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

"Don't be too skeptical…"

Duchamp issued this homemade bond at the end of 1924, promising a dividend of 20% on his winnings at the roulette wheel.1 When designer and art collector Jacques Doucet bought one, Duchamp assured him, "Don't be too skeptical, since this time I think I have eliminated the word chance. I would like to force the roulette wheel to become a chessboard."2 These remarks evince a more overtly controlling attitude than that which had characterized Duchamp's previous artistic engagements with chance, in which he had sought carefully circumscribed ways in which to introduce aleatory elements into his work.3

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