de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy (La Boîte-en-valise)

Since 1913, Duchamp had imagined a box edited in several copies, containing reproductions of his works and his notes: the first version is from 1914, which brings together facsimiles of the first sketches and preparatory notes for The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, reproduced on 13 silver glass plates; there are 3 copies,[3] five copies according to others,[4][5] one of which is at the Centre Georges Pompidou,[6][7] another is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[8] The container for the box was a commercial cardboard box for photographic plates.[3]

In an Interview with Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp explains:

For the "Box" of 1913-1914, it's different. I didn't have the idea of a box as much as just notes. I thought I could collect, in an album like the Saint-Etienne catalogue, some calculations, some reflections, without relating them. Sometimes they're torn pieces of paper... I wanted that album to go with the "Glass" and to be consulted when seeing the "Glass" because, as I see it, it must not be "looked at" in the aesthetic sense of the word. One must consult the book, and see the two together. The conjunction of the two things entirely removes the retinal aspect that I don't like. It was very logical.

— Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp[9]

The 1914 box contains facsimile notes and three photographs of a piece of string mounted on canvas and a note that led to the work: 3 Standard Stoppages.[10][11] It also contains a single drawing of a cyclist riding uphill titled Avoir l'appenti du soleil (To Have the Apprentice in the Sun).

One of the notes in the box makes an early reference to Duchamps last work: Étant donnés, "Etant donné que ....; si je suppose que je sois souffrant beacoup ...."[12]

In 1934, Duchamp made a new box that contained new preparatory notes for The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), a collection of eight years of ideas, reflections, thoughts; 93 documents in total (written notes, drawings, photographs).[13] The Large Glass had been badly damaged upon its return from an exhibition at the Brooklyn museum of art in 1926 to its owner, Katherine Dreier, who lived in West Reading, Connecticut. Duchamp repaired the glass in 1936.[14]

Each of those was lithographed and printed on paper that was similar to the paper he used in his preparations. Printed in an edition of 320 (with 20 containing an original work numbered I to XX; a series called the "luxury edition"), the final work was nicknamed La Boîte verte (Green Box) and bears the inscription "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" in punched-out caps. The publisher is listed as Rrose Sélavy,[Notes 1] Through André Breton, Duchamp explained in 1932 that he intended to give the notes a public reading.[15][Notes 2]

In 1935 Duchamp wrote in a letter to Katherine Dreier: "I want to make, sometime, an album of approximately all the things I produced."[16]

Between 1935 and 1941 Duchamp create a number of boxes called The Box in a Valise or From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Selavy, that contained three 3-dimensional replicas of his works; Paris Air, Underwood and Fountain.[17] The work was released in seven series, A through G. The first series, A, is numbered 1/XX though XX/XX and is a deluxe edition containing an original work of art, mounted in the lid of the box. It contains replicas of Duchamp's works mounted in a wooden frame that slide out in two wings, steadied by brass clips. The case contains 69 reproductions. The colour reproductions were produced using an already obsolete technique called pochoir, where a stencil was used to apply colour on a black-and-white reproduction, making every image, in a way, an original.[18][14] The works in the deluxe edition consist of a plywood box, fitted inside a leather-covered suitcase. When the box is opened, the frame is exposed in the form of an "M" for "Marcel".[14] Duchamp eventually tired of creating the boxes himself and hired assistants to aid in their construction, including Xenia Cage and Joseph Cornell.[14]

Series F were produced until 1966 and are in a red leather box.[14] In addition to the standard 68 works in the previous series, the F series contains 12 additional works, including the Wedge of Chastity and Objet-dart.[14] The large glass is reproduced on Rhodoïd (cellulose acetate).

The colour reproductions created using the pochoir technique took approximately 8 weeks to make. They were based on extensive colour notes taken by Duchamp, who travelled to visit each work and take notes. Prints contain approximately 30 individual colours.[19]

Around the same time that Duchamp woprked on the Box in a Valise, Walter Benjamin published The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. While Benjamin lamented the loss of the artwork's aura, Duchamp appears to have embraced it.[14] Duchamp delighted in the fact that critic at the time still clung to the auratic notion of the singular art work and considered the work a print edition, not a work of art in itself. Benjamin himself, on the other hand, in 1937 in his diary noted "Saw Duchamp this morning, same café on the Boulevard St. Germain. Showed me his painting, Nude Descending a Staircase, in a reduced format, coloured by hand, en-pochoir. Breathtakingly beautiful." The reproductions carry a stamp from a notary, who authenticated the facsimiles at the request of Duchamp.

It was a new form of expression for me. Instead of painting something the idea was to reproduce the paintings that I loved so much in miniature. I didn't know how to do it. I thought of a book, but I didn't like that idea. Then I thought of the idea of the box in which all my works would be mounted like a small museum, a portable museum, so to speak, and here it is in this valise

In 1966, Cordier & Ekstrom edited a new edition, A l'inifintif (In the infinitive) also called The White Box, gathering new unpublished notes from the period 1912 – 1920 in an edition of 150. The box contains 79 facsimiles of notes from 1914 – 23 in a Plexiglas case of 33.3 x 29 x 3.8 cm.[20]

• Centre Georges Pompidou La boîte de 1914 1913 - 1914[6]
• Philadelphia Museum of Art The Box of 1914[8]
• Musee Maillol, Paris [4]
• Art Institute of Chicago[4]
• Jacques Villon once owned a fifth copy, which is lost[4]

Tate The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even (The Green Box) [21]

• Staatliches Museum Schwerin[22]
• MCA Chicago Boite (Box), 1941/1963[23]
• MoMA From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy (The Box in a Valise) (de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy (Boîte-en-valise) published 1966[24]
• Peggy Guggenheim Collection[25]
• Kemper Art Museum[26]
• Akron Art Museum[27]

• Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, The Box in a Valise De-luxe edition no. II/XX May 1941[28]

• Hood Museum of Art, The Box in a Valise series F, 1966 [14]
• Staatliches Museum Schwerin[22]