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Lot Essay
George (Antheuil) had married one of the Perlmutter girls whom Joella had known in Paris. I had known, casually, her sister, the wife of Ren Clair. It was she who posed as Eve to Duchamp's Adam in the charming Man Ray photo after Cranach. I treasure a print of this document and always withheld it from exhibition out of deference to the husband, although he well could have taken pleased pride in that little belly, of a shapeliness both Botticelli and Cranach would admire and that few girls, even when just a little pregnant, possess. It is now a well known photo-document, often shown as a Duchamp memento as well as a Man Ray photo.
- Julien Levy, Memoir of an Art Gallery, p. 96.
On New Year's Eve, 1924, a Dada performance - an intermission within an intermission - occurred in Paris at the Thtre des Champs Elyses. Between acts of the ballet Relche, written by Francis Picabia with music by Eric Satie and produced by the Swedish Ballet, a short film by Ren Clair that featured performances by Picabia, Satie, Man Ray and Duchamp titled Entr'acte was shown. In the film, Man Ray and Duchamp are seen playing chess on the roof of the theater, a crowd of suited men in top hats runs by a fte foraine and Picabia, in beard and tutu performs ballet (see: Perpetual Motif, p. 125 and The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, pp.206 and 272.). Either while the film was shown or perhaps just after, Marcel Duchamp and Bronia Perlmutter, (who was to soon marry the filmmaker, Clair) stepped onto the stage naked, and posed, as Adam and Eve in front of a mural or scrim simulating the Garden of Eden. Man Ray photographed the scene, thereby creating Cin-Sketch, one of the earliest documents of performance art in existence, an idea forty or fifty years ahead of its time.
In comprehending Duchamp's role in Cin-Sketch, it can be considered another step in his lifelong pursuit of resolution between the Bride and the Bachelor, the two conflicting personas that co-exist throughout his entire artistic output. The trading of sexual identities, and the role playing that Duchamp was so entranced with was most personified by his alter ego, Rrose Slavy. But Rrose was just one embodiment of the struggle between the Bride and the Batchelor. The choice of Adam and Eve for this performance and the pose were far from arbitrary.
Based on Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach (Frielnder and Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, Cornell University Press, 1978, pl. 198, p. 108), Duchamp's staging of the duo's positioning recalls the figures' hand positions nearly exactly. By the act of photographing the event however, Man Ray accentuates the withheld arm of Duchamp, representing Adam's first refusal of Eve's apple of temptation. This is, perhaps, to more clearly convey the distance between them. Where in Cranach, Adam's hand describes a gesture, possibly of seeking guidance from God with a heavenward turned palm, Duchamp's Adam can be interpreted as refusing his Eve with a hand turned away and downward. According to Arturo Schwarz, Duchamp saw the painting for the first time in 1912 while working on his painting, The Bride (Schwarz, cat. no. 253). Of course, Duchamp's most famous work, The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, 1915-1923), a complex arrangement of schematic painting on two glass sheets, relates directly to Cin-Sketch. The theme of the Bride and the Bachelor was clearly on his mind in 1924, the year after he put away the Large Glass, declaring it unfinished. Over forty years later, in 1967, Duchamp produced an etching, one of a series of nine based on the theme of The Lovers, titled Morceaux choisis d'aprs Cranach et "Relche" ("Selected Details after Cranach and "Relche") (Schwarz, cat. no. 645) drawn from Man Ray's photograph. Schwarz writes "In these nine etchings we find the continuation of the Bride and the Bachelor's odyssey which was interrupted in the Large Glass, 1915-23, at a crucial moment - just before they were to meet. [In] Selected Details after Cranach and "Relche", the first etching of the series - which actually illustrates the close of the story - we find the two lovers in paradise. They have made love, are aware of ther nudity, and will shortly be driven out of the Garden of Eden." (ibid., p.873)
The print offered here is formally in the collection of Marc Allegret, a photographer and filmmaker who collaborated with Man Ray and Duchamp on their experimental film, Anemic Cinema, 1926.
