Poster after " Self Portrait in Profile."
DUCHAMP, Marcel. Five Original Duchamp Screen-Print Posters: Self Portrait in Profile. Original serigraphs printed in blue or red on black Montgolfier paper. Each with printed signature at lower right: "Marcel dechiravit." Size: 650 x 500 mm (25 9/16 x 19 11/6 inches). Professionally framed. Paris: La Hune, 1959.
A complete collection of the five known versions of the Duchamp portrait poster produced on the occasion of the exhibition Sur Marcel Duchamp (5-30 May 1959) at La Hune bookstore in Paris. The posters were issued to celebrate the publication of the deluxe edition of Robert Lebel's monograph on Duchamp and catalogue raisonné of his oeuvre, bearing the same title Sur Marcel Duchamp.
A) Poster screen-printed in blue and framed by text regarding the exhibition Sur Marcel Duchamp and Robert Lebel's monograph and catalogue raisonné of the same title.
B) Poster screen-printed in blue along with the artist's name, the letters of which are screen-printed in alternating red and blue, but excluding all text regarding the exhibition Sur Marcel Duchamp and Robert Lebel's catalogue raisonné of the same title.
This rare unnumbered screen-print is signed "Marcel Duchamp" in red ballpoint pen in the lower left corner of the self-portrait, and is either a proof or a variant.
C) Edition of 40, numbered 1/40-40/40 in the lower left in white ink below the blue screen-printed self-portrait.
This exceptionally rare hors-commerce screen-print is signed "Marcel Duchamp La Hune 1959" in charcoal or graphite along the lower left edge of the self-portrait and identified as "H.C." (hors-commerce) in white ink, in the lower left, below the self-portrait.
D) Poster screen-printed in red along with the artist's name, the letters screen-printed in alternating red and blue, but excluding all other text regarding the exhibition Sur Marcel Duchamp and Robert Lebel's catalogue raisonné of the same title.
This rare unnumbered screen-print is signed "Marcel Duchamp" in black ink in the lower left corner of the self-portrait.
E) Edition of 30, numbered 1/30-30/30 in the lower left in white ink below the red screen-printed self-portrait.
This exceptionally rare hors-commerce screen-print is signed "Marcel Duchamp" in red ballpoint pen along the lower edge of the self-portrait and identified as "H.C." (hors-commerce), also in red ballpoint pen, in the lower left corner of the self-portrait.
To celebrate the publication of the deluxe editions of his Sur Marcel Duchamp, Lebel organized the small exhibition of Duchamp's work at the Parisian bookstore La Hune in cooperation with its owner, Bernard Gheerbrant. This modest exhibition was equally titled Sur Marcel Duchamp and was on view 5-30 May 1959. It marked the artist's first solo show in his native France.
To help publicize and finance the exhibition, Duchamp agreed to have his Self-Portrait in Profile (1958), also known as Marcel dechiravit, which had been specifically created for inclusion in the deluxe editions of Lebel's book (see Schwarz, 557a & 565), to be re-issued as original screen-prints in an enlarged version for the exhibition poster, including the two related versions (the self-portrait alone and accompanied by the artist's name).
The two versions (C & E) of Self-Portrait in Profile that are screen-printed in red or blue, were signed by Duchamp and sold. The title Marcel dechiravit incorporates the invented word dechiravit, a contraction of the French verb déchirer (to tear) and the adverb vite (quick). It alludes to the process Duchamp employed to create Self-Portrait in Profile; for each version the artist tore from a sheet of coloured paper his profile portrait using a metal template outlining his profile. It is also a word play on the method of classical artists who signed their graphic work "delineavit et sculpsit." The five examples described above constitute all the known variations.
PROVENANCE: Édouard Jaguer, Paris; Private Collection, Paris.
Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, 3rd revised and expanded edition (New York: Delano Greenidge Editions, 1997), 557a & 565. Francis M. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, p. 198.
Item nr. 153801
Price:
$85,000.00