In keeping with the carefully considered but never po-faced spirit that pervades all its activities, Large Glass, one of my favourite spaces in London—or indeed anywhere—celebrated its fifth anniversary last night (1 December) with a characteristically erudite and entertaining riff on Marcel Duchamp, whose most enigmatic masterwork gives the gallery its name.
In honour of its first half-decade, five participants presented a specially commissioned “5-Way Portrait/Marcel Duchamp”. This consisted of a slideshow of Walter and Louise Arensberg’s Duchamp collection in their LA home, by the V&A’s director of research and collections Bill Sherman; the bibliophile curator Clive Phillpot’s riff on Duchamp through books and word play; and the artist Alice Channer’s 12 mini-performances. With the help of props such as chiffon, cigarettes and corduroy trousers, Channer attempted to embody and materialise 12 of Marcel Duchamp’s definitions of “infra-slim”.
Among the audience were the Dada and Surrealism expert Professor Dawn Ades, the new Design Museum’s head of exhibitions Mark Sladen, and the artists Alison Turnbull and Liliane Lijn. The spectators were also treated to an arcane but often hilarious treatise on the correspondences between The Large Glass and Homer’s Odyssey from the art historian Megakles Rogakos and a presentation by Cornelia Parker called Under the Influence, in which she traced the profound impact of Duchamp and his work on subsequent artists, especially herself.
All in all, a fitting tribute to a space which, although small of scale and situated in the northern reaches of the Caledonian Road—and therefore more convenient for Pentonville prison than any art hubs—has attracted keen devotees from the art world beyond: from Nicholas Serota, Antony Gormley and Richard Wentworth to the actress Fiona Shaw and the writers Deborah Levy and Ali Smith. Long may it continue to punch above its weight!