Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water) is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp, with the assistance of Man Ray. First conceived in 1920, created spring of 1921, Belle Haleine is one of the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp, or more specifically a rectified ready-made.[1][2]
A photograph of the object, by Man Ray, was reproduced on the cover of New York Dada magazine in April 1921.[3] This "readymade" consisted of a Rigaud brand perfume bottle with a modified label. It involved taking a mundane, utilitarian object, not generally considered to be art, and transforming it by adding a reworked label.[4]
In 2009, Belle Haleine, Eau de voilette became the most expensive Duchamp piece ever sold at auction when it brought in $11,500,000 (€8,913,000) at Christie's in Paris.[5][6] Previously, an artist's multiple of Duchamp's famed Fountain owned by Arturo Schwarz held the record, selling for $1,762,500 on November 17, 1999 at Sotheby's in New York.[7][8]
Overview
Rrose Sélavy, detail of Belle Haleine labelMarcel Duchamp (Rrose Selavy), Man Ray, 1920-21, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette. Cover of New York Dada, New York, April 1921
Duchamp removed the label from a Parfums Rigaud[fr] bottle, then proceeded, with Man Ray, to alter the object in several ways. The new label was specifically created by the two artists for the Rigaud bottle. For this reason Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette is often referred to as an 'assisted readymade'.[1] The model on the label is Rrose Sélavy, an alter ego of Marcel Duchamp and one of his pseudonyms. Sélavy emerged in 1921, on this label, for the first time, though the name was first used to sign a readymade, Fresh Widow, in 1920.[1] Man Ray continued a series of photographs showing Duchamp dressed as a woman through the 1920s. Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed Rrose Sélavy on several works. The ambiguity of Duchamp in drag is not dissimilar to the image of the Mona Lisa with a goatee and mustache in Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. (1919). Mona Lisa became a man, and Duchamp became a woman.[1]
The original label on the Rigaud bottle read "Un air embaumé" (meaning perfumed air, or embalmed air), "Eau de Violette" (or Violet Water). By swapping positions of the "i" and "o" Duchamp and Man Ray obtained "Eau de Voilette" (meaning Veil Water). "Un air embaumé" was replaced with the unapologetic "Belle Haleine" (or "Beautiful Breath"). The "R" for Rigaud became "RS" for Rrose Sélavy.[1]
The object touches on several issues; authorship, since the label is by Rigaud, Duchamp and Man Ray; gender identity or sexual orientation, as the woman's perfume now has a Duchamp as its principle image. Further sexual connotations arise due to suggestions of smell, touch, and taste intrinsic to the piece.[1]
Shortly after its inception, Duchamp gave the bottle to Yvonne Chastel-Crotti, the ex-wife of Jean Crotti (who eventually married Suzanne Duchamp).[5] Yvonne Crotti kept it throughout her lifetime. The first exhibition within which Belle Haleine appeared was organized by the Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York City, in 1965;[5] though a larger collage version of the label was shown in 1930, at Galerie Goemans in Paris.[5][9]
The title uses the feminine noun "haleine", which from the French language translates into 'breath', specifying the psychic content (from the Greek psykhḗ,[10] 'vital breath'). However, the two cities indicated on the label suggest the adoption of both languages. If "Haleine" is pronounced in a mixture of French and American it would have vague vowel similarity to “Hélène", in English “Helen”. The paraphony is suggested by the association with the adjective "Belle". The name is that of the daughter of Leda (Euripides, Helen, Prologue, v. 133), who was considered in Greek mythology to be the embodiment of ideal beauty and grace, praised in every age. The title of the ready-made would follow that of Jacques Offenbach, La Belle Hélène, a comic opera in three acts, set in Sparta (first performance: Paris, Théâtre des Varieétés, December 17, 1864). It is linked to a parodic tradition of the Homeric legend of Helen. The heroine "Mariée au peu ardent Ménelas", in the finale runs away with her lover, "Pâris" (text by Henri and Ludovic Halévy). The American Man Ray would have participated in the work, 'capturing' the photographic image, like Paris, author of the legendary capture of Helen. Elsewhere Duchamp has already played on the “double meaning of «Paris» like Paris [city] and Paris [Greek hero. Transliterated into Latin: Páris]”. [11] «Presumably, Duchamp drew the greatest ideas for his work from the reading of the tragedy of Euripides Helen, in which a different plot is carried out. [...] In the Prologue of the tragedy, set in Egypt, the protagonist dissociates herself from the current Homeric version, in revealing herself that, following the judgment of Paris, the goddess Hera, as a prize, did not give him Helen in person, "but a living image”, made in his “created likeness with celestial matter” («eídōlon émpnoun ouranoũ», Euripides, Helen, vv. 33-34). Her clarification was intended to dispel any suspicion of ubiquity and remedy her "shameful reputation" (Ib., v. 135)».[12] After clarifying the distinction between image and body (“eikṑn”, “sōma”, Ib., v. 588), the double of Helen ("eidōlon", Ib., v. 582) "flew into the depths of the ether and disappeared" (Helen, v. 605). Eau de Voilette met the same fate. The scent-bottle, exhibited at the historic Duchamp exhibition in Venice (Palazzo Grassi 1993), appeared empty. Only air remained inside. However, since every form wants its content, the same spirit [13] could be locked up again in the perfume bottle along with the same humor as Duchamp, [14] who revealed it (made it manifest) from the very moment he concealed it with an artifice. He was hidden under a thin veil (“Voilette”). Any observer is able to do this, according to Duchamp's poetics.[15]
Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire, founded by Hugo Ball with his companion Emmy Hennings, and in Berlin in 1917. New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s.
