7 - Marcel Duchamp (French-American, 1887-1968)

Marcel Duchamp (French-American, 1887-1968) De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy – 1966 (La Boîte-en-valise) from the F Series Red leather box, lining in red linen Mixed media, 41,5 x 38,5 x 9,9 cm Signed inside the box Provenance: Fernand Graindorge Collection, Liège Galerie Vega, Liège The Robert and Suzanne Pannier Collection, Bruges Literature: Ecke Bonk, Marcel Duchamp. The Portable Museum. The Making of the Boîte-en-valise. Inventory of an edition, Thames and Hudson, London, 1989, p.301 Arturo Schwartz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp. Third Revised and Expanded Edition, Volume Two, Delano Greenidge Editions, New York, 1997, cat.484, pp.762-764 Exhibited: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Lyngby Rådhus, Lyngby (shipment label) Marcel Duchamp began work on the first Boîte-en-valise in 1935, conceiving what he described as "a portable museum." Over the following three decades, the project evolved through several series, each varying in materials, presentation and contents, while preserving the fundamental idea of a retrospective condensed into the scale of a small suitcase. Rather than producing new works, Duchamp set himself the task of reproducing, in miniature, the paintings, ready-mades and constructions that had shaped his artistic career. "Instead of painting something," he later explained, "the idea was to reproduce the paintings that I loved so much in miniature." Rejecting the format of the book, he devised a small valise whose carefully arranged contents transformed the retrospective into an object in its own right. Conceived on the eve of the Second World War, the first Boîtes-en-valise were assembled under increasingly precarious circumstances. As Robert Lebel perceptively observed, "one year before the war, Duchamp foresaw that he must pack his bags in as small a space as possible." Far from being a simple portfolio of reproductions, the Boîte-en-valise is a carefully orchestrated construction. Miniature replicas of key readymades, colored reproductions, and transparent renderings of works such as The Large Glass are arranged according to a precise internal order. Each element occupies a deliberate position, allowing the relationships between the works to be reconsidered within the confined space of the box. The museum is reduced to the scale of the hand, yet the intellectual architecture of Duchamp's œuvre remains intact. Long before artists began to question the conventions of exhibition, reproduction and authorship, the Boîte-en-valise had already dissolved the distinction between original and copy, artwork and archive, collection and exhibition. The present example belongs to the F series, produced in Milan under the supervision of Arturo Schwarz and assembled in Paris by Jacqueline Matisse Monnier. It contains the complete ensemble of sixty-eight original elements. Formerly in the collection of Fernand Graindorge, it retains the collector's ownership label, designed by Henri Laurens. Acquired by Galerie Vega, it subsequently entered the collection of Robert and Suzanne Pannier. Through her gallery, Manette Repriels introduced the Panniers to many of the artists who would shape their collection. The inclusion of Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise reflects the broader perspective with which she approached modern and contemporary art, placing the origins of many post-war developments alongside the works they would later inspire.