dimensional vision toa three-dimensional being’ ability se the interior of a square in Flatland. Tn October 1912 Duchamp traveled by ear with ‘Apollinaire, Picabia, and Gabrielle Bufet tothe Jura ‘mountains; see Cameld, Piabia: His An, p. 34. Ace cording to Gil Blas, 2 Sept. 1912, p. 4, Duchamp was planning to submit a work entiled Section d'Or to the Salon ¢'Automne of 1912. For Duchamp's ideas on the Golden Section, see Marel Duchamp: Notes, pat- ticularly che notes numbered 70, 84, and 183. % Duchamp, 28 quoted in Sweeney, “Eleven Buro- peans in America,” p. 20. On this decision, see Lebel, Marcel Duchanp, p27, and Schware, Complete Works, pp. 19-21, 2 Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, “Plan pour écrire une vie de Marcel Duchamp,” in LOewere de Marcel Duchamp, t, 15 130 (J DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES in which Stein described meeting the young Duchamp, who talked “very urgently about the fourth dimension.” The Large Glass The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (Fig. 37) is cus- tomarily dated 1915-1923, for although Duchamp prepared a large number of notes and studies for it before 1915, actual work on the glass panels did not begin until after his move to New York in 1915. The Large Glass is a masterful statement of the conceptual approach to art that Duchamp had adopted at the end of 1912: in it both technique and content have been revolutionized. The sense of the artist's hand has been replaced, as Duchamp wished, by the look of machine fabrication in a variety of materials on glass. Not only is the style of the Large Glass machine-oriented; the subject matter of this work is set forth in creaturely machine images. The notes that were published as the Green Box in 1934 have been essential for art historians in deciphering the iconography of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. With the help of these notes and Duchamp’s preparatory studies, the title is now understood to describe a lovemaking machine made up of a “Bride” above and a complex “Bachelor Apparatus” below. There is a clear separation between upper and lower sections, however, and Duchamp's statement is ultimately a pessimistic one about the futility of all attempts at meaningful human contact. Sexual fulfillment is replaced by “Slow Life—Vicious Circle—Onanism,”” in what is for Duchamp the archetypal love relationship. Unlike the notes of the Green Box, which relate primarily to the iconography of the Large Glass, A l'infnitif records the evolution of the theory behind the forms of the Large Glass. There are a number of extraneous notes in the initial sections, as well as a section on “Color,” but the notes collected under “Appearance and Appa- tition,” “Perspective,” and “The Continuum” are devoted to the questions of per- > Undated Stein letter to Dodge, Mabel Dodge Lue hhan Archive, Yale University. See Chapter 4, n. 141, for the dating ofthis letter. The Large Glas was abandoned in 1923 in as “finished” a state as Duchamp wished. The cracks in the glass date from 1927, when it was shactered in transit from an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. For a description of the damage to the glass and Du- ‘champ's repair of icin 1936, see Schware, Compete Works, pp. 148-49. The evo metal bars which now divide the upper and lower panels were added at the time of ite repait. Originally, the horizon line was augmented by three “narrow plate of mirored gas.” ‘See Jean Suquet, Le Guéridon et la vrge (Paris: Cheis- tian Bourgois, 1976), p. 58; als, pp. 9-82 on the “Handler of Gravity,” who was to have bridged the two areas ofthe glas. » Duchamp, Green Bor, in Salt Seller, p. 56. DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES (131 spective and the representation of higher dimensions. With few exceptions the ge- cometry of the A I'infinitif notes is n-dimensional geometry.” Although Poincaré, the major proponent of non-Buclidean geometry in France during the early years of the twentieth century, was a major source for Duchamp, it is Poincaré’s work on higher dimensions that dominates the A Vinfintif notes. Nevertheless, in connection with his preparation for the Large Glass Duchamp did create what is surely the purest expression of non-Euclidean geometry in early twen- tieth-century art: the Three Standard Stoppages of 1913-1914 (Fig. 38). Notes referring to the Stoppages appear in the Box of 1914 and the Green Box, but Duchamp nowhere mentions non-Euclidean geometry, which was the source of his idea for the Stoppages.. The four notes read as follows: 3 Standard Stops = canned chance— 1914. The Idea of the Fabrication —lf a straight horizontal thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter straight on to a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases and creates a new image of the measure of length. — —3 patterns obtained in more or less similar conditions: considered in their relation to one another they are an approximate reconstitution of the measure of length. The 3 standard stoppages are the meter diminished.