The Large Glass: Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp is an interesting character in general. I’ve always appreciated his “found art” such as “Fountain,” and his painting “Nude Descending a Staircase.” In the case of “The Large Glass,” I am not so impressed.
I do agree with parts of it, depending on how well I’m reading it. Whether he’s talking about marriage, intercourse, or love, it can become a routine in an assembly line, with different kinds of machinery and reactions, but it appears to be so bitter and lacks a lot of hope when it comes to relationships. The Glass is clever and thought provoking, but it’s also very crude.
To me “The Large Glass” was made to tease the viewer to make their own decisions of what it means, at the same time giving a strong insinuation to a certain kind of idea, judging by its full title “The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even.” Which is probably true. As Tomkins says, Duchamp didn’t want the Glass to be his autobiography, or his self-expression. Well, what was the point then?
And when he left it unfinished, did he leave anything key to the understanding out?
Part of what turns me away from it is shallow and superficial. I don’t like the mechanical depictions; I don’t find them interesting to look at and without the explanations of their meaning it’s hardly worth bothering with. After reading Calvin Tomkins “Duchamp: A Biography” and Andrew Stafford’s understandingduchamp.com I still feel confused about the inner workings of the piece and why he bothered making it, and what he wanted to convey to the viewer.
Tomkins said that if you approach Duchamp’s work with a light heart the rewards are everywhere in sight, but I can’t laugh at The Large Glass. I don’t find it funny. The sexual undertones seem dark and demeaning some how, and the mechanical setting is just another Science class to me. (And I didn’t do very well in any Science classes.)
If I hadn’t read Tomkins paper I probably would have assumed he was hostile toward women and marriage, and that he had a lot of problems within his love life.
It’s also frustrating that he needed the Green Box to explain “The Large Glass.” While Calvin Tomkins, in “Duchamp: A Biography”, as well as understandingduchamp.com, states that the Green Box and its notes (created by Duchamp himself) is essential for its understanding, I feel that it defeats the purpose of its making. Not that I would have the notes be destroyed or unread, but he left the notes specifically for viewers, not just for his own personal records, and in this kind of art it just doesn’t seem to fit since he was trying to make to make the Large Glass’s viewer think about what it meant.
In Tomkins’ paper he says that to some “’dedicated Duchampians’, the message of the Large Glass is anything but hilarious.” I tend to agree with them. I don’t think it’s that funny, to me it sounds pessimistic and very bitter. The explanations on the two sources add on to it to me, especially in Tomkins’ essay. While I don’t think Duchamp’s work is “destructive,” and it does make the viewer question what he was thinking, surely, and as I said, I do appreciate his work, experiments, and jokes. Other then the Large Glass, which I cannot bring myself to like.


(Image from http://www.tate.org.uk)