I am interested in "3 standard stoppages," because Marcel Duchamp emphasizes "chance" as an unreproducible and irreversible event, which only happens one time. Also, it is very interesting to see transformation from a thread, flexible form, into a wood, fixed form as measurement.
Having dropped three meter-long threads from a height of a meter, he adhered them to three stretched canvases, preserving the random curves they had assumed upon landing. Cutting the canvases along the thread's profiles, he then translated these curves into wooden templates, new units of measure that retained the meter length but confused it rationale.
( p. 30 in "On Line")
The Idea of the Fabrication
horizontal
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||
--If a thread
|
one meter long
|
falls
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straight
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The Idea of the Fabrication
from a height of one meter on to a horizontal plane
twisting as it pleases and creates
a new image of the unit of length 3 examples obtained more or less
similar conditions
:considered in their relation to one another
they are an approximate reconstitution of the unit of length
The 3 standard stoppages are the meter diminished
| Duchamp then made the object, listing the date as "1913-14" and insisting that he had followed the protocol of his note. He claimed that he had dropped three pieces of string, each exactly one meter long, each from a height of exactly one meter, and each only once, onto a canvas. He then glued each string to the canvas in the exact position of its chance fall. Photographs of the three canvas strips appear in the Box of 1914.
In the summer of 1936, as he was working on the restoration of The Large Glass, Duchamp cut each of the canvases down to its current width and glued each to a glass plate. A comparison of the 1914 photos with the current strips on glass -- which are now at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York -- reveals no differences in the length or form of any of the strings. We may therefore assume that MOMA's object represents Duchamp's original construction. (See illustration 4 for the 3 Standard Stoppages in situ at the Museum of Modern Art.)
Calvin Tomkins describes the central importance of the 3 Standard Stoppages in Duchamp's work and career:
Duchamp would come to look upon the stoppages as one of the key works in his development as an artist. "In itself it was not an important work of art," he [Duchamp] said, "but for me it opened the way -- the way to escape from those traditional methods of expression long associated with art. I didn't realize at the time what I had stumbled on. When you tap something, you don't always recognize the sound. That's apt to come later. For me the Three Standard Stoppages was a first gesture liberating me from the past." |
In 1964 Duchamp explained: 'This experiment was made in 1913 to imprison and preserve forms obtained through chance, through my chance. At the same time, the unit of length, one meter, was changed from a straight line to a curved line without actually losing its identity [as] the meter, and yet casting a pataphysical doubt on the concept of a straight edge as being the shortest route from one point to another.' (Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, eds.,Marcel Duchamp, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973, pp.273-4.) Duchamp used each wooden template three times in mapping the diagrammatic painting Network of Stoppages, 1914 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). This painting served as a means of positioning the elements Duchamp called the Bachelors or Nine Malic Moulds in his early masterpiece The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (also known as The Large Glass), 1915-23 (Tate T02011).
In an interview of 1961, Duchamp hinted at a conceptual relationship between 3 Standard Stoppages and his famous 'readymades', manufactured objects he designated as works of art. Asked what he considered to be his most important work, he replied: 'As far as date is concerned I'd say the Three Stoppages of 1913. That was when I really tapped the mainspring of my future. In itself it was not an important work of art, but for me it opened the way - the way to escape from those traditional methods of expression long associated with art … For me theThree Stoppages was a first gesture liberating me from the past.' (Katherine Kuh, The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York 1962, p.81.)
3 Standard Stoppages was made at a time of widespread contemporary scepticism concerning the objectivity of scientific knowledge. Art historian Herbert Molderings has suggested that Duchamp may have been influenced by popular science books which discussed the relativity of all standards of measurement. In Science and Hypothesis (1902), for example, the philosopher of science and mathematician Henri Poincaré questioned whether or not it would be 'unreasonable to inquire whether the metric system is true or false?' (quoted in Molderings, p.246.) The concept for 3 Standard Stoppages may also be linked to Duchamp's admiration for the French humorist Alfred Jarry (1873-1907). At the end of the nineteenth century Jarry invented what he called a Pataphysics, or 'science of imaginary solutions', explicitly designed to 'examine the laws governing exceptions, and … explain the universe parallel to this one' (quoted in Ades, pp.78-9).
The original version of 3 Standard Stoppages is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Two replicas were made in 1963 (Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena). In 1964 an edition of eight replicas was made by Arturo Schwarz and the Tate's work is number two in this edition. In addition two further examples were made for the artist and for Arturo Schwarz, and a further two for museum exhibition.
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