Art, chess, and an $87,000 pipe frame an inside look at the relationship between Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp and chess Grandmaster George Koltanowski.
Spanning three decades, two continents, two world wars, and the international art and chess scenes of the mid-twentieth century, Duchamp's Pipe explores the remarkable friendship between art world enfant terrible Marcel Duchamp and blindfold chess champion George Koltanowski. Artist and cultural historian Celia Rabinovitch describes each man's rise to prominence, the chess matches that sparked their relationship, and the recently discovered pipe that Duchamp gave to Koltanowski. This tale of genius and resilience offers fresh insights into the essence of the gift in the bohemian underground. Rabinovitch invites us to discover the chess wizard and a Duchamp slightly off pedestal--
and ultimately more human.
Visit duchampspipe.com for more information.
“Celia Rabinovitch gives us a first-rate art historical detective story—a page-turner that is hard to put down. We are riveted by the story of the blindfolded chess player, and a detailed history of Duchamp’s life in the chess world. She is one of the most brilliant and intuitive thinkers on Surrealism. Duchamp’s Pipe is a marvel of scholarship and a delight!”
From archaic fetishism, found objects, dream images and free association, Surrealist artists and writers – such as Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Meret Oppenheim and Wolfgang Paalen – transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary by deliberately evoking the ambivalence of sacred power.
Surrealism and the Sacred traces the conflict between the secular and sacred forces from prehistory and paganism through the Renaissance and the occult revival of the 19th century to the Surrealist movement of the 20th century. Against the tyranny of reason and the European bourgeoisie, Surrealists drew from occultism, Asian religions and mysticism, and psychoanalysis to create an uncanny and creative state of mind that continues to have a profound effect on the modern imagination. This remarkable book challenges conventional assumptions about modern art and its larger meanings in the history of knowledge.
“This rich significant text… is extensive and sound, her argument compelling, and her prose smooth and elastic. Surrealism and the Sacred is an impressive study … an in-depth re-examination of the boundaries of consciousness.”
Second Edition Coming Soon
Invited Video Presentations
2021 - Two invited video presentations for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia.
Understanding the Surrealist Imagination
Through Her Own Eyes: Surrealist Women Artists
2020 - Celia Rabinovitch online book launch of Duchamp's Pipe: A Chess Romance: Marcel Duchamp & George Koltanowski, hosted by Ann McCoy
Understanding the Surrealist Imagination
Through Her Own Eyes: Surrealist Women Artists
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
Surrealism and the Sacred: Celia Rabinovitch, Louis Bourgeois and Celia Rabinovitch, Cerise Press, 2009.
Foreword in Kurt Seligmann, The Mirror of Magic, collector’s edition, Vermont: Inner Traditions Press, 2018. v-viii.
Surrealism and the Sacred, Complete with Missing Parts: Interviews with the Avant Garde, Interview by Louis Bourgeois, Oxford, Mississippi: VOX Publications, 2008. 127-140.
Acrylic Painting: History and Uses, Properties, Celia Rabinovitch, Carmen Bria, and Michael Sickler, Oxford Art Online- Grove Art Online, London: Oxford University Press, 2009, 2019.
1) Jean-Paul Lemieux; 2) Wolfgang Paalen; 3) Kurt Seligmann; 4) James Thrall Soby, The Dictionary of Art, London: Oxford University Press, 2009, 2019.
Diane Fenster: The Alchemy of Vision, Women, Art, and Technology, ed. Judith Malloy, Boston & San Francisco: M.I.T. Press & Leonardo, 2003.
Surrealism and Modern Religious Consciousness, The Spiritual Image in Modern Art, ed. Kathleen H. Regier, Chicago: Quest Publications, 1987.
MUSEUM CATALOG ESSAYS
Surrealism Through the Mirror of Magic guest essay for the exhibition, Surrealism and Magic, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca: Cornell University, 2014.
