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Lot Essay
In April 1952, Marcel Duchamp told a reporter at Life magazine, “Everything important that I have done can be put into a small suitcase” (quoted in W. Sargeant, “Dada’s Daddy: A New Tribute is Paid to Duchamp, Pioneer of Nonsense and Nihilism” in Life, 32, no. 17, 28 April 1952, p. 102). Rather than a self-deprecating statement regarding his impact on the history of art, Duchamp’s proclamation appears to have in fact been a reference to his now famous La boîte-en-valise, a portable, condensed retrospective in miniature of his most important works, contained within a petite, attaché-case style box. Described by the artist as “a wonderful vacation in my past life,” the imaginative project featured sixty-nine carefully hand-worked reproductions of paintings, drawings, Readymades and other objects spanning the entirety of the artist’s career, and offered a nearly comprehensive inventory of Duchamp’s extensive, groundbreaking oeuvre (quoted in “Dear Dee, Dear Miss Dreier: The Selected Correspondence of Katherine S. Dreier and Marcel Duchamp” in Etant donné Marcel Duchamp, no. 9, 2009, p. 122). Hailing from the deluxe Series A of La boîte-en-valise—the twenty-four, leather-bound, special editions Duchamp created for close friends, trusted collectors, supporters and early subscribers—the present example is numbered XVIII in the series, and includes the original, unique artwork Réflection à main, displayed on the interior lid of the case.
The initial idea for La boîte-en-valise appears to have taken root in Duchamp’s imagination in the spring of 1935. The artist spent the following five years preparing, producing and gathering the materials for inclusion in each of the individual boxes—he sought out key artworks from across his oeuvre, visiting collectors around the world to see the objects in person and organizing for high-quality photographs to be taken of each work, which he then marked up with diligent notations regarding their size, color, detail and finish. Rather than adopting modern and inexpensive practices of printing to create the reproductions, such as lithography, Duchamp employed the more complex technique known as pochoir, in which colors were applied by hand, guided by a series of stencils over subtly half-toned collotypes, to create a more consistent finish across multiple impressions. This intensive process often took several months of preparation on each image before printing could begin—“I have started the reproduction in color of 5 paintings of mine,” Duchamp wrote to Katherine S. Dreier in June 1937. “It will take me all summer. Next winter, I expect to attack the big glass and the Tu’um” (letter to Dreier, 25 June 1937; quoted in F.M. Naumann, op. cit., 2012, p. 142). For the miniature versions of his revolutionary Readymades, meanwhile, Duchamp wished for each object in the deluxe edition to retain the materiality of the originals, including his infamous Fountain, for which he created a small papier-mâché maquette that was then passed to a skilled craftsman to reproduce in porcelain.
While Duchamp had initially envisioned an album filled with these painstakingly produced reproductions, as the project evolved he devised a specially designed box instead, with interior panels and compartments that would open in a particular sequence, revealing the artworks in a carefully choreographed arrangement guided by the artist himself. “It was a new form of expression for me,” Duchamp explained of La boîte-en-valise. “Instead of painting something [new], 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…” (interview with J.J. Sweeney, 1955; quoted in M. Affron, The Essential Duchamp, exh. cat., Tokyo National Museum, 2018, p. 167).
On 1 January 1941, while stranded in German-occupied Paris, Duchamp announced the project in a bulletin de souscription, offering interested parties the chance to acquire one of the deluxe versions of La boîte-en-valise, titled De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy, for the modest sum of 4,000 francs. For many of the artist’s admirers and supporters, the news came as something of a surprise—several years prior, Duchamp had proclaimed he was retired from art making, and instead planned to devote himself solely to chess. Only a few close friends had known of his plans for La boîte-en-valise, such as Dreier, and Louise and Walter Arensberg, who had granted the artist full access to their extensive collection to assist with compiling materials for the project. The advertisement also promised that each box would include an original, signed artwork, which would be mounted on the interior of the lid. While the earliest of these unique originals related directly to the production of La boîte-en-valise—namely the initial color-guides, or coloriages originaux, Duchamp had created for the printers to follow—as the project evolved over the course of the following decade, these additional artworks became more diverse and complex, relating to new works then in progress, or highly personal, intimate missives that reflected Duchamp’s relationship with the recipient.
