Gerhard Graulich

In conversations and interviews Joseph Beuys mentioned Marcel Duchamp more than any other artist. And hardly anyone else seems to have challenged him more than this artist from the previous generation. Direct evidence of this is his oft-cited action Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet (The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated) from 1964, through which Beuys attempted to shift focus onto the political and social dimensions of his concept of expanded art. The associations and connections between the artists go deep. Both used similar radical strategies to rejuvenate the concept of art and the role of art in everyday life; their questions had a number of aspects in common. This richly illustrated catalogue is the first to undertake a profound exploration of this multilayered relationship, while investigating both artists’ future-oriented potential.

Marcel Duchamp: one of his themes was the boundary between works of art and everyday objects, and with it, he set the art world in an uproar. Surely one of his most brilliant strokes of genius was the Fountain, a urinal he put on display. There are, of course, many more works that bear his signature, and the Duchamp Collection in Schwerin has ninety-two of them. Founded in 2009, the research centre has succeeded in establishing an interdisciplinary, globally connected network of researchers in Schwerin. Under the title Marcel Duchamp: Inventing the Presence, individual as well as groups of artworks from the Schwerin collection are examined from philosophical, art historical, and literary perspectives in volume five of the series Poiesis.