Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians like P. Adams Sitney (and others film critics in different countries), and its distribution process through non profit organizations like The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York, and similar cooperatives in many other countries through the world.

Definition[link]

The term describes a range of filmmaking styles that are generally quite different from, and often opposed to, the practices of mainstream commercial and documentary filmmaking. Avant-garde is also used, for the films shots in the twenties in the field of history’s avant-gardes currents in France or Germany, to describe this work, and "underground" was used in the sixties, though it has also had other connotations. Today the term "experimental cinema" prevails, because it’s possible to make experimental films without the presence of any avant-garde movement in the cultural field.

While "experimental" covers a wide range of practice, an experimental film is often characterized by the absence of linear narrative, the use of various abstracting techniques -- out-of-focus, painting or scratching on film, rapid editing -- the use of asynchronous (non-diegetic) sound or even the absence of any sound track. The goal is often to place the viewer in a more active and more thoughtful relationship to the film. At least through the 1960s, and to some extent after, many experimental films took an oppositional stance toward mainstream culture.

Most such films are made on very low budgets, self-financed or financed through small grants, with a minimal crew or, often a crew of only one person, the filmmaker. Some critics have argued that much experimental film is no longer in fact "experimental" but has in fact become a mainstream film genre.^[1] Many of its more typical features --such as a non-narrative, impressionistic, or poetic approaches to the film's construction -- define what is generally understood to be "experimental".^[2]

History[link]

The European avant-garde[link]

Two conditions made Europe in the 1920s ready for the emergence of experimental film. First, the cinema matured as a medium, and highbrow resistance to the mass entertainment began to wane. Second, avant-garde movements in the visual arts flourished. The Dadaists and Surrealists in particular took to cinema. René Clair's Entr'acte (1924) featuring Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray, and with music by Erik Satie, took madcap comedy into nonsequitur.

Artists Hans Richter, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Germaine Dulac, and Viking Eggeling all contributed Dadaist/Surrealist shorts. Fernand Leger, Dudley Murphy, and Man Ray created the film Ballet Mécanique (1924), sometimes described as Dadaist, Cubist, or Futurist. Duchamp created the abstract film Anémic Cinéma (1926).

Alberto Cavalcanti directed Rien que les heures (1926), Walter Ruttmann directed Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927), and Dziga Vertov filmed Man With a Movie Camera (1929), experimental ¨city symphonies¨ of Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, respectively.

The most famous experimental film is generally considered to be Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un chien andalou (1929). Hans Richter's animated shorts, Oskar Fischinger's abstract films, and Len Lye's GPO films would be excellent examples of more abstract European avant-garde films.

Working in France, another group of filmmakers also financed films through patronage and distributed them through cine-clubs, yet they were narrative films not tied to an avant-garde school. Film scholar David Bordwell has dubbed these French Impressionists, and included Abel Gance, Jean Epstein, Marcel L'Herbier, and Dimitri Kirsanoff. These films combines narrative experimentation, rhythmic editing and camerawork, and an emphasis on character subjectivity.

In 1952, the Lettrists avant-garde movement in France, caused riots at the Cannes Film Festival, when Isidore Isou's Traité de bave et d'éternité (also known as Venom and Eternity) was screened. After their criticism of Charlie Chaplin at the 1952 press conference in Paris for Chaplin's Limelight, there was a split within the movement. The Ultra-Lettrists continued to cause disruptions when they announced the death of cinema and showed their new hypergraphical techniques. The most notorious film of which is Guy Debord's Howlings in favor of de Sade (Hurlements en Faveur de Sade) from 1952.

The Soviet filmmakers, too, found a counterpart to modernist painting and photography in their theories of montage. The films of Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Alexander Dovzhenko, and Vsevolod Pudovkin were instrumental in providing an alternate model from that offered by classical Hollywood. While not experimental films per se, they contributed to the film language of the avant-garde.

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (April 2012)

Prewar and postwar American avant-garde : the birth of experimental cinema[link]

The U.S. had some avant-garde films before World War II, such as Manhatta (1921) by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, and The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra (1928) by Slavko Vorkapich and Robert Florey. However, much pre-war experimental film culture consisted of artists working, often in isolation, on film projects. Painter Emlen Etting (1905-1993) directed dance films in the early 1930s that are considered experimental, and artist Douglass Crockwell (1904–1968)^[3] made animations with blobs of paint pressed between sheets of glass in his studio at Falls River, New York.^[4]

In Rochester, New York, medical doctor and philanthropist James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber directed The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) and Lot in Sodom (1933). Harry Smith, Mary Ellen Bute, artist Joseph Cornell, and Christopher Young made several European-influenced experimental films. In 1930 appears the magazine Experimental Cinema with, for the first time, the two words directly connected without any space between them.^[5] The editors were Lewis Jacobs and David Platt. In October 2005, a large collection of films of that time were restored and re-released on DVD, titled Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941.^[6]

With Slavko Vorkapich, John Hoffman made two visual tone poems, Moods of the Sea (aka Fingal's Cave, 1941) and Forest Murmurs (1947). The former film is set to Felix Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture and was restored in 2004 by film preservation expert David Shepard.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid is considered to be one of the first important American experimental films. It provided a model for self-financed 16 mm production and distribution, one that was soon picked up by Cinema 16 and other film societies. Just as importantly, it established an aesthetic model of what experimental cinema could do. Meshes had a dream-like feel that hearkened to Jean Cocteau and the Surrealists, but equally seemed personal, new and American. Early works by Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Gregory Markopoulos, Jonas Mekas, Willard Maas, Marie Menken, Curtis Harrington and Sidney Peterson followed in a similar vein. Significantly, many of these filmmakers were the first students from the pioneering university film programs established in Los Angeles and New York. In 1946, Frank Stauffacher started the "Art in Cinema" series of experimental films at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

They set up "alternative film programs" at Black Mountain College (now defunct) and the San Francisco Art Institute. Arthur Penn taught at Black Mountain College, which points out the popular misconception in both the art world and Hollywood that the avant-garde and the commercial never meet. Another challenge to that misconception is the fact that late in life, after each's Hollywood careers had ended, both Nicholas Ray and King Vidor made avant-garde films.

The New American Cinema and Structural-Materialism[link]

The film society and self-financing model continued over the next two decades, but by the early 1960s, a different outlook became perceptible in the work of American avant-garde filmmakers. Artist Bruce Conner created early examples such as A Movie (1958) and Cosmic Ray (1962). As P. Adams Sitney has pointed out, in the work of Stan Brakhage and other American experimentalists of early period, film is used to express the individual consciousness of the maker, a cinematic equivalent of the first person in literature. Brakhage's Dog Star Man (1961–64) exemplified a shift from personal confessional to abstraction, and also evidenced a rejection of American mass culture of the time. On the other hand, Kenneth Anger added a rock sound track to his Scorpio Rising (1963) in what is sometimes said to be an anticipation of music videos, and included some camp commentary on Hollywood mythology. Jack Smith and Andy Warhol incorporated camp elements into their work, and Sitney posited Warhol's connection to structural film.

Some avant-garde filmmakers moved further away from narrative. Whereas the New American Cinema was marked by an oblique take on narrative, one based on abstraction, camp and minimalism, Structural-Materialist filmmakers like Hollis Frampton and Michael Snow created a highly formalist cinema that foregrounded the medium itself: the frame, projection, and most importantly, time. It has been argued that by breaking film down into bare components, they sought to create an anti-illusionist cinema, although Frampton's late works owe a huge debt to the photography of Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and others, and in fact celebrate illusion. Further, while many filmmakers began making rather academic "structural films" following Film Culture's publication of an article by P. Adams Sitney in the late 1960s, many of the filmmakers named in the article objected to the term.

A critical review of the structuralists appeared in a 2000 edition of the art journal Art In America. It examined structural-formalism as a conservative philosophy of filmmaking.

The 1970s and time arts in the conceptual art landscape[link]

Conceptual art in the 1970s pushed even further. Robert Smithson, a California-based artist, made several films about his earthworks and attached projects. Yoko Ono made conceptual films, the most notorious of which is Rape, which finds a woman and invades her life with cameras following her back to her apartment as she flees from the invasion. Around this time a new generation was entering the field, many of whom were students of the early avant-gardists. Leslie Thornton, Peggy Ahwesh, and Su Friedrich expanded upon the work of the structuralists, incorporating a broader range of content while maintaining a self-reflexive form.

Feminist avant-garde and other political offshoots[link]

Laura Mulvey's writing and filmmaking launched a flourishing of feminist filmmaking based on the idea that conventional Hollywood narrative reinforced gender norms and a patriarchal gaze. Their response was to resist narrative in a way to show its fissures and inconsistencies. Chantal Akerman and Sally Potter are just two of the leading feminist filmmakers working in this mode in the 1970s. Video art emerged as a medium in this period, and feminists like Martha Rosler and Cecelia Condit took full advantage of it.

In the 1980s feminist, gay and other political experimental work continued, with filmmakers like Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Tracey Moffatt, Sadie Benning and Isaac Julien among others finding experimental format conducive to their questions about identity politics.

The queercore movement gave rise to a number experimental queer filmmakers such as G.B. Jones (a founder of the movement) in the 1990s and later Scott Treleaven, among others.

Experimental Film and the Academy[link]

With very few exceptions, Curtis Harrington among them, the artists involved in these early movements remained outside of the mainstream commercial cinema and entertainment industry. A few taught occasionally, and then, starting in 1966, many became professors at universities such as the State Universities of New York, Bard College, California Institute of the Arts, the Massachusetts College of Art, University of Colorado at Boulder, and the San Francisco Art Institute.

