From the Referential to the Relational: Duchamp and Wittgensteinian Family Resemblance

Abstract

This essay identifies and discusses certain affinities between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Duchamp’s artistic work. While acknowledging the great differences between the one and the other, it cannot fail to strike one that the two take similar attitudes on certain issues concerning the way they look at mathematics and numbers, the importance given to the relational over the referential, and the peculiar use made of the notion of context.