Immer Muttig! 34 petites Duchamperies

par Malcolm Green

In an edition of 180 A5 copies, 36pp, choicest paper. €14

Legend has it that the signature ‘R. Mutt’ on Marcel Duchamp’s famous ready-made Fountain, which was submitted to the Society of Independents exhibition in New York in 1917 but not publicly presented, is a play on the German word ‘Armut’ or poverty. The syllable ‘mut’ appears in many German words, and means variously cheer, courage, or dis­position, depending on the word’s overall meaning. The mut/mutt variations in this slim volume have been roughly translated in the back of the book for the English-speakign audience.

MD: I don’t believe in the word ‘being’. The idea of being is a human invention.

PC.: Being is very poetic.

MD.: No, not at all. It’s an essential concept, which doesn’t exist at all in reality, and which I don’t believe in, though people in general have a cast-iron belief in it… No one ever thinks of not believing in ‘I am,’ no? M. Duchamp, Dialogues, New York, 1987, p.89