Many of the practitioners of experimental film do not in fact possess college degrees themselves, although their showings are prestigious. Some have questioned the status of the films made in the academy, but longtime film professors such as Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Ernie Gehr, and many others, continued to refine and expand their practice while teaching. The inclusion of experimental film in film courses and standard film histories, however, has made the work more widely known and more accessible.

Exhibition and distribution[link]

Lithuanian artist Jonas Mekas, regarded as godfather of American avant-garde cinema

Beginning in 1946, Frank Stauffacher ran the "Art in Cinema" program of experimental and avant-garde films at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

From 1949 to 1975, the Festival international du cinéma expérimental de Knokke-le-Zoute—located in Knokke-Heist, Belgium—was the most proeminant festival of experimental cinema in the World. It permits the discovery of American avant-garde in 1958 with Brakhage's films and many others European and American filmmakers.

From 1947 to 1963, the New York-based Cinema 16 functioned as the primary exhibitor and distributor of experimental film in the United States. Under the leadership of Amos Vogel and Marcia Vogel, Cinema 16 flourished as a nonprofit membership society committed to the exhibition of documentary, avant-garde, scientific, educational, and performance films to ever-increasing audiences.

In 1962, Jonas Mekas and about 20 other film makers founded The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York City. Soon similar artists cooperatives were formed in other places: Canyon Cinema in San Francisco, the London Film-Makers' Co-op, and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Center.

Following the model of Cinema 16, experimental films have been exhibited mainly outside of commercial theaters in small film societies, microcinemas, museums, art galleries, archives and film festivals.

Several other organizations in both Europe and North America helped develop experimental film. These included Anthology Film Archives in New York City, The Millennium Film Workshop, the British Film Institute in London, the National Film Board of Canada and the Collective for Living Cinema.

Some of the more popular film festivals, such as Ann Arbor Film Festival, the New York Film Festival's "Views from the Avant-Garde" Side Bar and the International Film Festival Rotterdam prominently feature experimental works.

The New York Underground Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, the LA Freewaves Experimental Media Arts Festival, MIX NYC the New York Experimental Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and Toronto's Images Festival also support this work and provide venues for films which would not otherwise be seen. There is some dispute about whether "underground" and "avant-garde" truly mean the same thing and if challenging non-traditional cinema and fine arts cinema are actually fundamentally related.^{[citation needed]}

Venues such as Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco Cinematheque, Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris often include historically significant experimental films and contemporary works. Screening series no longer in New York that featured experimental work include the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, Ocularis and the Collective for Living Cinema.

Recently Pacific Film Archive eliminated their experimental Tuesday night program. The new curator (since 2000) of the Whitney Museum stated in a 2001 interview on Charlie Rose that he believed it was the responsibility of the Anthology Film Archives to show the work because the work is essentially unsellable and the Whitney was not interested in "renting" video art and films. He went on to intimate that it would fall out of favor in coming biennials. (PBS/Charlie Rose).^{[citation needed]}

Some distributors of experimental film today include Le Collectif Jeune Cinema^[7], Cinédoc, and Light Cone ^[8] in Paris, Canyon Cinema in San Francisco, Canadian Filmmaker's Distribution Centre, The Film-Makers' Cooperative in New York, and Lux in London. Sixteen mm prints are still available through these organisations.

All these associations and movements have permitted the birth and development of national experimental films and schools like “body cinema” ("Écoles du corps" or "Cinéma corporel") and “post-structural” movements in France, and “structural/materialism" in England for example.^[9]

Influences on commercial media[link]

Though experimental film is known to a relatively small number of practitioners, academics and connoisseurs, it has influenced and continues to influence cinematography, visual effects and editing.

The genre of music video can be seen as a commercialization of many techniques of experimental film. Title design and television advertising have also been influenced by experimental film.

Many experimental filmmakers have also made feature films, and vice versa. Notable examples include Kathryn Bigelow, Curtis Harrington, Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Jean Cocteau, Isaac Julien, Sally Potter, David Lynch, Gus Van Sant and Luis Buñuel, although the degree to which their feature filmmaking takes on mainstream commercial aesthetics differs widely.

See also[link]

• List of film formats
• Microcinema
• New media art
• Performance art
• Underground film
• Video art
• Cinema pur
• Remodernist film
• Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941
• Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s

Notes[link]

References[link]

• A. L. Rees, A History of Experimental Film and Video (British Film Institute, 1999).
• Malcolm Le Grice, Abstract Film and Beyond (MIT Press, 1977).
• Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema, Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, 1992, 1998, 2005, and 2006).
• Scott MacDonald, Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
• James Peterson, Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order: Understanding the American Avant-Garde Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994).
• Jack Sargeant, Naked Lens: Beat Cinema (Creation, 1997).
• P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
• Michael O’Pray, Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions (London: Wallflower Press, 2003).
• David Curtis (ed.), A Directory of British Film and Video Artists (Arts Council, 1999).
• David Curtis, Experimental Cinema - A Fifty Year Evolution (London. Studio Vista. 1971)
• Wheeler Winston Dixon, The Exploding Eye: A Re-Visionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997)
• Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (eds.) Experimental Cinema - The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2002)
• Stan Brakhage, Film at Wit's End - Essays on American Independent Filmmakers (Edinburgh: Polygon. 1989)
• Stan Brakhage, Essential Brakhage - Selected Writings on Filmmaking (New York: McPherson. 2001)
• Parker Tyler, Underground Film: A Critical History (New York: Grove Press, 1969)
• Jackie Hatfield, Experimental Film and Video (John Libbey Publishing, 2006; distributed in North America by Indiana University Press)
• Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema (Dutton, 1970) available as pdf at Ubuweb
• Dominique Noguez, Éloge du cinéma expérimental (Paris Expérimental, 2010, 384 p. ISBN :9782912539373, in French) Paris Expérimental
• Al Rees, David Curtis, Duncan White, Stephen Ball, Editors,Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance and Film, (Tate Publishing, 2011)

External links[link]

• Hi-Beam: site for experimental cinema
• Ann Arbor Film Festival - one of World's Premier Experimental Film Fests
• Chicago Underground Film Festival - Annual festival of underground, experimental and documentary film
• Retrospective about X Films, an experimental production company founded in Spain in the sixties
• Cinema and abstraction, by Raphaël Bassan, in Senses of Cinema number 61
• Anthology Film Archives
• Collectif Jeune Cinema The first born (in 1971) French cooperative for the distribution and promotion of different and experimental cinema.
• Lightcone The most important French coop.
• Cinédoc, Another French coop.
• Film-Makers Coop
• Cinovid, database for experimental film and video art
• San Francisco Cinematheque, showcasing experimental film and video since 1961
• Canyon Cinema, excellent source for experimental film rentals
• GreenCine primer on Experimental/Avant-Garde film
• British Artists' Film & Video Study Collection
• Flicker, which includes many resources on experimental film and links to the online discussion group FrameWorks
• Fred Camper's archive - articles on Stan Brakhage and other experimental film
• Avant-garde/Experimental Film Webring: some two dozen sites related to experimental film
• Animate Projects
• Experimental Film, Mediateca Media Art Space
• Confusion Circles: The cinema of visual artists, Mediateca Media Art Space
• French Portal of Experimental Films and New Medias
• Centre for Visual Music : Experimental film's archives
• News, books, films

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Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968; French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl dyˈʃɑ̃]) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.^[6]

Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions. He famously dubbed a urinal art and named it Fountain, though in a 1917 letter to his sister Duchamp indicates that a female friend, possibly the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, conceived of the urinal as sculpture and sent it to him under the pseudonym Richard Mutt.^[7] Duchamp produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. - Marcel Duchamp^[8]

Life[link]

Marcel Duchamp's parents' house in Blainville-Crevon.

Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville-Crevon Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie region of France, and grew up in a family that enjoyed cultural activities. The art of painter and engraver Emile Nicolle, his maternal grandfather, filled the house, and the family liked to play chess, read books, paint, and make music together.

Of Eugene and Lucie Duchamp's seven children, one died as an infant and four became successful artists. Marcel Duchamp was the brother of:

• Jacques Villon (1875–1963), painter, printmaker
• Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876–1918), sculptor
• Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (1889–1963), painter.

As a child, with his two older brothers already away from home at school in Rouen, Duchamp was close to his sister Suzanne, who was a willing accomplice in games and activities conjured by his fertile imagination. At 10 years old, Duchamp followed in his brothers' footsteps when he left home and began schooling at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille, in Rouen. For the next 7 years, he was locked into an educational regime which focused on intellectual development. Though he was not an outstanding student, his best subject was mathematics and he won two mathematics prizes at the school. He also won a prize for drawing in 1903, and at his commencement in 1904 he won a coveted first prize, validating his recent decision to become an artist.

He learned academic drawing from a teacher who unsuccessfully attempted to protect his students from Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and other avant-garde influences. However, Duchamp's true artistic mentor at the time was his brother Jacques Villon, whose fluid and incisive style he sought to imitate. At 14, his first serious art attempts were drawings and watercolors depicting his sister Suzanne in various poses and activities. That summer he also painted landscapes in an Impressionist style using oils.

Duchamp was throughout his adult life a passionate smoker of Habana cigars^[9]

Early work[link]

Duchamp's early art works align with Post-Impressionist styles. He experimented with classical techniques and subjects, as well as with Cubism and Fauvism. When he was later asked about what had influenced him at the time, Duchamp cited the work of Symbolist painter Odilon Redon, whose approach to art was not outwardly anti-academic, but quietly individual.

He studied art at the Académie Julian from 1904 to 1905, but preferred playing billiards to attending classes. During this time Duchamp drew and sold cartoons which reflected his ribald humor. Many of the drawings use visual and/or verbal puns. Such play with words and symbols engaged his imagination for the rest of his life.

In 1905, he began his compulsory military service, working for a printer in Rouen. There he learned typography and printing processes – skills he would use in his later work.

