Marcel Duchamp... Marchand du Sel

Fine arts considered as a sort of angling

 
 
When the mind look to a canvas painted according to the classical perspective, the eyes are caught by this conventional node on the horizon. That is our future are we assured, buried in its fur of straight lines. And the established fatality of the laws of light comforts us in the opinion that there indeed lies the future.  

But as the mind, suddenly tired of submitting to prophecies, turns back to itself and walks towards this point that was handed to it just like a bait, it sees quite well that it is there just like here. It sees that things and space did not follow this law of shrinking that the canvas it was confronted with seemed to promise.  

So the mind leaves the canvas, and its vision is suddenly cast on the surroundings. And it sees the hook from which the worm is hanging. And it also sees that its exact own position, standing here, in front of this space half hidden by the screen of the canvas, had been from long predicted by the painter. And in a movement that cannot be controlled any longer, it also perceives the painter, the wizard riding his brush, gliding along the field lines of his Art, towards this painting, from which himself - may be - escapes  

But because the mind, that first was looking, now moves, it also sees what the painter himself does not escape from: the Art of painting. And it perceives then the Art of painting as a the vanishing point of the human adventure, just like this point on the horizon that captivated him a moment ago, and all well considered not less fatal nor arbitrary.  

Then it remembers this thing in Philadelphia, this thing he never saw and the actual name of which it even ignores. It remembers this work of which it is said that Duchamp wanted it to be disclosed only after his death. And it guesses that as you look through this hole in the old door, the funnel of perspectives reverses, that the view shall now be directed towards the inextricable network of adventures, towards reality, this reality stripped bare by all its beyonds and urgencies.  

And although in its dizziness it still feels close by the presence of Marcel Duchamp's prophecy, it also realizes that the artist placed his honor, his care and his tenderness in not representing anything