Octavio Paz, an important public and literary figure in Mexico today, has published several volumes of condensed and highly metaphoric poetry in Spanish that display his close ties to Surrealism…. [In "Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare"] Mr. Paz has revised and extended two essays on Duchamp written over the last 10 years. This short vigorous book shuns the psychoanalytic speculation that weakens many of the 20-odd existing studies and probes deeply into Duchamp's relations to Eastern and Western culture. Even Duchamp cannot escape history.
"The Castle of Purity," the first essay, opens with a consideration of Duchamp's origins and his radical yet calm responses to the modern Midas myth…. The following 60-page description and interpretation of the "Great Glass," or "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" (1915–23) treats the two partially painted clear panes … as belonging to the ancient Western tradition of theological art conveying idea and myth. In our era, however, the only powerful idea at hand, according to Mr. Paz, is the antimyth of criticism; Duchamp employs it ironically. Therefore, the meaning of the "Bride" resides in complex allusions to absence (or multiplicity) of meaning. Next to this intellectual complexity, Duchamp's Ready-mades seem simple-minded. (pp. 13, 32)
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