The Duchamp Effect: Essays, Interviews, Round Table by Martha Buskirk, Mignon Nixon

Buskirk, Martha, and Mignon Nixon, eds. The Duchamp Effect: Essays, Interviews, Round Table. An October Book. Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT  Press, 1996. Pp. 227.

In its first appearance as the fall 1994 issue of October (no. 70), this collection focusing on Marcel Duchamp’s historical reception from the 1950s contained essays by Hal Foster and Thierry de Duve, an introduction by Benjamin, Buchloh, and interviews with six artists. For its re-publication it has been  augmented by additional essays by Sarat Maharaj, Molly Nesbit, and Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, and a postscript by T.J. Clark. This anthology contributes to the ongoing industry of Duchamp publications. In his essay, “What Neo about the Neo-Avant Garde?,” Hal Foster draws attention to postwar artistic activities in North America that sought to re-animate avant-garde practices of the 1910s and 1920s (5). Foster speaks longingly of radical readings, readings  that will not be yet “another accretion of the discourse” (6). He writes of the need to discover in the “repetitions in postwar art […] returns in a radical sense” (7), in an attempt to record “new genealogies of the avant-garde” (10).