In 1960 George Heard Hamilton published the first complete typographic translation of Duchamps Green Box in English. This landmark publication translated Duchamps notes and conceptual ambitions for his masterwork, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. And as a book, designed to hinge at its binding, the work fulfilled Duchamps conceptual proposal for art that would move from two- into three-dimensional space.
Hinge Pictures is an artists book in eight partsa gorgeous, palimpsestual publication that layers the practices of Sarah Crowner, Julia Dault, Leslie Hewitt, Tomashi Jackson, Erin Shirreff, Ulla von Brandenburg, Adriana Varejão and Claudia Wieser over the pages of Duchamps imagination. It is also a companion publication to an exhibition in eight parts, a confrontation with the patrimony of European modernism. A literal reading of Duchamp positions the Bride, a nude woman, suspended above a host of ogling bachelors. In his writing, Duchamp narrates both social and physical constraint (The Bride accepts this stripping) and formal liberation (discover true formdevelop the principle of the hinge.). The artists of Hinge Pictures use formal constrainta commitment to abstractionin a demonstration of social liberation. With a Swiss binding that unveils the spine of the book and multiple vellum overlays that create layered interlocutions, the books physical qualities mirror its conceptual occupations.
