+ Expand

Artist or Maker: Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

+ Expand

Description: Marcel Duchamp moulé vif
signed, titled, stamped with foundry mark, dated and numbered 'Marcel Duchamp Moulé vif 1967 EDITIONS LES MAITRES LTD. NEW YORK © 1967 IV/VI' (on the back of the base)
bronze with brown patina, onyx and black Belgian marble
Height: 22 1/8 in. (56.2 cm.)
Length: 16 7/8 in. (42.8 cm.)
Width: 9 3/8 in. (23.8 cm.)
Conceived in 1966-1967; this bronze version cast in 1967

+ Expand

Provenance: Acquired from the artist by the late owner.

+ Expand

Published: A. Jouffroy, "Duchamp prince de l'insolence," Arts Loisirs, June 1967, no. 87, pp. 20-21 (another cast illustrated, p. 21).
A. Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1970, no. 394 (another cast illustrated, p. 563).
J. Hobhouse, "A Private joke between myself and myself," ARTNews, vol. 76, no. 4, April 1977, pp. 41-43 (original wax model illustrated, p. 41).
F.M. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Ghent, 1999, pp. 272-273, nos. 9.23-25 (plaster version and other casts illustrated, p. 273).
A. Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, New York, 2000, vol. II, p. 867, no. 638 (another cast illustrated, p. 867).

+ Expand

Notes: Property from the Collection of Alfred Wolkenberg

Duchamp learned to play chess from his brothers Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and became an accomplished amateur. By 1930 "the energy and ambition he had once poured into art now belonged exclusively to chess" (C. Tompkins, Duchamp: A Biography, New York, 1996, p. 289). Duchamp participated in championship tournaments, and in 1932 he co-authored Opposites and Sister Squares are Reconciled, an important contribution to the subject of the endgame. "Why isn't my chess playing an art activity?" Duchamp asked Truman Capote. "A chess game is very plastic. You construct it. It's mechanical sculpture and with chess one creates beautiful problems and that beauty is made with the head and hands" (quoted in A. Schwarz, 2000 op. cit., p. 72).

Marcel Duchamp moulé vif (Marcel Duchamp Cast Alive) was created in collaboration with Alfred Wolkenberg of Editions les Maîtres, New York, who prepared life casts of Duchamp's face and arm. The knight was cast from a favorite piece which Duchamp designed and had a craftsman carve for him while he was living in Buenos Aires in 1918. Duchamp included this sculpture in several exhibitions; "he must have liked how the work captured him engaged in his favorite pastime" (F.M. Naumann, op. cit., p. 273).