Due to his eldest brother Jacques' membership in the prestigious Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture Duchamp's work was exhibited in the 1908 Salon d'Automne. The following year his work was featured in the Salon des Indépendants. Of Duchamp's pieces in the show, critic Guillaume Apollinaire--who was to become a friend—criticized what he called "Duchamp's very ugly nudes." Duchamp also became lifelong friends with exuberant artist Francis Picabia after meeting him at the 1911 Salon d' Automne, and Picabia proceeded to introduce him to a lifestyle of fast cars and 'high' living.

In 1911, at Jacques' home in Puteaux, the brothers hosted a regular discussion group with other artists and writers including Picabia, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Roger de la Fresnaye, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris, and Alexander Archipenko. The group came to be known as the Puteaux Group, and the artists' work was dubbed Orphic cubism. Uninterested in the Cubists' seriousness or in their focus on visual matters, Duchamp did not join in discussions of Cubist theory, and gained a reputation of being shy. However, that same year he painted in a Cubist style, and added an impression of motion by using repetitive imagery.

During this period Duchamp's fascination with transition, change, movement and distance became manifest, and like many artists of the time, he was intrigued with the concept of depicting a "Fourth dimension" in art.

Works from this period included his first "machine" painting, Coffee Mill (Moulin à café) (1911), which he gave to his brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon. The Coffee Mill shows similarity to the "grinder" mechanism of the Large Glass he was to paint years later.

In his 1911, Portrait of Chess Players (Portrait de joueurs d'echecs) there is the Cubist overlapping frames and multiple perspectives of his two brothers playing chess, but to that Duchamp added elements conveying the unseen mental activity of the players. (Notably, "échec" is French for "failure".)

Nude Descending a Staircase No.2[link]

Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) (1912). The painting depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures. It shows elements of both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, and the movement and dynamism of the Futurists.

He first submitted the piece to appear at the Cubist Salon des Indépendants, but jurist Albert Gleizes asked Duchamp's brothers to have him voluntarily withdraw the painting, or to paint over the title that he had painted on the work and rename it something else. Duchamp's brothers did approach him with Gleizes' request, but Duchamp quietly refused. Of the incident Duchamp later recalled, "I said nothing to my brothers. But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that."^[10]

He later submitted the painting to the 1913 "Armory Show" in New York City. The exhibition was officially named the International Exhibition of Modern Art, displayed works of American artists, and was also the first major exhibition of modern trends coming out of Paris. American show-goers, accustomed to realistic art, were scandalized, and the Nude was at the center of much of the controversy.

Leaving "retinal art" behind[link]

At about this time, Duchamp read Max Stirner's philosophical tract, The Ego and Its Own, the study of which he considered another turning point in his artistic and intellectual development. He called it "...a remarkable book ... which advances no formal theories, but just keeps saying that the ego is always there in everything."^{[citation needed]}

While in Germany in 1912, he painted the last of his Cubist-like paintings and he started "Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors" image, and began making plans for The Large Glass – scribbling short notes to himself, sometimes with hurried sketches. It would be over 10 years before this piece was completed. Little else is known about the two-month stay in Germany except that the friend he visited was intent on showing him the sights and the nightlife.

The same year, Duchamp also attended a performance of a stage adaptation of Raymond Roussel's 1910 novel, Impressions d'Afrique which featured plots that turned in on themselves, word play, surrealistic sets and humanoid machines. He credited the drama with having radically changed his approach to art, and having inspired him to begin the creation of his The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass. Work on The Large Glass continued into 1913, with his invention of inventing a repertoire of forms. He made notes, sketches and painted studies, and even drew some of his ideas on the wall of his apartment.

Towards the end of 1912, he traveled with Picabia, Apollinaire and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia through the Jura mountains, an adventure that Buffet-Picabia described as one of their "forays of demoralization, which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... the disintegration of the concept of art.".^[11] Duchamp's notes from the trip avoid logic and sense, and have a surrealistic, mythical connotation.

Duchamp painted few canvases after 1912, and in those he did, he attempted to remove "painterly" effects, and instead to use a technical drawing approach.

His broad interests led him to an exhibition of aviation technology during this period, after which Duchamp said to his friend Constantin Brâncuşi, "Painting is washed up. Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? Tell me, can you do that?".^[11] Brâncuşi later sculpted bird forms, which U.S. Customs officials mistook for aviation parts and for which they attempted to collect import duties.

In 1913, Duchamp withdrew from painting circles and began working as a librarian in the Bibliotèque Sainte-Geneviève to be able to earn a living wage while concentrating on scholarly realms and working on his Large Glass. He studied math and physics – areas in which exciting new discoveries were taking place. The theoretical writings of Henri Poincaré particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and that no theory could be considered "true." "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality",Poincaré wrote in 1902.^[12] Reflecting the influence of Poincaré's writings, Duchamp tolerated any interpretation of his art by regarding it as the creation of the person who formulated it, not as truth.^[13]

Duchamp's own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, 3 Standard Stoppages (3 stoppages étalon), he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto prepared canvases, one at a time, from a height of 1 meter. The threads landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. He then cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to each of the "stoppage" backgrounds. The piece appears to literally follow Poincaré's School of the Thread, part of a book on classical mechanics.

In his studio he mounted a bicycle wheel upside down onto a stool, spinning it occasionally just to watch it. It is often assumed that the Bicycle Wheel represents Duchamp's first of his "Readymades", this particular installation was never submitted for any art exhibition, and was eventually lost. However, initially, the wheel was simply placed in the studio to create atmosphere: "I enjoyed looking at it just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace."^[14]

After World War I was declared in 1914, with his brothers and many friends in military service and himself exempted, Duchamp felt uncomfortable in Paris. Meanwhile, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 had scandalized Americans at the Armory Show, and helped secure the sale of all four of his paintings in the show. Thus, being able to finance the trip, Duchamp decided to emigrate to the United States in 1915.To his surprise, he found he was a celebrity when he arrived in New York in 1915, where he quickly befriended art patron Katherine Dreier and artist Man Ray. Duchamp's circle included art patrons Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg, actress and artist Beatrice Wood and Francis Picabia, as well as other avant-garde figures. Though he spoke little English, in the course of supporting himself by giving French lessons and through some library work, he quickly learned the language.

For two years the Arensbergs, who would remain his friends and patrons for 42 years, were the landlords of his studio. In lieu of rent, they agreed that his payment would be The Large Glass. An art gallery offered Duchamp $10,000 per year in exchange for all of his yearly production, but Duchamp declined the offer, preferring to continue his work on The Large Glass.

Société Anonyme[link]

Duchamp created the Société Anonyme in 1920, along with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray. This was the beginning of his life-long involvement in art dealing and collecting. The group collected modern art works, and arranged modern art exhibitions and lectures throughout the 1930s.

By this time Walter Pach, one of the coordinators of the 1913 Armory Show, sought Duchamp's advice on modern art. Beginning with Société Anonyme, Dreier also depended on Duchamp's counsel in gathering her collection, as did Arensberg. Later Peggy Guggenheim, Museum of Modern Art directors Alfred Barr and James Johnson Sweeney consulted with Duchamp on their modern art collections and shows.

Dada[link]

This section called "Dada" needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2011)

Fountain 1917

New York Dada had a less serious tone than that of European Dadaism, and was not a particularly organized venture. Duchamp's friend Picabia connected with the Dada group in Zürich, bringing to New York the Dadaist ideas of absurdity and "anti-art." Duchamp and Picabia first met in September 1911 at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, where they were both exhibiting. Duchamp showed a larger version of his Young Man and Girl in Spring 1911, a work that had an Edenic theme and a thinly veiled sexuality also found in Picabia's contemporaneous Adam and Eve 1911. According to Duchamp, 'our friendship began right there." ^[15] A group met almost nightly at the Arensberg home, or caroused in Greenwich Village. Together with Man Ray, Duchamp contributed his ideas and humor to the New York activities, many of which ran concurrent with the development of his Readymades and The Large Glass.

The most prominent example of Duchamp's association with Dada was his submission of Fountain, a urinal, to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917. Artworks in the Independent Artists shows were not selected by jury, and all pieces submitted were displayed. However, the show committee insisted that Fountain was not art, and rejected it from the show. This caused an uproar amongst the Dadaists, and led Duchamp to resign from the board of the Independent Artists.^[16]

Along with Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood, Duchamp published a Dada magazine in New York, titled The Blind Man, which included art, literature, humor and commentary.

When he returned to Paris after World War I, Duchamp did not participate in the Dada group.

Readymades[link]

"Readymades" were found objects which Duchamp chose and presented as art. In 1913, Duchamp installed a Bicycle Wheel in his studio. However, the idea of Readymades did not fully develop until 1915. The idea was to question the very notion of Art, and the adoration of art, which Duchamp found "unneccessary"^[17]

My idea was to choose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see.^[17]

Bottle Rack (1914), a bottle drying rack signed by Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade. Prelude to a Broken Arm (1915), a snow shovel, also called In Advance of the Broken Arm, followed soon after. His Fountain, a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917. Fountain was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians.^[18]

In 1919, Duchamp made a parody of the Mona Lisa by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee. To this he added the inscription L.H.O.O.Q., a phonetic game which, when read out loud in French quickly sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul". This can be translated as "She has a hot ass", implying that the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. It may also have been intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo da Vinci's alleged homosexuality. Duchamp gave a "loose" translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" in a late interview with Arturo Schwarz.

According to Rhonda Roland Shearer, the apparent Mona Lisa reproduction is in fact a copy modeled partly on Duchamp's own face.^[19] Research published by Shearer also speculates that Duchamp himself may have created some of the objects which he claimed to be "found objects".

