Marcel Duchamp: A work that is not a work of art

On the day marking its 60th birthday, July 15 (Tuesday), the Modern Art Museum of São Paulo presents Marcel Duchamp: A work that is not a work "of art". The exhibition takes its title from a question that Marcel Duchamp wrote down one day in 1913: "Can one make works that are not 'of art'?" It signaled the beginning of his defiance of traditional artforms and laid the foundations for what would make him one of the most influential artists of 20th and 21st centuries. His insistent rethinking of the work of art is the focus of this first-ever major solo presentation of Duchamp in Latin America, featuring over 120 pieces of each form of media the artist worked in from 1913 to the end of his life. The exhibition opens on July 15 at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo's Grande Sala, and travels to Buenos Aires to inaugurate the Fundación Proa's new building in November 2008. The Argentinian Institution conceived the exhibition and co-produced it with the Museu d e Arte Moderna de São Paulo.

The exhibition begins with the moment when Duchamp wrote his famous question, which coincides with the period in which he began to conceive of mass-produced "readymade" objects as potential artworks, and traces his diverse and life-long experiments with chance, photography, perspective, optics, transparency, note-writing, humor, and eroticism. These interests connect to the exhibition's special focus on Duchamp's persistent interest in thinking about exhibition and display—how objects occupy space, how they transform and are transformed by their context, and how they shift or condition desire and perception.

Marcel Duchamp: A work that is not a work "of art," brings to Latin America many rare and exceptional works for an historic event possible thanks to generous loans from private collections and major museums, including the Philadelphia Art Museum, the University of Indiana Museum, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation in Vienna, and the Duchamp Estate in France.

Simultaneously, the exhibition "Duchamp-me" will take place at MAM's Sala Paulo Figueiredo. The curator Felipe Chaimovich (who is also Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo's curator) selected 40 artworks of museum's collection produced by Brazilian artists and inspired by the rupture of perspective proposed by Duchamp.

Exhibition "Marcel Duchamp: a work that is not a work 'of art'" – Grande Sala Curator: Elena Filipovic Opening night: Tuesday July 15, 2008 at 20.00

Marcel Duchamp
A work that is not a work "of art"
Kurator: Elena Filipovic