Marcel Duchamp, or The "Phynancier" of Modern Life Author(s): Thierry de Duve and Rosalind Krauss Source: October, Vol.

52 (Spring, 1990), pp. 60-75 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778885 . Accessed: 19/05/2013 16:48
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Phynancierof Modern Life

Marcel Duchamp, or The

THIERRY
TRANSLATED

DE DUVE
BY ROSALIND KRAUSS

In the whole of the twentieth thereis no less utopian an artistthan century Marcel Duchamp. And in the whole of it thereis no one - withthe exceptionof Matisse, whom Duchamp greatlyadmired- who could have cared less. Never did Duchamp believe that art had it in its power to promisea better, juster, or did have and never he to that art had regret happier society, reneged on its Klein Yves before wind, began selling Duchamp cruellypropromises. Long a societyin whichthe individualhas to pay for jected the idea of "establish[ing] the air he breathes," somethingthatdidn't preventhim fromquietly,tongue-into go throughlife,breathing.Long beforeAndy Warhol went cheek,continuing shoppingand stackedup fakeboxes of Brillo,he boughta real bottlerack froma departmentstoreand simplywaited for time to make it into art and forviewers to give it a price. Long beforeJoseph Beuys declared that"the silence of Marcel Duchamp is overrated," he stopped talkingand let others put a value on his had already been silence. He had understood that all the utopias of modernity realized, and thus that theyhad never been utopias. Beuys was right;it's true that everyoneis a potentialartist.But does that and "use-value" even exist?' No one knows;theseare guaranteethat"creativity" but Ideas, postulates. Nothing says that everyone has a productive nothing him- or herself,a facultythat is alienated at present but which within faculty definesor willdefinehumanity in its genericessence. And nothingproves thatit that is, in principle, just everyonebe an artistand liberatingthat everyonewill some day become one. Nothing says that humans mustwork in order to satisfy their needs and must grafttheir presentlyreified relations onto this speciesdeterminedhorizon.And nothingprovesthatitisjust and liberating thattheydo

1. This is the fourth sectionof a four-part studyofJoseph Beuys,Andy Warhol, Yves Klein, and Marcel Duchamp, titledCoususdefild'or (Sewnwith GoldenThread),Villeurbanne,Art-Edition, 1990. October has publishedthe first three parts: "JosephBeuys, or The Last of the Proletarians,"no. 43 (Summer 1988); "Andy Warhol,or The Machine Perfected,"no. 48 (Spring 1989); and "Yves Klein, or The Dead Dealer," no. 49 (Summer 1989).

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Marcel Duchamp,Box in a Valise. 1941. (Photo:Alex Brunelle.)

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are wrongs to be rightedonly on the grounds of so. Alienation and reification these postulates. Warhol was also right;it is true thatart is a businessand the workof art a and use-valuedon't existand that But does thatmean thatcreativity commodity. art's into Afterall Warhol one mustcynically accept exchange-value? absorption are machinesand produce no exchange-value, had his utopia as well: ifall artists then all consumersare potentialart lovers. But thatdoesn't prove thattheywill consume well, and it doesn't promise that the traditioncalled art will surviveits It onlyshowsthatYves Klein was wrongand that absorptionby commodification. it was unjustforthe artistto claim to own the means of artistic productionand to restrictartisticconsumptionto the buyer. One can cause and sufferwrongs withouttheirsupportingpostulatesbeing proved. Nothing is proved, then, and it is as if Duchamp, skeptic,took offfrom these observations.It is as if he had, in advance,observed Yves Klein struggling and had understood that in fact "to be a painter," or withhis wishfulthinking ratherto have been one, was the preliminary conditionto "being an artist."This had taughthim. And it is as if he had watched is what his own wishful thinking Warhol's success and had understoodthat the spleenof the commodity was the conditionforany object whateverto be called art and thatthe disappearance of aestheticvalue intoexchange-valuewas the conditionforsuch an object to have a price. It's what the success of his readymadeshad taughthim. It is as if he had watched Beuys play the pere Ubu of creativity and had understood that at the momentwhen the artist-proletarian saw himself broughthome to a Bohemia as unreal as Jarry's Poland, the congruence of the aesthetic field with that of political economy had been perfect,complete, accomplished. Etant donne this lesson, only one question remained: how to make art out of that? is anything but accidental,when we knowwithwhat The referencetoJarry grains of ironythe Salt Seller (marchanddu sel) seasoned the formulathrough esth art ce que merdre whichhe "defined" art: Arrhe est'a merde (Arrhe is to art as shitte is to shit). There's nothing left to say, and it is not art but the very congruence of art with economy that the formulaanalyzes by means of "algebraic comparison." There are hundreds of ways to read that formula,one of whichis: "arrhe,"2as Duchamp practicesit,is to art as practicedby the modernistswho believe in utopias what King Ubu's oath, merdre (which is also the first word of Ubu roi), is to the substance about which everyone knows that its retentionconstitutes the "anal-sadistic"personality of all the capitalistmisersof the world. The grain of salt that would allow this substance to be taken for a secretionof an artist'screativity is gross indeed. But when everyone can be an artistforthe simplereason of freeaccess to the marketplace where whatis reified
2. Translator's note: les arrhes (a plural noun), which means a deposit or down payment,is homophonic withart in French.

