Audio Stop 17

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This free-standing sculpture is a French window with a teal-colored frame and black, leather-lined glass panes standing on a flat, shallow base. Each door is made up of four, vertically stacked, equally sized panes. The doors are hinged on a narrow frame and open with small, clear knobs placed next to the second pane down from the top. The doors are slightly ajar. Black writing in capital block letters on the top surface of the base is legible in this photograph. It reads, “FRESH WIDOW COPYRIGHT ROSE SELAVY 1920.”

Marcel Duchamp

Fresh Widow, original 1920, fabricated 1964

Marcel Duchamp sought to challenge basic assumptions that informed traditional approaches to painting and sculpture. Fascinated by the American idea of cheap and easy reproductions, Duchamp began to appropriate found objects for his readymades, a term he borrowed from the clothing industry while living in New York. He shocked the art world by attempting to show these commonplace objects, often unaltered except for the addition of his signature, in exhibitions. The title of this work, a pun formed by dropping the letter "n" from the words "French" and "Window," refers to the double windows common in Parisian apartments as well as the women recently widowed by World War I. Duchamp himself did not make the miniature window, but rather outsourced the design to an American carpenter.

Read full audio transcript

NARRATOR:

The structure you see here are commonly called a French window. But look closely at the bottom left, where you’ll see the title of this work, Fresh Widow. This is not a typo!

Curator and head of modern art, Harry Cooper, explains Marcel Duchamp’s play on words.

HARRY COOPER:

This was made in 1920 in the aftermath of World War I, so it’s doubtless that Duchamp is referring to the widows created by the war. The fact that the windows are blacked-out might refer to the blackouts that were necessary during the war or to the color of mourning worn by widows.

NARRATOR:

Duchamp was famous for his “readymades,” found objects the artist presented as art. He also liked producing small, strange replicas of objects, as he did here. He believed art was something experienced, not made. Marcel Duchamp:

ARCHIVAL, MARCEL DUCHAMP:

All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

NARRATOR:

Duchamp was creating an experience here even as he signed this piece. Who is Rose Selavy?

HARRY COOPER:

That was an alias that he took. Pronounced in French, Rose Selavy sounds a lot like “c’est la vie.” That’s life. And “Rose” also sounds like “eros,” E-R-O-S. So, in a way, this pseudonym he took for himself could be translated as “eroticism is life.” We also know that it’s a female alter ego, and he was often photographed dressed in character as a rather elegant lady with hat and makeup. So he’s playing, not only [laughs] with the definition of art and the identity of the artist, but with gender as well.

NARRATOR:

Take a look at the work nearby: Boite-en-Valise, meaning box in a suitcase. The artist created this to be a small, portable Duchamp museum. Do you see Fresh Widow?

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