Essential Perhaps.- By: GLENN HARVEY, 03 Dec 2002 This is more than just a sample of Duchamp's writings. Here are some basic reproductions (in black & white) of a number of Duchamp's works - or 'things' as he sometimes called them. There is the text of his talk, 'The Creative Act' givenin April 1957in Houston - as well as his thoughts on Readymades (Apropos of "Readymades"), dating from 1961...and much more. Duchamp's art is a kind of stormy marriage of the Visual & the Textual - & you really need this book to get anything like a grasp of Duchamp's achievement. His jottings & declarations are - by turns - maddeningly puerile & inspiring.
The only limitation of the book form is that it systematises an aspiring a-systematic artist. But, whatever...