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Marcel Duchamp,or The PhynancierofModernLife

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on the one hand is the verythingthat is sublimatedon the other, the odds are heavythata large part of whatgets traded thereis in the natureof the substance in question. (Manzoni didn't missthe opportunity to remindthe all too sublime Yves Klein of this.) And since on this market the artistis a proletarian who alienates his own labor power (Beuys's version)or a machine fromwhichthings come that,even thoughwithoutvalue, have a price (Warhol's), whynot killtwo birdswithone stoneand make one's body into "a transformer designedto utilize vided the artistknows how to exploit the unexpected-and least prodigalresources of his labor power, he will always findhimselfsome businessmanor fromthe fewquanta of wertbildende Substanznevertheotherable to turna profit less spent. Besides, it's betterto take care of thatoneself. Laziness is the best of foremen and the most fertileof inventors,and humor the most efficient of dealers. It's up to the workeror the machineto supplythewaterfall, and up to the dealer to pay the bill for the illuminating gas. Etant donne, then, these two conditions- labor and commerce, the political-economic field--how to make arrheout of that? In New York, in April 1917, a so-called R. Mutt submitsa urinal titled Fountain to the hanging committee(of which Duchamp was president)of the newlycreated Societyof IndependentArtists, Incorporated.The Society,whose mottowas "no jury, no prizes," was open on principleto everyone:the membership card cost a dollar, the annual dues, five.For this modest sum, and on the additional condition of showing the year of his joining up, the little nobody became, in a certain sense, a stockholderof the Societe Anonyme (the name would be used by Duchamp in 1920 forthe collectionhe created withKatherine Dreier) fromwhich,on the whole, all Americanartists exposed to the ostracism of the National Academy hoped to receive dividends. Behold, then, this little a small-time nobody who is simultaneously capitalistin an enterpriselicensed to deal in art (the exhibited works were for sale) and an independent artisan otherwiseinvitedto displayhis know-how.Marcel Duchamp shared thisdouble status with the thousand or so self-proclaimed artistswho participatedin the 1917 exhibition, withthe qualification thathe played on one side as on the other an ascendantrole. On the stockholders'side, he was one of the twenty founding membersand presidentof the hangingcommitteeto boot; on the artisans'side, he was recognized for his talent as a painter, being the creator of the highly celebrated Nude Descending a Staircase.Yet, givingup thisdouble privilegeand like the little making nobody, he submits his entry under a pseuThe urinal is refused. donym. Duchamp keeps quiet, waitsforthe stormto pass, and at the close of the show publishesan unsignededitorialin his littlesatirical review, The Blind Man, an editorial called "The Richard Mutt Case," which, name. takingup the defense of Mr. Mutt,reveals his first Duchamp didn't make the Fountainwithhis own hands, like an artisan;he the J. L. Mott Iron Works. The name Mutt bought it fromits manufacturer,
the slight, wasted energies such as: . . . the fall of urine and excrement"? Pro-

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Marcel Fountain. 1917. Duchamp, (Photo: Alfred Stieglitz.)

