Rouge Selavy

Rouge Selavy

Rouge Selavy is the title of a work that Echaurren designed in 1977, a fundamental year because on that very date the artist decided to (temporarily) abandon art to devote himself to politics. The artist writes with a blue pen over a lined notebook one of the first projects where the figure of Marcel Duchamp emerges. In fact, the unrealized work consisted of a performative action: to be exact, a parade. In the Eucharren notebook he writes: "making Duchamp banners", then creating "silent" banners (conceptual, we could say), which had to show only verbal elements such as the question mark and question mark made with a red marker. 
This because? Echaurren explains the reasons in the points below. The artist speaks of the concept of imagination and develops it under various aspects, affirming that the imagination does not stop at a banner, that the imagination must be brought onto the banner itself and finally the same banner is defined as "doubtful" and "without certainties".
The title of the work is a distortion, one of the first distortions made by Echaurren on the titles of Duchamp's works (see Mon Alice, a project on display inside MoRE). Indeed, the famous portrait as a woman by the French artist Rrose Selavy is transformed into Rouge Selavy. There is a desire to highlight red as the color of life, in fact the marker strokes on the page that draw the exclamation and question marks on the banners are red.
Furthermore, this continuous use of the word imagination can only bring to the mind the famous slogan of the seventies "the imagination to power".
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Echaurren, Pablo

1977

Casero, Cristina

Rossi, Valentina

image/tiff

Italian

Text

Still Image

Pablo Echaurren

MoRE museum