THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION, which took place at Kerri Scharlin’s “salon” in New York on November 5, 2023, is published on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the series of six articles that Michelle Kuo, then chief editor of Artforum, commissioned from Thierry de Duve and published in 2013–14. They are the basis for “Don’t Shoot the Messenger,” the main section of de Duve’s new book, Duchamp’s Telegram: From Beaux-Arts to Art-in-General (Reaktion Books, 2023).
MARCEL DUCHAMP, BY ROBERT LEBEL WITH MARCEL DUCHAMP, ANDRÉ BRETON, AND H. P. ROCHÉ. New York: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2021. 252 pages. TOWARD THE END of his life, in 1966, Marcel Duchamp was asked why he had never had a solo exhibition in his native France. “I don’t know. I never understood. I think it’s a question of money,” he replied. “The dealers have nothing to gain from me. . . The museums are run, more or less, by the dealers.”This candor was calculated, all part of Duchamp’s schtick. Since the mid-1920s after a terrifyingly productive decade in which he reimagined Cubist painting,