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signalsthisprovenance with littledisguise. "And I added Richard," Duchamp Get it?The oppositeof poverty."He said. "That's not a bad name fora pissotiere. couldn't have been more explicit,as the signatureacknowledges the double an artistin becominga memberof statusof the nobody who proclaimshimself Muttor Mott,who stands the Society.On the one side thereis the manufacturer, in fortheartisan, on the stockholder. It is as and the otherRichard,thecapitalist, if the latterhad placed an order withthe former, or rather,as if Richard (alias too lazy or too busy withlightDuchamp, presidentof the hangingcommittee), with entries of his co-stockholders the illuminating gas, had charged Mutt ing Nude a with author of (alias Duchamp, Descending Staircase) paintingThe Waterhimself less had to and the latter, atJ. L. Mott's, sluggish, gone supply fall, hardly ran: "Among our articlesof lazyhardwarewe recommend whose advertisements to it." Mott has the item a faucetwhichstopsdrippingwhen nobody is listening to pay the restas soon as in stock.Mutthands over the deposit whilepromising possible,even adding, quite candidly,thathe counts on resellingthe object at a under his breath, profit."Well that'sa peculiar use fora urinal," Mott mutters thathelp men do numberone, "but it'snone of mybusiness.Mine is to sell things And the but I sell forthe sake of sellingand not forthemto relievethemselves." and takes his his Fountain under Mutt deal is struck. arm, goes away, Whereupon as as an administrator it to Richardand his hangingcommittee. Richard, just lazy

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Marcel Duchamp,or The PhynancierofModernLife

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IronWorks, The J. L. Mott Panama urinal, Porcelain-lipped model. 1908. Mutt is a painter,is absent. His assistants (George Bellows and Rockwell Kent) "The Fountain and exclaim: throwup theirarms maybe a veryusefulobject in a workof is exhibition and it not an art itsplace, but itsplace is, by no definition, release the of the art." (That's the text organizersthe day published by press of the facts and the versions The is the after follow-up veryconfused, opening.) Richard another accredited one but Here's false, (certainly by Duchamp): vary. C. art his name was Walter fact comes along, a friendof the first (in Arensberg, him can of scandal. tell the and asks about the collector), anyobject Nobody thing. "I want to buy it," he says withouteven having seen it. They findthe and Arensberg, big spender,hands over a blankcheck, object behinda partition "Fill in amount the yourselves."Upon which,flankedby Duchamp and saying, Man Ray, he leaves the room "holding the new acquisitionas though it were a marble Aphrodite." Mutt goes back to Mott's and pays the balance. Richard resignsfromthe Society and never cashes his dividends. Arensberg loses the urinal(ifhe ever had it). And Duchamp has onlyto wait. He had his replyto the he had jotted down as earlyas 1913: "Can one make workswhichare speculation had not worksof 'art'?" The answer was no, since speculationthere certainly been. is to shit.The art thatMutt Taking it fromthe top: arrheis to artwhatshitte practicesin workingas littleas possible,but in makinghis down payment(des what arrhes)to Mott, is to the art of those who work and believe in creativity

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(as Jarry speculationis to production,whatPhynance spelled "finance" in Ubu roi) is to politicaleconomy.The word arrhes, whichmeans deposit,or down payment, existsonly in the plural. Duchamp writesit in the singular,adding: "grammatiin gender." Here's how the word becomes cally,the arrheof paintingis feminine then: as a name formoneyit loses its characterof general equivatriply specific, the singular advance on a singular payment;as the homolency and signifies for the word art it only refersto painting,specifically, and not to the arts phone in general;as a gendered word,it designatesonlyhalfof mankindand showsitto be female. Now, "-one only has: forfemalethe urinal and one livesby it.-" This is in The 1914 Box,threeyearsbeforeFountain.Virgin and Brideare titlesof between in the which, 1912, paintings August Duchamp painted ThePassagefrom to theBride,and afterwhich,in October, he gave up paintingand found Virgin himselfa job on the labor marketas librarian"in order to get enough time to paint for myself." Now, of his strange activityas "arrhtist" who "paints for himself,"who composes aleatory music and draws plans for his Large Glass but doesn't paint any longer, nothing or very littlelands on the market between October 1912 and the 1917 Independentswhere ordinarily the specificworkof an artisan-painter is exchanged forgeneral currency.And when Fountain(femiand Bride) makes its appearance, there is no longer either nine,just like Virgin or painting artisanship.Duchamp has made art, withoutits belongingto one of the arts, no more to music or to architecturethan to painting; not even to sculpture. Moreover, he has done nothingat all; he has bought a readymade object whose manufacturer, J. L. Mott,didn't make either.Those who made the urinal neithermade art nor tried to do so; theyare the workerswhose creativity Mott bought on the labor market. The word "readymade" comes from the garment industry.Duchamp didn't inventit,he took it,ready-to-wear so to speak, to dress up the snow shovel he had just bought froma New York hardwarestore in 1915. In the Theories of SurplusValue (Book IV of Capital) Marx, who as alwaysliberally supplieshimself with examples taken fromthe industrialavant-gardeof his age -and the garment industry is one - differentiates productivefromunproductivelabor. The artisan-tailor to whom the cloth fora pair of pantsis broughtand who is paid for his servicesis an unproductive worker,he says,whilethe worker-tailor employed a merchant-tailor who derives by surplus value fromhis labor is a productive worker.In the same way Mutt,commissionedby Richard to paint a Waterfall, is in the situationof Marx's artisan-tailor, and Mott's worker,who fabricatesthe of hisworker-tailor. The artist Fountain,is in the situation who worksforhimself, forhis pleasure or because he feelsit a necessity, is an unproductivelaborer,and it's important thathe remainso ifhe doesn't want to end up as a pieceworkerin the cultureindustry and mortgagehis freedom.In otherwords,it is vitalthathe remainan artisan.Is thatto say thathe has to paint,to do handiwork,"to grind his chocolate himself"?Is it to say thathe mustresistthe divisionof labor to the into his own hands, fromthe grindingof pigments all point of takingeverything

