Cabanne, Pierre

This seemingly perverse textual application actually makes contextual sense. It is notorious that Duchamp fancied himself an initiate of Eros, EROS As he explained to Pierre Cabanne in 1966,... 

The first concretely iconographic sign of this new rotational interest, which Duchamp was in fact to pursue for decades, is encountered in a small oil sketch (33 x 12.5 cm) called the Coffee Mill (MD-61). According to Duchamp s posthumously published (1973), and typically bland, description of this miniscule mechanical operation, it shows the different facets of the coffee-grinding operation, and the handle on the top is seen simultaneously in several positions as it revolves. You can see the ground coffee in a heap under the cog-wheels of the central shaft, which turns in the direction of the arrow on top. He had already said much the same thing in 1966 to Pierre Cabanne ... 

In much later interviews with Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp recalled, not surprisingly, that Arensberg had a difficult character, poor man. He was a... 

Duchamp himself also praised, even invoked the awesome powers of the Spiritualist mediums who launched the modern branches of the Esoteric Tradition. As the artist eventually admitted to Pierre Cabanne, I do believe very strongly in the medium aspect of the artist... . There is the pole of the one who makes the work, and there is the pole of the one who looks at it. I give the latter as much importance as the one who makes it. On another occasion, Duchamp expanded much further upon the role of a modernist artists who overtly functions as a medium. Not only is the modem artist a spiritualistic medium, but also, says Duchamp, the spectator plays an essential role in the creative act. In order to explicate the creative acts symbioti-cally contributed to by both artist and viewer, Duchamp employs blatantly alchemical metaphors, a point typically overlooked in citations of this statement. As he stated, whereas the artist s imagery is refined from raw matter, the sensitive viewer undergoes a spiritual transmutation in the process of his esoteric act of decipherment and interpretation of a possibly impenetrable avant-garde work of art. 

Intimations of some even broader, quasi-philosophical implications that could be associated with his Three Standard Stoppages eventually emerged in Duchamp s interviews with Pierre Cabanne ... 

Duchamp also recalled this incident in his interviews with Pierre Cabanne ... 

Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. New York Viking, 1971 rpt. Marcel Duchamp Inginieur du temps perdu—Entretiens avec Pierre Cabanne. Paris Belfont, 1977 [1971 and 1977 editions cited here). 

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