Current belief is that Duchamp's girlfriend Maria Martins was the model for Etant Données, verified by letters left in the possession of her family. The obsessional quality of Duchamp's secretive creation of the piece over years suggests that the particular may have merged with more generalised sexual desire.
That last sentence was a funny way to word that! Well, you get the idea …
Cheers,
J
___________________________
Jaime Robles
On 15 Nov 2014, at 17:55, jesse wrote:
> I've read WCW's autobiography. Years ago there was a thick bio of WCW that I picked up back in the 80's--forget the name of the writer at this moment, (Paul Mariani!) but I do recall that the Baroness was a bit more than "a sometime thing" for WCW. Yes to "Body Sweats" but an even more emphatic yes to the original manuscripts written on the backs of hotel stationery and on various scraps of paper. She threw all of her sentences into C=A=P=S and dividing lines of various lengths and these were bitten into the pages in pencil--sometimes colored pencils were used. I took most of an afternoon to make my transcriptions (they did not allow photo-copying) appear as close as I could to the originals. There were some notes too to Jane Heap and others. One free-floating note had to do with her own liveliness. "AND I AM LIVELY!" she said/uttered/wrote in a manner that truly convinced me back in the 1980's that she was telling the truth.* The MIT Press did right by Mina Loy--hope they did the same for the Baroness. *These were manuscripts that she had submitted for publication and the fact that they were sent/submitted in the manner they were spoke worlds about context.
>
> I was wondering last night if the final great project that Duchamp created at the end might have been an homage to the Baroness--shaved pubic area as act of creative nostalgia--(Duchamp had worked on an early movie project about the Baroness engaged in lathering and etc. just that area of her body) as well as a cryptic confession of the origin of one of the most famous of the Duchamp Ready Maids.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS automatic digest system
> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 9:00 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Digest - 14 Nov 2014 to 15 Nov 2014 (#2014-4)
>
> There are 2 messages totaling 216 lines in this issue.
>
> Topics of the day:
>
> 1. R. Mutt: Duchamp's Living "Ready Maid" (2)
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 12:05:53 +0900
> From: jesse <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: R. Mutt: Duchamp's Living "Ready Maid"
>
> The Baroness is wonderful. She does count in all kinds of ways. I’ve read somewhere that she was sexually abused as a child and always lived her live “from the outside looking in.” The sad thing is that she became the Ready Maid of so many of the gentlemen of the avant-garde of the time in ways that Mina Loy and other women of the new did not. From my reading of Wm. Carlos Williams he appears to have been smitten by the Baroness or perhaps by her availability. I’m glad to see that her work—some of which I was privileged to view in manuscript at the Little Review archives at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee—is now being recovered from what had been up to the early 1990’s a more forensically inclined investigation (patho-nympho-psycho) and tranformed into a real exploration and appreciation of what she did before she turned the gas on or the gas was turned on her (that final fact is still ambiguous).
>
> I keep mentioning this in various places but the University of Maryland Digital Collections has done a fantastic thing with the manuscript poems of the Baroness. Here’s the project:http://www.lib.umd.edu/dcr/collections/EvFL-class/
>
> I recommend this form of web archaeology to one and all.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 21:42:43 -0700
> From: Jeremy F Green <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: R. Mutt: Duchamp's Living "Ready Maid"
>
> It's well worth seeking out Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven edited by Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo (MIT Press, 2011). It's the closest thing to a collected poems we're likely to get; it's also very much like an art book, with glossy reproductions of mss.
>
> WCW's infatuation with the Baroness was short-lived, at least according to his autobiography. After she ambushed him at his home, he was so alarmed he took up boxing to ready himself for their next encounter.
>
>
> From: jesse <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Reply-To: British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 20:05:53 -0700
> To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Subject: R. Mutt: Duchamp's Living "Ready Maid"
>
> The Baroness is wonderful. She does count in all kinds of ways. I’ve read somewhere that she was sexually abused as a child and always lived her live “from the outside looking in.” The sad thing is that she became the Ready Maid of so many of the gentlemen of the avant-garde of the time in ways that Mina Loy and other women of the new did not. From my reading of Wm. Carlos Williams he appears to have been smitten by the Baroness or perhaps by her availability. I’m glad to see that her work—some of which I was privileged to view in manuscript at the Little Review archives at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee—is now being recovered from what had been up to the early 1990’s a more forensically inclined investigation (patho-nympho-psycho) and tranformed into a real exploration and appreciation of what she did before she turned the gas on or the gas was turned on her (that final fact is still ambiguous).
>
> I keep mentioning this in various places but the University of Maryland Digital Collections has done a fantastic thing with the manuscript poems of the Baroness. Here’s the project:http://www.lib.umd.edu/dcr/collections/EvFL-class/
>
> I recommend this form of web archaeology to one and all.
>
> Jesse
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Digest - 14 Nov 2014 to 15 Nov 2014 (#2014-4)
> ************************************************************************
|