Two Stories After Marcel Duchamp, by ​Norbert Kovacs

Bicycle Wheel by Marcel Duchamp (France) 1951, after lost original of 1913.

​A Story of Simple Design

​I used to ride the steel frame bike to fetch small items from the mom-and-pop store.  In recent times, I became very good about getting groceries from the supermarket, so more often left the bike untouched in the garage. My boarder found it there while poking idly around the house. He was a quiet, endeavoring kind and didn't stint over fiddling with any odd item he got into his hands. Once I caught him taking apart my old coffee maker that had a broken lid, trying to reassemble it.  When I walked into the garage one Saturday afternoon, I discovered he had hitched my bike upright and was spinning  its front wheel round and round. He seemed fascinated in the motion, and, truth to say, his feeling infected me watching him spin the thing.

As it happened, I kept an old white stool in the corner of the kitchen. I had it to sit down when I was tired from standing too long while cooking. But I found I needed it less than I'd imagined, especially since I was better about getting exercise and staying healthy. So the stool sat there beside some old boxes, gaining little of my attention. My boarder, poking into my part of the house per his habit, would plant himself on the stool to read while I had a cake or a casserole baking in the oven. He said he enjoyed his book better in the warmth the oven provided than the loneliness of his room. He would read contently, his eyes moving  gently over the page as I saw peeking at him when I checked on the oven.

By accident one day, I saw the stool had gone from its corner. I thought to ask my boarder what had happened with it, but without him there right then, put the idea aside.  How much did the stool matter anyhow?, I told myself. Only then, a few days later, I noticed my unneeded bike gone from the garage. This second disappearance set the wheels in my mind going. 

I did not bother my boarder usually when he was alone, but I sought him out in his basement room to ask if he had seen the stool or the bike. When he opened the door, I discovered he had both items there. As it happened, he had removed the front wheel and part of the metal work from the bike and mounted them atop the white stool like an statue on a pedestal. He said it was his special creation, "a pure work of art." 

"You don't mind that I did this with your bike and sitting stool, I hope?" he added almost as an afterthought.
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I assured him I didn't. I couldn't be upset with as modest and polite a young man. I was more interested actually in the work he'd produced. I knew he had artistic leanings; I had enjoyed looking over some sketches that he made of the garden behind my house. But his new sculpture brought home the idea of his creativity seriously for the first time. His sculpture was a strange combination for sure; I had never seen a bike wheel paired with a stool that way. Who ever has, in fact? I was struck thinking of the thing as an artwork as I considered its parts. The wheel from the bike and the stool from my kitchen each had served a practical purpose. Now he had combined the items, creating a new one that served no function whatsoever. The difference between this sense of part and whole was amazing in my mind. My wonder hit its peak when he gave the wheel a light spin with his hand. It turned beautifully just as I had seen when he spun the wheel on the bike in the garage. The light glanced off it now in waves, advancing and receding. I felt a warm fascination to see it that kept me comfortably looking on that most singular sculpture.

Rotary Demisphere by Marcel Duchamp (France) 1925

Spectacular Effect 

He insisted his new device, long in the making, realized the most spectacular "rotary-kinetic" effect. "But you must see it for yourself to understand," he said when, excited, I asked just what kind of machine he had made and what it did. So I went with him to his private office where he had the device to see it as he urged. I realized quickly, on being shown the thing, just why my friend said that I should see it in person. The device was no ordinary machine, in fact it was more like a series of machines than just one. The series had its start in this small cylindrical engine down in the corner on the floor. At one of its ends stuck forth a spool  like you might wind up with thread. This spool had a belt hooked over it that led to a six-spoke wheel standing a few inches away. From the center of this wheel, a long axle stretched over a small platform close by; after passing through a pair of loops that seemed to hold it to the platform,  the axle ended in a pulley. Now through this pulley was wrapped a long, black cable; the cable wrapped upward toward a large disc mounted on a yard-high stand about a foot away. Behind the disc on the stand, the cable encircled a hoop attached to a metal rod; this rod passed through the disc into the back of a half sphere bulging from the disc's front.  A pair of entwined white and black spirals ran along the surface of the half sphere from its base to its end jutting out in space. 

The whole apparatus, from engine to axle to half-sphere, was the most bizarre arrangement I have ever known for a machine. But what did the contraption do?, I wondered as my friend smiled at my apparent puzzlement. The engine, wheel, and axle convinced me it must perform some intricate mechanical process, carefully synced and exact; the disc, rod, and half-sphere suggested some kind of scientific experiment. I had read of scientists who had charged metal plates, much like the disc appeared, to bring forth an electric current or beam. At another time, I heard an engineer speak of creating magnetized fields by spinning a disc in the presence of electricity. Did my friend's device achieve either of those remarkable feats? Or some other? I asked him, and my friend said , "You will see for yourself." Then he went over to the corner and pressed the power button on the engine. The spool on the end of the engine began to turn. The belt around it whirled, causing the wheel hooked to the belt to do the same. The axle through the wheel center turned; the pulley on its end rolled round. The pulley drew the long cable through its groove; the hoop to which the cable clung turned, as did the attached rod. 

Then the half-sphere itself spun. I held my breath, waiting for a crackle of electricity or even (I'll admit it) a laser beam to shoot from the sphere's end. The black and white spirals on its surface whirled around. Dark circles appeared to pulse over its face. The form of a black spiral, imprinted atop the other spirals,  looped round to the left, closing in toward the half-sphere's end. The spiral circled and with each turn renewed itself, each dark arm appearing to emerge from the disc behind. The bands of the dark spiral kept coming, turning, and appearing to advance outward without end. But this illusion of motion was all that was being achieved by the half-sphere turning, I soon realized. No electricity blazed forth, no laser beam. Rather than a scientific effect, the half-sphere created an optical illusion. I saw this was all my friend had to show me, the output of a curio built in his spare time. And I had trusted, hearing his enthusiasm over the device, it would be that much more. I will admit that the way I had worked myself up had fed into the charm of the machine. However, I think few might be blamed for expecting some magical result from the workings of that remarkably built creation.

​Norbert Kovacs

Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He loves visiting art museums, especially the Met in New York. He has published art-inspired stories in The Ekphrastic Review and Timada's Diary. His website: http://www.norbertkovacs.net. ​