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Lot Essay
In his book Confessions of a Croupier, Paul de Ketchiva, a former dealer in Monte Carlo, proclaimed that anyone who visited a casino and believed they could leave with a fortune was living in a fool’s paradise. It was such a notion that Marcel Duchamp set out to challenge in 1924, when he devised a systematic scheme for playing roulette, which he believed could reliably beat the house and ensure him a steady financial return. Delving into the inherent mysteries of this game of chance, the artist spent the following two years trying to prove the potential of his formula, an endeavor that resulted in the creation of his intriguing artwork Monte Carlo Bond.
I have eliminated the word chance. I would like to force the roulette to become a game of chess.
Marcel Duchamp
Recently returned to Europe following a lengthy stay in Argentina, Duchamp found a growing interest in chess occupied more of his time than art-making—steering clear of the bustling avant-garde art scene in Paris, he spent most of his days studying chess strategy and problems, immersing himself in the intricacies of the game. During a trip to Monte Carlo for a chess tournament in the spring of 1924, he had the opportunity to visit the resort’s famed gambling halls and struck upon a strategy rooted in careful mathematical calculation, rather than luck.
At its heart, the game of roulette is non-competitive, in that players are not pitted against one another to win their fortune. Instead, their challenger is chance itself. Roulette was an immensely popular game in Monte Carlo—it was a spectacle people could easily watch and follow along with, each player feeling the thrill of suspense as the ball dropped into the spinning wheel, bouncing up and down amid the whirl of color, hypnotizing those that crowded around the table before landing on a winning number.
Duchamp intended to exploit what he saw as a weakness in the established system of wagering within roulette, increasing his bets in steady increments in a cumulative process that was “experimentally based on one hundred thousand throws of the ball” (“Extrait des statuts” on the verso of the present work). With this methodical, monotonous system, Duchamp reversed the inherent excitement of the game, and instead made it a test of patience, in which winning came only through a serious investment of time and focus.
Writing to the Parisian collector Jacques Doucet from his hotel room in Monte Carlo, Duchamp explained: “I spend the afternoons in the game rooms, and I haven’t the least temptation. All that I lost there was done in full consciousness and I have not yet been seized by the ‘over-excitement’ of the playing hall. Everything about this life amuses me very much and I will explain to you one of my systems upon returning” (quoted in F.M. Naumann, The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp, New York, 2012, p. 105).
In another letter to his close friend and fellow Dadaist, Francis Picabia, Duchamp reported: “Every day I have won steadily, small sums—in an hour or two. I’m still polishing the system and hope to return to Paris with it completely perfected” (quoted in ibid.). In order to expand the scheme and raise his potential profits, Duchamp required an injection of funds, and he sought a way to engage collectors and avant-garde enthusiasts in the project. He came up with the idea of issuing stocks in a new company that would pursue the wagering system at the gaming tables, with the artist’s alter-ego, Rrose Sélavy listed as President of the Administrative Council, while the artist acted as an “administrator.” Duchamp intended to make thirty shares available to interested parties, at a price of 500 francs each, in the form of the Monte Carlo Bond, which would entitle the holder to a return on their investment of twenty percent per annum.
The artist designed the imagery of the document himself, adopting a birds-eye view looking down on a flat, schematic rendering of a roulette table and wheel, most likely inspired by a similar illustration in contemporary postcards detailing the rules of the game and the ways in which to place a wager. Overlaying text explained the conditions of the bond, while at the very center of the roulette wheel, Duchamp added a mischievous photographic portrait of himself, taken by Man Ray. According to the Surrealist photographer, the image had come about “during a shave and a shampoo”—playfully working the lather across his face until it reached a dense, thick layer of suds, Duchamp pushed the foam through his hair, shaping his locks into two Pan-like horns.
As renowned Duchamp scholar Francis M. Naumann has noted, the addition of this surreal portrait of the artist may be linked to the satirical postcards of the period that featured animals such as sheep, cows, and pigs taking their chances at the resort’s gambling halls. “As these various items were designed with humorous intent, there is little doubt that Monte Carlo Bond was intended to elicit a like response,” he writes, “although we now know that—for Duchamp and his potential investors—it was also to be understood as a bona fide legal document” (ibid., p. 107). To this end, only the editions of the bond that included a fifty-centimes stamp signed with the initials of the company’s president (R.S.) were considered binding and thus officially entitled the holder to a share of the profits from the scheme.
