Boîte-hors-de-valise 15
A still life of Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-Valise that condenses the idea of the portable museum into a self-contained form. The closed suitcase, set within an imagined coastal landscape with Mediterranean overtones, keeps its interior in reserve, shifting attention to its condition as an object and to what it withholds from view.
Executed in oil on linen, the work adopts a conceptual orientation that places it within a lineage of artists who have conceived the museum as an artistic form. Integrated into the Full Color Period and The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the painting operates as a pictorial reinterpretation of this legacy, translating into image a history of works that have treated the museum as part of their own language.
Original · Signed · Certificate
€920
Product Details
Davis Lisboa, Boîte-hors-de-valise 15, 2023, oil on linen, 50 × 50 × 3.5 cm (19.7 × 19.7 × 1.38 in).
The painting presents Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-Valise, conceived in 1935 as a portable museum gathering miniature reproductions of his key works. More than a container, the suitcase proposed an alternative understanding of authorship and the circulation of art. Here, its closed exterior condenses that operation into a single image, where the contents are implied but remain unseen.
The object appears in the foreground, set within a coastal landscape that evokes the Mediterranean. The openness of the setting contrasts with the reserve of the suitcase, creating a precise tension between visibility and concealment. The horizon offers neither clues nor resolution; instead, it places the scene in a suspended state, where the image asserts itself without explanation.
The work aligns with a lineage of artists who redefined the museum as an artistic form. Duchamp with Boîte-en-Valise, Robert Filliou with Galerie Légitime, and Marcel Broodthaers with Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles developed models in which exhibiting became a way of producing meaning. Within this continuity, the Davis Museum Barcelona operates as an expanded structure—archive, collection, and readymade sculpture—extending these strategies into a contemporary context.
Executed in oil on linen, the painting adopts a square format that echoes the cubic geometry of the Davis Museum Barcelona, while its chromatic treatment situates it within the Full Color Period, active from 2019 to the present. As part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the work establishes a continuity between painterly practice and the exhibition device.
Additional information
| Weight | 3.3 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 50 × 50 × 3.5 cm |
