Perspectives of New Music Perspectives of New Music

Marcel Duchamp's Musical Secret Boxed in the Tradition of the Real: A New Instrumental
Paradigm
Author(s): Sophie Stévance and Catrina Flint de Médicis
Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Summer, 2007), pp. 150-170
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25164661
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Marcel Duchamfs Musical
Secret Boxed in the
Tradition of the Real:
A New Instrumental Paradigm
Letrta
Sophie St?vance
"A new box of Swedish matches, that we just bought, is lighter than an
opened box because it does not make noise."
?Marcel Duchamp, Notes
In common,
1913, Marcel
everydayDuchamp wouldas works
household objects become theFollowing
of art. first person
that to present
historic moment of personal inventiveness, the phenomenon spread to
become an integrated part of the art world as a whole. The "readymade"
figured prominently in paintings and sculptures, and was integrated in
installations within the museums and galleries it had invaded. Yet if the
use of the everyday may be upheld as one of Duchamp's most important
Marcel Duchamp's Musical Secret 151
initiatives, there remains nonetheless a territory in his work that remains

unexplored in research: music (in general) and the instrument (in partic
ular).
John Cage once declared: "I more and more consider Duchamp as a
composer."1 Indeed Marcel Duchamp did compose two musical pieces:
Erratum Musical for three voices, and a version of the same piece for
piano entitled The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even/Musical
Erratum. Completed in 1913, the first piece was not discovered until
1934, when it was published in The Green Box, a now legendary pam
phlet of notes and projects that Duchamp had started in 1912. The
second received its first hearing only in 1973, as part of a John Cage ret
rospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gathered together in
Marcel Duchamp, Notes (1980), Duchamp's written reflections also
reveal the existence of some surprising "magical sound effects"2 that are
an integral part of With Hidden Noise (1916).
Moneybox (or preserves): make a Readymade with a box containing

something unrecognizable by its sound and weld the box.3
In 1916 in New York, Duchamp exhibited an "Assisted Readymade,"

which consisted of a ball of string inserted between two brass plates that
were joined in turn by four long screws. The mystery attached to this
particular readymade derives from an unknown object placed inside the
ball. With the exception of the artist's friend and benefactor who placed
the object inside the ball, Walter Arensberg, no one knew what the
object was?including Duchamp himself. Thus even for the readymade's
creator, "the noise was then especially mysterious."4 Today, shaking the
apparatus continues to produce a sound. But what is the real nature of
the concealed object? And what are the consequences of such an act?
This is not the place for a comprehensive study of music in the work
of Marcel Duchamp.5 But what may be accomplished here is an expos?
of its more notable aspects, beginning with an examination of three con
ceptual poles: the material (or exposed object), the immaterial (or
hidden object), and the representation of sounds (or noise?) that arise
from the sound effects generator in With Hidden Noise. Two questions
seem relevant to this discussion: how is immaterial sound made mani
fest, and what are its effects on the artistic project as a whole? I will draw
a map of the various effects created by this objet sonore or sound struc
ture, which serves as the initial focal point for the musical landscape
even though it eventually evaporates on the sonic horizon of the work.
By way of conclusion, I will consider the ways in which a fascination for
152 Perspectives of New Music
this instrumental enigma affected subsequent artistic endeavors and

ideas.
While this article should in no way be taken as a systematic survey, it
does build up a series of key references. As a secondary result, this article
provides clarification of the concept of bruitism, mainly in order to bet
ter delineate the various issues that catalyzed a radical change in the
relationship between music and the outside world. There are issues of
perception that cannot be ignored in this discussion, such as how the ear
adjusts to increasingly intense sound phenomena?sonic structures that
become progressively more extreme, and inch ever closer to reality. Out
standing individuals and highly constitutive works of the new musical
landscape provide the locus for this study, because these subjects and
objects all fell under the watchful eye of Marcel Duchamp, who, without
warring, invested areas of music with a new tradition of the real. But
before I begin, a word of warning: there is almost no point in searching
for any absolute meaning in the use of the everyday, since it is entirely
possible that much of this might, in the final analysis, be simply an illu
sion.
A Verbal Score
This Readymade is a ball of twine between two squares of brass . . .

and before I finished it, Arensberg put something inside the ball of
twine, and never told me what it was, and I didn't want to know. It
was a sort of secret; and it makes a noise, so we called this Ready
made with a secret noise. Listen to it. I will never know whether it
is a diamond or a coin.6
The mystery of With Hidden Noise is due to the "small object that pro
duces a noise when it is shaken," explained Duchamp: "Even today," he
continued, "I still don't know what it is, no more than anyone else."7 A
similar enigma arises from the three short sentences placed on the brass
plates by the readymaster himself. "I wrote [the sentences] with missing
letters, like in a neon sign with unlit letters which renders the word
unintelligible."8 The missing letters in the statements resonate with the
absence of information evoked in the title, and forever hidden from
Duchamp. Since the artist himself had no desire to understand the sen
tences, trying to formulate a meaning seems counterintuitive, and might
simply be a waste of time.
Inscribed on top of the upper plate are a series of elusive words:
IRCARE LONGSEA/F.NE,HEA.,.O.SQUE/.TE.U S.ARP BARAIN
The bottom of the lower plate reads:
P.G. .ECIDES DEBARASSE./LE.D.SERT. F.URNIS.ENT/ AS HOW

. R. COR. ESPONDS
Underneath the top plate one finds a name and date:
Sophie Marcel/P?ques 1916-1931
Duchamp wrote specific instructions to accompany the completed

