Jacky Chapman

"Fin-de-siècle Vienna - The Coffee House"
Mixed Media. 8 miniature glass ampoules filled with coffee affixed into glass box frame
23X23CM

In 1919, Marcel Duchamp purchased a 50cc glass ampoule from a pharmacy, filled it with Parisian air and exhibited it as art - ‘Air de Paris’. In 2018, I purchased 10ml ampoules from the Internet, filled them with fin-de siècle Viennese coffee house espressos and am exhibiting it here. Mould in my surreptitiously syringed filled Duchampesque samples presented challenges. Decay? A living oeuvre like the coffee houses themselves? Progress without decay is unthinkable, as Viennese philosophers and Bohemian artists might agree. Today? Tourists. IPhones. Nostalgia. Why did I go? Inspiration? Or simply to sit where Gustav Klint met Sigmund Freud? 

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