A Surrealist in the Infra-Thin

Modern Language Association National Convention, Philadelphia, December 2006

Among Duchamp’s posthumous papers are the series of remarks on an invented category of liminal phenomena, the "infra-thin" (infra-mince). Sometimes poetically suggestive but often vague, the remarks describe exemplary "infra-thin" entities or events as well as possible projects for displaying, evoking, or otherwise capturing in art (or technology) something of the infra-thin. Often cited in the critical literature, the notes on the infra-thin remain a peculiarly under-examined part of an otherwise intensely examined body of work.

My paper will present an analysis of these notes with a view to describing their retroactive role within Duchamp’s art. Among the notes, Duchamp asks how one can "isolate" the infra-thin. While I do not isolate a clear and unified idea of the infra-thin, I will isolate certain grammatical and rhetorical structures common to many of the notes. Isolating these structures or patterns of use will show both how the term "infra-thin" operates within the series of notes as a whole and how the notes themselves might be read to operate more widely within Duchamp's body of work.

In addition to looking at the notes, I'll examine Duchamp's cover designs for the special Duchamp number of the Surrealist journal View (March 1945). The back cover cites from one of the notes on the infra-thin ("When the tobacco smoke smells also of the mouth which exhales it, the two odors marry by infra-thin") while the front cover appears to translate the cited lines into part of a visual allegory reminiscent of Duchamp's Large Glass (1915-23). The View covers connect the infra-thin notes to Duchamp's earlier work, especially the Large Glass and the Green Box (1934). Forming a verbal-visual emblem, they also allow Duchamp a novel method for negotiating between his own artistic production and the Surrealists with whom he collaborated. In terms of his notes and the View covers, I want to suggest, Duchamp becomes not a Surrealist exactly but an artist married to Surrealism only "by infra-thin."