Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers MDP Finding aid prepared by Katherine Stefko, Adrianna Del Collo, and Vicky Rodner.. Last updated on January 31, 2017. 04/30/2014 Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers Table of Contents Summary Information....................................................................................................................................3 Biography/History..........................................................................................................................................4 Scope and Contents....................................................................................................................................... 8 Administrative Information........................................................................................................................... 9 Related Materials......................................................................................................................................... 10 Controlled Access Headings........................................................................................................................10 Collection Inventory.................................................................................................................................... 11 Personal records.....................................................................................................................................11 Lectures.................................................................................................................................................. 13 Interviews...............................................................................................................................................17 Writings about Duchamp.......................................................................................................................30 Correspondence......................................................................................................................................44 Miscellany.............................................................................................................................................. 50 Ephemera................................................................................................................................................52 Clippings................................................................................................................................................ 60 Library material..................................................................................................................................... 64 Photographs............................................................................................................................................78 Original housing...................................................................................................................................196 Studies and preparatory material.........................................................................................................198 - Page 2 - Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers Summary Information Repository Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives Creator Duchamp, Alexina, 1906-1995 Creator Duchamp, Marcel, 1887-1968 Title Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers Call number MDP Date [inclusive] circa 1886-1990, undated Extent 18 linear feet Language English Language Predominantly in English; some material in French. Abstract The Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers are comprised of some personal papers of Marcel Duchamp as well as published material documenting the artist and his work that were compiled and organized by his widow, Alexina Duchamp. The collection is comprised of approximately 800 personal photographs; a small portion of Duchamp's correspondence; his lecture notes and transcripts; vital records; transcripts of several interviews with Duchamp; and published material concerning the artist. Cite as: [Item identification and date], [Series info.], Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Archives. - Page 3 - Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers Biography/History Perhaps more than any other artist of the twentieth century, the iconoclastic ideas and work of Marcel Duchamp shaped the course of modern and contemporary art in the United States and Europe. French American artist Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville, near Rouen, France on July 28, 1887 to Justin-Isidore (Eugène) Duchamp and his wife, Marie-Caroline-Lucie Nicolle. Duchamp had five siblings, including three artists: painter Jacques Villon (born Gaston Duchamp, 1875), the sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon (born Raymond Duchamp, 1876), and the painter Suzanne Duchamp (b. 1889). Marcel Duchamp briefly studied painting at the Académie Julien in Paris. In 1905, he completed a year of voluntary military service. Following his discharge, he returned to Paris, where he painted and produced cartoons for "Le Courrier Français" and "Le Rire." Between 1908 and 1913, Duchamp lived and worked in the Paris suburb of Neuilly. During these years, he often traveled to Puteaux on Sunday where artists and writers including Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Guillaume Apollinaire gathered at his brothers' studios. In 1909, he exhibited publicly for the first time, showing two works at the Salon des Indépendants, and three at the Salon d'Automne. Also around this time, Duchamp met the painter Francis Picabia, whose spirited individualism and radical artistic ideas meshed well with Duchamp's. They became close friends and remained so until Picabia's death in 1953. By 1911, Duchamp was working in a Cubist style and began incorporating sexual mechanical symbolism, biomorphism, and motion into such works as "Coffee Mill" and "Sad Young Man in a Train." The following year, he completed his best known painting, "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2," which he withdrew from the March 1912 Salon des Indépendants in protest against criticism from the hanging committee. The painting later caused a scandal at the 1913 Armory Show in New York (travelled to Boston and Chicago), the first exhibition devoted to European modernism in the United States, where it was described by one critic as depicting an "explosion in a shingle factory." As a result, Duchamp became famous in the United States while remaining relatively obscure in Europe. During July and August of 1912, Duchamp traveled to Munich, where he painted "The Passage from the Virgin to the Bride" and "The Bride," and executed the first drawing on the theme of "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors." In 1913, Duchamp virtually abandoned all conventional forms of painting and drawing, and began experimenting with chance, producing "Three Standard Stoppages" and "Erratum Musical." He also began studies and notes for his magnum opus "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (the Large Glass)" (1915-1923), a complex allegory of frustrated desire. In October of the same year, he moved back to Paris and, shortly thereafter, mounted a bicycle wheel upside down on a kitchen stool. This object, which he found visually delightful, proved to be a forerunner to the Readymades, commonplace objects that Duchamp elevated to the status of art by selecting, inscribing, and, sometimes, slightly altering them. The following year, Duchamp collected a small group of notes and one drawing in the "Box of 1914," of which at least three photographic replicas were made. With the outbreak of World War I and his exemption from military service due to a mild heart condition, Duchamp found France to be inhospitable and in 1915 departed for New York, where he remained until 1918. While in the United States, Duchamp lived first with Walter and Louise Arensberg at 33 W. - Page 4 - Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers 67th Street, and later in a studio above their apartment. Walter Pach had introduced Duchamp to the Arensbergs upon his arrival, and they became instant and lifelong friends. In addition, the Arensbergs became Duchamp's greatest patrons, assembling the preeminent collection of his works that they presented to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1950. In exchange for rent, the Arensbergs eventually acquired ownership of "The Large Glass," which they later transferred to Katherine Dreier. During this time, Duchamp was a primary participant in the so-called Arensberg Salon, where intellectuals, artists, writers, and others gathered almost nightly to imbibe, exchange artistic ideas, and play chess. Duchamp was also active in a variety of organized avant-garde artistic events and activities that helped to define New York's manifestation of the Dada movement. He exhibited five paintings and drawings, as well as two Readymades, at the April 1916 exhibition of modern art at the Bourgeois Gallery. He was a founding member of the Society of Independent Artists, Inc. His relationship with this organization was cut short when he resigned from the board after his submission of a urinal, under the pseudonym R. Mutt, was rejected from the inaugural exhibition. In addition, Duchamp with the aid of Henri-Pierre Roché, Walter Arensberg, and Beatrice Wood, published two little magazines: "The Blind Man" and "RongWrong." Following the United States entry into World War I in 1917, Duchamp departed for Buenos Aires. During his nine-month stay in Argentina, Duchamp completed his study on glass, "To Be Looked at with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour,"