Marcel Duchamps letztes Readymade

With its purchase of the Marcel Duchamp collection from Antwerp-based Ronny van de Velde, the Staatliche Museum Schwerin has extended its own collection of works by the artist to become the most comprehensive in Germany, accompanied by the museum’s Duchamp Research Centre. The monograph series Poeisis documents and publishes new research findings on Marcel Duchamp. Based on his last ready-made, in the third volume of the series art historian Thomas Zaunschirm examines the ready-made as an independent genre. The red license plate with the title Faux vagin is both a single as well as a multiple object, and it has previously received little attention in research on Duchamp despite this special feature. Light is now being shed on the story of its origin for the first time. Connections become apparent to, for instance, the early automobile industry in the Parisian commune of Puteaux or Francis Picabia’s fascination for machines, as well as to Duchamp’s projects Large Glass and Étant donnés.