Marcel Duchamp

A unique assemblage of four reproductions of Duchamp's earlier paintings and objects, the present work not only brings together some of the most iconic images of his oeuvre, but also addresses one of its key questions, that of the artistic value of a mechanically reproduced object. Although the four images are executed by mechanical means, the uniqueness of the work and the 'aura' of the author are present in the artist's choice of producing these particular images and assembling them within a single frame, made by himself. In a witty, tongue-in-cheek manner characteristic of Duchamp, this assemblage presents a compilation of his masterpieces, selected by himself and presented to his friend André Breton.

Discussing the present work in the context of Duchamp's practice of reproducing his own paintings and objects, Francis Naumann commented: 'For years, Duchamp had not only allowed reproductions to serve as stand-ins for his work, but he considered them finished works of art in their own right. An untitled work from 1963 [the present work], for example [...] adequately illustrates this point. As a gift for a friend, Duchamp prepared a special mat and frame to present four reproductions of his work [...] although these reproductions came from those that had been prepared in the late 1930s for use in the valise, the two paintings do not appear to have been colored in the same pochoir technique (they are greenish in color, but monotone in the fashion of grisaille), and those representing the works on glass are mounted so as to make their transparency evident' (F. M. Naumann, op. cit., p. 245). By reproducing The Large Glass on transparent material, Duchamp evokes this particular quality of the original glass object. He incorporates the chance background visible through the work into its domain, thus transcending the two-dimensionality of the printed image.

These four images are reproductions of the following earlier works executed for Duchamp's celebrated La Boîte en valise: King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes painted in 1912, The Large Glass of 1915-23, Nine Malic Moulds of 1914-15 and Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 of 1912. La Boîte en valise presents a portable Marcel Duchamp museum, containing a larger number of reproductions of his most significant works, including three-dimensional miniature replicas of some of his Readymades. The artist explained his reasons for creating La Boîte en valise: 'It was a new form of expression for me. Instead of painting something the idea was to reproduce the paintings that I loved so much in miniature. I didn't know how to do it. I thought of a book, but I didn't like that idea. Then I thought of the idea of the box in which all my works would be mounted like in a small museum, a portable museum, so to speak, and here it is in this valise' (quoted in A. Schwarz, op. cit., p. 762).