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. He has had an immense impact on 20th- and 21st-century art, and a seminal influence on the development of conceptual art. By the time of World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists as "retinal", intended only to please the eye. Instead, he wanted to use art to serve the mind.
A found object, or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already have a non-art function. Pablo Picasso first publicly utilized the idea when he pasted a printed image of chair caning onto his painting titled Still Life with Chair Caning (1912). Marcel Duchamp is thought to have perfected the concept several years later when he made a series of ready-mades, consisting of completely unaltered everyday objects selected by Duchamp and designated as art. The most famous example is Fountain (1917), a standard urinal purchased from a hardware store and displayed on a pedestal, resting on its back. In its strictest sense the term "ready-made" is applied exclusively to works produced by Marcel Duchamp, who borrowed the term from the clothing industry while living in New York, and especially to works dating from 1913 to 1921.
Jean Crotti was a French painter.
Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti was a French Dadaist painter, collagist, sculptor, and draughtsman. Her work was significant to the development of Paris Dada and modernism and her drawings and collages explore fascinating gender dynamics. Due to the fact that she was a woman in the male prominent Dada movement, she was rarely considered an artist in her own right. She constantly lived in the shadows of her famous older brothers, who were also artists, or she was referred to as "the wife of." Her work in painting turns out to be significantly influential to the landscape of Dada in Paris and to the interests of women in Dada. She took a large role as an avant-garde artist, working through a career that spanned five decades, during a turbulent time of great societal change. She used her work to express certain subject matter such as personal concerns about modern society, her role as a modern woman artist, and the effects of the First World War. Her work often weaves painting, collage, and language together in complex ways.
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work are prioritized equally to or more than traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to American artist Sol LeWitt's definition of conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.
Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt". In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, to be staged at the Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice." In Duchamp's presentation, the urinal's orientation was altered from its usual positioning. Fountain was not rejected by the committee, since Society rules stated that all works would be accepted from artists who paid the fee, but the work was never placed in the show area. Following that removal, Fountain was photographed at Alfred Stieglitz's studio, and the photo published in the Dada journal The Blind Man. The original has been lost.
Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? is a 1921 "readymade" sculpture by Marcel Duchamp. Specifically, Duchamp considered this to be an "assisted Readymade", this being because the original objects of which the work is made up had been altered by the artist. They consist of a birdcage, 152 white cubes, a medical thermometer, a piece of cuttlebone, and a tiny porcelain dish. The birdcage is made of painted metal and contains several wooden perches.
Francis M. Naumann is an American scholar, curator, and art dealer, specializing in the art of the Dada movement and the Surrealist periods. He has an MFA degree in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago (1973) and a PhD in art history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (1988).
Bicycle Wheel is a readymade from Marcel Duchamp consisting of a bicycle fork with front wheel mounted upside-down on a wooden stool.
The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object and repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the found object became art.
Arturo Umberto Samuele Schwarz was an Italian scholar, art historian, poet, writer, lecturer, art consultant and curator of international art exhibitions. He lived in Milan, where he amassed a large collection of Dada and Surrealist art, including many works by personal friends such as Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, Man Ray, and Jean Arp.
L.H.O.O.Q. is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp. First conceived in 1919, the work is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically a rectified ready-made. The readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or simply renaming and reorienting them and placing them in an appropriate setting. In L.H.O.O.Q. the found object is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's early 16th-century painting Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.
The Bottle Rack is a proto-Dada artwork created in 1914 by Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp labeled the piece a "readymade", a term he used to describe his collection of ordinary, manufactured objects not commonly associated with art. The readymades did not have the serious tone of European Dada works, which criticized the violence of World War I, and instead focused on a more nonsensical nature, chosen purely on the basis of a "visual indifference".
Anemic Cinema or Anémic Cinéma is a 1926 Dada/surrealist French experimental film by Marcel Duchamp, made in collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret.