[edit] The Large Glass

Duchamp worked on his complex Futurism inspired piece The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) from 1915 to 1923, with the exception of periods in Buenos Aires and Paris in 1918–1920. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship. He published notes for the piece, The Green Box, intended to complement the visual experience. They reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and a mythology which describes the work. He stated that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erotic encounter between a bride and her nine bachelors.

The piece was inspired by a performance of the stage adaptation of Roussel's novel Impressions d'Afrique which Duchamp attended in 1912. Notes, sketches and plans for the work were drawn on Duchamp's studio walls as early as 1913. In order to concentrate on the work free from material obligations, Duchamp found work as a librarian while living in France. After emigrating to the United States in 1915, he commenced his work on the piece financed by the support of the Arensbergs.

The piece is partially constructed as a retrospective of Duchamp's works, including a three dimensional reproduction of his earlier paintings Bride (1912), Chocolate Grinder (1914) and Glider containing a water mill in neighboring metals (1913–1915), which has opened for numerous interpretations. The work was formally declared "Unfinished" in 1923. Going home from its first public exhibition, the glass broke in its shipping crate and received a large crack in the glass. Duchamp repaired it, but left the cracks in the glass intact, accepting the chance element as a part of the piece.

Until 1969 when the Philadelphia Museum of Art revealed Duchamp's Etant donnés tableau, The Large Glass was thought to have been his last major work.

Kinetic works[link]

Duchamp's interest in kinetic works can be discerned as early as the notes for The Large Glass and the Bicycle Wheel readymade, and despite losing interest in "retinal art", he retained interest in visual phenomena.

In 1920, with help from Man Ray, Duchamp built a motorized sculpture, Rotative plaques verre, optique de précision ("Rotary Glass Plates, Precision Optics"). The piece, which he did not consider to be art, involved a motor to spin pieces of rectangular glass on which were painted segments of a circle. When the apparatus spins, an optical illusion occurs, in which the segments appear to be closed concentric circles.

Man Ray set up equipment to photograph the initial experiment, but when they turned the machine on for the second time, a belt broke, and caught a piece of the glass, which after glancing off Man Ray's head, shattered into bits.^[20]

After moving back to Paris in 1923, at André Breton's urging and through the financing of Jacques Doucet, Duchamp built another optical device based on the first one, Rotative Demisphère, optique de précision (Rotary Demisphere, Precision Optics). This time the optical element was a globe cut in half, with black concentric circles painted on it. When it spins, the circles appear to move backwards and forwards in space. Duchamp asked that Doucet not exhibit the apparatus as art.^[21].

Rotoreliefs were the next phase of Duchamp's spinning works. To make the optical "play toys", he painted designs on flat cardboard circles and spun them on a phonographic turntable. When spinning, the flat disks appeared three-dimensional. He had a printer produce 500 sets of six of the designs, and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them. The venture was a financial disaster, but some optical scientists thought they might be of use in restoring three-dimensional stereoscopic sight to people who have lost vision one eye.^[22]

In collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret, Duchamp filmed early versions of the Rotoreliefs and they named the film Anémic Cinéma (1926).

Later, in Alexander Calder's studio in 1931, while looking at the sculptor's kinetic works, Duchamp suggested that these should be called "mobiles". Calder agreed to use this novel term in his upcoming show. To this day, sculptures of this type are called "mobiles."^[23]

Musical Ideas[link]

Between 1912 and 1915, Duchamp worked with various musical ideas. At least three pieces have survived: two compositions and a note for a musical happening. The two compositions are based on chance operations. Erratum Musical, written for three voices, was published in 1934. La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical is unfinished and was never published or exhibited during Duchamp's lifetime. According to the manuscript, the piece was intended for a mechanical instrument "in which the virtuoso intermediary is suppressed". The manuscript also contains a description for "An apparatus automatically recording fragmented musical periods", consisting of a funnel, several open-end carss and a set of numbered balls.^[24] These pieces predate John Cage's Music of Changes (1951), which is often considered the first modern piece to be conceived largely through random procedures.^[25]

In 1968, Duchamp and John Cage appeared together at a concert entitled "Reunion", playing a game of chess and composing Aleatoric music by triggering a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard.^[26]

Rrose Sélavy[link]

Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp). 1921. Photograph by Man Ray. Art Direction by Marcel Duchamp. Silver print. 5-7/8" x 3"-7/8". Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"Rrose Sélavy", also spelled Rose Sélavy, was one of Duchamp's pseudonyms. The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est la vie", which may be translated as "Eros, such is life." It has also been read as "arroser la vie" ("to make a toast to life").

Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray showing Duchamp dressed as a woman. Through the 1920s Man Ray and Duchamp collaborated on more photos of Sélavy. Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed several creations with it. These included at least one sculpture, Why Not Sneeze Rrose Sélavy? (1921). The sculpture, a type of readymade called an assemblage, consists of an oral thermometer, and several dozen small cubes of marble resembling sugar cubes inside a birdcage.

The inspiration for the name "Rrose Sélavy" may have been Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's librarian of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Following the death of J.P. Morgan, Sr., Greene became the Library's director, working there for a total of forty-three years. Empowered by the Morgans, she built the library collection, buying and selling rare manuscripts, books and art.^{[citation needed]}

Transition from art to chess[link]

In 1918, Duchamp took leave of the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the Large Glass, and went to Buenos Aires, where he remained for nine months and often played chess. He even carved from wood his own chess set, with the assistance of a local craftsman who made the knights. He moved to Paris in 1919, and then back to the United States in 1920. Upon his return to Paris in 1923, Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist although he did work on several projects towards his death. Instead, his main interest was now chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.

Duchamp can be seen, very briefly, playing chess with Man Ray in the short film Entr'acte (1924) by René Clair. He designed the 1925 Poster for the Third French Chess Championship, and as a competitor in the event, finished at fifty percent (3–3, with two draws). Thus he earned the title of chess master. During this period his fascination with chess so distressed his first wife that she glued his pieces to the board. Duchamp continued to play in the French Championships and also in the Chess Olympiads from 1928–1933, favoring hypermodern openings such as the Nimzo-Indian.

Sometime in the early 1930s, Duchamp reached the height of his ability, but realized that he had little chance of winning recognition in top-level chess. In following years, his participation in chess tournaments declined, but he discovered correspondence chess and became a chess journalist, writing weekly newspaper columns. While his contemporaries were achieving spectacular success in the art world by selling their works to high-society collectors, Duchamp observed, "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position."^{[citation needed]} On another occasion, Duchamp elaborated, "The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."^{[citation needed]}

In 1932, Duchamp teamed with chess theorist Vitaly Halberstadt to publish L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled), known as corresponding squares. This treatise describes the Lasker-Reichhelm position, an extremely rare type of position that can arise in the endgame. Using enneagram-like charts that fold upon themselves, the authors demonstrated that in this position, the most Black can hope for is a draw.

The theme of the "endgame" is important to an understanding of Duchamp's complex attitude towards his artistic career. Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was an associate of Duchamp, and used the theme as the narrative device for the 1957 play of the same name, Endgame In 1968, Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage, at a concert entitled "Reunion." Music was produced by a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard, triggered sporadically by normal game play.^[26]

On choosing a career in chess, Duchamp said, "If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him—as if anyone could—but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted."^[27] Duchamp left a legacy to chess in the form of an enigmatic endgame problem he composed in 1943. The problem was included in the announcement for Julian Levi's gallery exhibition "Through the Big End of the Opera Glass", printed on translucent paper with the faint inscription: "White to play and win." Grandmasters and endgame specialists have since grappled with the problem, with most concluding that there is no solution.^[28]

Artistic involvement and marriages[link]

Although Duchamp was no longer considered to be an active artist, he continued to consult with artists, art dealers and collectors. From 1925 he often traveled between France and the United States, and made New York's Greenwich Village his home in 1942. He also occasionally worked on artistical projects such as the short film Anemic Cinema (1926), Box in a Valise (1935–41), Self Portrait in Profile (1958) and the larger work Etant Donnés (1946–66).

In June 1927, Duchamp married Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor; however, they divorced six months later. It was rumored that Duchamp had chosen a marriage of convenience, because Sarazin-Lavassor was the daughter of a wealthy automobile manufacturer. Early in January 1928, Duchamp said that he could no longer bear the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and soon thereafter they were divorced.^[29]

From the mid-1930s onwards, he collaborated with the Surrealists, however, he did not join the movement despite the coaxing of André Breton. From then until 1944, together with Max Ernst, Eugenio Granell and Breton, Duchamp edited the Surrealist periodical VVV, and also served as an advisory editor for the magazine View, which featured him in its March 1945 edition, thus introducing him to a broader American audience.

In 1954, he and Alexina "Teeny" Sattler married, and they remained together until his death. Duchamp became a United States citizen in 1955.

His influence on the art world remained behind the scenes until the late 1950s, when he was "discovered" by young artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who were eager to escape the dominance of Abstract Expressionism. He was a co-founder of the international literary group Oulipo in 1960.

Interest in Duchamp was reignited in the 1960s, and he gained international public recognition. 1963 saw his first retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum, and in 1966 the Tate Gallery hosted a large exhibit of his work. Other major institutions, including the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, followed, with large showings of Duchamp's work. He was invited to lecture on art and to participate in formal discussions, as well as sitting for interviews with major publications.

As the last surviving member of the Duchamp family of artists, in 1967 Duchamp helped to organize an exhibition in Rouen, France, called "Les Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp." Parts of this family exhibition were later shown again at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.

Exhibition design[link]

Duchamp was the designer of the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition, which was held at the Gallerie des Beaux-arts, Paris. The show featured more than 60 artists from different countries, including approximately 300 paintings, objects, collages, photographs and installations.

The surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a creative act, and called on Duchamp to do so. At the exhibition's entrance he placed Salvador Dalí's Rainy Taxi This work consisted of a taxicab rigged to produce a drizzle of water down the inside of the windows, a shark-headed creature in the driver's seat, and a blond mannequin crawling with live snails in the back. In this way Duchamp greeted entering patrons, who were in full evening dress.

Surrealist Street filled one side of the lobby with mannequins dressed by various surrealists. The main hall was a simulation of a dark subterranean cave with 1,200 coal bags suspended from the ceiling. Illumination was provided only by a single light bulb,^[30] so patrons were given flashlights with which to view the art.

An installation by Wolfgang Paalen was composed of oak leaves and a water-filled pond with water lilies and reeds, while the aroma of roasting coffee filled the air. Around midnight, the visitors witnessed the dancing shimmer of a sparsely dressed girl who suddenly arose from the reeds, jumped on a bed, shrieked hysterically, then disappeared just as quickly. Much to the surrealists' satisfaction the exhibition scandalized the viewers.

In 1942, for the First Papers of Surrealism show in New York, surrealists again called on Duchamp to design the exhibition. This time he wove a three-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works.^[31] Duchamp made a secret arrangement with an associate's son to bring young friends to the opening of the show. When the finely dressed patrons arrived, they found a dozen children in athletic clothes kicking and passing balls, and skipping rope. When questioned, the children were told to say "Mr. Duchamp told us we could play here." Duchamp's design of the catalog for the show included "found", rather than posed, photographs of the artists.

[edit] Etant donnés

Duchamp's final major art work surprised the art world that believed he had given up art for chess 25 years earlier. Entitled Etant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage ("Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas"), it is a tableau, visible only through a peep hole in a wooden door.[2] A nude woman can be seen lying on her back with her face hidden, legs spread, and one hand holding a gas lamp in the air against a landscape backdrop.[3] Duchamp had worked secretly on the piece from 1946 to 1966 in his Greenwich Village studio while even his closest friends thought he had abandoned art.

Death and burial[link]

Duchamp's grave in Rouen, France.

Marcel Duchamp died on 2 October 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France. His grave bears the epitaph, "D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent;" or "Besides, it's always other people who die."

Legacy[link]

A quotation erroneously attributed to Duchamp suggests a negative attitude toward later trends in 20th-century art:

This Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did. When I discovered the ready-mades I sought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my readymades and found aesthetic beauty in them, I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.

However, this was actually written in 1961 by fellow Dadaist Hans Richter, in the second person, i.e. "You threw the bottle-rack...". Although a marginal note in the letter suggests that Duchamp generally approved of the statement, Richter did not make the distinction clear until many years later.^[32]

Duchamp's attitude was actually more favorable, as evidenced by another statement made in 1964:

Pop Art is a return to "conceptual" painting, virtually abandoned, except by the Surrealists, since [Gustave] Courbet, in favor of retinal painting.... If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas.^{[citation needed]}

The Prix Marcel Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp Prize), established in 2000, is an annual award given to a young artist by the Centre Georges Pompidou. In 2004, as a testimony to the legacy of Duchamp's work to the art world, his Fountain was voted "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by a panel of prominent artists and art historians.

See also[link]

• Anti-art
• History of painting
• Shock art
• Found art
• Western painting
• Gustave Courbet

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Tomkins, Calvin: Duchamp: A Biography, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-8050-5789-7
• Seigel, Jerrold: The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp, University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0-520-20038-1
• Hulten, Pontus (editor): Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, The MIT Press, 1993. ISBN 0-262-08225-X
• Yves Arman: Marcel Duchamp plays and wins, Marcel Duchamp joue et gagne, Marval Press, 1984
• Cabanne, Pierre: Dialogs with Marcel Duchamp, Da Capo Press, Inc., 1979 (1969 in French), ISBN 0-306-80303-8
• Gammel, Irene. Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
• Duchamp Bottles Belle Greene: Just Desserts For His Canning by Bonnie Jean Garner (with text boxes by Stephen Jay Gould)
• Gibson, Michael: Duchamp-Dada, (in French, Nouvelles Editions Françaises-Casterman, 1990) International Art Book Award of the Vasari Prize in 1991.
• Sanouillet, Michel and Peterson, Elmer: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. NY: Da Capo Press, 1989. ISBN 0-306-80341-0
• Sanouillet, Michel and Matisse, Paul: Marcel Duchamp : Duchamp du signe suivi de Notes, Flammarion, 2008. ISBN 978-2-08-011664-2
• Catherine Perret Marcel Duchamp, le manieur de gravité, Ed. CNDP, Paris, 1998
• Banz, Stefan (ed), Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall, JRP-Ringier, Zürich, 2010. ISBN 978-3-03764-156-9

Further reading[link]

• Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, Delano Greenidge Editions, 1995
• Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998
• Paola Magi, Caccia al tesoro con Marcel Duchamp, Edizioni Archivio Dedalus, Milano, 2010, ISBN 978-88-904748-0-4
• Paola Magi: Treasure Hunt With Marcel Duchamp, Edizioni Archivio Dedalus, Milano, 2011, ISBN 978-88-904748-7-3
• Marc Décimo: Marcel Duchamp mis à nu. A propos du processus créatif (Marcel Duchamp Stripped Bare. Apropos of the creative Act), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2004 ISBN 978-2-84066-119-1.
• Marc Décimo:The Marcel Duchamp Library, perhaps (La Bibliothèque de Marcel Duchamp, peut-être), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2002.
• Marc Décimo, Le Duchamp facile, Les presses du réel, coll. «  L'écart absolu / Poche", Dijon, 2005
• Marc Décimo (dir.), Marcel Duchamp et l'érotisme, Les presses du réel, coll. «  L'écart absolu / Chantier », Dijon, 2008
• T.J. Demos, The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007.
• Lydie Fischer Sarazin-Levassor, A Marriage in Check. The Heart of the Bride Stripped by her Bachelor, even, Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2007.
• J-T. Richard, "M. Duchamp mis à nu par la psychanalyse, même" (M. Duchamp stripped bare even by psychoanalysis), éd. L'Harmattan, Paris (France), 2010.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Marcel Duchamp

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp works

• Philadelphia Museum of Art houses the Arensbergs' large collection of Duchamp's work. (website)
• The Israel Museum has many of Duchamp's works in its Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art. (website)
• Marcel Duchamp at the Museum of Modern Art
• An explanation about the "Roue de bicyclette" by Duchamp (website)
• Dossier : Marcel Duchamp, Centre Pompidou
• Philadelphia Museum of Art Portrait of Chess Players (Portrait de joueurs d'echecs) (1911).
• Philadelphia Museum of Art The Green Box. Notes and studies for The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. (1915–1923)
• Rotoreliefs (1920s)
• Anémic Cinéma film (1926)

Essays by Duchamp

• Marcel Duchamp: The Creative Act (1957) Audio

General resources

• Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp Andrew Stafford: – animated explanations.
• Marcel-Duchamp.com Étant donné – annual review published by L'association pour l'etude de Marcel Duchamp.
• Toutfait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal
• MarcelDuchamp.org – Personal website dedicated to Duchamp.
• MarcelDuchamp.net – Art Science Research Laboratory site about researching Duchamp.
• Marcel Duchamp – Olga's Gallery pages with biography and images.
• Marcel Duchamp Rotoreliefs – animated.
• Marcel Duchamp (DADA Companion) – the Online Research Companion.
• Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Poraiture – online exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
• profile at ChessGames.com
• Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14, a model of Duchamp's from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art

Essays about Duchamp

• Marcel Duchamp's Impossible Bed and Other "Not" Readymade Objects: A Possible Route of Influence From Art To Science Rhonda Roland Shearer:
• Duchamp is Dandy! Michael Beyer:
• "Duchamp & his legacy" Hilton Kramer:, The New Criterion
• "Peep show" Marcel Duchamp's "Étant donnés." Morgan Meis:, The Smart Set

Audio and video

• Duchamp audio CD Musical Erratum + In Conversation at LTM
• Voices of Dada, Futurism & Dada Reviewed and Surrealism Reviewed – readings by Duchamp on audio CDs
• UbuWeb – Music, lectures, and film
• Duchamp's Legacy with Richard Hamilton and Sarat Maharaj from Tate Britain. (RealPlayer required.)
• Audio of Marcel Duchamp's 'Some texts from "A l'infinitif"' (1912–20). Recorded by Aspen magazine (4:00) published on the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine @ Ubuweb

Betty Blowtorch was an all-female American hard rock band from Southern California.

Biography[link]

The band was formed in 1998 by three members of Butt Trumpet.^[1] After releasing the 2001 album, Are You Man Enough?, the group toured with Nashville Pussy.^[2] During the tour, drummer Judy Molish and guitarist Sharon Needles left the group; Jennifer Finch from L7 joined in their stead. In December 2001, lead singer and bassist Bianca Halstead (Butthole) was killed in a car crash in New Orleans, which marked the end of the group.^[2] A collection of rarities and live performances was released as Last Call in 2003.

They are the focus of Antonia Scarpa's documentary film, Betty Blowtorch And Her Amazing True Life Adventures.

Halstead is buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Blare N. Bitch and Sharon Needles are currently both members of the Los Angeles based band, Psychostar.