With Hidden Noise: "something unrecognizable by its sound is to be
placed within a box that is welded shut."9 The process for this work may
be compared to much later works, such as Words Pieces and Words
Events?the results of pre-Fluxus experiences at the beginning of the
1960s. Duchamp's directive may well have set the tone for Robert Mor
ris's (poly-expressive and unclassifiable) I BOX (\96\), which contains
statements that seem modeled on his mentor's, such as "Make a box
that contains something and leave it in a field."10 The idea of making an
object only to lose it is something that Robert Morris remained faithful
to for the rest of his career. Indeed, similar considerations very likely
guided the work of Walter de Maria and his recommendations for Boxes
for Meaningless Work ( 1961 ).
Duchamp's Musical Erratum (for three voices, 1913) may well have
served as an additional model for Morris and de Maria. Eschewing con
ventional means of notation, this work was meticulously detailed on a
miniaturized "verbal score" in which the composer specified both his
artistic goal and the rules that guided the development of the music.
Duchamp's instructions indicated that a text should be "repeated 3
times by 3 people, from 3 different scores made up of jumbled notes
drawn from out of a hat."11 But Duchamp went further. He also asked
that the work take the form of a "musical sculpture" with "sounds emit
ting and leaving from different places and forming a sculpture of sound
that endures."12 This particular work would go on to inspire John Cage
in 1985.13
In the second version for organ, written the same year, Duchamp
added a graphic interpretation of the score, as well as several manual
inscriptions, to his sonic system. Thus created, this musical poetic
allowed for a clear and easy reading. Likewise, for the composers who
came after Duchamp, this appears to have been the most appropriate
method for the visual representation of music: an Action Music or
Fluxus. As exemplified in works like Dieter Schnebel's MoNo: Musik

zum lesen, this type of music is intended as both an aural and visual
experience. It renders sound visible "in order to prove?or the impossi
bility thereof?a sense's appearance."14 With complete freedom, the
notes acquire agency. They take shape, express themselves, and broaden
out of their own volition: the musical staves are no longer equated with
prison bars.
An example of true interdisciplinary cross-over, this visual representa
tion of musical thought presages a multitude of symbols and new codes
(unintentionally at times!) that create new relationships between the
performer and the score, and the composer and the diversity of the
acoustical elements (which can now be considered part of the musical
material). These same elements also lay the groundwork for the abnega
tion of the roles and categories of "creator" and "artwork." Indeed, the
types of writing?or describing?used by Marcel Duchamp, John Cage
(Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, 1969), Earle Brown
(December 52, 1952), Christian Wolff (Intersection III, 1953) or the
Fluxus artists (La Monte Young, Composition 1960 #10; Toschi
Ichiyanagi, Sapporo, 1962) seem highly subversive: they underpin the
destruction of hierarchies that delineate the roles of performer and com
poser, creator and performer, and amateur and professional. To this
effect, in Private Pieces (1976) Tom Johnson created a set of verbal
instructions to be followed at the piano?instructions particularly acces
sible for individuals not versed in the language of music. To be even
more precise in his organ version of Musical Erratum, Duchamp under
lined the abandon of "virtuosity"15 and called for the removal of any
"musicianship" in his accompanying notes.16
This new pictographic means of expression offered contemporary
observers a different understanding of acoustical phenomena. In addi
tion to eliciting unexpected sound actions, today this type of music
suggests the "theatricalization" of each musical event and projects lis
teners into a universe of freedom and imagination, in which humour and
seriousness become interconnected. Mauricio Kagel, Dieter Schnebel,
Luciano Berio, Georges Aperghis and especially Gy?rgy Ligeti (who
may be viewed as a figurehead of sorts as a result of works like Aventures
and Nouvelles Aventures) viewed the score as a film script, or, a "score of
gestures" (Schnebel, K?rpersprache, 1980) with theatrical situations in
which derision and irony take front and center stage. For the actors in
this musical theatre, the idea was to mix up even the most varied artistic
categories and explore new relationships between the different charac
ters. Artists took the creation of "total theatre" as their goal, as a genre
that blended aesthetics, society (Luigi Nono, La Fabrica Illuminata,
1964), politics (Peter Schat, Labyrinthe, 1966), and even eroticism (Syl
vano Bussotti, La Passion Selon Sade, 1965). These same characteristics
may also be found in the works of Robert Morris, a great admirer of
Duchamp, who paid subtle tribute to his master with I BOX (1961). In
this installation, letter and image, nonsense and inexplicable enigma,
conventional irony and exhibitionistic eroticism are intimately inter
twined. A smaller-sized painting with an incision in the shape of an "I"
may be opened at whim by the spectator/voyeur, for a view of nude
photograph of Morris. Duchamp also appeared in his birthday suit in
Selected Details After Cranach and "Rel?che" (1967). These "details"
depict a series of engravings immortalized in the Ren? Clair film,
Entr'Acte (1924), which was shown during the intermission for the
Francis Picabia ballet, Rel?che (with music by Erik Satie). Here
Duchamp and Bronia Perlmutter posed for the camera in nothing more
than vine leaves.
A veritable wellspring of inspiration, this novel graphic waterfall has
proved intoxicating for composers. The recordings of the New York
School most notably reveal this: 36 Mesostic re and not re Marcel
Duchamp (John Cage, 1970), Projections 4 (Morton Feldman, 1950
51), and For 1, 2 or 3 people (Christian Wolff, 1964). These particular
graphic inventions influenced the artist Tom Philips, who, by using and
abusing writings along with verbal and graphic notation, produced
"imaginary scores" (or "conceptual") such as Last Notes From Endenich
(1976). In Europe, the same unfurling of "score-collages" (Luciano
Ori, Concerto di Primavera, 1986), "text-scores," "book-scores," or
even "musical newspaper" (Aus den sieben tagen, Karlheinz Stockhausen,
1968), continued further along the trail in broadening creative imagina
tion and perception?an aesthetic of "non finito."
In his time, Duchamp played with words, had fun with meaning by
assigning them symbolic functions, as with many of his later ready
mades. One work in this genre, Comb (1916) is signed and dated with
great precision: "planning for a moment to come (on such a day, such a
date, such a minute), FEB. 17 1916 11 A.M., to inscribe a ready
made." The "readymaster" adds: "Three or four drops of haughtiness
have nothing to do with savagery" ("3 ou 4 gouttes de hauteur n'ont
rien a voir avec la sauvagerie"). The inscription has nothing to do with
the comb itself, just as the components of the inscription bear no rela
tion to one another. Some of the same aesthetic considerations may
have shaped Why Not Sneeze Rrose Selavy (1921), a small birdcage
loaded with 152 marble cubes shaped as sugar cubes. This work is very
surprising, particularly when one dares to lift it up, because its unex
pected weight is rather astonishing. Duchamp's mysterious aims lead
him to apply this new process to the visual recognition of the object: "to
lose the possibility of recognizing (identifying) 2 similar objects (. . .) 2
undefined forms,"17 or "a series of identical words that have different
meanings."18
Generalized Bruitism
Shaking With Hidden Noise produces a "sound," or rather, a mysterious

