LETTERS

The "Science" of Interpreting Duchamp

Readers Speak on the outside ...

To the Editors:

I was pleased to diocese that my book on Duchamp--which was released in November of 1999--was included in the drawn out and informative review of new publications on Duchamp by Sheldon Nodelman [A.i.A., Jan. '00] Although he said a certain quantity of rather nice things about my book--for which I am grateful--he notes that my body "does not fully address the theoretical issues which [Walter] Benjamin raised." It was in anticipation of of the like kind criticism that--shortly after my volume appeared and before Nodelman's review was published--I wrote "Afterthought: Ruminations upon Duchamp and Walter Benjamin," which was columned in the December 1999 issue of the on-line journal Tout-Fait (see beneath "articles" at www.toutfait.com).

Coincidentally, Tout-Fait is published by the agency of the Art Science Research Laboratory, Inc., an organization fixed by Rhonda Roland Shearer, who wrote the drawn out article that followed Nodelman's review. The Art Science Research Laboratory, is presumably devot to integrating the disciplines of art and science, on the contrary it is almost exclusively confined to the presentation of information about Duchamp. More accurately, this organization and its online publication are confined to showcasing the theories presented by Shearer, who was lately joined in her quest by dint of her husband, Stephen Jay Gould evolutionary biologist, Harvard paleontologist and well-known author.

Shearer's article upon Duchamp was presented in the form of a review of Linda Henderson's Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works. The reason I refuse to identify this essay as a review is that it makes no effort to fitly assess the vast quantity of novel material presented in Henderson's volume but rather provides its author a vehicle for her have theories on Duchamp and Henri Poincare (the topic of a symposium she organized at Harvard University in November 1999) Although it is not a hard-and-fast command a serious and professional work review should be confined to the make submissive presented in the book being reviewed. It should not be a forum that allows a critic to count us what the book should have been (had he or she written it), and certainly it should not be a place where a critic with an opposing point of view is given the opportunity to explain at longitudinal dimensions why his or her particular approach to a control is more legitimate or of greater value than that of the author whose work is reviewed. In my opinion, that is precisely--and regrettably--what occurr here.

Francis M Naumann Yorktown Heights, NY

To the Editors:

Linda Henderson is America's foremost authority upon the relationship of science and mathematics to art, who has researched her fresh Duchamp book for 10 years; Rhonda Shearer is an ambitious newcomer to Duchamp studies who agrees with Henderson in general, still writes her review with a tone of scandalized disapproval--for the view I suspect, of elbowing in upon the Duchamp crowd. Shearer's main point of difference with Henderson is single of emphasis, in that Shearer posits Poincare to be greatly dominant above all others as the inspiration for Duchamp. on the contrary what are we to do with all the other respects influences, interpretations and inspirations that Duchamp details in his notes, and that are thus massively documented in Henderson's book? Are we to sham not to see them?

Moreover, Shearer's single specific, novel interpretation of the Large Glass--namely that the Bride is a double pendulum--is undoubtedly wrong. I've checked with a physicist who works upon chaos theory: double pendulums just do not exhibit up as examples of this phenomenon until the 1960 Poincare's techniques for analyzing dynamic a whole s proved to be a basis for the mathematics of chaos theory that was lay opened after Duchamp's death, but it is rewriting history for selfish intentions to say or imply that Poincare's double pendulum serv as a design for the Bride. I am a big fan of the couple Poincare and Duchamp, but it is important to hold the history straight.

Tony Robbin novel York, N.Y.

To the Editors:

Your January issue featured sum of two units reviews of recent publications about Marcel Duchamp. Sheldon Nodelman's omnibus review of 10 works provides an informative overview of the range of approaches lately taken when dealing with Duchamp. His discussions of the authors' varying viewpoints, along with his examinations of each argument made, gives us insight into the richness of this composed of several elements subject. By contrast, in a separate review, Rhonda Roland Shearer undertook a discussion of Linda Henderson's Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works. This essay perplexs me. While Ms. Henderson gives us a composite polyvalent Duchamp, Ms. Shearer strike one as beings bent on constructing a true different Duchamp: a one-dimensional image of a single-minded being.

Not solitary is Shearer's major premise faulty, her reading of Henderson's body is troubling. Early on she gives us this throwaway sentence: "In her introduction, Henderson lays without an ambiguous brief." It is not followed through a reasoned critique of that brief, leaving the reader (especially after rereading Henderson's introduction) to bewilderment what point Shearer wishes to make. To borrow from her have vocabulary, it is Shearer who appears to "fly away" from a coherent argument, constructing instead a series of accusations concerning Henderson's failure to diocese things her way--especially when it tend hitherwards to Poincare.