‘ To create the Three Standard Stoppages Duchamp performed the action described in the “Idea of the Fabrication” note above three pieces of painted canvas. The fallen threads were fastened to the canvases with varnish, and the canvases were finally glued onto strips of plate glass. Wooden templates were also made as “meter sticks” of the new measure, and Duchamp then used each template three times to determine the network of tubes connecting the “Nine Malic Molds” of the Large Glass. 1 The most obvious exception to this statement is 2 drawing labeled “Pseudo sphere (Projections from the center)" included in the “Perspective” section of A Cini. The drawing and its mistaken label are discussed below. Adcock argues that other of the notes in A Vinfinif may be related to non-Euclidean ge- ‘ometry (°Marcel Duchamp's Notes,” ch. 4) * Duchamp, Green Bor, in Sale Seller, p33. Du cchamp’s description ofthe Three Standard Stoppages 1s “canned chance” and his general fascination with che ‘dea of chance suggests another reason Poincaré would have appealed tothe artist. Poincaré lectured on prob ability theory at che Université de Paris and published his Caled des probabil in 1896, witha second edition appearing in 1912, Joufre had als published a book fn this subject, Sur la probabité dur det bouches & fu et la méthode des moindre carés of 1875, Duchamp, Box of 1914, in Sat Sele, p. 22 © Duchamp was also to employ the Three Sudand Swoppages i. Tu m’ of 1918, his last oil painting on, 132 0) DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES Beneath the playfulness of Duchamp's new physics is a demonstration of the basic principle of a non-Euclidean geometry that rejects Euclid’s assumption of the inde- formability of figures in movement. Unlike the non-Euclidean geometries associated with the names of Lobachevsky and Riemann, which discarded Eucli’s parallel pos- tulate, this alternative to Euclidean geometry involves figures that readily change their shape when they ate moved about. This type of non-Euclidean geometry had grown out of nineteenth-century studies of congruence by mathematicians such as Riemann and Helmholtz and is most easily visualized on surfaces of irregular curvature. In Duchamp's Stoppages, itis simply the movement of a line (the thread) from one area of space to another, which illustrates that geometrical figures do not necessarily retain their shape when moved about, as Euclid and geometers for two thousand years after him had assumed they would. Ie was this same association of non-Euclidean geometry with deformability that had made this type of geometry so attractive to Metzinger and Gleizes in Du Cubisme, and Duchamp undoubtedly received his first introduction to these ideas at the Puteaux gatherings. Despite all their talk in Du Cubisme, however, neither Metzinger nor Gleizes ever produced a work as overtly non-Euclidean as the Three Standard Stoppages. Although Metzinger may have consciously incorporated curvature into certain of his paintings (e.g., Fig. 27), he and Gleizes looked to non-Euclidean geometry primarily as.a theoretical justification for Cubist distortion and their conventionalist view of art history. The non-Euclidean Three Standard Stoppages established the forms of the tubes connecting the Nine Malic Molds (the Bachelors of the Large Glass), but Duchamp’s overriding theoretical concer in the Large Glass was the question of dimensions, the interrelation of the second, third, and fourth dimensions. Early in his initial planning for the Large Glass, Duchamp had determined that there should be a fundamental difference between the upper and lower sections: the Bride would represent a four- dimensional Bride, while the three-dimensionality of the Bachelors would be empha- sized by a strict application of the canons of Renaissance perspective. Although his continuing interest in the fourth dimension was a tribute to the influence of his Cubist friends in the Puteaux group, the idea of reintroducing per- spective went directly against a basic tenet of Cubism. From its beginnings in the art of Picasso and Braque, Cubism had sought deliberately to avoid all traces of traditional perspective, “that miserable tricky perspective,” “that fourth dimension in reverse,” “+ Linde as suggested thatthe three “Draft Pistons” forms by photographing small squares of cloth as they within the “Top Inscription” or "Milky Way” repre- were “deformed by a breeze. See Linde, “Piston de senting che Bride's “cinematic blossoming” may allude courant dai,” in L’Oeuare de Marcel Duchamp, 1,80. ‘onon-Euclidean geometry. Duchamp determined their DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES (1 133, “hat infallible device for making all things shrink, in 1913. Duchamp's reevaluation of painting in terms of the relationship of dimensions was much more fundamental than Cubism’s recent rejection of one-point perspective in favor of a new kind of pictorial space. His concem was “scientific” and, if the passage from two