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In the Manner of Duchamp, 1942-47: the years of the "mirrorical return"
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2004 by Thomas Singer
[FIGURE 16 OMITTED]
The design of the dust jacket, which determined the two works that would open and close the catalogue, is of great significance to Duchamp's career as an "an-artist." (54) Monte Carlo Bond was the first work that Duchamp completed following his abandonment of The Large Glass and his rejection of all forms of painting and anything resembling what was traditionally recognized as art. As he jokingly wrote to Francis Picabia in 1924, "You see I haven't quit being a painter, now I'm sketching on chance." (55) For its part, In the Manner of Delvaux announced his mirrorical return in 1942 to works that, as he later told Rougemont, did not involve "resign[ing] yourself to self-imitation" and inaugurated a new period that would culminate in the installation Etant donnes.
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Autobiographical references aside, the dust jacket's design poses the question of how Man Ray's photograph of the lathered Duchamp relates to the reflected breasts of In the Manner of Delvaux. Duchamp himself provides the clue: "RENVOI MIROIRIQUE"? That is, the images on the front and the back of the dust jacket of Marcel Duchamp: Ready-Mades, etc. (1913-1964) are mirror images of each other. The two photographs portray Rrose Selavy and Duchamp, respectively, in mirrors that reverse their gender. The "infra-thin separation" of Duchamp's "visiting card," In the Manner of Delvaux, reverses the male Duchamp as the female Bride. In one of his posthumously published notes, Duchamp mused about the interrelation of the infra-thin, the renvoi miroirique, and sexual difference: "Reflections from a mirror--or a glass ... infra-thin separation ... separation / has the 2 senses male and female...." (56) The relation of mirror imaging to "the 2 senses male and female" goes back in his work to as early as November 1908, when he published his first cartoon, the drawing Feminisme / La Femme Cure, in the newspaper Le Courier Francais: it shows a lady dressed as a curate standing before the mirror of her vanity table (Fig. 17). Among the uniforms of the Nine Malic Molds in The Large Glass is that of a priest, indicating that this Bride before the mirror has been transformed into one of the Bachelors.
[FIGURE 17 OMITTED]
In Duchamp lathered, we are presented with a portrait of Rrose Selavy transformed by the renvoi miroirique of photography into Marcel Duchamp. Although the photograph shows no mirror, one is clearly implied, as Dawn Ades persuasively argues in her article "Duchamp's Masquerades." Ades writes that "the gaze at the camera lens operates as a replay of the mirror's confirmation of beauty," points to the project proposed in the White Box notes published in 1966, "Photo ...: My portrait in the bathroom mirror," (57) and argues that for the shaver, "The bathroom mirror is the male counterpart to the dressing-table looking glass." Ades also points out that at roughly the same time that Man Ray took the photographs of Duchamp lathered, the latter was also working with Man Ray on the series of Rrose Selavy photographs in which he wears the hat of Picabia's lover, Germaine Everling (Fig. 18). (58) Clearly, the two series of photographs are related. Duchamp is Rrose Selavy (about to be, that is, "delay included") rasee, recalling the photograph of Duchamp with his head shaved in order to create the Headlight Child tonsure (from the Jura-Paris Road project--the "headlight child could, graphically, be a comet, which would have its tail in front...." (59)) of the late 1910s or early 1920s (Fig. 19), and foreshadowing the Mona Lisa rasee of 1965. (60) Duchamp wrote in 1912, "The Jura-Paris road ... [will find] a termination at one end in the chief of the 5 nudes, at the other in the headlight-child." (61) The dust jacket of the exhibition catalogue forms a perfect circle by opening and closing with references to the Jura-Paris road. At one end is Duchamp lathered, as if in preparation for the Headlight Child tonsure; at the other end the "5 nus" or "seins nus" of In the Manner of Delvaux.
