How American Modern Art Still Dances Around Duchamp

It all started with a review. When a reviewer of a 1957 painting exhibition by Jasper Johns compared one of his paintings to a readymade by Marcel Duchamp, Johns and friend and fellow artist Robert Rauschenberg made the pilgrimage down from New York City to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, home since 1954 to not just Duchamp’s readymades, but also the painting known simply as The Bride and the monumental work known less simply as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass). Inspired, Johns and Rauschenberg soon met Duchamp and struck up a friendship that would eventually include composer/visual artist John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham. In Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, which runs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through January 21, 2013, you discover how these younger artists came to dance around the influential presence of Duchamp and create art in the same playful spirit as the arch-Dadaist. Perhaps the most difficult (yet most pleasurable once acquired) artist of the 20^th century, Duchamp remains the inevitable influence for all American art ever since Johns and Rauschenberg made their trip. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How American Modern Art Still Dances AroundDuchamp."

[Image: Not Wanting to Say Anything about Marcel, 1969. John Cage, American, 1912-1992. Plexigram (comprising eight silk screened plexiglas panels and one walnut base), 14 x 20 x 1/8 inches (35.6 x 50.8 x 0.3 cm; Base: 36 13/16 x 61 x 1 7/8 inches (93.5 x 154.9 x 4.8 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art. © The John Cage Trust.]

[Many thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for providing me with the image above from, a press pass to view, and other materials related to Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, which runs through January 21, 2013. The festival celebrating the centennial of John Cage’s birth, Cage: Beyond Silence, runs through January 20, 2013.]