Spellbound by Marcel: Duchamp, Love, and Art

by Ruth Brandon

Overview

In 1913 Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase exploded through the American art world. This is the story of how he followed the painting to New York two years later, enchanted the Arensberg salon, and—almost incidentally—changed art forever.

In 1915, a group of French artists fled war-torn Europe for New York. In the few months between their arrival—and America’s entry into the war in April 1917—they pushed back the boundaries of the possible, in both life and art. The vortex of this transformation was the apartment at 33 West 67th Street, owned by Walter and Louise Arensberg, where artists and poets met nightly to talk, eat, drink, discuss each others’ work, play chess, plan balls, organise magazines and exhibitions, and fall in and out of love. At the center of all this activity stood the mysterious figure of Marcel Duchamp, always approachable, always unreadable. His exhibit of a urinal, which he called Fountain, briefly shocked the New York art world before falling, like its perpetrator, into obscurity.

Many people (of both sexes) were in love with Duchamp. Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood were among them; they were also, briefly, and (for her) life-changingly, in love with each other. Both kept daily diaries, which give an intimate picture of the events of those years. Or rather two pictures—for the views they offer, including of their own love affair, are stunningly divergent.

Spellbound by Marcel follows Duchamp, Roché, and Beatrice as they traverse the twentieth century. Roché became the author of Jules and Jim, made into a classic film by François Truffaut. Beatrice became a celebrated ceramicist. Duchamp fell into chess-playing obscurity until, decades later, he became famous for a second time—as Fountain was elected the twentieth century’s most influential artwork.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643138619
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	220,418
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Ruth Brandon is an acclaimed novelist and cultural historian. She is the author of Houdini (Random House); The Spiritualists (Knopf), and Ugly Beauty: Helena Rubinstein, L'Oréal, and the Blemished History of Looking Good (Harper). She lives in London.

Table of Contents

Chief Dramatis Personae ix

Introduction xi

Part 1 Prewar 1

1 The Armory Show, 1913 3

2 Marcel, 1912 10

Part 2 Wartime 19

1 Marcel, 1915 21

2 Marcel, New York, 1915 26

3 Beatrice, 1916 32

4 Artistic Life, New York, 1916 41

5 Pierre, 1917 53

6 The Blind Man 63

7 Mr. Mutt's Fountain 69

8 Beatrice's Sentimental Education, 1917 77

9 The Buddha of the Bathroom 80

10 Pierre's American Loves, 1917 97

11 Leaving New York 1: Beatrice 121

12 Leaving New York 2: Pierre 142

13 Leaving New York 3: Marcel 153

Part 3 Between Continents 163

1 Marcel, Paris, 1919 165

2 True Love: Man Ray, Picabia, Pierre, and Marcel 169

3 Mary 176

4 Marcel Married: Paris, 1927 179

5 Marcel Discovers Love 193

Part 4 Late Fame 201

1 Beatrice 203

2 Pierre 208

3 Marcel 213

4 Surviving Marcel 225

Acknowledgments 229

Selected Bibliography 231

Index 233

Editorial Reviews

01/24/2022

Cultural historian Brandon (Houdini) delivers a swirling tale of two people whose infatuations with 20th century French artist Marcel Duchamp sparked their own love affair. The nexus of Brandon’s narrative is New York City’s Arensberg salon, where, in the months before America entered WWI, “artists and poets from both sides of the Atlantic met nightly” to “discuss each other’s work... and fall in and out of love.” As Brandon reveals, many of them—including French author Henri-Pierre Roché and artist Beatrice Wood—fell in love with Duchamp. Sifting through Roché and Wood’s diaries and published works, Brandon plays analytical sleuth to their converging love stories, which, she reveals, are rife with discrepancies—while Wood claimed Duchamp was besotted with her, it was actually “Duchamp who introduced her to Roché in hopes that she might find another object for her romantic yearnings.” Along the way, Brandon weaves in a cast of eccentric characters from Duchamp’s life (including his “Wealthy Middle-Aged Lady Friends”), while also tracing the artist’s path from obscurity to fame, cemented by his 1917 urinal sculpture, Fountain, which “expressed all the anger Marcel’s life was otherwise devoted to denying... about the art world, about the war.” Part drama, part page-turning history, this paints the complexities of art and love in a seductive light. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"A ripping account of celebrity and magic. Brandon has chosen a fascinating subject and written a book that rises to it superbly. A compelling account of a peculiar life.

The Sunday Times (London)

Brandon's chronicles are poignant. It is important to remember what a great, necessary and arduous achievement the education of women was.

The Wall Street Journal

"Brandon is a congenial stage manager, adept at presenting and dismissing her dramatis personae. Unblushing, she dispenses salacious gossip, patiently decoding the diaries of Roché."

The Spectator

A masterly survey. Even when donning her sociologist's hat, Brandon is still lively as well as humane. Fairly sizzling with fascination.

Washington Times

"Spellbound by Marcel is a group biography which charts the triangulated love affair between Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, and Henri-Pierre Roche, and the others who crossed their paths and their beds. The portrait Brandon sketches of Wood is especially winning. She comes across with novelistic vibrancy. A delicious and deeply researched portrait of its time.

The New York Times Book Review Lauren Elkin

"Spellbound by Marcel makes for enjoyable reading. The revolving door of affairs, breakups, betrayals, and wild avant-garde stunts is quite juicy. It’s also impressively researched. Brandon speaks with the authority that comes from intimate familiarity with the key players’ own words about their lives."

Daily Art Magazine

Beatrice Wood is effectively the protagonist and certainly the most appealing subject of Spellbound by Marcel: Duchamp, Love, and Art. Her élan is legendary. Hellbent on breaking free of the expectations of her upbringing, Wood seems to me a singular, wild-card creative personality of the twentieth century. Brandon contributes a fair amount to what the milieu was like for a shifting cast of characters who focused and intensified a transformative Zeitgeist. Glimpses into their romantic entanglements provide a flickering, you-are-there perspective.

The New Yorker Peter Schjeldahl

"Brandon paints a fascinating picture of turn-of-the-century America.

The Times (London)

"Drawing on the stories of the Arensbergs and three principal figures in their salon—Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, and Henri-Pierre Roché—Brandon has woven a narrative that intermingles complex romantic entanglements with persistent artistic aspirations."

New York Journal of Books

Praise for Ruth Brandon:

From the Publisher

"As entertaining as the contemporary works of fiction such lives inspired, Brandon displays a keen understanding of a complex educational system that kept its subjects ignorant even while purporting to enlighten.

The New Yorker

"In Albert Camus and the Human Crisis, Meagher presents a powerful reading of the oeuvre of a thinker who still has much to tell us. Meagher’s deep understanding of Camus, developed over fifty years of teaching, enables him to discuss Camus’ work in prose that is lively and clear and, at the same time, full of nuance. Reading Meagher is like talking over coffee with your favorite professor. Berets and clove cigarettes optional."

Chicago Review of Books