Kendell Geers presents his new book, Duchamp’s Endgame, and accompanying exhibition, The Oculist Witness, this June 2024 at Wilde, Basel.
To better understand Duchamp’s transformative process, Kendell Geers sought to decode the works Duchamp created during his time in Munich and his decision to cease painting, which is considered the Holy Grail of Art History. The book reveals the extensive research that Geers conducted during this crucial year in Duchamp’s career. The findings may astonish many and even spark debate among purists. This narrative embarks on a unique journey led by an artist’s perspective, tracing the influences and inspirations across history from one artist to another, all the way back to Leonardo da Vinci.
Duchamp’s Endgame presents a nuanced view, arguing that Marcel Duchamp is less of an iconoclast and more of a classicist. It goes further, portraying him as quintessentially a French painter throughout his career. Kendell Geers clarifies a common misconception: Duchamp never outright declared ‘painting is dead.’ Instead, he loudly protested against the stupidity of painters and his task was rather “to put painting once again at the service of the mind.”
The book is a passionate story about art and the real-life, art-historical version of the “Da Vinci Code” written by a contemporary artist with his tongue firmly on our cheek. Kendell Geers describes Marcel Duchamp as “the artist I love to hate and hate to love.” After reading Geers’s book and seeing his exhibition, there will be much more to love and hate about the Godfather of Dada and Pope of Surrealism.
Duchamp’s Endgame is published by Wilde in partnership with Fonds Mercator and Yale University Press.