Members[link]

• Bianca Butthole (Bianca Halstead) - bass, vocals
• Sharon Needles - rhythm guitar, vocals
• Blare N. Bitch - lead guitar
• Judy Molish - drums

Discography[link]

• Get Off (Foil Records, 1999)
  • 01 - "Betty Blowtorch Anthem"
  • 02 - "Fish Taco"
  • 03 - "I Wanna Be Your Sucker"
  • 04 - "Shut Up & Fuck"
  • 05 - "Party Til Ya Puke"
  • 06 - "Get Off"

• Are You Man Enough? (Foodchain Records, 2001)
  • 01 - "Hell On Wheels"
  • 02 - "Love/Hate"
  • 03 - "Size Queen" (featuring Vanilla Ice)
  • 04 - "I Wanna Be Your Sucker"
  • 05- "I'm Ugly and I Don't Know Why"
  • 06 - "Shut Up and Fuck"
  • 07 - "No Integrity"
  • 08 - "Frankie"
  • 09 - "I Wish You'd Die"
  • 10 - "Big Hair, Broken Heart"
  • 11 - "Part-Time Hooker"
  • 12 - "Rock My World"
  • 13 - "Dresses"
  • 14 - "Strung Out"
  • 15 - "Rock 'N Roll 69"

• Last Call (Foodchain, 2003)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

This article on a United States rock music band is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Jim Henson
Henson at the 1989 Emmy Awards
Born	James Maury Henson (1936-09-24)September 24, 1936 Greenville, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	May 16, 1990(1990-05-16) (aged 53) New York City, New York, U.S.
Cause of death	Organ failure
Nationality	American
Education	Northwestern High School
Alma mater	University of Maryland, College Park
Occupation	Puppeteer Film director Television producer
Years active	1954–90
Known for	Creator of The Muppets
Home town	Leland, Mississippi
Board member of	Jim Henson Foundation The Jim Henson Company Jim Henson's Creature Shop
Spouse	Jane Nebel (1959–86; separated)
Children	Lisa Henson Cheryl Henson Brian Henson John Henson Heather Henson
Parents	Paul Ransom Henson Betty Marcella (née Brown)
Awards	Courage Conscience Award Disney Legend Award Emmy Award

James Maury "Jim" Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for projects like Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth. He was also an Oscar-nominated film director, Emmy Award-winning television producer, and the founder of The Jim Henson Company, the Jim Henson Foundation, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. He died on May 16, 1990 of organ failure resulting from a Group A streptococcal infection caused by Streptococcus pyogenes.

Henson, who was born in Greenville, Mississippi and educated at University of Maryland, College Park, is one of the most widely known puppeteers ever.^[1] He created Sam and Friends as a freshman in College Park. After suffering struggles with programs that he created, he eventually was selected to participate in Sesame Street. During this time, he also contributed to Saturday Night Live. The success of Sesame Street spawned The Muppet Show, which featured Muppets created by Henson. He also co-created with Michael Jacobs the television show Dinosaurs during his final years. On June 16, 2011, he posthumously received the Disney Legends Award.

Early life[link]

Jim Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi, the younger of two boys. His parents were Betty Marcella (née Brown) and Paul Ransom Henson, an agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.^[2] He was raised as a Christian Scientist and spent his early childhood in Leland, Mississippi, moving with his family to Hyattsville, Maryland, near Washington, DC, in the late 1940s.^[3] He later remembered the arrival of the family's first television as "the biggest event of his adolescence,"^[4] having been heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom (on Kukla, Fran, and Ollie) and Bil and Cora Baird.^[4]

In 1954 while attending Northwestern High School, he began working for WTOP-TV, creating puppets for a Saturday morning children's show called The Junior Morning Show. After graduating from high school, Henson enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, as a studio arts major, thinking he might become a commercial artist.^[5] A puppetry class offered in the applied arts department introduced him to the craft and textiles courses in the College of Home Economics, and he graduated in 1960 with a B.S. in home economics. As a freshman, he had been asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV. The characters on Sam and Friends were forerunners of Muppets, and the show included a prototype of Henson's most famous character: Kermit the Frog.^[6]Henson would remain at WRC for seven years from 1954 to 1961. "Among the first of his assignments at WRC was Afternoon, a magazine show aimed at housewives. This marked his first collaboration with Jane Nebel—the woman who later became his wife"^[7]

In the show he began experimenting with techniques that would change the way puppetry had been used on television, including using the frame defined by the camera shot to allow the puppeteer to work from off-camera. Believing that television puppets needed to have "life and sensitivity,"^[8] Henson began making characters from flexible, fabric-covered foam rubber, allowing them to express a wider array of emotions at a time when many puppets were made of carved wood.^[2] A marionette's arms are manipulated by strings, but Henson used rods to move his Muppets' arms, allowing greater control of expression. Additionally, Henson wanted the Muppet characters to "speak" more creatively than was possible for previous puppets—which had seemed to have random mouth movements—so he used precise mouth movements to match the dialogue.

When Henson began work on Sam and Friends, he asked fellow University of Maryland freshman Jane Nebel to assist him. The show was a financial success, but after graduating from college, Jim began to have doubts about going into a career as a puppeteer. He wandered off to Europe for several months, where he was inspired by European puppeteers who look on their work as an art form.^[9] Upon Henson's return to the United States, he and Jane began dating. They were married in 1959 and had five children, Lisa (b. 1960), Cheryl (b. 1961), Brian (b. 1962), John (b. 1965), and Heather (b. 1970).

Projects in the 1960s[link]

Despite the success of Sam and Friends, which ran for six years, Henson spent much of the next two decades working in commercials, talk shows, and children's projects before being able to realize his dream of the Muppets as "entertainment for everybody".^[4] The popularity of his work on Sam and Friends in the late fifties led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. Henson himself appeared as a guest on many shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show (although on his appearance on the Sept. 11, 1966 episode of the show—released to DVD on 2011 as part of a collection of episodes featuring the Rolling Stones—Sullivan mis-introduces Henson as "Jim Newsom and his Puppets"). This greatly increased exposure led to hundreds of commercial appearances by Henson characters throughout the sixties.

Among the most popular of Henson's commercials was a series for the local Wilkins Coffee company in Washington, D.C.,^[10] in which his Muppets were able to get away with a greater level of slapstick violence than might have been acceptable with human actors and would later find its way into many acts on The Muppet Show. In the first Wilkins ad, a Muppet named Wilkins is poised behind a cannon seen in profile. Another Muppet named Wontkins (with Rowlf's voice) is in front of its barrel. Wilkins asks, "What do you think of Wilkins Coffee?" and Wontkins responds gruffly, "Never tasted it!" Wilkins fires the cannon and blows Wontkins away, then turns the cannon directly toward the viewer and ends the ad with, "Now, what do you think of Wilkins?" Henson later explained, "Till then, [advertising] agencies believed that the hard sell was the only way to get their message over on television. We took a very different approach. We tried to sell things by making people laugh."^[11] The first seven-second commercial for Wilkins was an immediate hit and was syndicated and re-shot by Henson for local coffee companies across the United States;^[10] he ultimately produced more than 300 coffee ads.^[11] The same setup was used to pitch Kraml Milk in the Chicago, Il., area and Red Diamond coffee.

In 1963 Henson and his wife moved to New York City, where the newly formed Muppets, Inc., would reside for some time. Jane quit muppeteering to raise their children. Henson hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961 and puppeteer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her.^[12] Henson later credited both writers with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets.^[13] Henson and Oz developed a close friendship and a performing partnership that lasted 27 years; their teamwork is particularly evident in their portrayals of the characters of Bert and Ernie and Kermit and Fozzie Bear.^[14]

Henson's sixties' talk show appearances culminated when he devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog. Rowlf became the first Muppet to make regular appearances on a network show, The Jimmy Dean Show. Henson was so grateful for this break that he offered Jimmy Dean a 40% interest in his production company, but Dean declined stating that Henson deserved all the rewards for his own work, a decision of conscience Dean never regretted.^[15] From 1963 to 1966, Henson began exploring film-making and produced a series of experimental films.^[16] His nine-minute Time Piece was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Oscar for Short Film in 1966. The year 1969 saw the production of the NBC-TV movie The Cube—another Henson-produced experimental film.

Also around this time, the first drafts of a live-action experimental film script were written with Jerry Juhl, which would eventually become Henson's last unproduced full-length screenplay, Tale of Sand. The script remained in the Henson Company archives until the screenplay was adapted in the 2012 graphic novel, Jim Henson's Tale of Sand.

[edit] Sesame Street

In 1969, Joan Ganz Cooney and the team at the Children's Television Workshop asked Henson to work on Sesame Street, a visionary children's program for public television. Part of the show was set aside for a series of funny, colorful puppet characters living on the titular street. These included Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster and Big Bird. Henson performed the characters of Ernie, game-show host Guy Smiley, and Kermit, who appeared as a roving television news reporter. It was around this time that a frill was added around Kermit's neck to make him more frog-like. The collar was functional as well: it covered the joint where the Muppet's neck and body met.

At first Henson's Muppets appeared separately from the realistic segments on the Street, but after a poor test-screening in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the show was revamped to integrate the two, placing much greater emphasis on Henson's work. Though Henson would often downplay his role in Sesame Street's success, Cooney frequently praised Jim's work and, in 1990, the Public Broadcasting Service called him "the spark that ignited our fledgling broadcast service."^[4] The success of Sesame Street also allowed Henson to stop producing commercials. He later remembered that "it was a pleasure to get out of that world".^[10]

In addition to creating and performing Muppet characters, Henson was involved in producing various film and animation insets during the first two seasons. During the first, Henson produced a series of counting films for the numbers 1 through 10, which always ended with a baker (voiced by Henson) falling down the stairs while carrying the featured number of desserts. For seasons two to seven, Henson worked on a variety of inserts for the numbers 2 through 12, in a number of different styles—including film ("Dollhouse", "Number Three Ball Film"), stop-motion ("King of Eight", "Queen of Six"), cut-out animation ("Eleven Cheer"), and computer animation ("Nobody Counts To 10").

