Duchamp's Pipe: A Chess Romance--Marcel Duchamp and George Koltanowski

(Paperback)

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Art, chess, and an $87,000 pipe frame an inside look at the relationship between famed blindfold grandmaster George Koltanowski and dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp. Shortlisted for the 2021 Vine Awards Art, chess, and an $87,000 pipe frame an inside look at the relationship between Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp and chess Grandmaster George Koltanowski Spanning three decades, two continents, two world wars, and the international art and chess scenes of the mid twentieth century, Duchamp's Pipe explores the remarkable friendship between art world enfant terrible Marcel Duchamp and blindfold chess champion George Koltanowski. Artist and cultural historian Celia Rabinovitch describes each man's rise to prominence, the chess matches that sparked their relationship, and the recently discovered pipe that Duchamp gave to Koltanowski. This tale of genius and resilience offers fresh insights into the essence of the gift in the bohemian underground. Rabinovitch invites us to discover the chess wizard and a Duchamp slightly off pedestal--and ultimately more human.

Reviews

Duchamps Pipeoffers a delightful and fascinating study of Duchamps career in a manner remarkably attuned to his sensibility. This book shows how the richest form of thinking in the arts may lie in attempting to match the mind to the matter of matter.
CHARLES ALTIERI, professor of English at UC Berkeleyand author ofWallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity

Duchamps Pipeis an utterly unique book.Celia Rabinovitch has accomplished something wondrous here: a work of scholarship that is also a dream, one worthy of the Surrealist figures that populate its pages.
J. F. MARTEL,author ofReclaiming Art in the Age of Artificeand cohost of the Weird StudiesPodcast

Celia Rabinovitch gives us a first-rate art historical detective storya page-turner that is hard to put down. Rabinovitch is one of the most brilliant and intuitive thinkers on Surrealism.Duchamps Pipeis a marvel of scholarship and a delight!
ANN McCOY,artist, art critic, and editor at theBrooklyn Rail

... the facets ofDuchamps Pipereflect the light of audacious bohemia living in Europes wartime shadows.
ADINA KAMIEN-KAZHDAN,The David Rockefeller Senior Curator of Modern Art at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and author ofRemaking the Readymade

Delightful and enlightening! Rabinovitch investigates Duchamp as arbitrator in Giorgio de Chirico and Andr Bretons duel ... giving pause on one of modern arts tragedies.
KATHERINE ROBINSON, scientific coordinator ofMetaphysical Art: the FondazioneGiorgio e Isa de Chirico

To prevail in the Duchampian universe requires a good story and the capacity to tell it. Rabinovitchs book, like a playwith a cast of characters led by George Koltanowski and Marcel Duchamp, delivers both.
STEPHAN E. HAUSER, author ofKurt Seligmann,1900-1962: Leben Und Werk

. . . The subtle and precise movements of chess pieces; the camaraderie with George Koltanowski and his ring of friends ... external gifts of exchange and imaginative consciousness of the materiality of the human world ... Rabinovitchaddslife to our understanding of Duchamp.
CHARLES H. LONG, author ofSignificationsandEllipsis

A smoking reproach against staid scholarshipjuxtaposing biography, industrial history, literary history, photography, and other disciplines to produce a fairy tale about chess and friendship, and a meditation on the contradictory role of the gift in the world of art.
LINDSEY BANCO, author ofTravel and Drugs in Twentieth-Century Literature

A richly illustrated chess odyssey that winds across three continents tracing the intertwined lives of two of the more cerebral characters of the last century.
HENRY M. SAYRE, Distinguished Professor of Art History, Oregon State University, and author ofThe Visual Text of William Carlos Williams

Author Bio

CELIA RABINOVITCH, an artist, writer, and scholar, weaves the artist's experience into a nuanced understanding of modern art, history, cultural anthropology, and comparative mythology. Her previous book, Surrealism and the Sacred- Power, Eros, and the Occult in Modern Art, uncovers the struggle between sacred and secular forces in art from prehistory to Surrealism. Her other publications explore connections among art, history, and spiritual experience. Her luminous paintings have been shown in Canada, Europe, and the US. Educated at McGill University (PhD, religions) and the University of Wisconsin (MFA, painting), Rabinovitch directed the Extension programs in fine arts and design at UC Berkeley and served as director of the School of Art, University of Manitoba, Canada. She has taught at the University of Colorado, California College of the Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Stanford University, and as invited speaker at Cornell University, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and has been an artist in residence at Syracuse University and the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Duchamp's Pipe is her second book.