In which we consider how Stieglitz came to Dada,
with Duchamp playing ambassador of New York Dada
āTo scholars of both Dada and Stieglitz,āJay Bochner observes, āit has seemed that [Stieglitz] was critical of the extremes of Dada and entirely unreceptive to its shenanigans.”1 Itās easy to see why. Stieglitzās earnest, idealistic stance and sensuous, earthy photos seem like the polar opposite of Duchampās cool, evasive poses and abstract, cerebral artistic experiments.
Contending that āthe differences between the two menās aesthetic positions would always remain vast,ā2 Debra Bricker Balken positions each at the helm of ātwo distinct aesthetic factionsā of the American avant garde: āAlfred Stieglitz, the proponent of an intuitive and sensuous approach, and Marcel Duchamp, the champion of a more cerebral form of artistic investigationā (Balken 34, 18).Ā Their ācontrasting sensibilitiesā come into sharper focus in their own statements about art.3 Whereas Stieglitz asserted that, āArt begins where thinking endsā (qtd by Balken 63), Duchamp professed, āI was interested in ideasā¦I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mindā (qtd by Naumann 43).4
When Duchamp arrived in New York in 1915, he found Stieglitz too stern and serious for his taste: āHe always spoke in a very moralizing way,ā Duchamp recalled, āHe didnāt amuse me much at the beginning. I must say he didnāt think much of me either; I struck him as a charlatanā (qtd by Balken 40).5 But though the two artists may have been skeptical of one another from afar, according to Duchamp, āwhen we met in 1915 we got on very well, at once. From then on all went splendidly between us. He had my āready-madeā R. Mutt figure at 291 when it was pushed aside by the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. He also photographed itā (qtd by Norman).6
Jay Bochner illuminates the common ground between the two artists. Although Stieglitz was more idealistic and physical, and Duchamp was more āideaticā in his interest in abstract ideas, both ācontrived to dispossess the market of the art objectā and both āinsistently goaded a sleepy, self-satisfied public.”7 What united Stieglitz and Duchamp under the umbrella of Dada was an interest in removing art from the elites and handing it over to the American public.
From its initial inception to its intended dissemination, Stieglitzās iconic āThe Steerageā (1907) illustrates his democratic, anti-commercial stance. Stieglitz recalled his first encounter with the scene: āI stood spellbound for a while. I saw shapes related to one anotherāa picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me: simple people; the feeling the ship, ocean, sky; a sense of release that I was away from the mob called richā (qtd by Norman 76). In this account, abstract shapes and patterns lead Stieglitzās imagination to a more visceral contact with the physical world and its human inhabitants. Later, Stieglitz āagreed to have The Steerage appear in 291, to see what the American people would do to it if left to themselves,ā but he insisted that he āmade no attempt to solicit orders nor to sell the magazineā (qtd by Norman 127).
In this seminal work and throughout his career, Stieglitz sought to spur new ways of seeing and make contact with real, āsimple people,ā all while evading commercial entanglements. According to Bochner, similar democratic ideals had motivated Stieglitz more than a decade earlier to form Secession, an avant-garde collective that sought to foster a ālink between modern art and modern society, as if not to let commerce run away with the whole culture.”8 Indeed, throughout his career, Bochner explains, Stieglitz worked toward three main ideals: the recognition of photography as art, the formation of a distinctly American tradition of modern art, and the āeducation of the American public to make them see spiritual and emotional value in individual, native work not distorted by the marketing of artā (āEros Eyesoreā 106).
Although Duchampās provocations are more ironic than Stieglitzās photographs, they also attack the elitesāthe critics and connoisseurs who guard the gateways to the high art. Duchamp inserts everyday objects into this sacred realm, turning them over to the public to accept or reject. For the readymade to have its effect on art,ā Bochner explains, āmuch depends on its finding its way to a public that will decide whether or not it can be allowed into the inner circle of artā (āEros Eyesoreā 103).9
Michael Taylor argues that the urinal in particular āwas explicitly chosen for its shock value, and was intended for public rather than private consumptionā; Fountain was āa deliberately provocative āblagueāāa premeditated joke in plastic form, designed to flush out the hypocrisy of the Societyās professed liberal idealismā and expose it to the American public (Taylor 206). Duchampās āblaguesā defy authority and incite laughter, and as Joseph Stella remarked in 1921, āTo poke fun at, to break down, to laugh at, that is Dadaismā (qtd by Naumann 200-1).
For all his high seriousness about the cause of art, Stieglitz got the joke, writing to Duchamp and Man Ray in response to their magazine New York Dada: āItās quite a marvelā¦āThe cover is a delightā¦āThe skitāHartleyāMina LoyāStellaāmost amusingāand Francisās letter a real messageāItās all a prodā (qtd by Bochner 215).
- Jay Bochner,Ā An American Lens: Scenes form Alfred Stieglitzās New York Secession, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005, p.215
- Debra Bricken Balken, Debating American Modernism: Stieglitz, Duchamp, and the New York Avant-Garde, New York: American Federation of the Arts, 2003, p. 62.
- Michael R. Taylor, āBlind Manās Bluff: Duchamp, Stieglitz, and theĀ FountainĀ Scandal Revisited,āĀ Mirrorical Returns: Marcel Duchamp and the 20thĀ Century Art, ed. by Yukihiro Hirayoshi (Osaka: National Museum of Art, 2004), p.209.
- Stieglitz made this remark in a 1926 public address; see Herber Seligman, Alfred Stieglitz Talking: Notes on Some of His Conversations, 1925-1931 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 110. Duchampās remark was recorded in āEleven Europeans in America,ā ed. by James Johnson Sweeney, Bulletin 13, Nos. 4-5 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946), 20.
- This remark is recorded in Pierre Cabanneās Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, trans. by Ron Padgett (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 54.
- Dorothy Norman,Ā Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer, New York: Random House, 1973, p.123.
- Jay Bochner.āEros Eyesore,ā InĀ Debating American Modernism: Stieglitz, Duchamp, and the New York Avant-Garde, Ed. by Debra Bricken Balken, New York: American Federation of the Arts, 2003, p.113.
- Jay Bochner,Ā An American Lens: Scenes form Alfred Stieglitzās New York Secession, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005, p. 118.
- Rosalind Kraus similarly argues that, āthe readymade logic itself was aimed squarely in the realm of high art in order to reveal the sense in which art was already caught up in the system of exchange and of the deracination of objects by removing them from their original sites in order to circulate them within the rootless conditions of the museumā (251).