257. Duchamp, Marcel and Robert Lebel
Eau & Gaz a tous les etages

Signed by Signed by Duchamp and Lebel.

Paris: Editions Trianon, 1959
194 pp.

Limited to 137 copies of which this is number 72. Loose as issued in wrappers, enclosed in a brown cloth box with blue and white pochoir title plate on the cover. The front of the case bears a title plate which reads "Eau & Gaz a tous les etages" [Water and Gas on all floors]. This pochoir, inscribed with Duchamp's initials, reproduces the blue and white enamel plates found on apartment building facades all over Paris. Like other "readymades" for which Duchamp was customarily on the lookout, the apartment plaques appealed to Marcel Duchamp both for their graphic design and for their possibilities for "double entendre".

Inside the box is a proof of Duchamp's celebrated work, "The Large Glass," mounted under plexiglass inside a compartment with magnetic enclosure, and a proof of the pochoir of the sketch "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" [the formal title for "The Large Glass"]. Mounted inside the book is "Self Portrait in Profile", numbered and inscribed in ink, Marcel dechiravit. The profile has the appearance of being torn carefully from an orange sheet of paper, hence the Latin term "dechiravit." Duchamp biographer Arturo Schwarz noted that the "Eau & Gaz" plates played into the elaborate sexual iconography of "The Large Glass" with its Bride and her Bachelors. In his fine recent study of Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Abrams, 1999], Francis Naumann offers a number of imaginative insights into reasons for the artist's choice of the terms "Eau & Gaz" as well as for the materials used in the construction of this work. Naumann notes that both water and gas were components that played a major role in the operation of the Bachelor Machine in the Large Glass. He also points out a more personal, even familial connection with these elements as well: "It was recently discovered that one of Duchamp's relatives in the 19th century had strongly advocated establishing a proper water and gas supplies to the village in which he lived, a civic-minded goal that led him to author a series of brochures entitled "L'Eau et le Gaz."

Naumann also suggested that Duchamp's choice of a brown rust-colored linen cover for the box of "Eau & Gaz" was probably meant to suggest the wall of an old building--the kind of structure on which one would find the enamel plaques touting the modern utilities within.

6000/12000     SOLD: $6,900.00

Condition: A Fine copy with typical shrinkage of plastic over "Large Glass" causing crenellation of image.