D is for Duchamp the Deep Dyed Deceiver

The exhibition brings together the largest body of material assembled to date on the reception of Duchamp’s work, presenting an extraordinary group of previously unknown sources and documents alongside the most influential publications issued during his lifetime.

Taken together, the objects on view map what was seen, narrated, and reproduced in Duchamp’s lifetime. They trace how the reception of Duchamp’s oeuvre evolved across different social and public contexts.
Alongside this documentation, the exhibition features more than twenty original works by Duchamp, together with an ordinary mass-produced object, a “coat rack.” An item from the same production run that served in 1917 as the point of departure for the readymade Trébuchet, whose French title alludes both to a chess “trap” move and to the act of stumbling, turning the work into a visual pun with multiple resonances. For Duchamp, the work becomes an epistemological trap, while the public record of its reception unfolds into an expanding field of meaning.

Developed over nearly three decades of research, the project takes its point of departure from Duchamp’s conception of the work of art, articulated in his 1957 lecture The Creative Act, as the outcome of a complicity between artist and viewer, thereby assigning the latter an authorial role.

The exhibition includes an intervention by the German artist Olaf Nicolai, specially developed for this occasion. Executed in neon script, it is based on a sentence by Duchamp found in a recently discovered correspondence, which is presented within the exhibition. The statement underpins the project’s central idea by returning to Duchamp’s own words and offering insight into the trap he set for his audience.