Writing to the collector Ettie Stettheimer, who was one of the first supporters to invest in the Monte Carlo project, the artist advised: “I have sent you yesterday a bond by registered post, which is the only valid one of those you have seen because it has been stamped. If you have another… keep it as a work of art, but the 20 percent will be paid to you on the one which I am sending you” (letter to E. Stettheimer, 27 March 1925; quoted in ibid., p. 108). The faux-legality of the document was further accentuated by the inclusion of an extract from the company’s statutes on the reverse of the bond, as well as rows of precisely printed text in the background of the main image reminiscent of a watermark, with the pun “moustiques domestiques demi-stock” (domestic mosquitos half-stock) repeated 150 times in a vivid green ink that matched the color of the gaming table.
Artists of all times are like [the] gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others.
Marcel Duchamp
The artist printed thirty examples of the Monte Carlo Bond, though in reality only a handful of friends, supporters and collectors were interested in supporting the endeavor—alongside Stettheimer, other examples were acquired by Jacques Doucet, the painter Marie Laurencin, Madeleine Tremois and the artist’s dentist, Daniel Tzanck. As Gavin Parkinson has noted, most collectors “entered into the scheme more out of friendship and respect than in the expectation of making their fortune” (The Duchamp Book, London, 2008, p. 146). Indeed, Doucet is the only investor known to have received a dividend from Duchamp, in the form of a one-off payment of fifty francs, a sum half of what had initially been promised.
Writing in 1959, Robert Lebel noted that though the Monte Carlo Bond was not immediately profitable for Duchamp’s investors, the artist remained convinced of the accuracy of his system: “[Duchamp] insists, not without pride, that he succeeded in neither winning nor losing which is, for him, the peak of financial success. He considers his martingale infallible in this respect, but he also admits that if one perseveres long enough one can hope to win an amount equal to the wages of a clerk who works in his office as many hours as the gambler does in the casino” (Marcel Duchamp, trans. by G.H. Hamilton, New York, 1959, p. 50).
Surviving examples of the Monte Carlo Bond are extremely rare—though Duchamp had planned to make thirty individual bonds, it is believed that only approximately eight were fully realized and activated with the signed stamp. Within this small group, the present work stands out even further, as it is the example Duchamp kept for himself, and remained in his personal collection for the rest of his life. Marked as number thirty in the series, it subsequently entered the collection of the artist’s wife, Teeny, and was passed down through her family before being acquired by the present owner a decade ago.
I have eliminated the word chance. I would like to force the roulette to become a game of chess.
Marcel Duchamp
Recently returned to Europe following a lengthy stay in Argentina, Duchamp found a growing interest in chess occupied more of his time than art-making—steering clear of the bustling avant-garde art scene in Paris, he spent most of his days studying chess strategy and problems, immersing himself in the intricacies of the game. During a trip to Monte Carlo for a chess tournament in the spring of 1924, he had the opportunity to visit the resort’s famed gambling halls and struck upon a strategy rooted in careful mathematical calculation, rather than luck.
At its heart, the game of roulette is non-competitive, in that players are not pitted against one another to win their fortune. Instead, their challenger is chance itself. Roulette was an immensely popular game in Monte Carlo—it was a spectacle people could easily watch and follow along with, each player feeling the thrill of suspense as the ball dropped into the spinning wheel, bouncing up and down amid the whirl of color, hypnotizing those that crowded around the table before landing on a winning number.
Duchamp intended to exploit what he saw as a weakness in the established system of wagering within roulette, increasing his bets in steady increments in a cumulative process that was “experimentally based on one hundred thousand throws of the ball” (“Extrait des statuts” on the verso of the present work). With this methodical, monotonous system, Duchamp reversed the inherent excitement of the game, and instead made it a test of patience, in which winning came only through a serious investment of time and focus.
Writing to the Parisian collector Jacques Doucet from his hotel room in Monte Carlo, Duchamp explained: “I spend the afternoons in the game rooms, and I haven’t the least temptation. All that I lost there was done in full consciousness and I have not yet been seized by the ‘over-excitement’ of the playing hall. Everything about this life amuses me very much and I will explain to you one of my systems upon returning” (quoted in F.M. Naumann, The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp, New York, 2012, p. 105).
