By Erin McClenathan, Assistant Professor of Art History
Mercer University
Loy, etc. in View’s Duchamp Number
Entanglements abound in lives of Mina Loy and Marcel Duchamp. Between their shared tendency to return to autobiography and numerous scholarly retellings, their stories are abundantly accessible. Yet, this biographical excess also frustrates attempts to find definitive accounts among evidence that often blurs documentation with artifice. This object lesson embraces archival density as a call to action. A digitized layout from View: The Modern Magazine serves as a glancing snapshot, visualizing multiple, imperfect versions of Mina and Marcel’s intertwined lives. Published in 1945, the special issue provides a purportedly singular view of Duchamp. Annotating Loy and fellow contributors, however, reveals a multivocal assemblage therein.
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For more on Loy and Duchamp, see the following chapters in Mina Loy Baedeker: A Scholarly Guide for Digital Travelers:
- Suzanne W. Churchill, “Pas de Deux: Mina Loy & Alfred Stieglitz Dance Dada“
- Susan Rosenbaum, “Surrealism on the Move: New York, 1937- 1953“
Bio
Erin McClenathan is Assistant Professor of Art History at Mercer University, where she teaches courses in the College of Liberal Arts. Her current research defines the medium of handheld cinema through dada and surrealist periodicals in a continuation of her doctoral project, which she completed at the University of Georgia in 2018. Related articles appear in The Space Between and InVisible Culture.