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the way throughthe vernissage? Marx's artisan-tailor is unproductive because he worksto order,because he is broughtthe clothforthe pantsand because it's his is a holdover fromprecapitalist servicesthatare paid for. This artisanship relationsof production.But iftheartisanhas his own clothsamples,ifhe has invested -and thereis no lack of thread in a sewingmachine,ifhe has his listof suppliers and weavingmillsin Marx-he is already on the way to small business.In the same passage fromCapital,Marx showswhatartisanship has become or is in the as an of it archaism walled off withinthe when survives becoming process mode of He out how the smallartisan surrounding points capitalist production. who workson commission sees, whetheror not he wantsto, whetheror not he knowsit, the social divisionof labor penetrating his own body, and lives out his own activity in the mode of divisionbecause the divisionof labor and of capital is thedominantmode of social relations.He is a capitalist ownerof hisown means of productionwho employshimself as wage laborer,buyinghis own labor power, exploitinghis own overtimeand pocketingthe surplusvalue thus created. The Marx attests, is thateitherthe artisan predictableoutcome of thiscontradiction, prospers,ending up hiringworkersand becominga boss in his turn,or he fails, losing his means of productionand ending up in the employof someone else. Marcel VestforBenjamin Peret.1958. Duchamp,

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or when it is, we stop talkingof art in But thisis not the situationof artists, ambitious sense of the word. Their situation -and whatevertheymay do, any whethertheypaint,write,compose, or are contentto put the air theybreathein vials or to can othersecretionsof theirlabor power- is to lead, againstall odds, the lifeof an independentartisan.This has nothingto do withwhattheymake or withthe qualityof theirwork. It has hardlymore to do withtheirsuffering or theirpleasure. Those who balk at the divisionwill make it a point of honor to slick up theirworkall the while decryingthe decline of tradition(these are the withthe academicians). Those who findit intolerableto be divided willidentify withoutseeing thatthe capitalist is to be foundthereas proletarianin themselves well, and will look for the reconciliationoutside, for example in "social sculpture" (as with Beuys). Or if they are masochiststhey will identifywith the withoutseeing thattheyexploit the proletarianin themselves(as with capitalist, iftheyare reallyclever theywilltake theirstakesout of the game by And Klein). themselves into a machine (as withWarhol). But all of thatis beside the making To lead life of an artisan without suffering the or pleasure, without point. is to or live one's life as an artist in the mode of division.It promising betraying, means pushingaway the pain of the artisanwho suffers fromhaving to exploit himselfif he wants to survive,fromhaving to mess up thejob to the point of losingthe pleasure and pride he getsfromhis work,and fromhavingto abandon the traditionalgesturesof his craftto the benefitof makeshifts consumingless labor time, in a sort of existentialmise-en-abyme for which Duchamp had the knackand throughwhichhe registeredthe divisionof labor thattearsthe artisan "Given that. . . . ; ifI suppose I'm suffering apart,separatinghim fromhimself: a lot. ... " (This is in The 1914 Box,also.) When Duchamp gives up paintingin 1912 and becomes a wageworkerat the Ste. Genevieve Library "in order to he dividesup the productiveand unproductivelaborerswithin paint formyself," to that he has stillto make a lifeout himself. Up point it's nothingbut a lifestyle; of it, and out of thislife to make his oeuvre. Duchamp the employee makes no claim to art and Duchamp the artisan has stopped producing paintings.Registered: Mott'sworkerstakesno claim to art and Muttthe artisanno longerpaints. Down withthe artisan-painter whose Nude Descending a Staircaseand even more The Passage oftheVirginto theBride had shown his talent. Down withtradition, down with the nostalgicclingingto an outmoded craftpursued under hostile conditions.And up with "the arrheof painting," in the singularand the feminine. How to make Phynance out of that? Let's take up once again the fable of la Fontaine(for it's above all a moral is a mythand the artist-machine a fiction): At the begintale, whereas creativity ning of the storyMarcel Duchamp is R. Mutt,but thiswe won't know untilthe end. R. Muttis like the littlenobody who proclaimshimself an artist in takingout his membershipin the Society; he divides himselfinto a stockholderand an artisan,Richard and Mutt. Richard is like Arensberg,both of them "big" stockholders in the Society(both foundingmembers)and both collectors(Richard is

