Panorama International / Belgian Premiere

Alreadymade

Barbara Visser

In 2004, a urinal was declared the most influential work of modern art. It was the famous artist Marcel Duchamp who caused a stir in 1917 by exhibiting a product of industry – a urinal – signed it and christened it Fountain. In doing so, he invented what is known as the ‘readymade’, ‘a manufactured object promoted to an art object simply by the artist's choice’.

However, this fact, well known to art lovers, now seems questionable. New research into this cult object suggests that it was not Duchamp but a certain Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, an eccentric and flamboyant baroness, who came up with this brilliant idea.

Did Marcel Duchamp make the idea his own? He wouldn't be the first artist in history to exploit the talent of another, often a woman.

With a sense of humour, filmmaker Barbara Visser, a true specialist in what is real and what is fake, takes us on a quest to find the traces left by one and not the other. Who was baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven? What became of her? Can we unmask the lies by watching an interview with Marcel Duchamp? Was it marketing, mystification or misogyny that made the work so famous?

Picking up on this story, the filmmaker invites us inside the creation process of her film, which thus becomes an object that takes shape thanks to other materials and in collaboration with other people. This approach humorously questions the status of the artist as demiurge, genius and mythical creature, an idea that belongs to a bygone era.

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CONTEMPORARY ART

Thu. 14 NOV. / 19:00
cINEMATEK LEDOUX
OV NL ST FR
87'

2023 / nl

Prod : Tomtit Film

dISTRIB : Cat and Docs

Plus-Rose

Surrealism : 100 years !

Followed by ANEMIC CINEMA

& JEU D’ÉCHECS AVEC  MARCEL DUCHAMP

20:30 – CINEMATEK LEDOUX

EN