Dada 1916-1923
Artist
Marcel Duchamp
France, 1887 - 1968
Date1953
MediumLithograph
Dimensions38 x 24 3/4 in. (96.5 x 62.9 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.866
DescriptionThis poster and catalogue combined was designed by Marcel Duchamp for the 1953 DADA exhibition that he organized, installed, and catalogued for the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. The sheet features catalogue entries as well as essays by Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Jacques-Henry Levesque, and the blocks of text in black letterpress run down the page in a staircase design overlaid in bright orange with the title and details of the exhibition. The poster/catalogue was printed on basic parchment paper and, in characteristically irreverent style, Duchamp asked that visitors be encouraged to crumple the poster when they were given it upon arrival, and throw it in a proffered garbage can. This scheme inevitably made surviving examples of this work rather rare. However, in addition to the one in the collection here and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among a few others, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has a crumpled version of the piece. This emphasizes the object's dual function as both wastepaper and sculptural work of art, and can be related to Duchamp's other art involving readymades, most famously his Fountain of 1917, simply comprising a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt."On View
Not on view
