Celia Rabinovitch - Duchamps Pipe: A Chess Romance Between Marcel Duchamp and George Koltanowski

Duchamps Pipe is an utterly unique book. Recounting the friendship of French avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp and Belgian chess master George Koltanowski, it reveals the central place that chess held in the mind of Duchamp, for whom this ancient game, along with art and tobacco smoke, was an instrument to open the gates of the imagination. Celia Rabinovitch has accomplished something wondrous here: a work of scholarship that is also a dream, one worthy of the Surrealist figures that populate its pages.

J. F. Martel, author of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action and cohost of the Weird Studies Podcast

Celia Rabinovitch gives us a first-rate art historical detective story in Duchamps Pipea page turner that is hard to put down. What begins as an authentication of a pipe created by Marcel Duchamp for George Koltanowski enters into a chronology of two intersecting lives. We are riveted by the story of the blindfolded chess player, and a detailed history of Duchamps life in the chess world. I consider Rabinovitch to be one of the most brilliant and intuitive thinkers on Surrealism. This book is a marvel of scholarship and a delight.

Ann McCoy, artist, art critic, and editor-at-large at the Brooklyn Rail

In the smoky world of coffee house chess, the facets of Duchamps Pipe perfectly reflect the light of audacious bohemia living in Europes wartime shadows. The pipe links the irony of Marcel Duchamp to the vaudeville showmanship of Koltanowski, tracing a mystery that is based on original material uncovered by the author.

Adina Kamien-Kazhdan, senior curator of Modern Art and of the Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and author of Remaking the Readymade: Duchamp, Man Ray, and the Conundrum of the Replica

Duchamps Pipe offers a delightful and fascinating study of Duchamps career in a manner remarkably attuned to his sensibility. The book is very fine in deploying Duchamps concept of inframince. It uncovers details, following Duchampian logic in associating various particularsfrom a pipe offered specially for George Koltanowski, his chess rival, to art involving pipes and chess, to Duchamps themes of smoking and breathing. This book shows how the richest form of thinking in the arts may lie in attempting to match the mind to the matter of matter.

Charles F. Altieri, Stageberg Professor in English at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of many books, including Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity: Toward a Phenomenology of Value

Delightful and enlightening! Celia Rabinovitch investigates Duchamp as arbitrator in Giorgio de Chirico and Andr Bretons duel, and Duchamps wait for posterity rings out like a chess clock giving pause and reflection on one of modern arts greatest tragedies.

Katherine Robinson, scientific coordinator of Metaphysical Art: The de Chirico Journals of the Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico

Scholarly and lively, Duchamps Pipe chronicles the unlikely relationship between a surrealist master and a chess maestro, providing insights into the artists inner thoughts and motivations. This book will be enjoyed by chess players and art lovers alike.

Cecil Rosner, director of Investigative Journalism: Regions at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and author of Behind the Headlines: A History of Investigative Journalism in Canada.

To prevail in the Duchampian universe, where books are published each month, requires a good story and the capacity to tell it. Rabinovitchs book, like a play with a cast of characters led by George Koltanowski and Marcel Duchamp, delivers both.

Stephan E. Hauser, author of Kurt Seligmann, 1900-1962: Leben Und Werk and librarian at Schaulager, Laurenz Foundation, Switzerland

The substantial ever-changing hues of a briar pipe; the subtle and precise movements of chess pieces; the camaraderie with George Koltanowski and his ring of friendsall held together as the ethereal smoke from the pipe, molding and embodying being and non-being, external gifts of exchange and imaginative consciousness of the materiality of the human world. Celia Rabinovitchs insightful biographical study adds life to our understanding of Duchamp.

Charles H. Long, author of Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion and Ellipsis: The Collected Writings of Charles H. Long and emeritus professor of religious studies at University of California, Santa Barbara

A remarkable, authoritatively researched account of the life and career of George Koltanowski and of artist and fellow chess fanatic Marcel Duchamp. Rabinovitch shines a light on these two unusual fellows as bright as the flame they used to light the small handcrafted pipe they shared.

Steve Rubenstein, journalist and personal friend of George Koltanowski

A smoking reproach against staid scholarshipjuxtaposing biography, industrial history, literary history, photography, and other disciplines to produce a fairy tale about chess and friendship, and a meditation on the contradictory role of the gift in the world of art.

Lindsey Banco, author of Travel and Drugs in Twentieth-Century Literature and associate professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan

A richly illustrated chess odyssey that winds across three continents tracing the intertwined lives of two of the more cerebral characters of the last century.

Henry M. Sayre, Distinguished Professor of Art History Emeritus at Oregon State University and author of nine books, including The Visual Text of William Carlos Williams

Copyright 2020 by Celia Rabinovitch. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover design by Jasmine Hromjak

Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in Canada

All works, writings, and words by Marcel Duchamp Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2019.

Additional permissions begin on page 273.

Duchamps Pipe: A Chess RomanceMarcel Duchamp & George Koltanowski is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rabinovitch, Celia, author. | Holubizky, Ihor, writer of foreword.
Title: Duchamps PipeA Chess Romance: Marcel Duchamp & George Koltanowski / Celia Rabinovitch; with a foreword by Ihor Holubizky, and contributions by Nicole Lastreto, Kerry Hamilton Lawless, and Irwin Lipnowksi.
Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, 2020. | Includes