"noise," which is particularly so for Duchamp: "the noise was especially
mysterious for me."19 The title of this acoustical object has some subtle
implications?"noise" not "sound." While fanciful theories of composer
intention might surely debase Duchamp's true goal, it seems appropriate
to consider whether or not this readymade may be viewed as a handing
over of the fundamental question of the future of music and hence a
broadening of values, music open to noises, to all sorts of sounds that
exist in daily reality. With this work, Duchamp plunged onlookers into
the heart of a socio-cultural polemic promoted by the first artistic avant
gardes of the early twentieth century: the freeing of the world of sound
and its opening up to bruitism at the same time as the work of Italian
futurist Luigi Russolo came to the fore. The publication of Arte dei
rumori (1913) confirmed the sonoristes infatuation with noise, now pro
moted to a rank of artistic material. Immediately, the world of noise
became "musicalized," and considered as entirely belonging to the con
ventional musical sphere.
As is well-known, Russolo's Arte dei rumori became a seminal source
of inspiration for twentieth-century composers. It was the first real musi
cal program to break with Western musical tradition as part of a
profound reconsideration of music. The consequences were decisive.
The development of tonality (polytonality), musical instruments, the
freedom of dissonance (cluster, microtone) and rhythm (polyrhythmic,
ostinato patterns), invited artists from all over the world to discover new
sounds close to bruitism, including composers such Charles Ives (The
Rainbow, 1914-21) and Henry Cowell (The Tides of Manaunaun,
1912). The incorporation of extra-musical elements in compositions also
comes to mind here, works like Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231 (1923),
Sergei Prokofiev's Le Pas d'acier (1927), Francis Poulenc's Les Mamelles
de Tir?sias (1947), and of course Erik Satie 's Parade (1917), which
assembled on stage a lottery wheel, a gun, a siren, an alarm clock, type
writers, and airplanes. Upping the ante, for Ballet M?chanique (1924)
George Antheil called for the use of eight mechanical pianos, a pianola,
six xylophones, electric bells, circular saws, and airplanes propellers. For
the first American performance at Carnegie Hall in 1927, he added

automobile horns, anvils, and eight pianos. Maurice Ravel was also
drawn to this new sound universe. For his lyrical fantasy L'Enfant et les
sortil?ges (1924), he used a cheese grater, a whip, and heliophones. Like
wise Darius Milhaud took advantage of a wind machine, a hammer, a
siren, a whip, and a whistle, combined with a whole array of percussion
instruments for L'Homme et son D?sir (1921). These percussion instru
ments later played a important role in Cage's works, most notably in his
prepared piano pieces (Bacchanale, 1938; Music for Marcel Duchamp,
1947) and especially Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48) and First Con
struction in Metal (1937), all of which incorporate found objects as
instruments of indeterminate pitch.
The blurring of boundaries between high art and common reality is
now a matter of history. Duchamp's artistic preoccupations have an ana
logue in Kurt Schwitters's integration of everyday life fragments, which
are interspersed throughout his work. Stimulated by the Hanoverian
dadaists and Jackson Pollock's "all-over" painting technique, Allan
Kaprow's series of collages, completed between 1953 and 1956, made
use of anything he collected during his many meanderings through vari
ous city streets. Through Pollock's work, Kaprow came to appreciate the
possibility of building bridges between timeless art and the daily world
of common materials and the ordinary experiment. Reified by the art
critic Pierre Restany, this phenomenon was classified and provided with
a theoretical apparatus in Restany's First Proclamation of the New Real
ism, published in Milan in April of 1960.
The Transcended Instrument
"New Realism" is a European phenomenon that demonstrated great