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presidentof the hanging committeeand futurefounder of the Socikt' Anonor small industrialist. As artisan Mutt yme). Mutt is like Mott, artisan-painter fromhis person's being divided into an exploited workerand a merchant suffers he exploits his Mott doesn't suffer, who pockets surplus value. As industrialist workers. Mutt envies Mott and fears for his trade. For a year now he hasn't stopped telling himselfthat he should paint (qu'il peigne),sbut his Chocolate but itsnominalowner is alreadymortgagedand he is no longeranything Grinder have but his to sell, he he will soon that nothing creativity (says Marx). Feeling withdrawshis savings,stakes his all, and subcontracts.Mutt is once again like Mott,a merchant, alternately buyerand seller: Mott buys labor power and sells "items of lazy hardware," amongst which is a "faucet" that Mutt buys. At the end of the storyMutthas sold the "faucet" under a new label to Arensbergfora withouta ceiling. Mott, who has got wind of the affair, just can't price virtually believe it. He getsafterhis workerswitha prod; yetnever could he extractsuch thateven if he knows surplusvalue out of them. He shakes his head, muttering His workers somethingabout production,he understandsnothingof Phynance. and among them there is one who chuckles.On have also got wind of the affair and forthe modestsum of $6.00 he took out his Sundayshe paints"for himself," in the membership Independents. His name? R. Mutt. Thus does Duchamp render unto Caesar thatwhichis Caesar's: to Mott his than the means of production,whichby natureare neithermore nor less artistic brushesand tubes of paintare fora painter;to Mott'sworkerstheirlabor power, whichis neithermore nor less entitledto take the place that i.e., theircreativity, talent had in classical aestheticsthan the Independents have the right to call themselvesartiststhrough wishfulthinking;and to the modern artiststheir resistanceto the destructionof theircraft,whichis neithermore nor lessjustly of the divisionof labor ("the bachelor grinds definedby the technicalspecificity his chocolate himself") than by its social generality("separation is an operaof creativity; to Warhol tion"). But Duchamp renders,as well: to Beuys the myth the fictionof the machine; to Klein the emptinessof exchange-valueand, need we add, to Marx whatbelongsto Marx. Yes, everyoneis an artist; don't no, artists work;yes,the wishto proclaimoneselfan artistis onlya wish.Yes, the proletarians are alienated; yes, the relations of production are reified;yes, dialectical materialismclaims that a just practice proves a theorycorrect and viceversa. When the congruence between the aesthetic field and the field of political economy is perfect,there is nothingleftby to make thisvisible;but thatproves nothing.It was up to Duchamp to show thiscongruence,and in showingit, he rendered to everyonewhat belonged to Duchamp. And he, what did he pocket?

