Review of Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even by Richard Hamilton

Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even by Richard Hamilton

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is less of a book than it is an extension of Duchamp's masterwork The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, sometimes known as The Large Glass. This book is a typographical version of the box of notes that Duchamp created as a supplemental multiple of the piece, and like the piece that inspired it, it is open-ended, cryptic and, to me at least, bears repeated scrutiny. I'll be coming back to this book again, now that I know it is safely ensconced in the library, hidden among the art glass and bottle collector books.

What I did walk away with is the statement that The Large Glass is a "delay in glass," implying that the images are less permanent on the structure as they are momentarily trapped. This sense of impermanence feeds into the use of dust as a pigment, the use of glass as a medium, even the nature of glass itself (the debate whether glass is a slow-moving liquid or a solid). Like the piece it supports, it offers a continuation of the work's competing logic and mystery, and that is what I look for in art.


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