affinity for 1960s New York Neo-Dadaism. The movement brought
together artist-sociologists who analyzed all the forms and manifesta
tions of the consumer society (i.e., Arman, Cesar, Christo, Yves Klein,
Mimmo Rotella, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely). All claimed to be plan
etary recyclers, as advertising images, posters, and objects of any kind
from any source?from the bowels of dumping grounds to the depths of
the wrecking yard and other waste repositories?became an inex
haustible source of artistic inspiration (Arman, Domestic Dustbin, 1960;
Cesar, Sunbeam Compression, 1961). It dramatically reveals the extent to
which there arose a need for a renewed relationship between citizens in
a world of mass production that was in full expansion mode at the time.
These artists proposed a new way to look at reality. They embraced the
object just as it was, as raw material, while transcending its banal reality.
While paying tribute to his spiritual mentor and friend, with The Lunch
of Marcel Duchamp (1964), Spoerri denounced the new social problems
by pressing into service an energetic proliferation of images and
attempted to reconcile life with art. Recent decades have borne witness
to a plethora of investigations into the relationship between life and art:
Spoerri's "painting-traps" are supposed to inform, arouse, and force the
spectator to observe what is not or no longer looked at.
The majority of New Realism artists created close ties of friendship
with Marcel Duchamp and furthered his stance against attaching exces
sive importance to a work of art. Indeed, "at the present, Marcel
Duchamp's found objects . . . assume another meaning. They assert the
right to direct expression by a whole organic sector of modern activity?
one of the city, street, factory, and series production."20 But the move
ment's raison d'?tre should not be conceived of as an endless
reproduction of Duchampian behaviour: in "Realism of Accumula
tions,"21 Arman sought to establish a distinct place for himself and his
ideas as innovative. In his 1960 Angers of Objects Arman cast found
objects as kindling in order to set a violin, cello, double bass, and a
piano ablaze. In Chopin's Waterloo (1963), the instrument crumbled up
in pieces and eventually burned. After 1961, Arman's quick-tempered
violence evolved into an aggressive dislocation of musical instruments or
objects from a variety of sources: "Cuts of Dissected Objects" ( Cut of
Violin, 1961) was subsequendy recomposed in a new shape (Eine kleine
nachtmusik, 2000). Jean Tinguely's destroying sound action bears some
resemblance, but the difference is that Arman (sometimes) pressed exist
ing objects into artistic service, while Tinguely (sometimes) built
machines only in order to break them. Arman's aggressiveness towards
traditional string-instrument manufacturers may be seen to justify his
work, since violence against musical instruments might be understood as
an avant-garde form of revenge following centuries of "oppressive" and
"dictatorial" music. It also indicates the artist's longing to widen the
field of musical practices and techniques.
In the same highly symbolic sphere and following Duchamp's con
finement gesture in With Hidden Noise, some of the Fluxus musicians
suggested inward violence: together and at the same time, they wrapped
up instruments in order to render them dumb, or alternately dramati
cally juxtaposed them them with extra-musical objects.22 Thus, the
instrument was reduced to silence?a significant preoccupation for John
Cage in The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs for voice and silent
piano (1942), A Flower (1950), 4>33? (1952), Nowth Upon Nacht
(1985) and is also a feature of some of Joseph Beuys's "sound setting
up" works that confine the piano to silence. Artists such as Nam June
Paik devoted themselves to the creation of new musical instruments,
such as Paik's 1958 Klavier Integral, which was modeled on Cage's cele
brated prepared piano. The Klavier Integral is an upright piano in which
various objects are inserted both in and outside of the instrument (e.g.,
sound gadgets, barbed wire, telephone, radio alarm clock, bra, lamp,
and children's knick-knacks). The whole is connected to an electric
device.
In 1961, Paik created Urmusik ("Primitive Music"), the construction
of which curiously recalls the readymade With Hidden Noise. Urmusik
works as a primitive, wooden resonance box: strings are stretched across
the top, and inside the instrument a ball rolls around in a tin box. Paik's
1963 Zen Exercises made use of simple objects for instrumental and
musical ends such as strainers, pans, sleigh-bells, keys, and shoes. Pre
viewed at Cambridge University (31 March 1961), Robert Morris's
sound sculpture, The Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, makes use
of similar materials. In his own words:
The first object I made when I came to New York was a box with
sound, which is a cube about eight inches on a side. I recorded the
sound of making this box and put a speaker in it so that it plays for
three hours the sounds of its being constructed. And it wasn't con
scious with me but I think this was again ... I mean this com
pletely split the process and the object. And yet put them both back
together again. So in some way I think this was a work that allowed
me then to go ahead. I mean really resolved that conflict that had
occurred in painting.23
The first conceptual works of Morris appeared while Duchamp's work

and thought was being rediscovered around the end of the 1950s.
Avant-garde artists of that time reconsidered his readymades and very
often attributed them with surprising aesthetic qualities. Duchamp
reacted to this attention with some degree of astonishment: "I threw the
bottle-rack and the urinal at their faces as a provocation and now they
admire them for their aesthetic beauty!"24 Entirely inspired by the spirit
of the artistic tour guide, Morris's "musical box" becomes exposed to
the public eye by revealing its own generated music?a sharp contrast
with the static nature of its cubic form and the intense sounding move
ment that accompanies it. Moreover, it combines the real time of the
object such as it exists and the time in which it was created (now com
pleted). The posthumous work of Duchamp Given: 1. The Waterfall,
2. The Illuminating Gas (1946-66) was considered by Cage to be "a
musical work because when we build it we generate sounds," and most

certainly influenced Robert Morris. Built and assembled without any
particular significance or any value, Walter de Maria's Boxes for Mean
ingless Work could also be an echo of Duchamp's sound strategies. In a
parallel project, Robert Morris realized Card File (1962-3), a series of
cards on which a series of hazy concepts are written and laid out alpha
betically on a vertical support. Through this initial process, Morris
created a description of the necessary stages required to achieve the
work. The terms used in this file include such things as accidents,
alphabets, cards, categories, conception, criticism, or decisions, dissatis
factions, durations, forms, future, interruptions, names, numbers,
possibilities, prices, purchases, owners, and signature. As a result, the
work had no content other than the circumstances of its execution.
Through this piece, Morris also asserted that if one wished to under
stand and penetrate all subtleties of the work, one would have to
consider all the methods used in bringing it forth. The status of the
work of art is immediately called into question, because the range of
cards can undergo a change:
In a broad sense art has always been on object, static and final, even
though structurally it may have been a depiction or existed as a
fragment. What is being attacked, however, is something more than
art as icon. Under attack is the rationalistic notion that art is a form
of work that results in a finished product. Duchamp, of course,
attacked the Marxist notion that labor was an index of value, but
Readymades are traditionally iconic art objects. What art now has in
its hand is mutable stuff which need not arrive at the point of being
finalized with respect to either time or space. The notion that work
is an irreversible process ending in a static icon-object no longer has
much relevance.25
Marcel Duchamp's musical and "Dismountable approximation" illus

trate this process perfectly. John Cage recalled that "for his final opus,
Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas, exhibited in Philadel
phia, [Duchamp] wrote a book [the "Dismountable approximation"]
that provided a blueprint for dismantling the work and rebuilding it.26
It also provided information on how to proceed, as well as the only defi
nition of the musical notation, isn't that so? So it is a musical work of
art; because when you follow the instructions you produce sounds."27
But Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas was never created
as a musical piece, even though it is entirely "possible to do it. . . . And
if one takes it like a musical piece, one gets the piece [that Duchamp]
made for his two sisters with the notes in the hat, The Bride Stripped
Bare By Bachelors, Even [Musical Erratum for three voices], and there is
too this musical piece with the small railroad, and there is the Sound
Sculpture which is today called 'Dismountable approximation.'"28
Music Boxes
So great is the ambiguity of the readymade With Hidden Noise that it

