Duchamp: 1887-1968, Art as Anti-Art

Taschen's Basic Art volumes exist to get an artist's whole argument into ninety-six pages, and Duchamp is the hardest possible test of that format: an artist whose most consequential works were bought rather than made.

Janis Mink's text, first issued in the series in 1995 as number 35, moves chronologically from the early Cubist-adjacent paintings and Nude Descending a Staircase through the Large Glass, the readymades and the Rrose Selavy alter ego, to the chess years and the posthumously revealed Étant donnés. Chapters carry titles drawn from the work itself, among them Why not sneeze?, A young man in spring and Breaking free. As with the rest of the series, the book pairs roughly a hundred colour illustrations and captions with a chronological summary of the life and a short biography, making it a compact reference rather than an argument.

Mink studied art history at Smith College and the University of Hamburg, where she took her doctorate under Martin Warnke, and works as a writer and curator. Duchamp (1887-1968) remains the pivot on which most accounts of conceptual art turn; more specialised treatments in this collection include Michael R. Taylor's Philadelphia Museum of Art study of Étant donnés.