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MARCEL DUCHAMP La Moustache sans la Joconde (Non vouloir ).
Folded sheet with printed poem by Georges Hugnet and pochoir ready-made on China paper, 1939-41. 193x290 mm; 7 5/8x11 1/2 inches (unfolded). Edition of 200.
Duchamp's (1887-1968) original appropriation of the celebrated Renaissance painting by Leonardo da Vinci, the Mona Lisa (or La Jaconde in French, dates to 1919 and his readymade L.H.O.O.Q. on which he drew with a pencil a moustache on a photographic reproduction of the famous portrait. The current work La Moustache sans la Joconde (Non vouloir) (or The Moustache without the Mona Lisa) further elaborates on this famous Dada appropriation.
The name of Duchamp's original work, L.H.O.O.Q., is a gramogram (a group of letters which can be pronounced to form one or more words); the letters pronounced in French sound like "Elle a chaud au cul" as in "She is hot in the ass" or "She has a hot ass." "Avoir chaud au cul" is a vulgar French expression implying that a woman has sexual restlessness. In an interview late in his career, Duchamp provided another loose translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below." Schwarz A 310.
