Matta-Duchamp

es, en mathématiques, en philosophie, la morphologie
de la forme, la rélativité, c’est tout le même problème.”
[To paint the moment of change, change itself, I have
devoted myself ceaselessly to this problem and I have
watched this problem develop in science, in mathematics,
in philosophy, the morphology of form, relativity,
it’s all the same problem.” 11 ]. Matta had also absorbed
the surrealists’ interest in alchemy, whose later connections
with magic tarnished its credentials as a precedent
to modern scientific discoveries. Nonetheless, scientists
did recognise that alchemical “transmutation”
was a parallel to what they preferred to call “transformation”,
and Rutherford called his book on radioactivity
The Newer Alchemy (1934). 12
From 1937, when he began seriously to commit
himself as an artist, his drawings and paintings show
an impulsive energy and dynamism. Throughout his
life he sought confirmation in the physical and mental
worlds, in nature and the imagination, of the links between
inner and outer realities.
This emphasis on morphology, on the potential of
forms to shift and change, and the relationship with the
11. Matta Centre Pompidou Paris 1985 p. 266
12. Henderson p. 23. Scholars have, somewhat controversially, emphasised
the rôle of alchemy in the work of both Matta and Duchamp, see eg
Golan (op. cit) and Arturo Schwarz The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp
Thames & Hudson 1997.
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