Schwarz, Arturo

Schwarz, Arturo. Four basic patterns of Indian and Western alchemical thought. Hermetic J, no. 16 (Summer 1982) 5-16. 

McLean, Adam. An Interview with Arturo Schwarz. Hermetic J, no. 13 (Autumn 1981) 5-7. 

The eventual owner (or copyright owner) of the piece was the proprietor of that gallery in Milan, Arturo Schwarz. He stated that the pseudonym adopted hy Duchamp was meant to enforce the value of the choice, and he quotes an interview with the artist in which Duchamp apparently explained the convoluted grounds for his choice ... 

For a broader interpretation of an esoteric significance possibly to be attached to the chess experience, we may turn to a devoted confidante and biographer, Arturo Schwarz. Reviewing Duchamp s statements, as quoted above, he observes that ... 

In this instance, we may believe that for once Arturo Schwarz was right on the mark indeed, as he chose to practice it, chess provides the perfect metaphorical model for Duchamp s life and works. ... 

Duchamp s blocked window motif, as a specific form of expression, appears, as the idea of the window as a point of departure, to represent the metamorphic basis for a truly mysterious Door (MD-141) that made its appearance in 1927. Again fabricated at Duchamp s orders by an ordinary carpenter, it was installed in the artist s Parisian studio apartment. Situated at number 11 rue Larrey, Duchamp moved there in October 1926, immediately following his abrupt separation from Lydie Sarrazin-Levassor, the first (legal) Madame Duchamp. Arturo Schwarz calls this contraption a three-dimensional pun a door which is permanently opened and shut at the same time. This simultaneously open and shut Porte was strategically situated between his studio and bedroom. As Man Ray remembered. 

Arturo Schwarz called this object the epitome of a basic paradox doors, in general, stand for a fundamental ambiguity, a synthesis of arrivals... 

Clair, Catalogue, 40, no. 47. The first strictly alchemical analysis of this canvas was made by Arturo Schwarz see his article reiterating his earlier arguments, Alchimie, in Clair, Abecedaire, 10-21. Considerably amplifying upon his initial suggestions, I am adding much more documentation, especially the textual kind easily available to Duchamp in 1911. 

This strictly pictorial kinship was first recognized by Arturo Schwarz, but he had only illustrated the print as it appeared in its initial publication, in J. C. Barckhausen s Elementa Chemiae (Leyden, 1718), which Francis Naumann curtly dismissed as some obscure eighteenth-century alchemical treatise. In short, neither author recognized that the source for Duchamp s figure of L Enfant Enferme dans I Oeuf was precisely as Barckhausen s motif had been reprinted in 1891 by Albert Poisson, that is, in a modern publication correctly described by Jean Suquet as rep-resenting the Bible for Alchemists around 1900 (Naumann and Suquet, as quoted in Duve, Definitively Unfinished MD, 73-74). 

The idea of Incest in Duchamp s Sirring was, unfortunately, taken altogether too literally by Arturo Schwarz. This generically represents the sort of problem which has beset several authors who have previously attempted those alchemical interpretations of Duchamp s early oeuvre they have not sufficiently studied the kinds of texts Duchamp most likely consulted, meaning 1) more or less contemporary publications, and 2) most likely ones published in French. The baleful results are that, not surprisingly, thoughtful scholars then find it difficult to accept their esoteric and rampantly anachronistic conclusions. 

These celebrated works are illustrated in various publications see, for instance, Bonk Hopps Linde and Schwarz, Complete Works. When not simply descriptive, the accompanying texts are, for me at least, mostly gibberish. Scarcely more useful are the explanations, some cited below, given by Duchamp s colaborator Arturo Schwarz, in Complete Works. 

The estate of Marcel Duchamp notes that the Marcel Duchamp Catalogue raisonne by Arturo Schwarz is a more recent catalogue. 

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