Rudolf Herz - Duchamp. La Patte
Munich-based conceptual artist Rudolf Herz had 17 street artists at Montmartre in Paris draw pictures after a photographic portrait by Marcel Duchamp. This as an ironic response to Duchamp's decision to stop being a ‘painter in the professional sense’, a decision he made while in Munich in 1912.
Historical research and visual work
Duchamp's photographic portrait shows in sober objectivity, anticipating the development made visible by his revolutionary idea of the Readymades and his masterpiece ‘The Large Glass’. With Rudolf Herz, historical research and visual work go hand in hand. For instance, he not only published his research into Duchamp's enigmatic stay in Munich in the book ‘Le Mystère de Munich’, but also reconstructed Duchamp's Munich flat as a full-scale sculpture, placing it in front of with museum Alte Pinakothek. Herz considers the flat the ‘cradle of conceptual art’.
When the Paris draughtsmen, now commissioned by Herz, print their own style on Duchamp's portrait, they open up a role-playing game - as Duchamp did in his own way, presenting himself in the most diverse roles for the camera since the 1920s and avoiding any identity that might limit his freedom. The street artists created a kaleidoscope of characters; it could hardly be more diverse. The very time Duchamp spent in Munich, where the photograph was taken, led to his decision to free himself from any form of artistic signature, the ‘patte’, the ‘paw’.