Matta-Duchamp

possible de peindre le changement.” 3 (highly illustrated
article, written by a lady called Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia
about a gentleman whose name was not at all that of an
artist as he was called Marcel Duchamp, spoke of painting,
of the passage from one state to another. This was
a challenge, a revelation, it was thus possible to paint
change.”)
Matta credits this essay with his discovery of “passage”,
the possibility that one could paint the change
from one state to another, whether psychological or
physical: a revelation with fundamental repercussions
for his development as a painter. However, in fact Gabrielle
Buffet-Picabia’s text doesn’t mention “passage”,
focussing rather on the readymades, assisted readymades,
the optical machines and Duchamp’s very recent
enterprise, the Rotoreliefs. Although the article was indeed
strikingly illustrated with several works in colour,
the only paintings reproduced were the Nude Descending
a staircase, the second version of the Chocolate
Grinder, and the Large Glass, The Bride stripped bare
by her bachelors, even. Neither the idea of movement
in the Nude, nor the implied movement in the Chocolate
Grinder, really involves “passage”. It is true that
Buffet-Picabia, in her brilliant account of Duchamp’s
3. G. Ferrari Entretiens Morphologiques, Notebook no 1 1936-1944 Sistan
London 1987 p 36
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