Sue Johnson: Wondrous Imagination, catalogue essay for the List Gallery, Pennsylvania: Swarthmore University, 2007.
The Art of Karen Tossavainen, catalogue essay for Karen Tossavainen: A Retrospective, Santa Cruz & Berkeley: Cabrillo College & The Kala Art Institute, 2006.
The Alchemist’s Apprentice, catalogue essay for Steve Gouthro: Through the Mill, Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2004.
SELECTED REVIEWS
Enigmas: Art books often throw a curveball and 2020 provides some delightfully peculiar pitches. Duchamp’s Pipe: A Chess Romance—Marcel Duchamp and George Koltanowski (North Atlantic Books, February) is the friendship between Dadaist Duchamp and Belgian chess master Koltanowski, in the Most Interesting Books Coming Out This Year: The best art books hitting the shelves, by Christian House, Art Agency Partners, Sotheby’s, New York.
Warholstars, a review of Duchamp's Pipe: A Chess Romance, by Gary Comenas, London, UK. December, 2019.
A Review of Duchamp’s Pipe by Jose Luis Perez Mallo, Ajedrez 365
The opening toward understanding the cultural history of women, and its impact on scholarship and society, is categorized under the rubric of feminism, and attested to in the work of Margaret R. Miles and Celia Rabinovitch, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Visual Arts as Ways of Being Religious: The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts, London: Oxford University Press, 2014.
…the two major authorities, Anna Balakian and Celia Rabinovitch, Urszula Szulakowska, in Alchemy in Contemporary Art, London: Ashgate Press, 2010. 9, 38-9, 221.
“… a bold and innovative critique of the historiography…an original view of the surrealist world, she displays no small degree of courage. The book is one of a kind and will probably remain an authority, A review of Surrealism and the Sacred by Urszula Szulakowska, University of Leeds. Papers of Surrealism, Issue 5, Spring, 2007.
ARTICLES
The Winnipeg Jewish Chess Club, Alexander Mogle and George Koltanowski, Champion of Blindfold Chess, The British Chess Magazine UK, May 2022, 291-295.
A conversation with LARRY LIST, chess curator and writer - Permanent Attraction: Art, Chess and Design. The British Chess Magazine, UK, November 2021 680-88.
The Frame of Space: An introduction to Kurt Seligmann's 1951 lecture on The Quest of Space for the New School of Social Research, Seligmann Center for the Arts, New York, December 2017.
H-France, a journal affiliated with the Society for French Historical Studies, a book review of Paul B. Franklin, The Artist and His Critic Stripped Bare: The Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp and Robert Lebel, foreword by Jean-Jacques Lebel, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. 2017
The Artist’s Experience: Kurt Seligmann and the Spiritual in Art. An introduction to "The Winged Boat: Lectures and Lecteurs" featuring Kurt Seligmann's 1940 lectures for the New School of Social Research, Seligmann Center for the Arts, New York. 2016.
Surrealism and the Sacred: Celia Rabinovitch, by Louis E. Bourgeois & Celia Rabinovitch, in Cerise: A Journal of Literature, Arts and Culture, Paris, France and Phoenix, Arizona, summer, 2009.
Matter into Metaphor: Transformations in Asian and Western Metals, feature article, Metalsmith, New York, 2002.
Fearsome Poetry: The Drawings of Stephen de Staebler, feature article in American Ceramics, New York, 1999.
“True East: What is an Asian Aesthetic?” Feature article, Artweek, San Jose, California, September 1998
“Stephen de Staebler at the Flora Hewitt Library, Graduate Theological Union” Artweek, San Jose, February, 1998
Occultism and the Idea of Sign: The History of an Idea in Modern Architecture, Art and Culture article in The Penn State Journal of Contemporary Criticism Number 4, 1992.
Ordinary and Extraordinary Objects: Fetishism in Surrealist Art. C Magazine, Feature article, Number 32, Toronto, 1992.
For other writings, please see Celia’s page on Academia.edu