Marcel Duchamp, Artist

"Étant donnés (in English: Given) is Duchamp's last major work. It was produced in secrecy over a number of years after the Second World War, from 1946 to 1966, and, after Duchamp's death in 1968, was permanently installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Étant donnés may therefore be considered to be Duchamp's artistic testament, his conclusion to art. The old wooden door of the work, the immediate 'facade' of Étant donnés, meets the onlooker in a small room behind the large, well light exhibition room, where the rest of the Duchamp works are found. The small room is a kind of 'appendix' to the large room. It does not lead anywhere and, at first glance, only contains the door, behind which the rest of the work is installed. When you enter the small room and look to the left, there is a stucco wall that stretches from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. In the center of this stucco wall there is a large, arched brick doorway that forms a frame around the old wooden door. It is obvious that the door cannot be opened, but in the middle of the door, at eye-level, there are two small peepholes." -source is Marcel Duchamp - Étant donnés: The Deconstructed Painting by Pia Høy, translated by John Irons.  Link here. 


"“Marcel, Marcel, I love you like Hell, Marcel.” So ran a mash note written to Marcel Duchamp in 1923 by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, one of the scores of women, and many men, for whom Duchamp was a personal fixation, erotic, aesthetic or otherwise." - source is NY Times, Holland Cotter, 2009.  Link here to read more. 

"Untitled (Erotic Object)," circa 1950s

Almost every surviving scrap of physical material related to "Étant Donnés" has been gathered, all evidence of Duchamp's fascination with craft and the naturalistic effects it could achieve: flesh that was smooth but not slick; skin that looked warm but not too flushed. - NY Times, link here

Photo: Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/Estate of Marcel Duchamp

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"Untitled (Left Arm)," 1959

The nude in "Étant Donnés" is largely pieced together from casts of the voluptuous figure of the sculptor Maria Martins, with whom Duchamp had an intense affair from 1946 to 1951. -NY Times, link here

Photo: Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/Estate of Marcel Duchamp