In another letter to his close friend and fellow Dadaist, Francis Picabia, Duchamp reported: “Every day I have won steadily, small sums—in an hour or two. I’m still polishing the system and hope to return to Paris with it completely perfected” (quoted in ibid.). In order to expand the scheme and raise his potential profits, Duchamp required an injection of funds, and he sought a way to engage collectors and avant-garde enthusiasts in the project. He came up with the idea of issuing stocks in a new company that would pursue the wagering system at the gaming tables, with the artist’s alter-ego, Rrose Sélavy listed as President of the Administrative Council, while the artist acted as an “administrator.” Duchamp intended to make thirty shares available to interested parties, at a price of 500 francs each, in the form of the Monte Carlo Bond, which would entitle the holder to a return on their investment of twenty percent per annum.
The artist designed the imagery of the document himself, adopting a birds-eye view looking down on a flat, schematic rendering of a roulette table and wheel, most likely inspired by a similar illustration in contemporary postcards detailing the rules of the game and the ways in which to place a wager. Overlaying text explained the conditions of the bond, while at the very center of the roulette wheel, Duchamp added a mischievous photographic portrait of himself, taken by Man Ray. According to the Surrealist photographer, the image had come about “during a shave and a shampoo”—playfully working the lather across his face until it reached a dense, thick layer of suds, Duchamp pushed the foam through his hair, shaping his locks into two Pan-like horns.
As renowned Duchamp scholar Francis M. Naumann has noted, the addition of this surreal portrait of the artist may be linked to the satirical postcards of the period that featured animals such as sheep, cows, and pigs taking their chances at the resort’s gambling halls. “As these various items were designed with humorous intent, there is little doubt that Monte Carlo Bond was intended to elicit a like response,” he writes, “although we now know that—for Duchamp and his potential investors—it was also to be understood as a bona fide legal document” (ibid., p. 107). To this end, only the editions of the bond that included a fifty-centimes stamp signed with the initials of the company’s president (R.S.) were considered binding and thus officially entitled the holder to a share of the profits from the scheme.
Writing to the collector Ettie Stettheimer, who was one of the first supporters to invest in the Monte Carlo project, the artist advised: “I have sent you yesterday a bond by registered post, which is the only valid one of those you have seen because it has been stamped. If you have another… keep it as a work of art, but the 20 percent will be paid to you on the one which I am sending you” (letter to E. Stettheimer, 27 March 1925; quoted in ibid., p. 108). The faux-legality of the document was further accentuated by the inclusion of an extract from the company’s statutes on the reverse of the bond, as well as rows of precisely printed text in the background of the main image reminiscent of a watermark, with the pun “moustiques domestiques demi-stock” (domestic mosquitos half-stock) repeated 150 times in a vivid green ink that matched the color of the gaming table.
Artists of all times are like [the] gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others.
Marcel Duchamp
The artist printed thirty examples of the Monte Carlo Bond, though in reality only a handful of friends, supporters and collectors were interested in supporting the endeavor—alongside Stettheimer, other examples were acquired by Jacques Doucet, the painter Marie Laurencin, Madeleine Tremois and the artist’s dentist, Daniel Tzanck. As Gavin Parkinson has noted, most collectors “entered into the scheme more out of friendship and respect than in the expectation of making their fortune” (The Duchamp Book, London, 2008, p. 146). Indeed, Doucet is the only investor known to have received a dividend from Duchamp, in the form of a one-off payment of fifty francs, a sum half of what had initially been promised.
Writing in 1959, Robert Lebel noted that though the Monte Carlo Bond was not immediately profitable for Duchamp’s investors, the artist remained convinced of the accuracy of his system: “[Duchamp] insists, not without pride, that he succeeded in neither winning nor losing which is, for him, the peak of financial success. He considers his martingale infallible in this respect, but he also admits that if one perseveres long enough one can hope to win an amount equal to the wages of a clerk who works in his office as many hours as the gambler does in the casino” (Marcel Duchamp, trans. by G.H. Hamilton, New York, 1959, p. 50).
Surviving examples of the Monte Carlo Bond are extremely rare—though Duchamp had planned to make thirty individual bonds, it is believed that only approximately eight were fully realized and activated with the signed stamp. Within this small group, the present work stands out even further, as it is the example Duchamp kept for himself, and remained in his personal collection for the rest of his life. Marked as number thirty in the series, it subsequently entered the collection of the artist’s wife, Teeny, and was passed down through her family before being acquired by the present owner a decade ago.