Concurrently with the first years of Sesame Street, Henson directed Tales from Muppetland, a short series of TV movie specials—in the form of comedic tellings of classic fairy tales—aimed at a young audience and hosted by Kermit the Frog. The series included Hey, Cinderella!, The Frog Prince, and The Muppet Musicians of Bremen.

Expansion of audience[link]

Concerned that the company was becoming typecast as a purveyor of solely children's entertainment, Henson, Frank Oz, and his team targeted an adult audience with a series of sketches on the first season of the groundbreaking comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL). Eleven "Dregs and Vestiges" sketches, set mostly in the Land of Gorch, aired between October 1975 and January 1976, with four additional appearances in March, April, May, and September. Henson recalled that "I saw what [creator Lorne Michaels] was going for and I really liked it and wanted to be a part of it, but somehow what we were trying to do and what his writers could write for it never gelled."^[10] The SNL writers never got comfortable writing for the characters, and frequently disparaged Henson's creations; one, Michael O'Donoghue, memorably quipped, "I won't write for felt."^[17]

Around the time of Henson's characters' final appearances on SNL, he began developing two projects featuring the Muppets: a Broadway show and a weekly television series.^[10] In 1976 the series was initially rejected by the American networks who believed that Muppets would appeal to only a child audience. Henson was finally able to convince British impresario Lew Grade to finance the show, which would be shot in the United Kingdom and syndicated worldwide.^[9] That same year, he abandoned work on his Broadway show and moved his creative team to England, where The Muppet Show began filming. The Muppet Show featured Kermit as host, and a variety of other memorable characters, notably Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, and Fozzie Bear. Kermit's role on The Muppet Show was often compared by his co-workers to Henson's role in Muppet Productions: a shy, gentle boss with "a whim of steel"^[14] who "[ran] things as firmly as it is possible to run an explosion in a mattress factory."^[18] Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, remembered that Henson "would never say he didn't like something. He would just go 'Hmm.' That was famous. And if he liked it, he would say, 'Lovely!' "^[3]Henson himself recognized Kermit as an alter-ego, though he thought that Kermit was bolder than his creator; he once said of Kermit, "He can say things I hold back."^[19]

Jim Henson was the performer for several well known characters, including Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, Dr. Teeth, the Swedish Chef, Waldorf, Link Hogthrob, and the Muppet Newsman.

Transition to the big screen[link]

Three years after the start of The Muppet Show, the Muppets appeared in their first theatrical feature film, 1979's The Muppet Movie. The film was both a critical and financial success;^[20] it made US$65.2 million domestically and (at the time) was the 61st highest-grossing film ever made.^[21]

A song from the film, "The Rainbow Connection", sung by Henson as Kermit, hit No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1981, a Henson-directed sequel, The Great Muppet Caper, followed, and Henson decided to end the still-popular Muppet Show to concentrate on making films.^[2] From time to time, the Muppet characters continued to appear in made-for-TV-movies and television specials.

In addition to his own puppetry projects, Henson also aided others in their work. In 1979, he was asked by the producers of the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back to aid make-up artist Stuart Freeborn in the creation and articulation of enigmatic Jedi Master Yoda. Henson suggested to Star Wars creator George Lucas that he use Frank Oz as the puppeteer and voice of Yoda. Oz voiced Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back and each of the four subsequent Star Wars films, and the naturalistic, lifelike Yoda became one of the most popular characters of the Star Wars franchise. Lucas even lobbied unsuccessfully to have Oz nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.^[22]

In 1982, Henson founded the Jim Henson Foundation to promote and develop the art of puppetry in the United States. Around that time, he also began creating darker and more realistic fantasy films that did not feature the Muppets and displayed "a growing, brooding interest in mortality."^[14] With 1982's The Dark Crystal, which he co-directed with Frank Oz and also co-wrote, Henson said he was "trying to go toward a sense of realism—toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive [where] it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to [present] the thing itself."^[10] To provide a visual style distinct from the Muppets, the puppets in The Dark Crystal were based on conceptual artwork by Brian Froud.

The Dark Crystal was a financial and critical success, and, a year later, the Muppet-starring The Muppets Take Manhattan (directed by Frank Oz) did fair box-office business, grossing $25.5 million domestically and ranking as one of the top 40 films of 1984.^[23] However, 1986's Labyrinth, a Crystal-like fantasy that Henson directed by himself, was considered (in part due to its cost) a commercial disappointment. Despite some positive reviews (The New York Times called it "a fabulous film"),^[24] the commercial failure of Labyrinth demoralized Henson to the point that son Brian Henson remembered the time of its release as being "the closest I've seen him to turning in on himself and getting quite depressed."^[14] The film later became a cult classic.^[25] Henson and his wife also separated the same year, although they remained close for the rest of his life.^[3] Jane later said that Jim was so involved with his work that he had very little time to spend with her or their children.^[3] All five of his children began working with Muppets at an early age, partly because, as Cheryl Henson remembered, "one of the best ways of being around him was to work with him".^[8]

Later career[link]

Though he was still engaged in creating children's television, such as the successful eighties shows Fraggle Rock and the animated Muppet Babies, Henson continued to explore darker, mature themes with the folk tale and mythology-oriented show The Storyteller (1988). The Storyteller won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program. The next year, Henson returned to television with The Jim Henson Hour, which mixed lighthearted Muppet fare with riskier material. The show was critically well received and won Henson another Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program, but was canceled after 13 episodes due to low ratings. Henson blamed its failure on NBC's constant rescheduling.^[26]

In late 1989, Henson entered into negotiations to sell his company to The Walt Disney Company for almost $150 million, hoping that, with Disney handling business matters, he would "be able to spend a lot more of my time on the creative side of things."^[26] By 1990, he had completed production on a television special, The Muppets at Walt Disney World, and a Disney World (Later Disney California Adventure Park as well) attraction, Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D, and was developing film ideas and a television series titled Muppet High.^[3]

[edit] Natural History Project and Dinosaurs

In the late 1980s, Henson worked with illustrator/designer William Stout on a feature film starring animatronic dinosaurs with the working title of The Natural History Project. In 1991, news stories written around the premiere of The Jim Henson Company-produced Dinosaurs sitcom highlighted the show's connection to Henson. "Jim Henson dreamed up the show's basic concept about three years ago," said a New York Times article in April 1991. "'He wanted it to be a sitcom with a pretty standard structure, with the biggest differences being that it's a family of dinosaurs and their society has this strange toxic life style,' said [his son] Brian Henson. But until The Simpsons took off, said Alex Rockwell, a vice president of the Henson organization, 'people thought it was a crazy idea.'"^[27] A New Yorker article said that Henson continued to work on a dinosaur project (presumably the Dinosaurs concept) until the "last months of his life."^[28]

Illness and death[link]

During production of his later projects, Henson began to experience flu-like symptoms.^[3] On May 4, 1990, Henson made an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, one of his last television appearances. At the time, he mentioned to his publicist that he was tired and had a sore throat, but felt that it would go away.^[3]

On May 12, 1990, Henson traveled to Ahoskie, North Carolina, with his daughter Cheryl to visit his father and stepmother. The next day, feeling tired and ill, he consulted a physician in North Carolina, who could find no evidence of pneumonia by physical examination and prescribed no treatment except aspirin.^[29] Henson returned to New York on an earlier flight and cancelled a Muppet recording session scheduled for May 14.^[3]

Henson's wife Jane, from whom he was separated, came to visit and sat with him talking throughout the evening. At 2 am on May 15, Henson was having trouble breathing and began coughing up blood. He suggested to his wife that he might be dying, but did not want to bother going to the hospital which would have gone against his religion. She later told People Magazine that it was likely due to his desire not to be a bother to people.^[3]

Two hours later, Henson finally agreed to go to New York Hospital. By the time he was admitted at 4:58 am, he could no longer breathe on his own and had abscesses in his lungs. He was placed on a mechanical ventilator to help him breathe, but his condition deteriorated rapidly into septic shock, despite aggressive treatment with multiple antibiotics. After two cardiac arrests over 20 hours after he was admitted, Jim Henson died on the morning of May 16, 1990, at the age of 53.

The official cause of death was first reported as Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterial infection.^[4] Bacterial pneumonia is usually caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, an alpha-hemolytic species of Streptococcus. Henson's cause of death, however, was organ failure resulting from Streptococcus pyogenes, a severe Group A streptococcal infection.^[30] S. pyogenes is the bacterial species that causes strep throat, scarlet fever, and rheumatic fever. It can also cause other infections.

On May 21, a public memorial service was held in New York City at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Another one was held on July 2 at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. As per Henson's wishes, no one in attendance wore black, and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band finished the service by performing "When the Saints Go Marching In". Harry Belafonte sang "Turn the World Around," a song he had debuted on The Muppet Show, as each member of the congregation waved, with a puppeteer's rod, an individual, brightly colored foam butterfly.^[31][32] Later, Big Bird (performed by Caroll Spinney) walked out onto the stage and sang Kermit the Frog's signature song, "Bein' Green".^[33] Henson was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery. His ashes were scattered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at his ranch.^[34]

In the final minutes of the two-and-a-half hour service, six of the core Muppet performers sang, in their characters' voices, a medley of Jim Henson's favorite songs, culminating in a performance of "Just One Person" that began with Richard Hunt singing alone, as Scooter.^[35] "As each verse progressed," Henson employee Chris Barry recalled, "each Muppeteer joined in with their own Muppets until the stage was filled with all the Muppet performers and their beloved characters."^[33] The funeral was later described by LIFE as "an epic and almost unbearably moving event." The image of a growing number of performers singing "Just One Person" was recreated for the 1990 television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson and inspired screenwriter Richard Curtis, who attended the London service, to write the growing-orchestra wedding scene of his 2003 film Love Actually.^[36]

Henson's sudden death resulted in an outpouring of public and professional affection. There have since been numerous tributes and dedications in his memory. Henson’s companies, which are now run by his children, continue to produce films and television shows.

