Étant donnés
| Étant donnés | |
|---|---|
| Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas (English), Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage (French) | |
 | |
| Artist | Marcel Duchamp |
| Year | 1946–1966 |
| Type | Assemblage |
| Location | |
Étant donnés (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas, French: Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage) is a 1966 assemblage by Marcel Duchamp. It was his last major artwork, surprising viewers and critics who had widely believed he had given up art; he was previously pursuing competitive chess which he had been playing for almost 25 years. The artwork is a tableau, visible only through a pair of peepholes—one for each eye—in a wooden door, of a nude woman lying on her back on a hill with her face hidden, legs spread, holding a gas lamp in the air in one hand against a landscape backdrop.
Duchamp worked in secrecy on the artwork from 1946 to 1966 in his Greenwich Village studio.[1] It is composed of an old wooden door, nails, bricks, brass, aluminium sheet, steel binder clips, velvet, leaves, twigs, a female form made of parchment, hair, glass, plastic clothespins, oil paint, linoleum, an assortment of lights, a landscape composed of hand-painted and photographed elements and an electric motor housed in a cookie tin which rotates a perforated disc to create a waterfall effect. The Brazilian sculptor Maria Martins, who had Duchamp as a lover from 1942 to 1949, served as the model for the female figure in the piece, and his second wife, Alexina (Teeny), served as the model for the figure's arm.[2][3] Duchamp prepared a "Manual of Instructions" in a 4-ring binder explaining and illustrating how to assemble and disassemble the piece.[1]
Anne d'Harnoncourt, a young curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and later its director, orchestrated the acquisition and transfer of the piece to Philadelphia. According to the artist's wishes that the work be installed and viewed after his death, Duchamp's widow Alexina Duchamp and his step-son Paul Matisse installed the work and made it available to the public at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1969, a year after Duchamp's death.[4]
See also
References
- Citations
- 1 2 "Manual of instructions for the assembly of Étant donnés..." Philadelphia Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 2014-12-03. Retrieved 23 November 2014.
- ↑ Cotter, Holland (August 28, 2009). "Landscape of Eros, Through the Peephole". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
- ↑ Naumann, Francis (2026). Impossible: The Love Affair Between Marcel Duchamp and Maria Martins, and the Artwork It Inspired. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 978-0789215291.
- ↑ "Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 2014-12-03. Retrieved 23 November 2014.
- Sources
- Banz, Stefan, ed. (2010). Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall. Zurich: JRP|Ringier. ISBN 978-3-03-764156-9.
- Cotter, Holland (August 27, 2009). "Landscape of Eros, Through the Peephole". The New York Times.
- Hulten, Pontus, ed. (1993). Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-08225-9.
- Meis, Morgan (October 7, 2009). "Peep Show". The Smart Set.
- Tomkins, Calvin (1996). Duchamp: A Biography. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-5789-8.
Further reading
- Morée Research Group (2025). Morée: A Hidden Duchamp That Reframes History. Morée Research Group. doi:10.17613/z1c8e-rvk19. — A study proposing that the painting Morée anticipates themes later developed in Duchamp’s Étant donnés.
External links
- Outside view of Etant donnés Archived 2007-10-24 at the Wayback Machine at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
- Inside view of Etant donnés
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