Marcel Duchamp

Octavio Paz (1978) proposes that Duchamp is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Yet this artist's reputation rests solely on a handful of works, and for the last forty-five years of his life, he seemed to have given up art entirely, interested primarily in playing chess.

We now know that Duchamp had not given up art entirely; from 1946 to 1966, he continued to secretly work on his final magnum opus, a rather startling work entitled “Given: 1) the waterfall 2) the illuminating gas.” In this paper, I attempt a psychoanalytic clarification of this work, as well as of Duchamp's other major work, “The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even.” They reveal Duchamp's struggle with erotic and aggressive impulses in his very ambivalent relationships to women, especially to his mother.

Marcel Duchamp was born July 28, 1887, the fourth child of seven born to Lucie and Eugene Duchamp. The oldest was Gaston, born 1875. (He changed his name to Jacques Villon when he became an artist.) The next oldest was Raymond, born fourteen months later. (He later changed his name to Raymond Duchamp-Villon when he also became an artist.) In July of 1883, the couple's first daughter, Jeanne, was born. She died of croup in December, 1886. Marcel was conceived a month after his two brothers went off to boarding school. As the biographer Marquis points out:

The new baby (Marcel) was a replacement for the mother of both her two older sons and her dead little daughter. The care of Marcel was divided between his mother, still grieving over her dead girl child, and an

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ample country woman, who was the family servant. (Marquis, 1981: 7)

Marquis writes:

Marcel never concealed his dislike for his mother. While he described his father as ‘kindly and indulgent,’ he recalled his mother as ‘distant and cold.’ Marcel ‘intensely disliked her’ … as did his older brothers and Suzanne, the sister who was born in … 1889. To a friend in 1957, Duchamp described his mother as ‘placid and indiffe