Canter through Dada
Andrew Lambirth
Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia Tate Modern, until 26 May Juan Muñoz Tate Modern, until 27 April
The recent Tate habit of serving up in threes major figures from art history is not to be encouraged. It almost worked in 2005 with Turner Whistler Monet, but as the old saying goes, ‘two’s company but three’s a crowd’, and one of the artists usually suffers. In the Degas, Sickert and ToulouseLautrec show (2005–6), it was Lautrec who suffered. In the current offering, it is Picabia, the least familiar of the three and the one needing most introduction to the public, thus warranting a better showing than he gets here, having to compete with his heavyweight mates. That said, it’s an enjoyable enough canter through Dada, though rather on the skimpy side. The show can’t decide whether it wants to tell the story of an art movement or of three buddies. As such, it tends to fall between two stools. (An appropriate metaphor for Duchamp at least, who not only used lavatories as art but also mounted a bicycle wheel on a stool.) The exhibition tries to cover too much and in the process gets spread rather thin. Art history lite is also not to be encouraged.
Early work is nearly always revealing. The first room introduces the friends via their portraits, and the joking starts at once with two mirrors exhibited as portraits, Duchamp’s signed (in mirror-writing, of course). The early work here includes Duchamp’s very painterly ‘House in a Wood’ (1907) and an awful ‘Adam and Eve’ by Picabia (prefiguring his later nudes), also a jigsaw-like landscape. Nothing much by Man Ray. He does, however, come into his own in Room 3, with a fascinating painting called ‘The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows’, which is structured like a Duchamp (though harsher) but with much stronger colour. Here, too, are rather beautiful early Duchamp paintings: ‘The Passage from Virgin to Bride’ and ‘Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2’, wood-coloured and analytical of movement. Picabia’s watercolour ‘Ad Libitum; Your Choice; At Will’ (c.1913–14) is strangely sexual while another one, ‘The City of New York Perceived Through the Body’, is hot reds and mechanical, a taste of things to come.
Machines are the very next incarnation, and both Picabia and Duchamp emerge full-grown. Here is Picabia’s striking and intriguing wheel-complex, unhelpfully entitled ‘Daughter Born Without a Mother’, done in gouache and metallic paint on printed paper. Here, too, is Duchamp’s superbly drawn ‘Chocolate Grinder No. 1’ and the exquisitely lyrical ‘Coffee Mill’ from the Tate’s collection. Man Ray by contrast seems still adolescent with his phallic ‘Factory in the Forest’. Perhaps here is first sown the doubt over Man Ray’s credentials, talented photographer though he undoubtedly was. Certainly he’s not much of a painter, though he made memorable images in many media. It could be argued that he was really an inspired opportunist, in the right place at the right time. I’m inclined to be a bit more generous than that, though he could definitely be seen as the weakest link in this particular triumvirate.
The fifth room stresses the friendship aspect of the show, with various photos of the chaps: Duchamp with star-shaped tonsure or in drag as Rose Sélavy, Man Ray with half a beard (an affectation more recently adopted by J.S.G. Boggs, who made a mint out of painting banknotes), and Picabia imitating Rodin’s sculpture of Balzac by throwing out his chest and combing his hair over his forehead. All good fun, and a lull before the intellectual storm of room 6, where we are greeted by Duchamp’s masterpiece ‘The Large Glass’, in the version made by Richard Hamilton. This room is full of iconic stuff (including the gorgeous photos of dust breeding), and approaches the heart of Duchamp’s mystery, through the crisp forms of his ‘Nine Malic Moulds’. It’s tricksy stuff, and probably better appreciated as formal structure (lead on glass, carefully drilled holes, measured lengths) than as mind games. ‘The Large Glass’ is otherwise known as ‘The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, even’. There’s poetry here, and alchemy and chess, but it can’t ever be completely explained. Duchamp was too addicted to enigma. The exhibition proceeds through a room of objects, which are the most famous emanations of this artistic trio. The urinal is here, as it has to be, resting on its back. There are the utilitarian objects, like the coatrack and bottle rack, and the shovel inspiringly named ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm’. Then there are the more ambiguous pieces, like Duchamp’s birdcage filled with marble sugar-cubes, or Man Ray’s ‘Enigma of Isidore Ducasse’ (a wrapped anvil) and his spiked iron. Picabia’s ‘Woman with Matches’ is a welcome ‘painting’, though drawn on with matches, coins and hairgrips. A room of Op Art vibrating discs and patterns leads into a room of Man Ray’s photos. ‘I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint,’ he wrote, rather jumping the gun as he soon returned to it. Picabia loses out around here in the centre of the show, so a room is given over to his paintings, in which the imagery flows and interpenetrates. ‘Venus’ of c.1942 is good, and the bizarre trio of ‘Minos’, ‘Rubi’ and ‘Catax’, but by this time the viewer’s energy is flagging and few visitors were pausing long here. They preferred the Intermission room, with photos and documentation and films (much easier to look at).
Room 12 was also something of a draw, being dedicated to eroticism. Man Ray’s photos are undeniably sexy and effective, but Picabia’s ultra-kitsch painted nudes are simply horrible. There’s an unsuccessful projected reconstruction of Duchamp’s final work (made when he pretended he’d given up art), and then Room 13 is Endgame. Here are a whole series of small Picabia paintings, interesting enough to make me wish the entire show had been a proper study of this important and underrated artist. Also Man Ray’s ‘Monument to the Unknown Painter’, a croupier’s rake stood upright. This show is much funnier than the Hayward’s Laughing in a Foreign Language, but in the end it’s almost as unsatisfying.
I went to the Juan Muñoz exhibition with few expectations apart from a vague dread of seeing too many plastic-looking grey figures chatting merrily to each other. I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. Muñoz (1953–2001) was a serious sculptor who has become known best for his grey men, updated and glorified garden gnomes, much favoured by curators who love installation. In fact, as can be seen from this thorough retrospective, he was much more than that. He had, for instance, a thing about balconies, witness the exhibition foyer and various exhibits within the display. Empty balconies that you have to look up to. (There are some scrappy but emotive drawings of balconies on large sheets of brown paper.) Then there are the forged iron staircases, the trompe-l’oeil lino, the barley-twist terracotta columns. Muñoz is good at architectural details but also human backs, a wax drum stabbed by scissors, cabinets of casts (from body parts to flick-knives), chalky interiors drawn on blackened gaberdineraincoat fabric — all this before the little grey figures begin to take over.
Muñoz called himself a storyteller and his work certainly strayed away from its Minimalist roots (in Donald Judd and Carl Andre) towards a much more baroque narrative art. A pity really, as he went too far, I think. Although the best of the work has a touch of mystery and invention that can only be called Goya-esque, the garden-gnome syndrome is all too present. The show tours to the Guggenheim, Bilbao (6 June to 28 September), Museu Serralves, Porto (31 October 2008 to 18 January 2009) and Fundación la Caixa, Madrid (6 February to 7 June 2009). A brave tribute.
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