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Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
MARCEL DUCHAMP The Chocolate Grinder.
Etching on Japon nacré, 1965. 257x330 mm; 10 1/4x13 inches, full margins. Second state (of 2). The deluxe edition of 30 on Japon nacré, aside from the edition of 150. Signed and numbered 23/30 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Giorgio Upiglio, Milan. Published by Arturo Schwarz, Milan. From The Large Glass and Related Works. A very good impression of this scarce etching.
According to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, where there is a copy of the complete The Large Glass and Related Works, "Following on from the replicas of the readymades, Duchamp [1887-1968] and gallerist Arturo Schwarz came up with the idea of making Duchamp's key work Le Grand Verre, 1915-23 (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art) accessible to a wider public, too, by repeating a series of etchings in a limited edition. In 1964 and 1965, Duchamp made etchings of seven separate passages from Le Grand Verre and an etching of the work as a whole. There is also one etching, The Large Glass Completed, in which the passages in red were added from the notes that were not included in 1923, when Duchamp signed the work as unfinished. In addition to the nine etchings, 144 notes were included in facsimile, which referred to the planning and production of the work, together with an English translation. These notes were previously published in La boîte verte and La boîte blanche. The whole was published in 1967 as loose-leaf illustrations in Schwarz's book titled The Large Glass and Related Works (Vol. I) in an edition of 150. The book and the etchings are contained in an acrylic glass slip-case with a colour reproduction of Le Grand Verre . . . A second volume appeared a year later, likewise in an edition of 150, in which Schwarz examined the formal and psychological starting points of Duchamp's early work. Duchamp illustrated this publication with nine etchings . . . Most of the prints consist of references to key works from art history that Duchamp satirized mischievously."
However, the current etching is based on an early oil on canvas by Duchamp, Chocolate Grinder (No. 1), 1913, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. According to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "This work was inspired by a chocolate grinding machine that Marcel Duchamp saw in the window of a confectioner's shop in Rouen, France. The artist rendered the machine in a dry and impersonal painting style, akin to the precise mechanical drawing found in architectural plans. Duchamp was fascinated with the rotating drums of the chocolate grinder, which had a sexual connotation for him, and the machine would reappear several times in his work, most notably in the lower section of The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass),1915-23." Schwarz 629.