3. Translator'snote: Duchamp's readymadePeigne,or Comb, is homophonicwiththe subjunctive of peindre,to paint.

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Marcel TzanckCheck.1919. Duchamp, no one; The fable isn't over. Who cashed Arensberg'sblank check?Apparently the checkwas fabulousin more sensesthanone. Duchamp, in anycase, wantedto cash nothing, not even to take out the rightto speculateon whathe'd just made. Speculation had already taken place, and the profitswent up in smoke. And of SidneyJanisand Arturo whenit would occur again it would be forthe benefit Schwarz (who made replicas of Fountain),and for the pleasure of those art forced to speculate on what reallyhappened withthis "faucet which historians stops dripping when nobody is listeningto it" but which-isn't that right, Marcel?- drips at the expense of those listening. Fables are worthwhatthey'reworthand thisone isn'teven supported.We don't know how thingsreallyhappened, but at least we know thatit wasn't like and Arensbergdidn't buy it. It was at this.The urinalwasn'tbehind a partition Stieglitz'sto be photographedand the real Duchamp, less altruisticthan the on his investment. decided to draw interest characterin the fable,had certainly The question is one of knowingto what extentwe are speakingthrough"algehas been superimbraic comparison" and to what extent thearrheofphynance posed on the art of finance.Should the mappingof the two on one anothererase in kind, then Duchamp would be nothingbut an opportunist, theirdifference

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clevererthan the others. Fables, afterall, are worthwhat theirmoral is worth, and it's in the real world that the moral is tested. Thus we must find the to Arensberg'sfabulous blank check. The TzanckCheckcould be counter-proof one. In December 1919, in Paris, Duchamp goes to his dentist,Daniel Tzanck, and pays forhis care witha fictive check,whollydrawn by hand. Tzanck, who is also a collectorand veryactive in Parisian avant-gardecircles,knows verywell what he is accepting for payment.In fact there are two transactions. Like any other dentistTzanck presentshis bill and receives a check in return.But as a means of paymentthe check is worthless. Like the owner of the restaurant where Paul Klee ate foryearsin exchange forhis paintings, he lets himself be paid "in kind," that is, in worksof art. But thisparticularwork of art is a check, and a check is not verygratifying when it comes to aestheticpleasure. In accepting it the dentistrenounces being paid and it is not exactly his services that he exchanges for money but the price of his services,already expressed in money, whichhe bartersagainsta Dada Drawing(as Picabia called it) not redeemable at the bank. Duchamp obviouslyknowsas well as Tzanck what he is proposingfor owner no doubtpayment.He suspectsthatifTzanck - like Klee's restaurant acceptsa workof art in paymentforhis care, thisis not onlybecause the art lover in him, the craftsman who knows what work well done means, has instinctively of the drawingthe artistoffers him, but also recognized the fineworkmanship because the collectorin him has instinctively recognizedthe speculativepotential of the deal. Indeed, doesn't Duchamp suggestto himthata bank existswherethe is redeemable?It's the one on whichit's drawn,The Teeth's TzanckCheck Loan & TrustCompany, which listsits legal address as 2 Wall Street, New Consolidated, York. Here we can savor Duchamp's marveloushumor.In inventing a New York bank (a strangethingsince we're in Paris),he cloaks withEnglishthe factthatthe name of the bank articulatesexactly the nature of the exchange and of the thatformsbetween the two men: "I loan you myteeth,and in return complicity me you give your trust,and thus will our relationsbe consolidated." For twenty years the check stayedin the dentist'scollection. During these exhibition twenty yearsDuchamp breathed,played chess,tookpartin a surrealist here and there,and, discreetly but not apologetically, as a broker. He performed sold an impressivenumber of modern works of art, many his own, to various people includingArensberg,his sidekicksince the Richard Muttaffair.The war was approachingand the momentcame to pack his (boiteen) valise. In 1940 he - drawn triedto interest Arensbergin the TzanckCheck up in 1919 for$115.00 -even writing himthathis dentist"would be delightedto accept $50.00 to send it to you." So much for finance: quite a shark, this Duchamp, when it was a matterof playinggo-betweenfortwo of his collectors.Perhaps Tzanck had not been faithful enough to him (he only owned one other work by him and as chance would have it an investment of the same type,to wit, the MonteCarlo didn't wantthe check. Duchamp thenapproached Bond). Arensberg, apparently, Daniel Tzanck and boughtthe checkback "fora lot more thanit saysit's worth."

