Marcel Duchamp

from or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy (Box in a Valise)

1935-1941

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 de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy (Boîte-en-valise)
Date 1935-1941
Medium Calfskin-covered valise containing paperboard, wood, buckram, oilcloth, velvet, ceramic, glass, cellophane, plaster, iron wire, iron and brass elements; reproductions in collotype, letterpress, and lithography on paper, cellulose acetate, paperboard, and canvas with tempera, watercolor, pochoir, ink, graphite, vegetable resins, and natural gums.
Dimensions 40.9 x 37.7 x 10.3 cm (maximum dimensions, container closed). Deluxe edition I of XX
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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