Marcel Duchamp 17 (Das Schweigen von M. D. wird überbewertet)
A haunting monochrome portrait that reconsiders Marcel Duchamp through disappearance, memory, and the unstable afterlife of the image. Drawing on the lost photograph by Man Ray and the critical echo of Joseph Beuys, the work unfolds as a meditation on absence, legacy, and the persistence of painting.
Original · Signed · Certificate
€1,390
Product Details
Davis Lisboa, Marcel Duchamp 17 (Das Schweigen von M. D. wird überbewertet), 2020. Oil on linen, 70 × 70 × 3.5 cm (27.6 × 27.6 × 1.38 in).
This painting translates the death of Marcel Duchamp into a visual language shaped by disappearance, memory, and the persistence of the image. Drawing on the lost photograph by Man Ray, taken in 1968, the work reconstructs a final presence not as document, but as a field of visual instability in which the figure begins to dissolve.
Rendered in a restrained bluish monochrome, the surface introduces an optical blur that unsettles the contours without fully abandoning figuration. The more openly expressive handling shifts the image into a suspended state, where gesture and material intensify both its emotional charge and spectral quality.
The subtitle directly recalls Joseph Beuys Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet (1964), opening a critical tension between silence as strategy and silence as omission. From that point, the work reactivates Duchamp’s legacy as a still-contested space shaped by withdrawal, historical construction, and artistic identity.
Within that displacement, portraiture no longer operates as stable representation, but as a surface upon which memory, myth, and cultural projection remain in active tension. The painting ultimately affirms its capacity to hold an image in place even after the document itself has disappeared.
Additional information
| Weight | 4.7 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 70 × 70 × 3.5 cm |
