La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (La boîte verte)

Author: Bert Jansen

Initially, Marcel Duchamp painted in a Cubist style, but in 1912, after his painting Nu descendant un escalier 2 (1911-12) was criticized by members of the artists’ collective Section d’Or, he decided to take a different approach. From then on he recorded his thoughts and associations on paper for what was to be an all-encompassing artwork: La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (Le Grand Verre). Eventually he selected ninety-three notes, sketches, technical designs and reproductions and combined them in La boîte verte. Le Grand Verre was to provide an image of the sexual power of attraction between man and woman and of the promise of an act of lovemaking that will not be kept. In the work preliminary painted studies made earlier come together with new forms that he applied to a background of transparent glass. In so doing, Duchamp wanted to emphasize the timeless and mythical character of the image, as an illusory moment between the third and fourth dimensions. Duchamp did not start constructing it until 1915, when he was in New York; before that the work had consisted only of preliminary drawings.

Le Grand Verre is in two parts: the bachelors below and the bride above. They are separated from one another by three glass plates. For the bachelors it is the horizon above which they project a bride; for the bride the floor on which she has dropped her wedding dress. For both, the glass plates act like the radiator grille of a car. Sexual power of attraction and anxiety are depicted as mechanized energy, as the attraction and repulsion of the poles of a magnet. The notes present a poetic science fiction story full of associative inventions, puns and references to the technological developments of the time. The development of ideas and construction took a great deal of time and Duchamp revised his plans several times.

Duchamp worked on Le Grand Verre until 1923. In that year he signed the work even though it was still not finished. He regarded La boîte verte with notes as an essential adjunct to Le Grand Verre and the decision to publish them should be interpreted as completing it. He got the idea for publication in 1934 after earlier suggestions made by André Breton and the poet Pierre de Massot. He explained his decision as follows: ‘to put painting once again at the service of the mind’.^[1] With the publication in La boîte verte the preliminary texts took on the character of a key to the symbols on a map, explaining the flows of energy between the bride and the bachelors with poetic metaphors. Viewed thus, it is also possible to regard Le Grand Verre itself as a reproducible illustration of the text. A year later this reproductive interpretation of his work would lead to La boîte-en-valise, in which Duchamp would bring together his oeuvre to date in the form of miniature reproductions.