Duchamp, the Empty Value of Words, and Bra Dreams 1955

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1072

There is absolutely no chance for a word ever to express anything. As soon as we start  putting our thoughts into words and sentences, everything goes wrong.-- Marcel Duchamp

Which is worth more, wind or stone?  They’re both priceless.  Alexksie Kruchenyh

This is one of the defining Duchamp quotes for me, the thing that most closely gets at what he was trying to do in his art.  Ultimately I think that he didn’t care about words to define the result of what he was thinking about–or what his art represented.  Or the outcome of a chess game.  To me he was all about the process of getting there, the results not mattering all that much–and certainly not a description of the result.  

Or perhaps not.  My opinion on Duchamp is that the whole deal for him was a performance, whether he was writing about or discussing or making art, the most important issue was the movement associated with trying to move from place to place.  The destination itself didn’t matter. The message was the thinking, and so identifying it as the same for everyone when the process was so individualized was senseless for him, the message a dynamic thing communicated with images.

When trying to use this Duchampian interpretative tool with this odd combination of words and images in this 1955 LIFE magazine ad I still come up a little short on  what was going on.  Maidenform was looking for dreams that women had in Maidenform bras, paying $13,000 for three juicy/saucy/odd samples.  The manikin-like pose, the expressionless face, and the few bits of clothing this woman is modeling apply some sort of robotism on which  rocket-y wire-circled bosoms are encased in a steely industrialism.  On the other hand the bra maker wanted women to share their bra-encrusted dreams.  The central interest is of course making money on bra sales, but underneath that I’m not sure what I come away with as the message in the images outside the obvious peek-inside-the-machine stuff. 


A little further in the magazine and we find an ad from Exquisite Form (“brassieres give you X* appeal”) that gets to a simpler message instantly.  The instantaneous is lacking in the Maidenform ad, but the inescapability isn't.