Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, 1924
Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray's collaborative piece Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (1924) is at once a formal work of art and an act of trickery, perhaps even mockery. Known as prophets of the avant-garde and also for their artistic puns and occasional pranks, I can only imagine the scene inside Duchamp's studio when the two came together for creative collaboration. Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette is said to be the only original assisted readymade by Marcel Duchamp that survives, it was on view (encased in glass and guarded like any other object valued at $11.5 million) this past January for 72 hours at the Neue Nationagalerie in Berlin.
A readymade= art created from undisguised but often modified objects that are not normally considered art, mostly because they already have a non-art function. Duchamp is the father of the readymade and declared that by simply choosing objects and repositioning or joining, titling and signing them, the objects became art. His most famous readymade entitled Fountain (1917) was actually a urinal and named the most influential modern work of all time by a poll of art historians. These subversive works allowed him to closely scrutinize art as commodity and his place in the art world. Since the process involved the least amount of interaction between artist and art, it represented the most extreme form of minimalism up to that time.
The readymade we're looking at here is an empty Rigaud perfume bottle adorned with a photo taken by Man Ray, of the demure Rrose Selavy, Duchamp's infamous alter ego (Rrose Salavy is pronounced like Rrose, C'est la vie, which translates to, Eros, that is life.) The production of the piece entailed dress-up time, a photo shoot, the peeling off of the original perfume label, the affixing of Rrose Selavy's portrait to the bottle, and then the inscription of letters to create a new label. Voila.
Whereas the original Rigaud perfume was called Un Air Embaume (perfumed air) Duchamp named his piece Belle Haleine (beautiful breath), and instead of the expected eau de violette (water of violet) on the perfume's label, he carefully inscribed eau de voilette (water of veil). The bottle being empty, here Duchamp seems to be suggesting that true art remains a magic elixer- the breath of genius, the perfume of the gods. He implies that art can only play it's crucial role as a social and political documentarian, when it is veiled underneath an every day object. In other words, here the perfume bottle is the vehicle by which he subtly delivers his own criticism of the capitalist art world. (Little did he know that sniffing bottled perfume would help pave the way to the establishment of Olfactory Arts as a respected genre in the 21st Century, in my opinion one of the most significant and sexy thrills since the Big Bang).
For Belle Haleine, Duchamp's inclusion of Man Ray, the master of formal creative and fashion photography, heightened the playful yet poignant parody of the piece. Today Belle Haleine is part of the Yves Saint Laurent collection. It periodically travels throughout Europe on exhibition and is valued at $11.5 million. These touches of irony smell as if they were scripted by Duchamp himself; I think it's safe to say that his artistic prank has outlasted him.
Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, by Man Ray, 1921
Enjoyed reading, well done.
Posted by: big d | February 25, 2012 at 06:44 PM