BLM (Bôite Labels & Models)

a detail of a display in a vitrine at moma of photos and diagrams by marcel duchamp, centered on a small paper sculpture made of a black and white photo of a small cage filled with square marble cubes meant to evoke sugar cubes, which sits on a small white pedestal. to the right is a flat snapshot of the same image. stacks of printed labels which went unused by duchamp sit in between the items.
A paper sculpture study of Why not Sneeze by Rrose Selavy, and accompanying labels

I forgot until I heard Michelle Kuo mention it again on Modern Art Notes Podcast, but one of the real discoveries of the Marcel Duchamp retrospective was the large vitrine stuffed with studies, preparatory materials, and extras from the Bôites-en-valise.

There are various photos and experiments with folded photo sculptures of Why Not Sneeze? by Rose Sélavy (1921), on the way to making the sliced, curved, pop-up book-style photo that ended up in the deluxe edition.

a vitrine full of small photos, diagrams, and a brown papier mache model of a urinal on its back on a little white pedestal, a small aged black and white photo of a cage filled with marble cubes, and a reproduction or transparency perhaps of duchamp's large glass, all leftover or unused pieces from the boite en valise, at moma

But there’s also a papier-mâché model of Fountain. Can you just see Duchamp carefully crafting this tiny toilet, with his little bowl of slop at his elbow, while nazis roam the streets of Paris?

But my favorite things, or the things I was most surprised to see, were the labels. Stacks of labels for every object in the Bôite. Oh, no, unused labels where there ended up being no place to put them. Like for Fountain.

a stack of business card size labels for fountain by richard mutt hauter (height) 0 meter 60 cm, 1917, in a vitrine at moma next to a small white pedestal, the contents of which is cropped out of the image

Ironically, the clearest image I can immediately find that shows both the labels attached to the matted reproductions and the curved 3-D photo of Sneeze is at Peggy Guggenheim’s collection, where I decline to “rent this image file” of a 1941 work with a claimed copyright of 2023. Peggy Guggenheim, for whom Duchamp reserved ed. I/XX, and to whom Duchamp smuggled all the ingredients for 50 Bôites while posing as a cheese merchant, and who packed them with her collection for shipping to the US.

So thanks, at least, Peggy Guggenheim, for getting these graphic design is my passion labels out of Europe, and affording us the opportunity to deduce the specific functionalities of each line’s different typefaces. These might be what I, too, fiddle with making during a nazi occupation.