With the Hidden Noise and Comb, Marcel Duchamp at Philadelphia Art Museum and Wedge of Chastity at the Tate Modern

With hidden Noise (1916) is assisted readymade and a collaborative work between Duchamp and Walter Arensberg in 1916. Duchamp asked Arensberg to place a small object inside the ball of twine, and not to tell him or anybody else what it was. What rattles inside the object nobody knows. In addition the play with bi-lingual words and missing letters (as neon lights that don’t work) inscribed in the metal plate adds to the unknown, which is what Duchamp enjoyed. The Comb (1916) is also an assisted readymade co-authored with Arensberg. Inscription printed along its narrow edge in white paint: “3 or 4 drops from [of] height have nothing to do with savagery,” which could be read as sadistic or caressing one’s hair, and could be seen as sexually loaded act of everyday life.DSCN4676 Wedge of Chastity (1954) moulded object was a wedding present for Duchamp’s second wife Teeny Matisse.DSCN4017

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: