In the Manner of Duchamp, 1942-47: the years of the "mirrorical return"

   A transformer designed to utilize the slight wasted energies such
   as: / the excess of pressure on an electric switch. / the exhalation
   of tobacco smoke / the growth of a head of hair, of other body hair
   and of the nails. / the fall of urine and excrement. / movements of
   fear, astonishment, boredom, anger. / laughter. / dropping of tears.
   / demonstrative gestures of hands, feet, nervous tics. / forbidding
   glances / falling over with surprise. / stretching, yawning,
   sneezing. / ordinary spitting and of blood. / vomiting. /
   ejaculation. / unruly hair, cowlicks. / the sound of nose-blowing,
   snoring. / fainting. / whistling, singing. / sighs etc.... (66)

Both the example of the infra-thin that Duchamp provided to Rougemont, "The sound, or the music that a pair of corduroy velvet pants makes when the two legs brush against one another," and the above-mentioned example from the posthumously published Notes, the heat remaining on a chair from which one has just arisen, could easily fit into this list of "slight, wasted energies."

What is most evident is how Duchamp's interest in the absurd and the fantastic changed since the years when he was working on The Large Glass and playing with the paradoxes of fourth-dimensional space. Duchamp's model was no longer the delirious logic of Alfred Jarry's Pataphysics or Raymond Roussel's exotic locales and strange machines generated by outrageous word associations. Rather, the absurd and fantastic are to be found in our everyday world. Whether this shift is related to the menace of extremist political movements during the mid- to late 1930s, the violent instability in France, the rise of Nazism in Germany, the consolidation of the Stalinist state in Russia, all of which made many sensitive men and women more attentive to and appreciative of the fragility of the little things of life, is open to question. In any case, Duchamp's concept of the infra-thin, which replaced the fourth dimension as a primary generative concept, soon expanded from "slight, wasted energies" to embrace a rich new field of potential paradoxes.

In late January 1942, Duchamp enigmatically described the concept of the infra-thin in a letter to his friend Henri-Pierre Roche as "a production which is no longer manual but coudique (as in 'elbow')." (67) Here, Duchamp is clearly thinking about the note he made on "crease molds," which humorously plays with the reversibility of molds and castings. It reads:

[FIGURE 20 OMITTED]

   Crease molds. / in the elbow's case [dans le cas du coude] / (right
   elbow) Mold

   type ex.--worn trousers and very creased. / (giving a sculptural
   expression of the individual who wore them) / the act of wearing the
   trousers, the trouser / wearing is comparable to the hand / making of
   an original sculpture

   With in addition, a technical inversion: / while wearing the trousers
   / the leg works like the hand of the / sculptor and produces a mold
   (instead / of a molding) and a mold in cloth / which / expresses
   itself in creases.... (68)