Duchamp’s Pipe
A Chess Romance
Marcel Duchamp & George Koltanowski
By Celia Rabinovitch
“Duchamp’s Pipe is an utterly unique book. Celia Rabinovitch has accomplished something wondrous here: a work of scholarship that is also a dream, one worthy of the Surrealist figures that populate its pages.”
—J. F. MARTEL
Spanning three decades, two continents, two world wars, and the international art and chess scenes of the mid twentieth century, Duchamp's Pipe explores the remarkable friendship between art world enfant terrible Marcel Duchamp and blindfold chess champion George Koltanowski.
Starting with the recently discovered pipe that Duchamp gave to Koltanowski, artist and cultural historian Celia Rabinovitch uncovers each man's motivations through the chess matches that sparked their relationship. This tale of genius and resilience offers fresh insights into the meaning of the gift in the bohemian underground, where we discover the bond between the eccentric chess wizard Koltanowski and the notorious Dadaist artist Duchamp.
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About the Author
CELIA RABINOVITCH (PhD, MFA), an artist, writer and scholar, weaves the artist’s experience into a nuanced understanding of modern art, history, cultural anthropology and comparative mythology. Her publications connect art, biography, poetry and spiritual experience. Her luminous paintings have been shown in Canada, Europe and the USA. She has directed extension programs in fine arts, design and music at U.C. Berkeley and taught at the University of Colorado, California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as being an invited speaker at Cornell University, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has been an artist in residence at Syracuse University and the University of Victoria, British Columbia.
“Duchamp's Pipe offers a delightful and fascinating study of Duchamp's career in a manner remarkably attuned to his sensibility. …This book shows how the richest form of thinking in the arts may lie in attempting to match the mind to the matter of matter.”
—CHARLES ALTIERI, author of Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity, and The Art of 20th Century American Poetry.