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So muchforphynance: theartist had paid hisdentist's bill in full,but as a checkto be guaranteed on trust,arrhe(the down payment)required the balance. The moral of a fableisn'tdissipatedwithin the real world,it returns to the commanditle." This is and it fable, through "symitrie Duchamp's expression A in finance back to commandite an a is investment brings phynance. joint-stock companywithliability only forthe sum invested.And thiskind of companyis a commercialenterpriseformedof two sorts of partners;the first (the investing silentpartners)bringcapitalwithouttakingpart in the runningof the company; the others (those invested) are jointly responsible for all legal debts. In we once again meet up withall the characters Duchamp's limitedpartnership fromthe fable, as fromreal life: Richard/Arensberg in Mutt/Mott, investing in and symmetrically, Tzanck. When he Duchamp investing buysthe check back fromhim he is not liable forany possible losseson the dentist'spart. Arensberg had been the fabulousinvestor, rightfromthe beginning.It was fairforthe one who had offered a virtually limitless price fora urinalhe had never possessed to assemblehis protege'sworkas completely as possible.But the latteris caughtup in stillanotherenterprise: a commandite is also a typesetters' collectiveworking by thejob. One monthbeforemakingup the TzanckCheck Duchamp put the letters L.H.O.O.Q. in his composing stick in order to titlea somewhatmustachioed needs the Tzanck Checkto reproductionof the Mona Lisa. Now the typesetter have it reproduced for the Boiteen valise. He had understoodhow profitable it Marcel Fountain. 1938.(First miniature, Duchamp, maquette.)

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and in the form--the lightest would be to keep his completeworksto himself most liquid possible--of a portable museum composed of reproductions.For the gold in the safe;forDuchamp, the fiatmoneybacked up byit. He Arensberg, coins moneyon the "ArensbergBank," or on the "Mary SislerBank" -in short collectorshave he runs off reproductionsof the works that his most faithful accumulatedthe way otherswritecheckson theirbank accounts.And this,dear and how thatwhich willbe fulfilled commandities reader, is how all the symitries will rendered unto Caesar. be to Caesar belongs It's a certainPhillipBruno who in 1965 cashed Arensberg'sfabulouscheck. The eventtook place duringthe exhibition of MarySisler'scollectionat Cordier Less RroseSilavy,1904Seen and or Seen Marcel & Ekstrom / (Not Duchamp/ oflby commanditieIncluded was there 1964). L.H.O.O.Q. echoed-through symitrie as "shaved" Mona Lisa which served the invitation to the the opening. The by was thereas well,havingin the meantimetraveledfromDuchamp's TzanckCheck wallet to those of Patricia Matta, Arne Ekstrom,and finally Mary Sisler. The in any if Bruno collected besides doesn't tell reproductions; Phillip anything story case the fact remains that he made the catalogue into an album into which, he pasted all the press clippingsabout withoutcoveringover the photographs, the exhibitionhe could gather.He wishedto obtain a Duchamp autographand, attached a check blank to the page where the witha paper clip, he whimsically Check of Tzanck appeared, opposite the mustachioedMona Lisa. reproduction second 1938. (From Marcel Fountain. Duchamp, miniature edition.)

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Playingthe innocent,he presentedDuchamp withthe book opened to the page in question, awaitinghis autograph. Of course Duchamp signed the check for in the amount: "unlimited";and the bank (French thistimealthough him,filling we're in New York): "Banque Mona Lisa." The Mona Lisa Bank is the Louvre. Every artist,even and above all the of the avant-gardes, terrible writescheckson tradition.They onlyhave the enfant value of that with which he or she repays tradition.For the arrheof painting will pay the balance, if it has enough of a sense of humor. The Mona posterity Lisa, withand withoutmustaches,belongs to it. The artisthas put his papers in order and organized his estate: to Leonardo the painting and to the culture the rightto printit on T-shirts;to Rrose the enigmaticsmile and to industry Mona the hot pants; to the cut-upGeorges Hugnet the mustachesand to Marcel Duchamp the razor blades that have "cuttage" in reserve. He could recall that his onlyutopia had been to "establisha societyin whichthe individualhas to pay forthe air he breathes" and leave to his creditorsthe botherof "cuttingoffthe air in case of non-payment."He discovered for himselfthat he had breathed enough. On October 2, 1968, age took charge of quietlyblowingout the candle. and anyway, it's alwaystheothers whodie.4 right? Sdlavy,

4. "D'ailleurs c'esttoujours les autresqui meurent," of epitaphon Duchamp's grave in the cemetery Rouen.

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Marcel BrunoCheck.1965. Duchamp,

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