|
 Sometime
during the mid-1960s, having begun my odyssey into abstract illusionism,
I made a painting series [ Skew
Series, 1966] that didn’t work visually. I had divided
a slab into three sections, attempting a three-dimensional perspective
effect, but had used isometric perspective which undermined the
illusion. My first New York show with Tibor de Nagy was scheduled,
and I had only two or three months to create a new, attention grabbing
series. Keenly aware that the artistic solution had not yet come
to me, I was under terrible pressure.
I
awoke a few nights later from a thrashing nightmare, and practically
ran to look at a reproduction of Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride
Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The
Large Glass. My wife and I had noticed the Oculist Witnesses,
a group of three disk-shaped objects located at the center right
of the painting, and we’d talked about them. Now, in the middle
of the night, I closely studied and measured the shapes, and discovered
Duchamp had rendered them using two-point perspective as indeed
he had the whole very complicated work. With this perceptual strike,
I felt mentored from afar by the provocateur Duchamp. [I screamed
“eureka” into the night and gulped three aspirins on
my way back to bed, where my wife was waiting for me to congratulate
her on her powers as an inspiratrice. :-) ] My immediate problem
with perspective was solved, and I was able to create the fiberglass
resin Slab Series, 1966, feverishly completing nine large paintings
in six weeks. Soon after in 1968, with my most important series,
I used three-point perspective to create the Dodecagon Series.
This was the turning point of my artistic career, which is remarkable
considering I had never been taught perspective in art school.
Duchamp’s
Large Glass is typically studied in order to discern the psychological
and sexual implications of the Bride, her Bachelors, and The Chocolate
Grinder, among other symbols, which Duchamp himself identified.
Beyond this, the value of the work purely as a painting, an entity
to be considered objectively as a work of visual art, has been
overlooked. Putting aside lengthy discussions of Duchamp’s
celebrated irony and French puns, and ignoring ten thousand-word
analytical essays about the Bride, we are able to view The Bride
Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even as the wonderful, abstract
perspective illusion it truly is. Another of Duchamp’s paintings,
Nude Descending A Staircase, is one of the great early developments
in Cubism, and affirms his mastery of abstract illusionism, despite
shocked emotional reactions when it was exhibited at the Armory
Show, New York, 1914.
Duchamp,
along with the Renaissance master of perspective, Paolo Uccello,
have informed, inspired, and influenced my work since the development
of my Resin Paintings in the 1960s. The concepts and techniques
divined from the thoughtful, progressive works of these revolutionary
artists are of great interest to me. . . an intellectual challenge
for many years. . .
— Ronald Davis
September
1, 2001
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