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schema:abstract
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"Robert Lebel -a French writer, critic and collector who earned his living as an expert in old master paintings and drawings- was instrumental in rendering Marcel Duchamp's often hermetic life, art, and ideas accessible to a wider public across Europe and the United States, principally with Sur Marcel Duchamp (1959), the first monograph and catalogue raisonné devoted to the artist. Duchamp was a willing collaborator in the book's creation. His active participation in both its conception and layout was so substantial that the volume is considered part of the artist's oeuvre. But the project took six long years to complete. The trials, tribulations, quarrels, and machinations that plagued the production, publication, and publicity of Sur Marcel Duchamp are the principal focus of this correspondence between two lifelong friends. Transcribed from the French, translated into English, and printed in full together for the first time, these letters, postcards, and telegrams from the collection of the Getty Research Institute offer uncensored access to the evolution of the relationship between Lebel and Duchamp from December 1946 to April 1967. The correspondence provides valuable information about their daily activities and those of friends and colleagues, vital details concerning their various collective projects, not to mention illuminating insights into their thinking on art and life. These documents, at once witty and candid, bear witness to the art of friendship and to a friendship in art."@nl
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