may have been a significant source of motivation for other artists to
compose similar works. Walter de Maria's tribute to John Cage, Cage:
Portrait of John Cage / Portrait of the School of Cage (1961) may be one
such case, even though it makes no direct reference to Duchamp. The
inventor created two vertical cages: a simple one for the Portrait of John
Cage and another containing a smaller cage for the second part of the
title. The work was shown in 1966 at a celebrated exhibition of mini
malists entitled Primary Structures. Before that, two of the preparatory
studies were published in the review Fluxus Newspaper 2. Revisiting the
Duchampian topic of the birdcage, de Maria presented during a New
York exhibition in 1963 a Statue of John Cage performed a year before.
After years of finding his way and wavering between a career as a
musician and a life as a visual artist, under the aegis of the Fluxus artists
he had met in the 1950s de Maria presented a series of works at the AG
Gallery (founded by George Maciunas, leader of Fluxus), one of which
was Boxes for Meaningless Work (1961). These "boxes for a work of art
with no meaning" appear as very ordinary ordinary wood structures, the
form of which likely has analogues in John Cage's musical technique
(even if de Maria's use of chance is different from Cage's) or La Monte
Young's. A third source for these structures is revealed in de Maria's
Boxes, a work the artist claimed to have been the result of "the influence
of a kind of Japanese sensitivity which existed in California, I started to
build very small boxes, very clean, quiet, static, non-relational sculp
tures."29 But Duchamp's artistic thumbprint is never far away. In
addition to his "Boxes" (The Box of 1914, The Box of 1932, The Green
Box and The White Box, The Box in a Valise containing "preserve think
ing, mental in box"), there is the seminal sculpture-receptacle With
Hidden Noise: a box enclosing an unknown sound object, an object of
all secrets. Likewise for Boxes for Meaningless Work (1961), de Maria
provided Fluxus with the following instructions (or Duchampian direc
tive?): "Transfer things from one box to the next box back and forth,
back and forth, etc. Be aware that what you are doing is meaningless."
Some of the works of Andy Warhol also seem based on a similar prin
ciple. A collection of bottles piled up in the manner of a supermarket
display, or cardboard Brillo Boxes heaped together and stacked on top of
each other. Warhol shared Walter de Maria's purpose in Boxes for Mean
ingless Work: he considered the meaning of his painting to lay "on the
surface," with no message, no significance. De Maria's output also
includes the series of Ball Boxes (or Ball Drop) of which the celebrated
Move the Ball Slowly Down the Row (1962-5) is a part, reproducing the
tribute paid to La Monte Young entitled Instrument for La Monte
Toung (1966). This piece consists of a metal box in which a ball is
meant to roll "fifty times" and in so doing produce sound shocks that
are intensely amplified by microphones positioned at each end of the
box. As an imitation of Move the Ball Slowly Down the Row, de Maria
asks spectators to set the object rolling. So "[you may expect] to hear
the ball thunder through a maze of channels hidden in the box, until it
reappears from a hole below. This waiting is detonative thanks to the
crashing sounds of the ball when it directly falls from the upper to the
lower hole."30
Boxes and balls seem to be at the heart of American avant-garde cre
ativity in the 1950s and '60s. But is this simply broad enthusiasm for a
new concept and all its varieties? Or is this symptomatic of a need for
simple forms with substantial suggestive and emotional power? Robert
Morris seemed to suggest the importance of spectator participation in
relationship to his work with regular polyhedrons (cubic, pyramids,
etc.). For Morris, these shapes offered the advantage "of turning around
the objects to explore their totality, their Gestalt. We see, and at once
we 'know' that our mental image represents the reality of the object."31
Surprisingly, many sound sculptures approach Duchamp's box with a
rolling object. It is useful to recall Alexander Calder's sound mobile enti
tled Une boule blanche, une boule noire (1930) as an example here.
Calder created his sound mobile by hanging two balls from the two ends
of an instrument and pushing them at random. The balls collide by pure
chance, and generate metallic sounds dispersed throughout a low
pitched register. Jumping thirty years ahead, we find an analogue for
this in Paik's Urmusik discussed above, and the famous work of Robert
Morris through which Marcel Duchamp's memory still resounds. The
impact of the spiritual leader of the contemporary art on Robert Morris
cannot be denied. Morris immediately purchased the first publication
devoted to Duchamp's work (Robert Lebel, On Marcel Duchamp,
1959), and the consequences were immediate. In 1963, Morris worked
out the "Large Glass" Litanies, which is a box covered with lead which
contains twenty-seven suspended keys. On each one, Morris wrote the
Litanies of the Carriage reproduced in The Green Box: "slow Life.

Vicious circle. Onanism. Horizontal. Butter of life. Bachelor regarded as
a rebounding on this buffer. Rebounding = junk of life. Cheap imita
tion. Tin. Cords. Iron wire. Crude wooden pulleys. Eccentrics.
Monotonous flywheel. Beer professor."32
But Robert Morris also created a Duchampian box, With the Sound of
Its Own Making, a work already mentioned in this article. A sealed cubic
box, made with wood boards and ready to be seen, broadcasts sounds in
real-time that were generated by its own making. Some instructions were
written on the lid under which a switch is hidden: "To begin turn on
the switch and continue doing what you are doing?or don't?do some
thing else. Later switch may be turned off?after a second, hour, day,
year, post-humously."
An Air of Eternity
Like the trajectory traced by Minimalist artists, the exploration of boxes

and cages became limitless. They offer a multitude of new explorations
in sound and art, mainly in the serial approach of minimalist artists. One
might consider the many examples offered in Tony Smith's steel box
(Die, 1962), Carl Andre's rectangular or square plates (Cedar Piece,
1959-74), Donald Judd's parallelepipeds (Coated Sheet, 1971), Sol Le
Witt's cubes (Structures, 1973), Robert Morris's Performance Box,
Robert Filliou's Optimistic Box cycle (1968-81) and Fluxus's Fluxboxes.
Separate cases in point include musicians whose work extends into the
infinite: La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Taking as a starting point
the first work of their friend, Robert Morris, they created the series enti
tled Sound and Light Box (1967), "Boxes of sound and light," a kind of
miniature Dream House:
Over the years, I constructed several light boxes utilizing calli

graphic cutout designs. In 1967, I received a commission from
Betty Freeman to create a light and sound object in collaboration
with La Monte Young. The resulting work, Music and Light Box
(1968) was selected by Pontus Hulten for inclusion in "The
Machine" show, which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in
November 1968.33
Like all of Zazeela's luminous compositions (those accompanying the