New York Dada was a regionalized extension of Dada, an artistic and cultural movement between the years 1913 and 1923. Usually considered to have been instigated by Marcel Duchamp's Fountain exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, and becoming a movement at the Cabaret Voltaire in February, 1916, in Zürich, the Dadaism as a loose network of artists spread across Europe and other countries, with New York becoming the primary center of Dada in the United States. The very word Dada is notoriously difficult to define and its origins are disputed, particularly amongst the Dadaists themselves.
Juliette Roche (1884–1980), also known as Juliette Roche Gleizes, was a French painter and writer who associated with members of the Cubist and Dada movements. She was married to the artist Albert Gleizes.
Tulip Hysteria Co-ordinating is a fictitious work of art by Marcel Duchamp.
La Boîte-en-valise is a type of mixed media assemblage by Marcel Duchamp consisting of a group of reproductions of the artist's works inside a box that was, in some cases, accompanied by a leather valise or suitcase. Duchamp made multiple versions of this type between 1935 and 1966. Titled From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy, Duchamp conceived of the boxes as a portable museum:
Instead of painting something new, my aim was to reproduce the paintings and objects I liked and collect them in as small a space as possible. I did not know how to go about it. I first thought of a book, but I did not like the idea. Then it occurred to me that it could be a box in which all my works would be collected and mounted like in a small museum, a portable museum, so to speak. This is it, this valise.
↑ Ezio Fiorillo, Eziopatogenesi, Parte dedicata ad Ermes, p. 115, All’insegna del Matamoros, Algua (Bergamo), 2019. Written in Italian. Digital edition. ISBN 978-88-907489-7-4
↑ "Presumably a magician, that is, an alchemist, has captured and locked up the spirit”. (Carl Gustav Jung, The symbolic of the spirit [Simbolik des Geistes (1948)], II, Part One, 3, The spirit in the bottle, p. 63)
↑ From lat. humor, 'liquid substance'. “My favorite weapons are humor and laugh” (Marcel Duchamp, interview by Katharine Kuh, from TheArtist's voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, Harper & Row, New York - Evanston 1962, p. 90; in Arturo Schwarz, La Sposa messa a nudo in Marcel Duchamp, anche, Einaudi Torino, 1974, p. 279).
↑ “All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” (From Art New, summer 1957). Text of an exhibition made by Marcel Duchamp in front of the Conference of the American Federation of the Arts, gathered in Houston (Texas) and dedicated to the study of the creative act. The French translation of this text was done by Duchamp himself: “Somme toute, l’artist n’est pas seul à complier l’acte de création car le spectateur établit le contact de l’œuvre avec le monde extérieur en déchiffrant et en interprétant ses qualifications profondes et par là ajoute sa propre contribution au processus créatif” (Marchand du Sel, écrits de Marcel Duhamp, réunit par Michel Sanouillet, Le Terrain Vague, Paris 1958, p. 172).
Further reading
M. Duchamp and M. Ray, in New York Dada, no. 1, 1921* R. Lebel, Sur Marcel Duchamp, Paris, 1959, p. 170, no. 149
A. Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, Londres, 1969, p. 310, no. 123
A. Schwarz, Documenti e periodici Dada, in Archivi d'arte del XX secolo, 1970
A. Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp, 66 Creative Years from the First Painting to the Last Drawing, Paris, 1972, p. 40, no. 93
Ubrigens Sterben immer die Anderen: Marcel Duchamp und die Avantgarde seit 1950, exhibition catalogue, Cologne, Museum Ludwig, 1988, p. 61
M. Duchamp and E. Bonk, Marcel Duchamp, The Portable Museum, Londres, 1989, p. 247
P. Hulten, J. Gough-Cooper and J. Caumont, Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, Milan, 1993, p. 80
F.M. Naumann, New York Dada, 1915-23, New York, 1994, pp. 52, 54
B. Adams, The Age of Modernism: Art in the 20th century, exhibition catalogue, Berlin, The Martin-Gropius-Bau, 1997, p. 319
A. Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1997, vol. II, p. 688, no. 388
B.J. Garner, "Duchamp Bottles Belle Greene: Just Desserts for his Canning", in Tout-Fait, no. 2, vol. 1, 2000
S.J. Gould, "From the Bitter Negro Pun to the Beautiful Breath Bottle", in Tout-Fait, no. 2, vol. 1, 2000
J. Mink, Duchamp 1887-1968: L'art contre l'art, Paris, 2001, p. 80
B. Bailey, Duchamp's Chess Identity: 1917-1923, Cleveland, 2004, p. 107, no. 28* Saõ Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna and Buenos Aires, Fundacion Proa, Marcel Duchamp: Uma obra que no uma obra "de arte", juin 2007-février 2009
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