''Anemic Cinema'' or ''Anémic Cinéma'' is a 1926

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

(credited to his alter ego,

Rrose Sélavy Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

), made in collaboration with

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...

and Marc Allégret. The seven-minute film is composed of alternating static camera shots of spinning animated drawings disks — which Duchamp called ''Rotoreliefs'' — inscribed with

pun A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...

s and

alliteration Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...

s in French. The text, which spirals in a counterclockwise motion, suggests erotic scenarios and the words, if read aloud, produce repetitive patterns of sounds that lead to

scatological In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces. Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases s ...

or obscene associations in reference to pulsating human sexual activity. To make ''Anémic Cinéma'', Duchamp filmed painted designs he made on flat cardboard circles while they spun on a phonograph turntable. When spinning, the flat disks appeared three-dimensional. The film premiered in a private screening in Paris in August 1926 and was acquired by MoMA in 1938, the first Duchamp work to enter a museum. Duchamp had a commercial printer run off 500 sets of six of the designs and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them. The venture was a financial disaster, but some optical scientists thought they might be of use in restoring

three-dimensional Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called ''parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the informa ...

sight to people with one eye.

Calvin Tomkins Calvin Tomkins (born 17 December 1925) is an author and art critic for ''The New Yorker'' magazine. Life and career Tomkins was born in Orange, New Jersey. After graduating from Berkshire School, he attended Princeton University and received an un ...

, ''Duchamp: A Biography'' (1996), pages 301–303.

History

Duchamp first showed ''Anemic Cinema'' at a private screening for friends in Paris on August 30, 1926. He brought the film on a trip to New York later that year, where he held another private screening at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse on December 22, 1926, and another at Miles Studio in early 1927. Artist Hans Richter acquired a print of the film and gave it its public debut in 1929, screening it at the '' Film und Foto'' exhibition in Stuttgart. New York art dealer

Julien Levy Julien Levy (1906–1981) was an art dealer and owner of Julien Levy Gallery in New York City, important as a venue for Surrealists, avant-garde artists, and American photographers in the 1930s and 1940s. Biography Levy was born in New York. Aft ...

obtained another print and screened it at his gallery in 1936 and 1937. The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(MoMA) acquired a print from Duchamp in 1938; this was the first of Duchamp's works to enter a museum collection. The film gained recognition in the 1930s and 1940s as Richter's copy circulated to film clubs in Europe, and MoMA's copy was lent to museums and universities around North America.

Rotoreliefs texts

*"Bains de gros thé pour grains de beauté sans trop de bengué." ( Bengay was invented in France by Dr. Jules Bengué) *"L'enfant qui tète est un souffleur de chair chaude et n'aime pas le chou-fleur de serre-chaude." *"Si je te donne un sou, me donneras-tu une paire de ciseaux?" *"On demande des moustiques domestiques (demi-stock) pour la cure d'azote sur la Côte d'Azur." *"Inceste ou passion de famille, à coups trop tirés." *"Esquivons les ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots exquis." *"Avez-vous déjà mis la moëlle de l'épée dans le poêle de l'aimée?" *"Parmi nos articles de quincaillerie paresseuse, nous recommandons le robinet qui s'arrête de couler quand on ne l'écoute pas." *"L'aspirant habite Javel et moi j'avais l'habite en spirale."

Notes and references

;Notes ;References * *

External links

''Anémic Cinéma'' at IMDB

at

Ubuweb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philo ...

Animated display of Duchamp's ''Rotoreliefs'' at Aqualoop 1926 films Marcel Duchamp works French silent short films French black-and-white films 1920s French films {{1920s-France-film-stub

History

Rotoreliefs texts

See also

Notes and references

External links