to three dimensions was to be studied, a scientific method for depicting three dimensions would best serve his purposes. As he later recalled the situation in his interviews with Cabanne, 5 as Apollinaire had described it Ducuamp: The “Large Glass” constitutes a rehabilitation of perspective, which had then been completely ignored and disparaged. For me per- spective became absolutely scientific. Capanne: It was no longer realistic perspective. Ducuame: No. It’s a mathematical, scientific perspective. ‘Capanne: Was it based on calculations? Ducwame: Yes, and on dimensions. These were the important elements. Duchamp also explained to Cabanne his final solution for incorporating higher dimensions in the Large Glass: Since I found that one could make a cast shadow from a three-dimensional thing, any object whatsoever—just as the projecting of the sun on the earth makes two dimensions—I thought that, by simple intellectual analogy, the fourth dimension could project an object of three dimensions, or, to put it another way, any three-dimensional object, which we see dispassionately, is a projection of something four-dimensional, something we're not familiar with. Ie was a bit of sophism, but still it was possible. “The Bride” in the “Large Glass” was based on this, as if it were the projection of a four-dimensional object.” Even if Duchamp did “glimpse” the fourth dimension in his August 1912 painting The Bride, as he later remarked, the lengthy process chronicled in the A linfinitif notes, would be required in order to provide a theoretical basis for the Bride's four-dimen- sionality. From the beginning, however, Duchamp may have associated the term épanouisse- ment, which he used for the “blossoming” of the Bride,** with the fourth dimension. Later in life his advocacy of eroticism as a way beyond the “isms” of art often led + Apollnaire, Les Petes Cubistes, p. 68; The Cub- 40. Duchamp had explained che Bride in this way as ls Paine, p. 45. carly as 1954 na eter to André Breton (4 Oct. 1954), Cabanne, Dialogues, p. 38, published in Medi, no. 4 (an. 1955), p. 33. © Duchamp, as quoted in Cabanne, Dialogues, p “ See Green Box, in Sale Seller, pp. 42-44 134 D) DUCHAMP AND THE NEW GEOMETRIES Duchamp to incorporate sex in his explanations of the fourth dimension, which by that time were less strictly geometrical.” Nevertheless, in the early years of the century geometry and sex had been blended in the word épanouissement, which was frequently used in discussions of higher dimensions. In addition to Jouffret’s use of the term in an explanation of higher dimensional geometrical figures,¥ Pierre Valin had employed it in the concluding installment of his 1909 La Phalange article, “L’Evolution de la philosophie du 19* au 20° sidcle.” There Valin writes, “It is necessary to recognize nevertheless that there are absolute mathematical reasons for demonstrating that the syntheses created by the fourth dimension are realized by expansion [épanouissement]; that, in the higher dimensions, beings and influences will be of a much more subtle fluidity, and surroundings, of a capacity more and more radiant.” In the Large Glass Duchamp emphasized just such a distinction between the “fluidity” of the Bride's Domain and the strictly measured three-dimensional perspective of the Bachelor Apparatus. The visual representation of the “blossoming” is a hary, cloudlike “milky way.” This quality of the upper portion of the glass is further described and contrasted to the Bachelor Apparatus in two nearly identical notes in the Green Box and A l'infniif. Unlike the “mensurated” forms of the Bachelor Apparatus (“‘rectangle, circle, square”), those of the Bride are ideal and thus beyond specific measurements. Of the parabolas and hyperbolas in the Bride, Duchamp writes, “In the Bride—the principal forms will be more or less large or small, no longer have mensurability in On Duchamp and eroticism, see Cabanne, Dia- logues, p. 88. Lebel in. Marcel Duchamp writes that Duchamp “considered the sexual ac the pre-eminent fourth-dimensional situation” (p. 28). Thiserotic con- ‘ection has been analyzed by Steefl in “The Position cof La Marge mise nu par ses ofibuaires, méme," pp. BIL-12, and in “The Art of Marcel Duchamp: Di- ‘mension and Development in Le Passage de la Virge la Mariée,” pp. 72-79. See also Suquet, Le Guéridon tla ving, pp. 63-64. Suquet quotes Pawlowski on the subject of love and the fourth dimension, but it ‘uct be emphasized that Pawlowski idealist vsion of hhuman love as the key to a future four-dimensional cxaisfar diferent fom Duchamp's cynical caricarring of sex. See Pawlowski, Voyage au pays de la quate dimension (1912), ch. 5. ‘Countering Lebel, Schware argues against the as- sociation of Duchamp's fourth dimension with sex as too “metaphorical.” However, the Duchamp state- ment he cites i hardy cleareu: “I would not say that sex is the fourth dimension; far fom it I would never say that. Sex is three-dimensional as well as four-

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