CAMPFIRE
6” x 10” x 10”
Mixed Media

I recently had the opportunity to view the Marcel Duchamp retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was blown away. One piece that really stuck out to me was the piece Why not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? This 1921 ‘assisted Readymade’ piece “consisted of a birdcage, 152 white cubes (resembling sugar cubes, but made of marble), a medical thermometer, a piece of cuttlebone, and a tiny porcelain dish.” (Wikipedia.)

André Breton, a leader of the surrealist movement at the time wrote:

"I have in mind the occasion when Marcel Duchamp got hold of some friends to show them a cage which seemed to have no birds in it, but to be half-full of lumps of sugar. He asked them to lift the cage and they were surprised at its heaviness. What they had taken for lumps of sugar were really small lumps of marble which at great expense Duchamp had had sawn up specially for the purpose. The trick in my opinion is no worse than any other, and I would even say that it is worth nearly all the tricks of art put together."

This was perfection Dada and I wanted to be a part of it. Thirty-four marshmallows later carved in alabaster stone, one of the oldest sculpting materials in the world, ‘Campfire’ was born. What was once light as air is now heavy with permanence. Sweetness without substance, softness without surrender. An ordinary confection, liberated from its purpose.

The horrors of World War I and a resistance to the Bourgeois culture inspired the original Dada movement. It challenged and undermined conventional artistic standards.. And now more than ever with numerous Wars, murderous brutality and unprecedented class and economic inequality, it’s totally needed again today.

Alabaster stone, glass, steel, paint