According to a photo-certificate acknowledging this provenance from Galerie Octant, there are approximately five prints of varying vintages known to exist including the print offered here. This may not include the print in the collection of Jean Farley Levy.
- Julien Levy, Memoir of an Art Gallery, p. 96.
On New Year's Eve, 1924, a Dada performance - an intermission within an intermission - occurred in Paris at the Thtre des Champs Elyses. Between acts of the ballet Relche, written by Francis Picabia with music by Eric Satie and produced by the Swedish Ballet, a short film by Ren Clair that featured performances by Picabia, Satie, Man Ray and Duchamp titled Entr'acte was shown. In the film, Man Ray and Duchamp are seen playing chess on the roof of the theater, a crowd of suited men in top hats runs by a fte foraine and Picabia, in beard and tutu performs ballet (see: Perpetual Motif, p. 125 and The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, pp.206 and 272.). Either while the film was shown or perhaps just after, Marcel Duchamp and Bronia Perlmutter, (who was to soon marry the filmmaker, Clair) stepped onto the stage naked, and posed, as Adam and Eve in front of a mural or scrim simulating the Garden of Eden. Man Ray photographed the scene, thereby creating Cin-Sketch, one of the earliest documents of performance art in existence, an idea forty or fifty years ahead of its time.
In comprehending Duchamp's role in Cin-Sketch, it can be considered another step in his lifelong pursuit of resolution between the Bride and the Bachelor, the two conflicting personas that co-exist throughout his entire artistic output. The trading of sexual identities, and the role playing that Duchamp was so entranced with was most personified by his alter ego, Rrose Slavy. But Rrose was just one embodiment of the struggle between the Bride and the Batchelor. The choice of Adam and Eve for this performance and the pose were far from arbitrary.
Based on Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach (Frielnder and Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, Cornell University Press, 1978, pl. 198, p. 108), Duchamp's staging of the duo's positioning recalls the figures' hand positions nearly exactly. By the act of photographing the event however, Man Ray accentuates the withheld arm of Duchamp, representing Adam's first refusal of Eve's apple of temptation. This is, perhaps, to more clearly convey the distance between them. Where in Cranach, Adam's hand describes a gesture, possibly of seeking guidance from God with a heavenward turned palm, Duchamp's Adam can be interpreted as refusing his Eve with a hand turned away and downward. According to Arturo Schwarz, Duchamp saw the painting for the first time in 1912 while working on his painting, The Bride (Schwarz, cat. no. 253). Of course, Duchamp's most famous work, The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, 1915-1923), a complex arrangement of schematic painting on two glass sheets, relates directly to Cin-Sketch. The theme of the Bride and the Bachelor was clearly on his mind in 1924, the year after he put away the Large Glass, declaring it unfinished. Over forty years later, in 1967, Duchamp produced an etching, one of a series of nine based on the theme of The Lovers, titled Morceaux choisis d'aprs Cranach et "Relche" ("Selected Details after Cranach and "Relche") (Schwarz, cat. no. 645) drawn from Man Ray's photograph. Schwarz writes "In these nine etchings we find the continuation of the Bride and the Bachelor's odyssey which was interrupted in the Large Glass, 1915-23, at a crucial moment - just before they were to meet. [In] Selected Details after Cranach and "Relche", the first etching of the series - which actually illustrates the close of the story - we find the two lovers in paradise. They have made love, are aware of ther nudity, and will shortly be driven out of the Garden of Eden." (ibid., p.873)
The print offered here is formally in the collection of Marc Allegret, a photographer and filmmaker who collaborated with Man Ray and Duchamp on their experimental film, Anemic Cinema, 1926.
According to a photo-certificate acknowledging this provenance from Galerie Octant, there are approximately five prints of varying vintages known to exist including the print offered here. This may not include the print in the collection of Jean Farley Levy.