Marcel Duchamp 11 (Rrose Sélavy)

Davis Lisboa, Marcel Duchamp 11 (Rrose Sélavy), 2017. Oil on canvas, 60 × 60 × 3.5 cm (23.6 × 23.6 × 1.38 in).

The painting takes as its point of departure the image of Marcel Duchamp in his alter ego Rrose Sélavy, captured by Man Ray in 1921, and shifts it into a field of controlled ambiguity. The figure emerges as mediated by the logic of painting itself, where identity and representation are destabilized, suspended between presence and image.

The pictorial treatment introduces a subtle dissolution that softens contours and suspends clarity. This gesture does not conceal, but rather reconfigures the portrait as a space of perceptual indeterminacy, where the image remains open and identity deliberately unresolved.

Integrated within The Paintings Section from Davis Museum, the work belongs to a body structured around self-portraits and still lifes. The former engage figures such as Duchamp, Filliou, and Broodthaers; the latter address works including Boîte-en-valise, La galerie légitime, and Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles. Together, these registers extend strategies of institutional critique within a contemporary framework.

Executed in a blue-dominated palette and a square format, the painting establishes a direct correspondence with the visual identity of the Davis Museum. Rather than representing a figure, the work activates a field in which image, history, and institution converge without hierarchy, affirming painting as a site of articulation.