Legacy[link]

The Jim Henson Company and the Jim Henson Foundation continued after his death, producing new series and specials. Jim Henson's Creature Shop, founded by Henson, also continues to build creatures for a large number of other films and series (e.g. the science-fiction production Farscape, the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the movie MirrorMask) and is considered one of the most advanced and well respected creators of film creatures. His son Brian and daughter Lisa are currently the co-chairs and co-CEOs of the company; his daughter Cheryl is the president of the foundation. Steve Whitmire, a veteran member of the Muppet puppeteering crew, has assumed the roles of Kermit the Frog and Ernie, the most famous characters formerly played by Jim Henson.^[37]

On February 17, 2004, it was announced that the Muppets (excluding the Sesame Street characters, which are separately owned by Sesame Workshop) and the Bear in the Big Blue House properties had been sold by Henson's heirs to The Walt Disney Company. However, as a result, Sesame Workshop (formerly the Children's Television Workshop), also lost the rights to Kermit the Frog, and he could no longer appear on any new material on Sesame Street, although Kermit did later appear on the premiere of the show's 40th season on November 10, 2009.

One of Henson's last projects is a show attraction in Walt Disney World and Disneyland featuring the Muppets, called Muppet*Vision 3D, which opened in 1991, shortly after his death.

The Jim Henson Company retains the Creature Shop, as well as the rest of its film and television library including Fraggle Rock, Farscape, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth.^[38]

In 2010 it was announced that the first major biography of Henson, sanctioned by the family and the Jim Henson Legacy, was under way.^[39]

Tributes[link]

• Henson is honored both as himself and as Kermit the Frog on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Only two other people have received this honor: Mel Blanc, the voice actor of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck; and Walt Disney, the voice actor of Mickey Mouse.
• The theater at his alma mater, Northwestern High School, in Hyattsville, MD, is named in his honor.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze and The Muppet Christmas Carol are both dedicated to him.
• Stephen Lynch produced a song titled "Jim Henson's Dead", in which he pays homage to many of the characters from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street.
• Henson featured in The American Adventure in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort.
• Philip Roth often quotes Jim Henson in his Sabbath's Theater as the "great regret" for Mickey Sabbath.
• The Jim Henson Museum, located in his hometown of Leland, Mississippi, features an assortment of original Muppet characters, official certificates from the Mississippi Legislature honoring Henson and his characters, and a statue of Kermit in the middle of the stream behind the museum.
• The 1990 television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson allowed the Muppets themselves to pay tribute to Henson. The special featured interviews with Steven Spielberg and others.
• Celtic singer, musician, and songwriter Heather Alexander wrote a song titled "Storyteller" in 1990 as a tribute to Jim Henson which harkens to his "Storyteller" series as well as his role as a modern storyteller.
• Tom Smith's Henson tribute song, "A Boy and His Frog", won the Pegasus Award for Best Folk Song in 1991.
• Henson was featured in Boyz II Men's 1991 video, "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday".
• Episode 2880 of Sesame Street (which aired on November 15, 1991) was dedicated in his memory, with a memorial card following the closing credits.
• The classes of 1994, 1998, and 1999 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Henson's alma mater, commissioned a life-size statue of Henson and Kermit the Frog, which was dedicated on September 24, 2003, Henson's 67th birthday. The statue cost $217,000, and is displayed outside Maryland's student union.^[40] In 2006, Maryland introduced 50 statues of their school mascot, Testudo the Terrapin, with various designs chosen by different sponsoring groups. Among them was Kertle, a statue by Washington DC artist Elizabeth Baldwin designed to look like Kermit the Frog.
• On the evening of October 25, 2000, Comedy Central had a banner sign that said: Jim Henson [1936–1990].
• In 2003, Jim Henson was honored at the annual Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota.^[41]
• Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, and Damien Ferri wrote, directed, and animated a 3D tribute to Henson entitled Over Time that was shown as part of the 2005 Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH.
• The Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia, has acquired more than 700 puppets created by Henson and his studio, including some of the earliest Muppets. Many of these are displayed in the museum exhibit Jim Henson: Puppeteer. In September 2008, the Center opened Jim Henson: Wonders From His Workshop, highlighting creations from Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth, and other later works.
• On September 24, 2011, Henson's hometown of Leland renamed one of their bridges "The Rainbow Connection" to honor Henson and his work.^[42] He was also honored with a Google doodle on his 75th birthday; the Google logo had six Muppets that were clickable using the “hand” buttons.^[43]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

	Maryland portal
	Biography portal
	Animation portal
	Muppets portal

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Media related to Jim Henson at Wikimedia Commons

• The Jim Henson Legacy
• Jim Henson at the Internet Movie Database
• Art Directors Club biography and portrait
• Jim Henson at Find A Grave
• Jim Henson on Muppet Wiki, an external wiki
• The Jim Henson Works at the University of Maryland: 70+ digital videos available to students, scholars and visitors at the University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
• Early Jim Henson films in the AT&T Archives: "Robot" and "Charlie Magnetico," two films that Henson created for the Bell Data Communications Seminar in the early 1960s

v t e The Muppets Characters Andy and Randy Pig Animal Annie Sue Beaker Bean Bunny Beauregard Beautiful Day Monster Bobo the Bear Bubba the Rat Camilla the Chicken Clifford Crazy Harry Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem The Elvises Foo-Foo Fozzie Bear The Frackles George the Janitor Gonzo the Great Dr. Bunsen Honeydew Johnny Fiama Kermit the Frog Lew Zealand Link Hogthrob Mildred Huxtetter Miss Piggy Mr. Poodlepants The Muppet Newsman Pepe the King Prawn Pops Rizzo the Rat Robin the Frog Rowlf the Dog Sam the Eagle Scooter Statler and Waldorf Steel Rabbit Dr. Julius Strangepork Marvin Suggs The Swedish Chef Sweetums Uncle Deadly Waldo C. Graphic Yolanda the Rat Muppet performers Terry Angus Pam Arciero Don Austen Jennifer Barnhart Bill Barretta Cheryl Blaylock Fran Brill Julianne Buescher Tyler Bunch Leslie Carrara-Rudolph Kevin Clash Stephanie D'Abruzzo Alice Dinnean Michael Earl John Eccleston Peter Friedman Dave Goelz Louise Gold Tim Gosley Brian Henson Jim Henson John Henson Richard Hunt Eric Jacobson Jerry Juhl John Kennedy Tim Lagasse Bruce Lanoil Peter Linz John Lovelady Noel MacNeal Jim Martin Drew Massey Frank Meschkuleit Ron Mueck Brian Muehl Kathryn Mullen Jerry Nelson Carmen Osbahr Frank Oz Eren Ozker Bob Payne Karen Prell Mike Quinn Martin P. Robinson David Rudman Sandra Shamas Michelan Sisti Judy Sladky Caroll Spinney Bob Stutt John Tartaglia Nikki Tilroe Matt Vogel Cheryl Wagner Steve Whitmire Mak Wilson Victor Yerrid Television series Sam and Friends (1955–61) The Mike Douglas Show (Muppet segments, 1966–79) The Ed Sullivan Show (Muppet segments, 1966–70) Our Place (1967) Sesame Street (1969–present) Saturday Night Live (The Land of Gorch segments, 1975) The Muppet Show (1976–81) Fraggle Rock (1983–87) Muppet Babies (1984–91) Little Muppet Monsters (1985) The Jim Henson Hour (1989) Muppets Tonight (1996–98) Bear in the Big Blue House (1997–2006) Web series Statler and Waldorf: From the Balcony (2005–06) The Muppets Kitchen with Cat Cora (2010) Feature films The Muppet Movie (1979) The Great Muppet Caper (1981) The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) Sesame Street presents – Follow That Bird (1985) The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) Muppet Treasure Island (1996) Muppets from Space (1999) The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999) The Muppets (2011) Television specials Hey, Cinderella! (1969) The Muppets on Puppets (1970) The Great Santa Claus Switch (1970) The Frog Prince (1972) The Muppet Musicians of Bremen (1972) Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977) John Denver & the Muppets (1979) The Muppets Go Hollywood (1979) The Muppets Go to the Movies (1981) The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show (1982) Rocky Mountain Holiday (1983) The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years (1985) The Tale of the Bunny Picnic (1986) The Christmas Toy (1986) A Muppet Family Christmas (1987) Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990) The Muppets at Walt Disney World (1990) The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson (1990) Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree (1995) It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005) Studio DC: Almost Live (2008) A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa (2008) Direct-to-video Wow, You're a Cartoonist! (1988) Muppet Classic Theater (1994) Kermit's Swamp Years (2002) Video games Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival (1989) Muppet RaceMania (2000) Muppet Monster Adventure (2000) Muppets Party Cruise (2003) Disney Universe (2011) Discography Albums The Muppet Show (1977) Muppet Beach Party (1993) Kermit Unpigged (1994) The Muppet Show: Music, Mayhem, and More (2002) The Muppets: A Green and Red Christmas (2006) Muppets: The Green Album (2011) The Muppets: Original Soundtrack (2011) Songs "The Muppet Show Theme" "Rainbow Connection" "Bein' Green" "Mahna Mahna" "I Hope That Somethin' Better Comes Along" "I'm Going To Go Back There Someday" "Bohemian Rhapsody" "Man or Muppet" Other media Muppet Meeting Films (1975–93) Muppet*Vision 3D (1991–present) Muppet Mobile Lab (2007–present) The Muppet Show Comics Before You Leap Related The Muppets Studio The Walt Disney Company The Jim Henson Company Jim Henson's Creature Shop Sesame Workshop Sesame Street Muppets Portal:Muppets