Peggy Guggenheim was the first subscriber to purchase an example of La boîte-en-valise, and Duchamp would assemble a total of five examples of La boîte-en-valise, Series A in France before the worsening situation of the war forced him to make plans to flee to America. Alongside sourcing the essential paperwork required for his passage from Europe, Duchamp faced the additional challenge of transporting the materials for the boîte-en-valise across the Atlantic. After acquiring a special license from a friend, which allowed him to travel throughout war-torn France, the artist posed as a wholesale cheese merchant, smuggling boxes of the reproductions south to Marseilles, where he intended to depart for the U.S. When he heard that Peggy Guggenheim planned to ship her extensive art collection to New York from Grenoble, Duchamp asked if she would be willing to include some of his materials in the shipment, a plan she quickly agreed to. Thus, while it was almost a full year before Duchamp managed to secure the necessary exit papers and visas to leave France, when he arrived in New York at the end of June in 1942 the contents for the La boîte-en-valise were waiting for him. Duchamp assembled the remaining nineteen examples from the Series A deluxe editions across the remainder of the 1940s, with various examples entering the collections of the Arensbergs, Sidney Janis, Kay Boyle, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Roberto Matta, and Julien Levy.
The present La boîte-en-valise was created in 1949 as a Christmas gift for Henri and Hélène Hoppenot, whom Duchamp had come to know through his long-time companion, Mary Reynolds. A career diplomat, Henri had been posted to Brazil, Syria and China, before the rising political tensions in Europe brought him back to France just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Hélène, meanwhile, was a skilled photographer, and often set out on their travels with a camera in hand, recording the landscapes, cultural and historical sights, and most importantly, the people she and Henri encountered on their voyages. Her extensive collection of photographs chronicle life in each of their postings, from Tunisia to Bolivia, China to Tahiti, Croatia to Peru. Reynolds had come to know the Hoppenots through their daughter Violaine while living in Paris during the war—the two women had both been heavily involved in the French Resistance—and Mary and Hélène became close friends and confidants, exchanging numerous letters throughout the remainder of the decade.
The original artwork in the Hoppenots’s La boîte-en-valise, titled Réflection à main, is a drawing in pencil and estompe, with a mirrored element glimpsed through a circular-shaped cut-out, and comes from the suite of preparatory studies Duchamp created for his late masterwork, Etant donnés. An enigmatic assemblage created over the course of twenty years and permanently installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1969, this three-dimensional tableau invites visitors to peer through the two small holes in a solid wooden door, revealing a partial view of a mysterious scene, in which a life-size model of a woman lies naked amid a carefully constructed diorama landscape. As Herbert Molderings has noted, Duchamp had initially planned for the nude figure at the center of the artwork to hold a mirror in its hand, forcing the viewer’s gaze to oscillate between the image of the reclining nude, the landscape, and their own reflection, though this accessory was later changed to an oil lamp. The inclusion of an original drawing associated with Etant donnés was particularly relevant for the Hoppenots—during a trip to Switzerland in 1946 to visit Henri and Hélène, the couple recommended that Duchamp and Reynolds travel to nearby Chexbres, to stay at the Hôtel Bellevue above Lake Geneva. It was here, surrounded by the picturesque mountain views, that Duchamp found the inspiration for the landscape portion of Etant donnés, taking numerous photographs of the waterfall between Chexbres and the village of Puidoux, which later appeared almost unaltered in Etant donnés.
The initial idea for La boîte-en-valise appears to have taken root in Duchamp’s imagination in the spring of 1935. The artist spent the following five years preparing, producing and gathering the materials for inclusion in each of the individual boxes—he sought out key artworks from across his oeuvre, visiting collectors around the world to see the objects in person and organizing for high-quality photographs to be taken of each work, which he then marked up with diligent notations regarding their size, color, detail and finish. Rather than adopting modern and inexpensive practices of printing to create the reproductions, such as lithography, Duchamp employed the more complex technique known as pochoir, in which colors were applied by hand, guided by a series of stencils over subtly half-toned collotypes, to create a more consistent finish across multiple impressions. This intensive process often took several months of preparation on each image before printing could begin—“I have started the reproduction in color of 5 paintings of mine,” Duchamp wrote to Katherine S. Dreier in June 1937. “It will take me all summer. Next winter, I expect to attack the big glass and the Tu’um” (letter to Dreier, 25 June 1937; quoted in F.M. Naumann, op. cit., 2012, p. 142). For the miniature versions of his revolutionary Readymades, meanwhile, Duchamp wished for each object in the deluxe edition to retain the materiality of the originals, including his infamous Fountain, for which he created a small papier-mâché maquette that was then passed to a skilled craftsman to reproduce in porcelain.
While Duchamp had initially envisioned an album filled with these painstakingly produced reproductions, as the project evolved he devised a specially designed box instead, with interior panels and compartments that would open in a particular sequence, revealing the artworks in a carefully choreographed arrangement guided by the artist himself. “It was a new form of expression for me,” Duchamp explained of La boîte-en-valise. “Instead of painting something [new], 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…” (interview with J.J. Sweeney, 1955; quoted in M. Affron, The Essential Duchamp, exh. cat., Tokyo National Museum, 2018, p. 167).