Theatre of the Eternal Music since 1966), Music and Light Box is capable
of sending out uninterrupted lines and patterns by a device hidden
inside. Covered with a "Mylar" magenta gel that enriches the nuances,
the sound and light sculpture coordinates the materialization of the
empty space perceived as a resounding box. The box containing the
sound represents a way of dominating it (although the sound evolves
freely in its environment), to fix it in empty space?a process similar to
Duchamp's when he locked up the Air of Paris in an empty bulb of glass
in 1919. Likewise the artist Murakami (from the Gutat group) designed
a cube of glass in order "to catch the air." In fact, what seems empty is
actually filled up with air: "the air is to the sound what the sound is to
the music, its substance."34
Music exists in the mental realm. In 1919, Duchamp bought a glass
bulb at a Parisian pharmacy as a gift for his friends, Louise and Walter
Arensberg. Particularly inspired by Marcel Duchamp, Ulf Linde elabo
rated a replica of this found-object while singing a Jacques Offenbach
melody in order to "[refer to] a single Parisian air." "At the end of . . .
1919, I went back to America and wanted to bring back a gift to my
friends Arensberg. I asked a Parisian pharmacist to empty a glass bulb
full of serum and reseal it. This is the invaluable bulb of 50 cubic cen
timeters of Paris Air (50 cc of Paris Air), which I brought to the
Arensbergs in 1919."35
This time, Duchamp locked up Parisian air in order to forever fix in
time the moment of the creation of this found-object. Even invisible,
even inaudible, the sound is held, maintained and supported by the
instrument in which the sound is. It invites the listener to concentrate
and meditate. Could this immaterial conception of the sound have been
reflected in the miniature poems of the Fluxus artists? I am thinking
here of eternal musical actions?a note or a line that must be held for
one unspecified length of time, and where time is suspended as a result.
This is the sort ofthing behind Composition 1960 #i0 to Bob Morris, in
which La Monte Young instructs performers to "Draw a straight line
and follow it," and Composition 1960 #7 in which he envisions a held
fifth (Bt|?Ffl) during an indeterminate lapse of time. This is the same fifth
that creates tension in Juan Hidalgo's Rrose Selavy (the feminine alter
ego created by Marcel Duchamp)36 in 1975.37 "To be held for a long
time": a material, visible and continuous line that propels Minimalist
art.38 This musical line leads to the incommensurability of sound: "sim
plicity of form does not necessarily mean simplicity of experiment."39 La
Monte Young's compositions for one sound ( Studies for The Bowed
Gong and Poem for Tables, Chairs, Benches, from 1959 and 1960) should
probably be viewed as a process that continues ad infinitum beyond the
music to eventual stagnation and sound contemplation.
The Nonsense Voice
Emptiness represents the music received and (sometimes definitively)

locked up in boxes. Emptiness may be crossed by breaths connecting the
visible world to an invisible world. In poetry, emptiness materializes
with the suppression of grammatical entities?"empty-words." This was
probably the conceptual foundation for works like Words Events (or
Words Pieces), subtitles, other Duchampian headings, and dadaist poetry
full of nonsense ("a crazy game within emptiness")40 which could in
their way illustrate Taoist thoughts. In the field of calligraphy, the open
(or empty) spaces actually have an essential function in the development
of the written parts. For artists, the concept of emptiness resulting from
Zen philosophy created new perspectives, wide prospects related to man
and representations of the world. It may also have revived an interest in
mankind and his relationship with nature: musical boxes or sound sculp
tures imagined by Duchamp (With Hidden Noise, 1916; Unhappy
Readymade, 1919), gave life to the "natural sculptures"41 (Laurie
Anderson, Windbook, 1974; Marcel Duchamp, Dust Breeding, 1920).
The presence of emptiness also had the potential to erase European
paternity, to prevent the utterance and expressions inherent in a con
sumer society. Duchamp attempted to make the word "unintelligible"42
to empty it of its fundamental significance. Such may be the intention of
the Minimalists as well: the idea of meaningless work that is of no use
and does not have any particular value.
In sum, the readymade was "neither art nor art for art, but art on art,
or better, to use an expression that Duchamp loved, art in connection
with art."43 Like a nonsense tool, a bazaar item without any intrinsic
meaning, the readymade expressed nothing but its own identity. It
mutated in its meaning through the irony of the artist's expression. In
the work of art, it was dispossessed of its original function and meaning.
This is why the bicycle wheel no longer ran or turned. This is why the
With Hidden Noise musical box is no longer shaken?its magic sound
effects reduced to silence. Likewise, the Comb no longer uncurls but is
still disturbing. Still, it has been possible to fill the Fountain with liquid
on several occasions.44 As for the two musical compositions (Musical
Erratum and The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Even/Musical
Erratum), they persist as an open path for the free exercise of the per
former's imagination and interpretation.
Throughout this article I have emphasized the importance of Marcel
Duchamp's work, his conception of the musical box, and the legacy of
comments and works it elicited in later generations. Consciously or not,
some of the artists mentioned above pursued the artistic and iconoclastic
gesture of Duchamp. But while a few express respect for the readymas
ter, others try to limit Duchamp's effect on them by adopting
antithetical strategies, sometimes in a violent way. In The Silence of Mar
cel Duchamp is Overrated (1964), Joseph Beuys suggested that
Duchamp's exploitation of the readymade was deficient, arguing that
silence was a dead end for art, incapable of spawning positive change.
Sometimes the criticism was more prickly: in For Duchamp (1969),
Robert Filliou inserted a bicycle wheel into a wooden box which he
labeled "The End." Is this a bitter criticism of the commercial gear in
which the readymade?and its inventor?had lost their way? Filliou
would attempt to restore the Duchampian concept to its proper place on
the artistic chess-board. To this end, Robert Morris created Optimistic
Box No. 3 (1969), a wooden chess box with the remarks, "So much bet
ter if you cannot play the chess: you wouldn't risk to imitate Marcel
Duchamp." However, Filliou also attempted to produce dust, perhaps in
remembrance of Duchamp's Dust of Dust, 1977. It's another box con
taining a rag used to clean the surface of a painting, possibly to get rid
of "retinal art," to borrow Duchamp's expression for the whole tradition
of painting for the eyes only as opposed to the "non-retinal" beauty of
gray matter.
John Cage once wrote that "Had Marcel Duchamp not lived, it
would have been necessary for someone exactly like him to live, to bring
about, that is, the world as we begin to know and experience it."45 The
composer seems willing to believe (and to note) that a number of artists
and authors in his day followed in Marcel Duchamp's attractive foot
steps?sometimes spontaneously, sometimes unwillingly. But if these
meetings between artists were only based on purest chance, "is it possi
ble that the primary gesture of the 'creator' consisted in only putting a
red sock in a yellow box?" as Filliou asked?46 Our knowledge is limited
because Marcel Duchamp continues to confuse the artistic community
and to lure onlookers in with his meddling?that is why he continues to
inspire contemplation in our day.
?Translated from the French by Catrina Flint de M?dicis
Notes
1. John Cage, quoted in Jean-Yves Bosseur and Daniel Caux, John

