Marcel Duchamp

Box in a Valise

1941

This is No. 1 of a "de luxe" edition of a travelling case (by Louis Vuitton) assembling 69 reproductions of Duchamp’s own work. This edition has one "original" and a dedication to Peggy Guggenheim, who assisted Duchamp financially in its production. It includes a miniature of the celebrated upturned urinal, Fountain, of 1917, and a reproduction of a "corrected ready-made" of 1919—Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, hirsute and inscribed "L.H.O.O.Q." These letters, when pronounced in French, make the phrase "Elle a chaud au cul", which was decorously translated by Duchamp as "there is fire down below".

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Artist Marcel Duchamp
Original Title Boîte-en-Valise
Date 1941
Medium Leather-covered valise containing wood, buckram, velvet, ceramic, oil cloth, glass, cellophane tape, iron wire, and iron and brass elements; reproductions in collotype, letterpress, and lithography on paper, cellulose acetate, and paperboard with watercolor, pochoir, ink, and graphite
Dimensions 40.7 x 37.2 x 10.1 cm
Credit line Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
Accession 76.2553 PG 10
Collection Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Type Mixed media

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