On 1 January 1941, while stranded in German-occupied Paris, Duchamp announced the project in a bulletin de souscription, offering interested parties the chance to acquire one of the deluxe versions of La boîte-en-valise, titled De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy, for the modest sum of 4,000 francs. For many of the artist’s admirers and supporters, the news came as something of a surprise—several years prior, Duchamp had proclaimed he was retired from art making, and instead planned to devote himself solely to chess. Only a few close friends had known of his plans for La boîte-en-valise, such as Dreier, and Louise and Walter Arensberg, who had granted the artist full access to their extensive collection to assist with compiling materials for the project. The advertisement also promised that each box would include an original, signed artwork, which would be mounted on the interior of the lid. While the earliest of these unique originals related directly to the production of La boîte-en-valise—namely the initial color-guides, or coloriages originaux, Duchamp had created for the printers to follow—as the project evolved over the course of the following decade, these additional artworks became more diverse and complex, relating to new works then in progress, or highly personal, intimate missives that reflected Duchamp’s relationship with the recipient.
Peggy Guggenheim was the first subscriber to purchase an example of La boîte-en-valise, and Duchamp would assemble a total of five examples of La boîte-en-valise, Series A in France before the worsening situation of the war forced him to make plans to flee to America. Alongside sourcing the essential paperwork required for his passage from Europe, Duchamp faced the additional challenge of transporting the materials for the boîte-en-valise across the Atlantic. After acquiring a special license from a friend, which allowed him to travel throughout war-torn France, the artist posed as a wholesale cheese merchant, smuggling boxes of the reproductions south to Marseilles, where he intended to depart for the U.S. When he heard that Peggy Guggenheim planned to ship her extensive art collection to New York from Grenoble, Duchamp asked if she would be willing to include some of his materials in the shipment, a plan she quickly agreed to. Thus, while it was almost a full year before Duchamp managed to secure the necessary exit papers and visas to leave France, when he arrived in New York at the end of June in 1942 the contents for the La boîte-en-valise were waiting for him. Duchamp assembled the remaining nineteen examples from the Series A deluxe editions across the remainder of the 1940s, with various examples entering the collections of the Arensbergs, Sidney Janis, Kay Boyle, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Roberto Matta, and Julien Levy.
The present La boîte-en-valise was created in 1949 as a Christmas gift for Henri and Hélène Hoppenot, whom Duchamp had come to know through his long-time companion, Mary Reynolds. A career diplomat, Henri had been posted to Brazil, Syria and China, before the rising political tensions in Europe brought him back to France just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Hélène, meanwhile, was a skilled photographer, and often set out on their travels with a camera in hand, recording the landscapes, cultural and historical sights, and most importantly, the people she and Henri encountered on their voyages. Her extensive collection of photographs chronicle life in each of their postings, from Tunisia to Bolivia, China to Tahiti, Croatia to Peru. Reynolds had come to know the Hoppenots through their daughter Violaine while living in Paris during the war—the two women had both been heavily involved in the French Resistance—and Mary and Hélène became close friends and confidants, exchanging numerous letters throughout the remainder of the decade.
The original artwork in the Hoppenots’s La boîte-en-valise, titled Réflection à main, is a drawing in pencil and estompe, with a mirrored element glimpsed through a circular-shaped cut-out, and comes from the suite of preparatory studies Duchamp created for his late masterwork, Etant donnés. An enigmatic assemblage created over the course of twenty years and permanently installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1969, this three-dimensional tableau invites visitors to peer through the two small holes in a solid wooden door, revealing a partial view of a mysterious scene, in which a life-size model of a woman lies naked amid a carefully constructed diorama landscape. As Herbert Molderings has noted, Duchamp had initially planned for the nude figure at the center of the artwork to hold a mirror in its hand, forcing the viewer’s gaze to oscillate between the image of the reclining nude, the landscape, and their own reflection, though this accessory was later changed to an oil lamp. The inclusion of an original drawing associated with Etant donnés was particularly relevant for the Hoppenots—during a trip to Switzerland in 1946 to visit Henri and Hélène, the couple recommended that Duchamp and Reynolds travel to nearby Chexbres, to stay at the Hôtel Bellevue above Lake Geneva. It was here, surrounded by the picturesque mountain views, that Duchamp found the inspiration for the landscape portion of Etant donnés, taking numerous photographs of the waterfall between Chexbres and the village of Puidoux, which later appeared almost unaltered in Etant donnés.