The Economist: Prospero, Books, Arts and Culture

A ready made sensation: Marcel Duchamp, a French artist credited with inventing conceptual art, was in his late 50s when he met John Cage, a composer, and Merce Cunningham, a choreographer, in New York. Duchamp had fled the war in France, and turned to playing chess. Cage and Cunningham were a generation younger, partners in love and work, experimentation and movement. Still, the impact of the elder artist on the pair, and then on their painter friends Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, was profound. It had been 30 years since Duchamp had taken a porcelain urinal and called it art. Yet the 1950s avant garde circle found in him a kindred spirit, one whose radical ideas about the art of the everyday, stimulated and informed their own disciplines. An unusual exhibit celebrating this web of artistic exchange, has now arrived at London's Barbican Center, after an acclaimed premiere at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns" could have been an overwhelming proposition. Instead it is an elegant and accessible balancing act. The open main floor and mezzanine balconies of the Barbican gallery give ample breathing space to this ambitious show, centered around a small white stage and Duchamp's curious 1923 magnum opus. "The Bride Stripped Bareby her Bachelors, Even Black clad dancers move across the stage like single notes, or freeze in couplets, performing extracts from Cunningham's dance repertory. Two pianos start up automatically, playing Cage's 1947 composition "Music for Marcel Duchamp". Johns's stage sets for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company sway above, their imagery derived from the enigmatic "Bride" sculpture, while a Rauschenberg prop involving bicycle tires and chairs is ranged along the side. Along the walls, pieces by Duchamp, Rauschenberg and Johns engage in endless dialogue. The show is less a static exhibit than a flowing interplay of movement, sight and sound. It is conceived as "an unfolding dance, including the artists in different combinations at different moments, and extending over time," says Carlos Basualdo, the curator. This aptly captures Duchamp's contribution to the definition of art. He rejected "retinal" art, art addressed exclusively to the eye, in favor of what he called "art at the service of the mind."