Thoughts on Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
In the practice of Zen Buddhism there’s the tradition of the Koan. These are unresolvable propositions meant to lead one’s mind to Enlightenment. They’re usually short phrases or stories. Here’s a well-known example: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
And there are a few reserved for acolytes: “Does a dog have a Buddha nature?”
Sometimes they’re answered by “Mu,” which means “no” but not in the sense of “yes and no,” but rather to cosmically disqualify the whole question.
One of the most entertaining story-type Koans revolves around picking the successor to the Fifth Zen Patriarch, Hongren. One night, as his application for the job, one of the wise Monks wrote on the Monastery bulletin board: “The mind is a mirror on which dust collects. It must be polished.”
The next day when the congregation woke up, they found a response written beneath it. “Where is the mirror and where is the dust?”
They were amazed. Which of the wise monks had written this? They asked around. It turned out it was the local woodcutter, a certain Huineng. He was promoted to Sixth Zen Patriarch.
Does the contemplation of a Koan lead to enlightenment? I can’t say, but I know that as stories they make one think and are often very entertaining. John Cage, who studied Zen with Daisetz Suzuki and who I consider as a modernist stand-up comedian, had a repertory full of them.
Koans are interesting because, like Cage and conceptual art in general, they can’t be pinned down. You can forget about them, say “who cares,” but they don’t go away. Furthermore, they show an acute understanding of human nature: for once a person “gets it,”, whatever “it” may be, they move on and forget about whatever it was that they “got.”
What can an artist do to assure that his or her work won’t be summarily “understood,” become a representation of some historical trend, period, school, and then dismissed? Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is “classical music” or “fate knocking against the door,” Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow is a Northern Renaissance representation of the religious disorders of his day, Van Gogh’s Crows Over a Cornfield a presaging of his death, a sign of encroaching mental illness or an example of Post-Impressionism. Dry explanations guaranteed to nip any thought in the bud.
Marcel Duchamp found the key to staying current by creating artistic Koans, works that couldn’t be pinned down. Is Nude Descending a Staircase Cubist or Futurist? Can a Cubist/Futurist work even exist? Can the same work be at once static and yet suggest movement? The question, though perhaps not as pressing as in 1913, still exists. Next, he found fertile ground in flea markets. Is Fountain (the signed urinal), or any of the ready-mades—the bicycle wheel, the bottle holder, the coat rack—even art? People still argue about it.
The crowning work in this process was The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Also known as The Large Glass, it’s housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s a nine-foot-tall work held between two large panes of plate glass. The images are mechanical diagrams of sieves, chocolate grinder forms, malic molds, images of stylized chess-inspired figures, and others. Duchamp also used self-invented techniques like “dust breeding.” Originally left uncompleted, the glass panes were broken during transit leading Duchamp to declare it finished.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this cryptic work is the accompanying Green Box, which holds the random notes he made while creating the work. Duchamp said the meaning of the work exists between the object itself and the Green Box. If assembled, these notes describe a mechanism which is illustrated by the work itself.
The arrangement of the pages in the Green Box and the purpose of the mechanism in The Large Glass has been the subject of conjecture. Here are some who gave it a shot: Octavio Paz, Michel Carrouges, Jean Suquet, André Breton, Arturo Schwarz, Roger Shattuck, Calvin Tomkins, Thierry de Duve, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, John Cage, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Smithson, Jean-François Lyotard, Rosalind Krauss and Michel Sanouillet.
Regardless of how the notes are assembled, the Green Box describes a mechanism forever frozen outside of time. Like a Koan, it isn’t meant to be solved. Duchamp said that it wasn’t a painting but a delay. What exactly is being delayed? One principle clearly stated in the notes: the mechanism deals with nine men trying to sexually arouse a woman so that she accepts one as a lover. There lies the problem. If it deals with people, it must be a living mechanism, for humans aren’t sterile and don’t exist outside of time. Regardless of which of the nine suitors succeeds in arousing the woman, the result would be concrete. And the concrete result is a child. This is what’s delayed. Since his work stops short of this necessary result, the Large Glass is the representation of an act of masturbation.
I agree with those who’ve suggested the work is a symbolic representation of Duchamp’s frustrated incestuous love for his sister Suzanne and his disappointment at her marriage. This interpretation is due to the title in French, La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même, where the word même sounds like m’aime which means “loves me.” That would result in The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Loves Me. This might explain why the mechanism is frozen outside of time, as if Duchamp was trying to infinitely delay reality and keep his fantasy alive.