From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
By David Bonetti
This week St. Louis has turned into the chess capital of the nation. The Central West End is hopping with the U.S. Chess Championship being held at the St. Louis Chess Club and Scholastic Center on Maryland Avenue near the intersection of Euclid.
Marcel Duchamp print
In conjunction with the championship, which is being held for the first time in St. Louis, there is also a treat for art lovers of a conceptual bent. The Saint Louis University Museum of Art has mounted an exhibition, “Marcel Duchamp: Chess Master,” that investigates for the first time in exhibition form Duchamp’s involvement with chess. (In 1923, Duchamp, the man who drew a mustache on a cheap lithographic copy of the Mona Lisa and exhibited a urinal as a work of art, renounced artmaking for chess.) The exhibition grew out of the academic work of SLU art professor Bradley Bailey, who also contributed to the new book, “Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess.” The exhibition is small and dense with as many documents as objects, but it should appeal equally to art and chess fans (and in the latter case, remember that fan derives from fanatic.) Among the highlights are chess sets designed by Man Ray, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. (We will review the show Sunday, May 17.)
A fascinating panel discussion on Duchamp and chess was held at the Chess Club this past Tuesday. Panelists included Bailey, the distinguished scholar of Dada and Surrealism Francis M. Naumann, American Women’s Chess Champion and author Jennifer Shahade, who goes by “Chess Bitch” – that’s the title of her book – and curator and chess specialist Larry List.
The St. Louis art world elite, most of whom admitted to not being chess players, showed up for the panel discussion. Spotted were SLAM chief curator Andrew Walker, demonstrating his love of art; Contemporary director Paul Ha and curator Anthony Huberman; Kemper curator Meredith Malone; art historian Susan Cahan; gallerist Philip Slein; non-profit maestro Matt Strauss; food writer and wild boar hunter Malcolm Gay; artists Bill Smith and Michael Byron; free lance curator Dana Turkovic; and art advisor Susan Barrett, who sponsored a raucous dinner after the event at Liluma.
Many of the same tribe reconfigured the next night at the exhibition opening, joined by a flock of Jesuits in their Roman collars. I entertained the notion for a moment that the mysterious Duchamp was in fact a secret Jesuit, but there is absolutely no truth to that fantasy. A man of silence, exile and cunning, he would have made a great one, however.
