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Marcel Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise: The Museum of Metamorphosis

Boîte-en-valise 0/XX, for Mary Reynolds

Marcel Duchamp, American (b. France), 1887-1968, De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy, 1941, Brown leather valise with handle containing sixty-nine miniature replicas and printed reproductions and one original, Sonate, 1938, hand-colored collotype, made in Paris, case (closed): 3 11/16 x 15 3/16 x 16 1/4” (9.4 x 38.5 x 41.2 cm); overall (opened): 15 ¾ x 15 3/16 x 36 1/8” (40 x 38.5 x 91.7 cm), Mary Reynolds Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries Special Collections, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

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Duchamp inscribed this Boîte-en-valise, one of the four deluxe Boîtes that he produced outside the official edition of twenty, to his lover Mary Reynolds in May 1941. Reynolds, a bookbinder, helped Duchamp design the box used for the Boîtes when the architecture that he had initially envisioned proved too frail. While Duchamp left Paris and eventually France following the Nazi occupation, Reynolds remained in the capital and supported the French Resistance. For its “original,” this Boîte contains a color-guide for the pochoir reproduction of Sonata (1938), a painting that depicts Duchamp’s sisters playing music in front of their deaf mother at their home in Rouen. Click to see tombstone information.