*UNCORRECTED CAPTIONS* Also note typo in a slide - correct name is Helena
Rubinstein.
(ABSTRACT) “Opening given over to children playing, and to the scent of cedar,” the First Papers of Surrealism exhibition catalogue promised. Marcel Duchamp recruited children to play in the exhibition space, adding lively and sonic elements. An olfactory dimension would have been unsurprising, given Duchamp’s reputation for innovative exhibition designs. His 1938 Exposition Internationale de Surréalisme introduced multi-sensory audience engagement into modern art exhibitions. Despite the tactile and visual qualities of Duchamp’s “mile of string” interlaced with artworks in the 1942 First Papers exhibition, scholars have searched in vain for traces of the olfactory dimension the catalogue noted. This article proposes the possibility that the promised scent was grasped by the mind alone, without physical substances to generate perceivable smell. This interpretation builds upon Duchamp’s reference to titles of artworks as “invisible colors,” and parallels his commitment to a “non-retinal” art – thus favoring cerebration over base perception. Given the importance of myth for André Breton’s contribution to the exhibition catalogue, mythic qualities of cedar merit consideration. Cedar has an especially strong mythic association aligning it with the landscape of the island Ogygia, in Homer’s Odyssey. There, “à I'odeur du cèdre,” Odysseus lingers in the romantic embrace of Calypso, a dalliance that interrupts his journey home from epic wars and delays his reunion with his wife, Penelope. Considering the Homeric reference alongside Duchamp’s lifelong engagement with perfumes and olfactory representation sheds new light on the exhibition experience, and on the emergent patrons of wartime Surrealism.
