The Brooklyn Rail

Over the years, Marcel Duchamp has been the subject of several retrospectives or near-retrospectives: Pasadena in 1963; London in ’66; New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, curated by Anne d’Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine in ’73; the opening of the Pompidou Center in ’77; Barcelona and Madrid in ’84; and Venice in ’93.

Only two, however, have manifested in Philadelphia: the current exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which will travel to Philadelphia later this year, and the 1973 incarnation, also co-created by MoMA and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This location will allow them to include Duchamp’s two most important works, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915–23), otherwise known as The Large Glass, and Étant Donnés (1944–66).

Neither of these works are on view here in New York. It’d be nice if they were, but despite the double void, the show does not feel empty, and the reason for that is one word with two meanings: reproduction. Duchamp said that his Green Box (1934), containing ideas that led to and instructions for the creation of The Large Glass, was the other half of the story, a full partner to the physical object—a work both opaque and transparent, “retinal” and cerebral. And so, with The Large Glass too fragile to travel, those fragments reproduced as the Green Box take their place here, present and wondrous. Each scrap of jotted-on paper was carefully reproduced to be a facsimile of the original—torn edges and all. They fill the gap as the mental “love gasoline” behind the visual work in glass. But they are also what I would call exquisite sacred paperwork. Enjoying Duchamp fully requires a fetish for ephemera.

The same can be said about proxies for Duchamp’s final work, Étant Donnés, not present thanks to its permanent iconic installation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art following Duchamp’s 1968 death. Instead, we have a three-ring binder compiled by Duchamp, a scribbled-on maquette, the artist’s own photographs, and notes and twenty-seven photographs by Denise Browne Hare (hired by Duchamp’s widow, Teeny) documenting his secret studio at 11th Street and Broadway less than three months after he died. Of course, these exciting curiosities can’t do justice to the effect of seeing Duchamp’s final work in person, but collectively they form a poignant testimonial to the end of the artist’s life. Duchamp was also documented in a 1966 five-minute Screen Test by Andy Warhol in which the punmaster appears almost vulnerable while smiling, cigar-puffing, and sipping water.

Duchamp arranged for both of his most important works, two- and three-dimensional versions of the same ineffable human process, to be gathered in Philadelphia along with other unique puzzle pieces connecting together his grand experiment in optics, eros, and humor. This is an underappreciated aspect of Duchamp’s career—no other artist has exerted so much control over the way their work would be seen by future generations.

Duchamp also controlled precisely how his last sculptural work, Étant Donnés, would be seen physically, creating a viewing experience that was possible from only one vantage point—two peepholes in a wooden door. He controlled the lighting, perspective, and more—everything except his perception by the public and the slow entropic aging of the three-dimensional elements that make up his peep show. Several prototypes and three major renderings of the nude woman who serves as the work’s centerpiece grace the current exhibition, while a fourth, on Plexiglas with perforated holes, I did not see at MoMA (although it appears in the exhibition catalogue). One surprise for me, however, was the hand-colored collage version recently gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by John Pritzker. Another Pritzker contribution to the Met also delighted: Francis Picabia’s version of L.H.O.O.Q. (1942), a mustachioed Mona Lisa augmented by Duchamp with a goatee because Picabia forgot it. There are many other astonishments to be uncovered here, according to one’s curiosity and affection for Duchampiana.

The Box in a Valise (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy) (1935–41) was actually the first Duchamp retrospective, executed by the artist himself—sixty-nine reproductions of his work in a cardboard box then, in the deluxe versions, placed inside a briefcase as a kind of traveling show. Each item and label was intricately executed per Duchamp’s specific instructions like handmade paint-by-number sets, with the process and examples all perusable in great detail at the Museum of Modern Art. The same cavernous room that contains the Green Box and the Box in a Valise also displays the The Box of 1932 (1932) containing notes for a book Duchamp wrote about chess. Elsewhere is the The Box of 1914 (1913–14), his first, made in an edition of five and given to a few friends, and his last boxed medley, In the Infinitive (The White Box) (1966) capping this retrospective of an artist attuned to reproduction, a perfect subject for Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

In a 1955 interview, Duchamp said that his ideal public was that which would come fifty years after his death. Perhaps this retrospective is the first in which the public has truly caught up with Duchamp. He was never trying to gaslight us with his enthusiasm for procreation and re-creation—despite the gaslight brand “Bec Auer,” appearing repeatedly in his work.

For this exhibition the curators have taken a strict chronological approach, even to the extent that certain significant “lost” works are missing in their original forms. Instead we encounter re-fabricated replacements that appear at the moments of their reproduction as doppelgängers, creating reoccurring readymade motifs that thread through the show. For example, a Large Glass replica, painstakingly created for the London retrospective, even appears towards the end, missing the original’s cracks.

Such duplications won’t diminish Duchamp’s reputation as an original—and, indeed, they are central to the success of this exhibition as a teaching tool. Perhaps by finally understanding this creative checkmate, the public could restore artists—rather than collectors and institutions—to their rightful place atop the art world. In the end, money will likely remain king, but wouldn’t it be gratifying to see Duchamp’s reverence for ideas, including originality, flood the market instead?