Marcel Duchamp

2011-12-18T18:24:26Z

LaBerg:

July 28 1887 (Blainville-Crevon) - October 2 1968 (Neuilly-sur-Seine). French-American artist, associated with the [[Dadaist]] and [[Surrealist]] movements.

Marcel Duchamp was the forerunner to the movement of Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, as well as Pop art and minimalism; he was one of the most influential artists of the modern era.

Born in 1887 in Normandy, France, he began painting at age 15. He was the grandson of a painter, and his three siblings were also visual artists; unlike his relatives, he turned his ironic skepticism about art into an extraordinary career built on the smallest amount of work. At sixteen he went to Paris to study art. From 1905-1910 he contributed cartoons to French papers.

His early paintings reflect an interest in movement, forecasting the themes of Italian ''Futurist'' work; his paintings received wide acclaim in the US. After a while he abandoned painting for three-dimensional art and offered everyday objects as "readymade". In 1915, during World War I, he moved to New York and spent several years working on ''Large Glass'', a monumental piece, which was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926. Meanwhile he became the modern master of the provocative. With self-confidence, he submitted a urinal titled ''Fountain'' to the 1917 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, whose vice president he was. The exhibition organizers refused to accept it, so Duchamp resigned. Similarly, in a DADA exhibition in Paris in 1920 he submitted a reproduction of Leonardo's ''Mona Lisa'' to which he added a moustache and a goatee; its official title was ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' (Elle a chaud au cul), which is loosely translated as "she has a hot arse".

By the mid 1920s, Duchamp had publicly abandoned painting in favor of chess and certain experiments in kineticism. In 1942 Duchamp fled to the US again during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Here he worked sporadically over the next 20 years. Duchamp died in 1968.

[[Sources:]]

1) Bossy, Michel-André, ''Artists, Writers, and Musicians: An Encyclopedia of People Who Changed the World'', Connecticut: The Oryx Press, 2001.

2) Kostelanetz, Richard, ''A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes'', Second Edition, New York: Routledge, 2001.

Friedrich Nietzsche

2011-10-30T12:51:37Z

LaBerg: Created page with 'Friedrich Nietzsche was born on the 15th October, 1844, in Rocken, Saxony; he was the son of a Lutheran pastor. It was noted as a particular omen that he shared his birthday with…'

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on the 15th October, 1844, in Rocken, Saxony; he was the son of a Lutheran pastor. It was noted as a particular omen that he shared his birthday with King Wilhelm IV of Prussia. His father died when he was five years old and this formed a traumatic childhood experience that left deep scars on Nietzsche's later developement. After the death of his father he moved with his mother and younger sister to Naumburg in 1850. Eight years later he left for boarding school in Pforza, where he became a brilliant scholar. Then he studied classical philology at Bonn and Leipzig Universities, and in 1869, just at the age of 25, he was appointed Extraordinary Professor of Classical Philology at Basle University, where he taght until 1879. This period reflected the conservative and bourgeois spirit of the town. The initial enthusiasm with which he devoted himself to his studies of Greek literature and mythology was destroyed by the Franco-Prussian War. Shaken by his experience of the war as a volunteer medic, he returned to Basle. The pessimistic attitude of his soul that already existed since the death of his father was intensified, and led to his doubting meaning of human existence. His first book, ''The Birth of Tragedy'', which was published in 1872, casts light on his spiritual background, and offers a visionary overview of the origins and decline of Greek tragic culture, and claims that this culture was destroyed by the subordination of the poetic imagination to an uncreative rationalism that has come to rule the modern age. Fearlessly he exercised his criticism not only of the educational aims but also of the intellectualism and historicism. ''The Birth of Tragedy'' was gravely condemned by the academic community for its 'unphilosophical' approach and the dispute between Nietzsche and German intellectual culture was to last the rest of his life. Consequently his books that followed thereafter made little impression upon the general reading public. In 1879 he was forced to retire because of mental health problems. From this point, Nietzsche led the life of an independent philosopher. He had little time for the democratic and egalitarian objectives of the radicals and reformers, but joined them in finding the conservatism of German culture and politics foolish and dull. In January 1889, while in Turin, he experienced a complete mental breakdown, from which he never recovered and lived until his death, on 25 August 1900, with his mother and sister.

Sources:
1. Frey-Rohn, Liliane, ''Friedrich Nietzsche - A Psychological Approach to his Life and Work'', Zürich: Daimon Verlag, 1984.
2. Spinks, Lee, ''Friedrich Nietzsche'', London: Routledge, 2003.

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Marcel Duchamp

Friedrich Nietzsche