Marcel Duchamp: Boîte-en-valise

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), France, active in United States, Box in a Valise from or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy (Boîte-en-valise de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy), conceived 1935–41, edition E assembled in Paris in 1963, green linen imitation leather covered box containing mixedmedia assemblage/collage of miniature replicas, photographs, and

color reproductions of works by Duchamp, Gift of Anne W. Harrison and Family in memory of Agnes Sattler Harrison and Alexina “Teeny” Sattler Duchamp, 2016.305, © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2018

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was a French-American painter, sculptor, chess player and writer. Between 1910 and 1914, he rapidly mastered, then discarded, the principal pre-war aesthetic movements—from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism to Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism—and then withdrew from the Paris art world. By World War I Duchamp turned from what he referred to as ͞retinal͟art—art that appealed to the eye. His goal was to ͞put painting once again in the service of the mind,͟ which meant abandoning the traditional tools and techniques of painting and questioning every previous assumption about the boundaries of visual art. From that time forward he deliberately worked in a diversity of media and methods without repeating himself.