Anaglyphic Chimney

Author: Bert Jansen

One of the last works that Marcel Duchamp was to make was a stereometric drawing of a chimneybreast. The idea was to use this drawing for the deluxe edition of the French translation of the catalogue raisonné by Arturo Schwarz planned for 1969. Duchamp’s death in 1968 led to the cancellation of the French publication. Around 1968 Duchamp wrote to Schwarz about the drawing, ‘I have thought of making an anaglyph (red and green) apropos of a Spanish chimney of which I have made a sketch in three dimensions for the mason who is executing it in our new summer home. This hand-made anaglyph should produce a three-dimensional effect when viewed through a pair of spectacles with red and green filters.’^[1]
           
The publication of Cheminée anaglyphe finally appeared as an appendix to the deluxe edition of the catalogue for the exhibition Marcel Duchamp: Rrose Sélavy in Galerie Ronny Van de Velde in Antwerp in 1991. A copy of the publication Les anaglyphes géometriques by Henry Vuibert from 1912, which was a source of inspiration for Duchamp at that time, was added to it. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen owns a facsimile publication from 1995 without Vuibert’s book, but with a signed and numbered brochure from the publisher Fall Edition, with a piece about the realization of the work and illustrations of the sketches.
           
Duchamp’s plan to create a three-dimensional effect calls to mind earlier works. In 1917 he had drawn a pyramid and its mirror image on a stereo photograph of a sea view. Viewed through a stereoscope, the pyramid appears to be floating above the sea. In 1924, Man Ray and Duchamp made the film Anémic Cinéma, in which revolving discs with spiral patterns created an effect of depth. These experiments were then part of the desire, which he shared with Man Ray and Francis Picabia, to find new forms of art outside painting.