Christian Marclay: The Bell And The Glass

Two of Philadelphia's most famous cracked icons, The Liberty Bell and Marcel Duchamp's "The Large Glass," are perhaps rarely thought of as having anything at all to do with one another, save for the fact that they are both cracked and both situated in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, here they are, joined together in an innovative book by renowned installation artist and composer Christian Marclay. This curious volume, unusually (and thus appropriately) bound with an exposed binding, features several musical scores by Marclay, Duchamp, John Philip Sousa and others, as well as multiple pairings of images of the Bell and the Glass. Full of surprising and often humorous affinities between these wildly unrelated subjects, The Bell and the Glass is published on the occasion of the installation and performances by Marclay and the Relâche Ensemble at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in late spring 2003.