An Art Museum in the Postmodern World

Nude Descending a Staircase

An Art Museum in the Postmodern World -- A Parody-Poem on Marcel Duchamp

The following poem is modeling Ginsberg's "Supermarket in California," a poem we read earlier in this class. It's done to parody the Dadaism of Marcel Duchamp. Instead of the supermarket, it takes place in the Duchamp section of a modern art museum. And instead of walking with Walt Whitman I am walking with Kenyon Cox, an academic classicist artist. So instead of decrying the lost America of Walt Whitman I am decrying the lost America of Kenyon Cox and grand art. 



Fountain

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Kenyon Cox, for I walked into the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Duchamp section with a headache self-conscious looking at the "Nude Descending a Staircase."

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went through the Duchamp section, dreaming nightmares of art!

What? "Fountain"? What? "Sink stopper"? Companies of intellectuals watching at night! Aisles full of professionals! -- and you, Norman Rockwell, what are you doing down by the "Dart Object"?

I saw you, Kenyon Cox, childless, lonely old antique, turning the "Bicycle Wheel" and eyeing the "Comb."

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the meaning of art? What prices were these? And who is Rose Selavy?

Why are you sneezing, Rose Selavy?

I wandered in and out of the stacks of readymades following you, and followed in my imagination by a Dadaist.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary nightmare viewing Duchamp, possessing every readymade already at home, and never passing the cashier for that.



Where are we going, Kenyon Cox? The doors are closing. Which way does the brush point tonight?

(I touch the "Bottle Rack" and dream of our odyssey in the Duchamp section and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through art that doesn't lift? The figures add shade to shade, lights out in the artists, we'll both be lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love, home to our grand reaching?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Duchamp quit poling the ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of postmodernism?