Can the lifetime collaboration of two artists be extended a few hours after one of them has died? - Donald Shambroom
Only if the collaboration was truly a collaborative process.
When I think of artistic collaborations, true collaborations in which the entire creative process is based in a collaborative relationship then I believe it is possible to extend the collaboration beyond the death of a party and not just for a few hours but as long as one party remains above ground.
For example, take the collaborative partnership of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, altered by Jeanne-Claude’s death in 2009.
Considering the depth of the couple’s collaboration during the time both of them were on Earth, listening and taking closely to heart how they described their collaboration when they were both alive, it is inconceivable that Christo would be able to continue the work. The actual, physical form of their collaboration differs, nonetheless a collaborative form remains. This new form is derived from the same collaborative basis for the process of the work realized during their lifetimes. The eventuality that one day one would no longer be able to actively contribute was taken into account in their methodology. During their lifetime the artists spoke frequently of this aspect of the work, acted in recognition that there would come a time when one or the other would no longer be physically present to contribute to the work’s realization but there will remain work that could or needed to be completed in some way.[1]
The question Donald Shambroom is asking in this book, Duchamp’s Last Day, concerns another collaborative relationship between two artists, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. Although many writers, artists, historians and critics have described numerous works in which both artists had a hand as resulting from a collaboration between the two it is my opinion that doing so is not only a false assumption but a misleading premise for understanding or defining the work of either, particularly Duchamp.
This question appears at the very top of the back cover, in line with the title appearing on the front cover, of this recently published book in the Ekphrasis imprint of David Zwirner Books from the artist Donald Shambroom. A short explanation from the publisher in the back pages states ekphrasis, a word’s whose origins date to ancient Greece and is one of the oldest forms of writing ...
… photo taken by Man Ray of Marcel Duchamp as he lay dead on his bed within hours of his passing
TBC
[1] I had the luck to hear Christo and Jeanne-Claude speak of this at a lecture they gave in late October 1994 at the University of Karlsruhe [KIT] in honor of the 70th birthday of Fritz Haller. The couple had just received the approval to complete the wrapping of the Reichstag/Bundestag building in Berlin from the German government. The artist’s cited the public involvement and scale of their projects as the primary reason the work would need to continue to some extent beyond the death of one of them. The drawings and prints with which finance the larger works’ realization could no longer be produced if Christo was no longer to make them but they had accounted for this and the large scale works in progress would be able to be completed. Hearing them discuss collaboration in this way was formative to my own understanding of what differentiates collaboration from assisting the realization of an artwork in other ways and has led to my own narrow definition of what is a collaboration between artists.