Cage (Paris: Minerve, 1993), p. 172.
2. Robert Lebel, Sur Marcel Duchamp (Paris: Trianon, 1959), p. 39.
3. Marcel Duchamp, Duchamp du signe (Paris: Flammarion, 1994),
p. 49. Hereafter cited as DDS.
4. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in Pierre Cabanne, Les 3 Duchamp:

Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp (Paris:
La Biblioth?que des Arts, 1975), p. 141.
5. Sophie St?vance, "Impacts and Echoes of Marcel Duchamp's Sono
sphere," Ph.D. diss., University of Rouen, 2005.
6. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in James Johnson Sweeney, A Conversa

tion with Marcel Duchamp, film (National Broadcasting Company
Television, January 1956), "Elderly Wise Men" series.
7. Duchamp, DDS, p. 226.
8. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in Michael Gibson, Duchamp, Dada (Paris:
Nouvelles Editions Fran?aises, 1991), p. 217.
9. DDS, p. 53.
10. Letter from Robert Morris to La Monte Young, September 7, 1960,
quoted in Henry Flynt, "La Monte Young in New York, 1960-62,"
in Sound and Light: La Monte Toung, Marian Zazeela, William
Duckworth and Richard Fleming, editors (Lewisburg, Penn.: Buck
well Review 40, no. 1, 1996), pp. 44-97.
11. Ibid., p. 47.
12. Liner notes to Music by Marcel Duchamp (LP), Block EB202, Petr
Kotik & S.E.M. Ensemble, John Cage (voice), 1991. Reprinted in
DDS, p. 47.
13. John Cage, Sculpture Musicale (Madrid: Estampa, 1991).
14. John Cage, Pour les oiseaux: Entretiens avec Daniel Charles (Paris:
L'Herne, 2002), pp. 131-2.
15. "The virtuoso intermediary is suppressed," Duchamp, DDS, p. 53.
16. Marcel Duchamp, Notes (Paris: Flammarion, 1999), no. 199, p. 27.
168 Perspectives of New Music.
17. DDS, p. 47.

18. Michel Foucault, Raymond Roussel (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), p. 22.
19. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in Cabanne, Les 3 Duchamp, p. 141.

20. Pierre Restany, "? 40? au-dessus de Dada" (Paris: Galerie J., 17
May-10 June 1961), quoted in 1960, Les Nouveaux R?alistes (Paris:
Mus?e d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1986), pp. 266-7.
21. Arman, "R?alisme des accumulations" Z?ro 3, 1960, pp. 208-9.
22. La Monte Young, in his piece Piano Piece for David Tudor #1
(1960), asks "to bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water on stage
for the piano to eat or drink. The piece is over after the piano eats
or decides not to."
23. Interview with Robert Morris, conducted by Paul Cummings for

the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, March 10,
1968.
24. Marcel Duchamp, letter to Hans Richter, November 10, 1962, quo
ted in Hans Richter, Dada, Kunst und Antikunst: der Beitrug
Dadas zur Kunst des 20. Jahrhurderts (Cologne: DuMont Schau
berg, 1964), p. 196.
25. Robert Morris, quoted in Conceptual Art and Aspects, Donald H.
Karshan, editor (New York: New York Cultural Center, 1970), p.
47.
26. Marcel Duchamp, Manual of Instructions for Marcel Duchamp
?tant Donn?s: Io la chute d'eau 2? le gaz d'?clairage (Philadelphia:
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1987).
27. John Cage, quoted in Jean-Yves Bosseur, John Cage, p. 172.
28. John Cage, quoted in Euphonia, The France Culture Radio Music
Program, "Zen, I-ching, Dada and the indeterminacy music," by
Daniel Caux, with the American composer Tom Johnson, 1992.
29. Walter de Maria, cited by Paul Cummings in "Interview with Walter

de Maria for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,"
New York City, 4 October 1972, http://www.aaa.si.edu/oralhist/
demari72.htm.
30. Kenneth Baker, Minimalism: Art of Circumstance (New York:

