“Marcel Duchamp #10”

This work emerges from a visual and conceptual inquiry into the figure of Marcel Duchamp. It takes as its point of departure a still frame from the only live television interview the artist ever granted—conducted by Joan Bakewell and broadcast by the BBC in 1968, just a few months before Duchamp’s death. In that conversation, Duchamp delivers a pointed critique of “retinal” art, asserts the role of the artist as a “maker” rather than a romantic genius, and questions the artificial boundaries between art and other human activities.

Formally, the painting engages with the visual language of German artist Gerhard Richter, who, in the 1960s, began reworking photographic images into blurred pictorial compositions. By destabilizing the legibility of the original photograph, Richter created a liminal space between memory, documentation, and painting. This work adopts a comparable strategy, dissolving the identity of the subject to expand the symbolic resonance of the portrait.

The piece positions itself within a critical genealogy of artists who have challenged institutional paradigms by founding their own museums as poetic and conceptual gestures. Among them are Duchamp (Boîte-en-valise), Robert Filliou (Galerie légitime), and Marcel Broodthaers (Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles). Continuing this tradition, Davis Lisboa founded the Davis Museum in 2009—conceived simultaneously as a readymade sculpture, a recognized cultural entity, and a platform for critical engagement.