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Last Words (Rilke, Wittgenstein) (Duchamp)
Author(s) -
Nesbit Molly
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00129
Subject(s) - casual , relation (database) , speculation , object (grammar) , privilege (computing) , art history , art , philosophy , epistemology , aesthetics , linguistics , computer science , law , computer security , database , political science , economics , macroeconomics
Starting out from a casual remark attributed to Michael Baxandall, his wishing ‘to redo Roger Fry from nature’, the article sets up a dialogue between Marcel Duchamp and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This takes place on the grounds of their understanding of the relation between language and nature on the one hand and a possible interweaving of each others epistemology on the other. Without further referring to Michael Baxandall himself, this interplay sets out a means of thinking through his art‐historical problematics in what amounts to a parable of the coming to visual knowledge. Duchamp and Wittgenstein slide between positions and possibilities in a play of uncertainty in which neither that which can be positively known nor the object of speculation can be endowed with any privilege in art's discourses.