Marcel Duchamp
These Objects Are Closer Than They Appear
Haim Steinbach watched many of his peers experience phenomenal success. At 68, the artist whom some have dubbed the heir to Marcel Duchamp is enjoying a renaissance.
Author Ascending A Staircase
In 1940-1941, as part of the American journalist Varian Fry’s rescue of anti-Nazi European intellectuals, artist Marcel Duchamp fled to New York, with a brief stopover in Morocco. This visit is the focus of a new novel by Serge Bramly, a Frenchman of Tunisian Jewish origin. The title of “Orchidée fixe” cites a virtually untranslatable pun by Duchamp referring to orchids and obsessions.
Paul Burlin: An Artist Who Deserves Rediscovery
Sometimes posterity can play odd tricks on talented artists. Paul Burlin (1886-1969), born Isadore Berlin in New York, was rediscovered repeatedly during his lifetime, only to fall into subsequent obscurity. Now a new biography by Michelle Wick Patterson, “Natalie Curtis Burlin: A Life in Native and African American Music,” about Burlin’s ethnomusicologist wife, sheds light on obstacles which the couple conquered.