ABSTRACT

Étant donnés: 1⁰ la chute d’eau, 2⁰ le gaz d’éclairage . . . (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas . . .) was achieved by Marcel Duchamp over a 20-year period in which he convinced the world he had given up art for chess. It was a gift of the Casandra Foundation, in 1968, to the Philadelphia Museum of Art where it is permanently installed in two rooms. The work is the achievement of Duchamp’s aim to make art that engages the mind rather than the eye. With Étant donnés, Duchamp forces us to think. In this chapter I ask, what will it take for us to be worthy of our encounter with Étant donnés? I answer that it is not a question of having a commendable moral character but of acquiring and refining the skills that pick up the affordance in this artwork that bring out what is best in it and in us. Drawing on readings of the Large Glass and The Green Box, I present Étant donnés as a work that challenges our assumptions about art.