If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

Main content

Duchamp, Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F

Marcel Duchamp, Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F, 1960 (Portland Art Museum) Speakers: Bruce Guenther, Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.

Want to join the conversation?

  • leaf grey style avatar for user Casius Cool
    What is Mona Lisa doing in his collection?
    (13 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • piceratops seedling style avatar for user Stuart A
      Marcel Duchamp was one of those guys who questioned the state of art quite a bit, asking "what is art, really?", that sort of thing. One of his pieces was called "L.H.O.O.Q." and it was simply a card of the Mona Lisa on which he drew a moustache on her and wrote those letters at the bottom. In French, it would be pronounced like "ELL ASH OH OH KYEU" (hope that makes sense) which is similar to the actual French "Elle a chaud au cul," which in English means "She has a hot ass." Duchamp was poking fun at da Vinci's "Mona Lisa", basically writing it off, which as you could imagine, was a pretty bold statement. He was basically questioning the foundation of what art is. That's why Mona Lisa is hanging out in his collection.
      (38 votes)
  • leaf green style avatar for user Frazier
    Does anyone know if there is any of Norman Rockwell's work in this category or the next?
    (2 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
  • leaf orange style avatar for user Jeff Kelman
    Speaker Bruce Guenther at says "...he [Duchamp] decided to reproduce everything and make his own history...his own museum in a suitcase...in a new and completely UNBRANDED way."

    What does Bruce Guenther mean here by "unbranded"? Did he not sign these works or something?
    (2 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • piceratops tree style avatar for user itsleeford
      I'm not entirely sure what he means by unbranded here. Exactly why Duchamp assembled this suitcase has actually been debated by critics to no real conclusion. The prevailing theory however is that Duchamp assembled this box of his artwork as a sort of self-deprecating joke that he had not produced much over his career. Essentially saying everything he did could fit in that little box. Another theory is that it was an additional attempt to undermine the value of art, claiming there is nothing precious about the artworks inside and they can be easily reproduced. I imagine either of those reasons may have led to a description of unbranded
      (2 votes)
  • leaf blue style avatar for user ozyo the unfunny
    much of the art by Duchamp that we have discussed wasnt even his own art , such as taking a snow shovel and calling it his art just by putting his signiture on it , if i put my signiture on starry night does that make it my art? NO! so why are his readymades considerd works of art, their not even his.
    (2 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • aqualine tree style avatar for user David Alexander
      Much of what bears the imprint of Andy Warhol was neither produced nor touched by him. He used photographs made by others and had them turned into silk screen prints made by a workshop according to his instructions. The art was in his concept, and it happens when we view it. Warhol's art, as Duchamp's readymades, happens when we see the world differently through what the artist presents to us. Duchamp's critique of the world, seen in how he presents it to us, is the art. No, the urinal, the shovel and other things were not his art, the conceptual framework in which he places them is the art.

      To say that his signature on it is a trick being played on us is simplistic. That figurative artists use paint that is compounded by others make what they produce less than true art?
      How about singers and performers who do not compose their own songs?
      (1 vote)
  • starky sapling style avatar for user Manon Sintes
    Doesn't creating hundreds of valises completely backtrack on his initial idea of packaging his life's work of art into a single suitcase to 'protect' it and make it portable in the case of war/destruction?
    (1 vote)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
  • orange juice squid orange style avatar for user Daniel Man
    Marcel Duchamp was truly a enlightenening person. His work could be different than the classical renisaunce paintings, but, why was it different?
    (1 vote)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
  • leaf green style avatar for user Alex Hallmark
    Was Duchamp a school teacher? What a great project for third graders! I think that the new eyes of a third grader could bring some great originality and spontaneity to this project. So isn't this really what this is about? A return to childhood and naivety.
    (1 vote)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
  • female robot amelia style avatar for user Heather
    What does he mean by mechanically reproduced artwork? And what technology did Duchamp use to create them? Mr. Guenther says that they are not original hand-pulled reproductions (as in printmaking, I am assuming).
    (1 vote)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user

Video transcript

We are here in the Portland Art Museum in the Jubilee Center for Modern and Contemporary Art In front of Marcel Duchamp's landmark Boite-en-valise The red box, series F When I hear the word "valise" I think of could carry around Like a suitcase. Yeah. Like a suitcase. I think my grandmother used "valise" for a suitcase Exactly, and we use backpacks. It's a new nomenclature. Duchamp at the end of world war one had seen in the desturction in Europe. He was a painter, he saw his brother injured in battle and die He came back to Paris and he said "My work could be lost for the ages" and he decided to reproduce everything and make his own history His own musuem in a suitcase. He packaged himself Absolutely. In a new an completely unbranded way. He reproduced a new descending staircase all of his cubist and vaguely surrealist paintings on reproductions It's like a retrospective in a box. Absolutely and you know the interesting thing about this box is that he updates it twice so that the box here at the Portland Art Museum is a box that he created as an addition For Schwartz in Italy in 1960 How many are there? 100 There are 100 boxes In the red version There are red, green, leather and tan versions The earliest version is actually a Valise A leather valise, because these are mechanically reproduced objects he had a little cottage industry He prints a bunch of them but they never get assembled and so when Schwartz comes to him in the '60s and says I want to do the Boite-de-valise as a real addition Duchamp says okay I happened to have a stack of them right here. I never put them together And so his wife Teeny sat in Paris apartment gluing the reproductions onto these black cardboard backgrounds and little labels they had made and they created this retrospective in a box And there is something to me that's sort of about the idea of the artist packaging himself Selling himself, almost like a traveling salesman going around to galleries and try to get their work There is something about that artist and the commercial environment. As a curator I always immidiately pullback when someone introduces themselves as an artist Because the modern artist carried slides and now they carry an iPhone with their entire work on it Sort of like Duchamp but in the technology of today as opposed to the reproductive technology of his age What I find interesting and beautiful about this is the variety Because he was both a painter and a sculptor in the sense that the ready made was a sculpture We have the tiny verison of a urel The entire thing was a ready made He gave us his lifes work to that date as a ready made surrogate For the experience. None of it is an original print in the sense of an artist pulled, plate numbered and signed but in fact these are all mechanically reproduced From images that may or may not have been an original work of art in the first place What's great to me about it is this kind of embracing of mechanical reproduction Which is sort of a thread through all of Duchamp's work and a sort of loss of the aura of the original Which was always a sort of issue that Duchamp confronted You'll notive that this object is sitting not in 1929 when he first concieves it but it sits here in the Jubit centre halfway up in the 1960-70 when America discovers his ideas When Duchamp becomes the grandfather of pop and of Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince and all of the artists who practice appropriation and Sherry Levine and all of that Absolutely and Sherry Levine who would not exist without Duchamp And this little miniturization of them too it's like little souveniers A little Duchamp souvenir It's like Warhol, your little vail of the air of Paris Right here