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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

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39. This early introduction to the catechism and the general influence of Catholicism in Duchamp's works are emphasized in Dawn Ades, Neil Cox. and David Hopkins, Marcel Duchamp (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 11, 24. For a more detailed study of Duchamp's use of Catholicism in his works, see David Hopkins, Marcel Duchump and Max Ernst: The Bride Shared (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 60-77. Paysage fautif, consisting of seminal fluid (most probably Duchamp's) on Astrolon backed by black satin, was the title of the original piece added to the Box in a Valise that Duchamp gave to his lover Maria Martins in 1946.

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40. Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp, Le Surrealisme en 1947, exh. cat., Galerie Maeght, Paris, 1947 (Paris: Pierre a Feu, 1947). Adcock (as in n. 29), 168-69, points out, "The catalogue cover ... is closely related to the mannequin in Etant donnes. The working study for 'Priere de Toucher' approximates an actual plaster cast of the breast of the mannequin. As was argued earlier, Etant donnes is essentially an n + I dimensional recasting of the n-dimensional Large Glass. With this in mind, it is hardly fortuitous that Duchamp associates a two-dimensional photograph of a 'stripped bare' breast with a three-dimensional foam-rubber counterpart based upon a casting. Similar kinds of references may inform Duchamp's A la maniere de Delvaux (In the Manner of Delvaux), a work that is closely associated with the catalogue cover."

41. Gough-Cooper and Caumont (as in n. 1), Aug. 5, 1946.

42. For reproductions of these original items, see Ecke Bonk, Marcel Duchamp: The Box in a Valise: De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Selavy (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 281, 283, 285, 289, 293, 295.

43. Herbert Molderings, "Un Cul-de-lampe: Reflexions sur la structure et l'iconographie d'Etant donnes," Etant Donne 3 (2001), 106, discusses Reflection a la main as belonging to the allegorical tradition of the representation of Truth, pointing in particular to the famous nude holding high a resplendent mirror in Jules-Joseph Lefebvre's painting La verite (1870). In a section of his article entitled "Duchamp et son auto-renouvellement en tant qu'artiste," 101-3, Molderings corroborates a number of the associations I have made in this essay. In addition to discussing the phrase "a refaire le passe, which I will consider below, he mentions Duchamp's words to Rougemont on the crisis an artist faces at age forty and argues that "After the Second World War, in New York, a renewal of ardor, a rebirth of creativity, roused him and gave him the desire to 'renew' himself entirely" (101).

44. Francis M. Naumann, "Arturo's Marcel," Art in America 86, no. 1 (Jan. 1998): 37-38. The quote is from idem, "Marcel & Maria," Art in America 89, no. 4 (Apr. 2001): 108.

45. All the quotes and descriptions from the Lake George trip are from Rougemont (as in n. 10), 562-71. The translations from the French are mine.

46. Duchamp, in Cabanne (as in n. 8), 76.

In the Manner of Duchamp, 1942-47: the years of the "mirrorical return"

Art Bulletin, The, June, 2004 by Thomas Singer

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