Duchamp Marcel - AKA Marcel Duchamp : meditations on the identities of an artist

Frontispiece

Julien Levy, FBI Wanted Notice: Edward Aloyisus Hannon (Marcel Duchamp) Wanted for the Crime of Impersonation , ca. 1950. Letterpress card stock with gelatin silver prints attached, 7 " 8" (20 20.3 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art. The slipperiness of identity became a playfield for the surrealist art dealer Julien Levy, who created a number of spoofing wanted posters in the early 1950s. His depiction of Marcel Duchamp (seen here) clearly pays homage to Duchamps Wanted: $2,000 Reward of 1923. In that 1923 work, Duchamp similarly pictured himself in both profile and frontal views, and positioned himself behind a number of aliases (e.g., George W. Welch and Rrose Slavy). Nodding to Duchamps ready adoption of alter egos and alluding to his own imitation of Duchamps work, Levy casts his friend as Edward Aloyisus Hannon, a forger sought by the law for impersonation.

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Compilation copyright 2014 by Smithsonian Institution

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

All artworks by Marcel Duchamp Succession Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2014

All artworks by Man Ray Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris 2014

All artworks by Jean Crotti 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York /ADAGP, Paris

Taking Duchamps Portrait copyright 2014 by Brian ODoherty

Cover image:
Arnold Newman, Marcel Duchamp (detail), 1942.
Arnold Newman Collection/Getty Images.

Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
AKA Marcel Duchamp : meditations on the identities of an artist / edited by Anne Collins Goodyear, James W. McManus.
pages cm.(A Smithsonian contribution to knowledge)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-935623-15-1 (hardback)
1. Duchamp, Marcel, 18871968Criticism and interpretation. I. Goodyear, Anne Collins, editor of compilation. II. McManus, James W., 1942, editor of compilation.
N6853.D8A85 2014
709.2dc23

eBook ISBN: 978-1-935623-26-7
Hardcover ISBN 978-1-935623-15-1

v3.1

This volume, like any scholarly endeavor, has benefitted immensely from the support and example of numerous individuals. We are grateful for the superb scholarship on which our own work buildsfar too voluminous to enumerate here, although suggested through the numerous citations that run through this volumeand for the extraordinary generosity of many friends and colleagues whose ever-gracious assistance enabled us to construct the scaffolding around which this volume was constructed.

Our anthology owes a tremendous debt to the organization of the E. P. Richardson Symposium on Portraiture, underwritten by Robert L. McNeil Jr. and hosted by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, on March 27, 2009, in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture (March 27 to August 2, 2009). Accompanying this event was the related Conservation Panel: New Research on Marcel Duchamp Portraits by Jean Crotti. For their invaluable and selfless assistance in the organization of these events, we thank Jennifer E. Quick and Julie Heath. For sponsoring the Conservation Panel and the related study of Crotti portrait drawings of Marcel Duchamp from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Lunder Conservation Center, whose public programming funds were critical to this effort.

At the National Portrait Gallery, we extend a special thanks to Amy Baskette, Wendy Wick Reaves, and former director Martin Sullivan for their support of this project. The research presented here would not have been possible without the ongoing effort of numerous assistants, over several years, to whom we are extraordinarily grateful: Michael Maizels, Nell Fortune-Greeley, Sara Ickow, Ellen Castrone, Jennifer E. Quick, Caroline Dickson, Aubrie Koenig, Hannah Wong, Molly Sciaretta, Charlotte Gaither, and, most recently, Bridget Killian.

The collaborative research presented in this volume on Jean Crotti has benefitted from the ongoing kindness and expertise of numerous colleagues who deserve special thanks. We express our gratitude to our colleagues at the Archives of American Art for graciously making available materials related to Jean Crotti and Marcel Duchamp for prolonged study, in particular John W. Smith (now Director of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design), Marissa Bourgoin, and Susan Crary. At the Museum of Modern Art, Scott Gerson was tireless in offering his expertise to interpret the physical attributes of key photographs and drawings and sponsoring numerous study sessions; Lee Ann Daffner repeatedly extended herself to provide invaluable expertise in the analysis of related photographs. We are grateful to Adrian Sudhalter for her key contributions to this ongoing study and to Kathy Curry for facilitating these efforts. At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Scott Homolka (now in private practice) worked energetically on research related to this project and was ever patient in fielding requests for information. Shelley Langdale provided valuable information related to the work of Jean Crotti. Michael R. Taylor, who is now director of the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, was incredibly kind in granting access to information about key collections of material to help us better understand Crottis work and many other topics related to Duchamp. At the National Portrait Gallery, Rosemary Fallon has been a source of invaluable information regarding photographs in the collection of the Archives of American Art, which she kindly examined on numerous occasions. We thank Paul Messier for his generosity with his scholarship in helping us interpret initially puzzling findings. We also offer special thanks to Alice Saligman for her generous support of our research.