Artwork of the month October

Marcel Duchamp, Boîte (La Boîte-en-valise), 1968

Marcel Duchamp

*1887 in Blainville-Crevon, † 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France



Boîte (La Boîte-en-valise), 1968


Cardboard box covered in leather and linen, contains 80 replicas und reproductions of works by Duchamp (G series)
9.9x38.5x41.9cm

A green box with a fold-out flap containing reproductions of all Duchamp's important works: colour reproductions of drawings and paintings as well as models of the ready- mades Air de Paris, Traveler's Folding Item and Fountain presented in a portable minia- ture museum. They are carefully labelled and grouped around a reproduction of the Large Glass, one of Duchamp's major works. The artist himself is responsible for the selection and arrangement of the heterogeneous artistic approaches and works; their spatial layout in turn mirrors very calculated cross-references and overlaps in the artist's overall oeuvre.

The act of selecting was also decisive for Duchamp's concept of the "ready-made". In 1915, having been a painter up till that point, Duchamp responded to the meantime questionable role of the creative artist by means of the "ready-made". Just as in everyday consumerism the crafted object was replaced by the choice of an industrially-produced product, the very selection of an object, i.e., its removal from a purely purpose-oriented state and its recontextualisation, became art. In 1917, for example, Duchamp bought a commercially available urinal, signed and dated it, and presented it in an exhibition, thereby creating his famous Fountain.

In 1941, under the title de ou par MARCEL DUCHAMP ou RROSE SELVAY, Duchamp published the first version of his Boîte-en-valise complete with his own name and that of a female art figure based on a pun. He had worked five years to produce the reproduc- tions, which demanded a degree of technical effort and care that blurred the borders between original and mechanical duplication. Until the year of Duchamp's death, about 300 other versions followed in a total of seven editions; these differ in the number of individual objects they contain and the material used for the cover.

<b>Marcel Duchamp, Boîte (La Boîte-en-valise), 1968</b>
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein highlights a work from the permanent collection each month throughout the year. Works from the collection of the Hilti Art Foundation are also included in this series on a regular basis.