Talia Kwartler

PhD supervisor: Briony Fer
Working title for PhD: 'Suzanne Duchamp Does More Intelligent Things Than Paint'

Kwartler’s thesis is a monographic study of the work Suzanne Duchamp made between 1916 and 1922. Taking an object-focused and materially-driven approach, the thesis builds upon formal and historical relationships between Duchamp and her peers in order to explore her particular manner of working with readymade materials, language, and objects. Kwartler’s research centres on the transatlantic activities of Dada, particularly networks of artistic exchange between New York, Paris, and Zurich. Prior to her studies at UCL, Kwartler was a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting & Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She previously worked at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, and the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford; and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. 

Publications: 

Book Chapters

• Anne Umland and Talia Kwartler, “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism: ‘A Serious Affair,’” in Networking Surrealism in the USA: Networks, Agents, and the Market, ed. Julia Drost, Fabrice Flahutez, Anne Helmereich, and Martin Scheider (Paris: Centre Allemand d’Histoire de L’Art; Heidelberg: University of Heidelberg Press, 2019), 40–76. 
• “Francis Picabia’s Portrait of a Couple (1942–43): Sources, Techniques, Context,” in Picasso, Picabia, Ernst: New Perspectives, ed. Annette King, Joyce Townsend, and Adele Wright (London: Archetype Publications, 2018), 101–112.

Articles

• “Suzanne Duchamp, Katherine Dreier, and ‘Semi-Abstract Painting,’” in Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, ed. Frauke Josenhans and Susan Matheson (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, December 2021). [forthcoming]
• “Suzanne Duchamp’s Readymade Paintings,” Object: Graduate Research and Reviews in the History of Art and Visual Culture, vol. 22 (2020), 29–52. 

Reviews/Notices

• Ellen Davis and Talia Kwartler with Ana Martins, “Collage Logic in Max Ernst’s Woman, Old Man, and Flower (1923–24): New Findings,” The Burlington Magazine (London, Spring 2021). [forthcoming]
• Review of Kai Althoff Goes with Bernard Leach at Whitechapel Gallery, London, Texte zur Künst (Berlin, March 2021). [forthcoming]

Exhibition/museum catalogues

• Entries on Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Umberto Boccioni, and Bruce Nauman, in Being Modern: MoMA in Paris, ed. Quentin Bajac. (London: Thames and Hudson; Paris: Fondation Louis Vuitton; New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2017), 76–77, 128–129, 134–135, 162–163, 176–177. Also published in French.
• Co-author with Natalie Dupêcher, “Checklist of the Exhibition,” in Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction, Anne Umland and Cathérine Hug, ed. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2016), 340–360. Also published in French and German.

Digital publications

• Co-editor with Michael Duffy, Natalie Dupêcher, and Anne Umland, Francis Picabia: Materials and Techniques (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2017). Published at mo.ma/picabia_conservation. Also the author of the essay on Portrait of a Couple (1942–43), with Michael Duffy, and the selected bibliography, 61–65, 73–76.

Exhibitions:

• Max Ernst: Beyond Painting. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 September 2017–1 January 2018. Assisted Starr Figura and Anne Umland.
• Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction. Kunsthaus Zürich, 3 June–25 September 2016, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 20 November 2016–19 March 2017. Assisted Anne Umland and Cathérine Hug.

Conference papers and presentations: 

• “Between Paris and New York: Suzanne Duchamp’s Readymade Paintings.” “Rethinking the Histories and Legacies of New York Dada,” Loughborough University, July 2020. [upcoming/postponed due to COVID-19] 
• “Dancing Abstractions: Suzanne Duchamp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp.” “Women in abstraction. Another History of abstraction in the 20th century,” Centre Pompidou, Paris, 19–20 May 2021. [upcoming]
• “From private to public. Issues and strategies in the presentation of private collections of modern and contemporary art in public institutions,” Musée de Grenoble, 12 March 2021. [upcoming]
• “Suzanne Duchamp’s Diagrammatic Poetry.” Dada and Surrealism Research Group, University of Edinburgh, 8 December 2020.
• “Teacher as Student: Sophie Taeuber in Zurich, 1915–1920.” “Transmission and Gender: Women artists as teachers in the 20th century,” Ecole nationale des chartes, Paris, 3 December 2020.
• “Word as Material: Suzanne Duchamp’s Verbal and Visual Poetry.” “Perlego: Critical Perspectives on Image and Text,” University of Oxford and the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, 22 October 2020. 
• Co-organizer with Chloe Julius, “Pedagogic Relations: Art and History,” University College London, Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art, 29 February 2020. Key-note conversation by Elizabeth Price with Adrian Rifkin. 
• “Suzanne Duchamp’s Dada Collages (1916–1921).” “Collage, Montage, Assemblage: Collected and Composite Forms, 1700–Present,” University of Edinburgh, 18 April 2018.
• “The First Papers of Women.” “Half Straddle: Here I Go, pt. 2 of You.” The Kitchen, New York, 10 March 2017. 
• “Francis Picabia’s Portrait of a Couple (1942–43): Sources, Techniques, Context.” “Picasso, Picabia, Ernst,” Tate, London, 25 November 2016.
• “Stati d’animo: The Unfolding of Boccioni’s Futurist Aesthetic.” “New Perspectives on Italian Futurism (1909–1944)." Northeast Modern Language Association, Toronto, 30 April 2015.
• “Why Not Rome? Reconstructing Ileana Sonnabend’s Roman Sojourn, c. 1960–1962.” “Rome Revisited: Rethinking Narratives in the Arts, 1948–1964,” The American Academy in Rome, 15 January 2015.

Media appearances:

• Introduction for “Suzanne Duchamp,” The Museum of Modern Art, 2020. 
• #ArtSpeaks talks on Hector Hyppolite, The Congo Queen (by 1946), 26 June 2018; Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Composition of Circles and Overlapping Angles (1930), 20 May 2018; Meret Oppenheim, Object (1936), 27 February 2018; Marcel Duchamp, Female Fig Leaf (1951), 30 January 2018; Umberto Boccioni, States of Mind: The Farewells, Those Who Go, and Those Who Stay (all 1911), 27 May 2017; and Francis Picabia, The Fratellini Clown (1938), 20 January 2017; The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
• “Maintaining Good Relations,” Artists Space, New York, December 16, 2017. Organized by Native Art Department International (Maria Hupfield, Jason Lujan) and Christopher Green.

Teaching: 

• HART 0001 – History of Art and Its Objects (Spring 2020)

Awards: 

• Gerald D. Feldman Travel Grant for research on Suzanne Duchamp in Paris, Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem, Max Weber Stiftung, 2021 
• Research Mobility Grant for Research in France on Suzanne Duchamp, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, 2020  
• Fulbrook Faculty Scholarship, University College London, 2018–21  
• Robert V. Storr Grants for research on Suzanne Duchamp and Ileana Sonnabend, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017/2018