Abbeville, 1988), p. 82.
31. Robert Morris, quoted in Irving Sandler, Le triomphe de Fart

am?ricain, vol. 2: Les Ann?es soixante, "La Sculpture minimaliste"
(Paris: Carr?, 1990), p. 264.
32. DDS, p. 81. Robert Morris interprets Duchamp's Three Standard
Stoppages (1913) with Three Rulers, in 1963. He exposes three
meters with various lengths.
33. Marian Zazeela, quoted in http://www.mantratv.com/artist/

marianZazeela.htm.
34. Jean-Marc Chouvel, VEspace: Musique/Philosophie, (Paris:

L'Harmattan, 1998), p. 187.
35. Ulf Linde, quoted in Francis M. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp, VArt
? P?re de la reproduction m?canis?e (Paris: Hazan, 1999), p. 224,
and note 33, p. 253.
36. Rrose Selavy lived on as the person to whom Duchamp attributed
works of art, readymades, puns and writings throughout his life.
37. Juan Hidalgo, Rrose S?lavy (UP) (Milan: Cramps, 1977).
38. Piero Manzoni draws single lines on paper, placed in sealed card
board tubes, labelled and signed by the artist. He executed the
longest line on July 4, 1960, at Hernig, Denmark on a 7,200-meter
roll of newsprint. Yoko Ono imagines in 1964 Line Piece I ("Draw a
line. Erase the line"), Line Piece II ("Erase lines"), or Line Piece III
("Draw a line with yourself. Go on drawing until you disappear").
She imagines too a "Painting to construct in your head" where "it is
possible for a straight line to exist?not as a segment of a cure
***but as a straight line" (Yoko Ono, Grapefruit, A Book of
Instructions + Drawings, with an introduction by John Lennon
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), p. 254.) After having drawn
a line, Ono asks: "Have you seen a horizon lately? Go see a horizon.
Measure it from where you stand and let us know the length"
(Grapefruit, p. 217, cf. Example 7). Walter de Maria made the Mile
Long Drawing (1968) in the Mojave desert for walls in the desert.
This project, originally conceived in 1962, consists of two parallel
mile-long walls. He also created Desert Cross or Las Vegas Piece
(1969). Let us mention too Nam June Paik's Zen for Head, and
Earle Brown's score of the Four Systems (1954): rather than a tradi
tionally notated score, this music appears on the page as a series of
black lines, some longer, some thicker, some overlapping, some
higher or lower on the page.
39. Robert Morris, quoted in Daniel Wheeler, L'Art du Xx? si?cle: De

1945 ? nos jours (Paris: Flammarion, 1992), p. 221.
40. Letter to Richard Huelsenbeck, November 28, 1916, quoted in
Richter, Dada?Art et Anti-Art, p. 28.
41. Cl?ment Rosset, L'Anti-nature: El?ments pour une philosophie
tragique (Paris: PUF, 1986), p. 53.
42. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in Gibson, Duchamp?Dada, p. 217.
43. Thierry de Duve, R?sonances du readymade: Duchamp entre avant
garde et tradition (N?mes: Jacqueline Chamb?n, 1989), p. 15.
44. Pierre Pinoncelli, Bjorn Kjelltoft, Yuan Cai, JJ Xi, and Brian Eno
urinated in Duchamp's Fountain.
45. John Cage, A Tear From Monday: New Lectures and Writings (Mid
dletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), p. 70.
46. Robert Fillliou [sic], Sprengel-Museum, Hanover/Mus?e d'Art

Moderne de la ville de Paris/Kunsthalle Bern, 1984-85.

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Marcel Duchamp's Musical Secret Boxed in the Tradition of the Real: A New Instrumental

initiatives, there remains nonetheless a territory in his work that remains

Moneybox (or preserves): make a Readymade with a box containing

In 1916 in New York, Duchamp exhibited an "Assisted Readymade,"

this instrumental enigma affected subsequent artistic endeavors and

This Readymade is a ball of twine between two squares of brass . . .

IRCARE LONGSEA/F.NE,HEA.,.O.SQUE/.TE.U S.ARP BARAIN

The bottom of the lower plate reads:

P.G. .ECIDES DEBARASSE./LE.D.SERT. F.URNIS.ENT/ AS HOW

Underneath the top plate one finds a name and date:

Sophie Marcel/P?ques 1916-1931

Duchamp wrote specific instructions to accompany the completed

Fluxus. As exemplified in works like Dieter Schnebel's MoNo: Musik

Shaking With Hidden Noise produces a "sound," or rather, a mysterious

the first American performance at Carnegie Hall in 1927, he added

The Transcended Instrument

"New Realism" is a European phenomenon that demonstrated great

The first conceptual works of Morris appeared while Duchamp's work

musical work because when we build it we generate sounds," and most

Marcel Duchamp's musical and "Dismountable approximation" illus

So great is the ambiguity of the readymade With Hidden Noise that it

Litanies of the Carriage reproduced in The Green Box: "slow Life.

Like the trajectory traced by Minimalist artists, the exploration of boxes

Over the years, I constructed several light boxes utilizing calli

Like all of Zazeela's luminous compositions (those accompanying the

The Nonsense Voice

Emptiness represents the music received and (sometimes definitively)

?Translated from the French by Catrina Flint de M?dicis

1. John Cage, quoted in Jean-Yves Bosseur and Daniel Caux, John

4. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in Pierre Cabanne, Les 3 Duchamp:

6. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in James Johnson Sweeney, A Conversa

17. DDS, p. 47.

19. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in Cabanne, Les 3 Duchamp, p. 141.

23. Interview with Robert Morris, conducted by Paul Cummings for

29. Walter de Maria, cited by Paul Cummings in "Interview with Walter

30. Kenneth Baker, Minimalism: Art of Circumstance (New York:

31. Robert Morris, quoted in Irving Sandler, Le triomphe de Fart

33. Marian Zazeela, quoted in http://www.mantratv.com/artist/

34. Jean-Marc Chouvel, VEspace: Musique/Philosophie, (Paris:

37. Juan Hidalgo, Rrose S?lavy (UP) (Milan: Cramps, 1977).

39. Robert Morris, quoted in Daniel Wheeler, L'Art du Xx? si?cle: De

46. Robert Fillliou [sic], Sprengel-Museum, Hanover/Mus?e d'Art

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