From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy

1935–40, 1963–66 (Series F)

Marcel Duchamp

(French, 1887–1968)

Culture

Medium

Red leather box containing 80 objects (collotype, letterpress, pochoir, and lithographic prints; gouache, green lacquer, varnish, celluloid, wood; objects of glass, oilcloth, and ceramic

Measurements

Overall: 41.5 x 38.5 x 9.9 cm (16 5/16 x 15 3/16 x 3 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 2007.157

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

In 1919, Duchamp created his iconic work L.H.O.O.Q. by drawing a goatee over a printed reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

Description

A leader of the Dada movement that emerged in Europe and America during World War I, Marcel Duchamp assaulted the traditional concept of art as a unique, physical object distinguished by superior handwork or craftsmanship. In its place he proposed that the central, animating principle of art should be the idea. His reputation as the century's most controversial artist began with the public's riotous reaction to his Nude Descending a Staircase at the 1913 Armory Show. That same year he created his first "ready-made" by attaching a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool, and in 1917 he exhibited a urinal under the title Fountain. Often adding inscriptions with humorous puns and ironic double meanings to his works, Duchamp raised philosophical speculation to a higher level of importance than the physical object. Shocked by his unconventional tactics, critics labeled his works "anti-art."