Presenting Duchamp’s Collages on Histories on Display, Histories Unbound: Pathways of the Past the 22nd Annual McGill-Queen’s Conference which takes place in Kingston on March 29th and March 30th, 2025.
This paper, Duchamp’s Collages, proposes a new reading of Marcel Duchamp’s history, bringing attention and value to an often-overlooked element of his practice: his collages on paper. Collage at its most basic can loosely be defined as the bringing together of fragments. It relies on thoughtful understandings of the images and materials being used, with the ability to see beyond the realities and meanings of the “original.” Collage also invites us to recognize relationships made possible through (re)imagining already existing images in the world. Drawing from key collage works by Duchamp such as Monte Carlo Bonds,1924, Front and Back Cover for View Magazine, vol. 5, no. 1, March 1945, Cover for Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares, 1946, Catalogue cover Surrealism in 1947, with Please Touch on the back, In the Manner of Delvaux, 1942 and Etant Donnés, 1966, this research challenges the dominant focus on Duchamp’s more recognized mediums/works and proposes a new reading of Etant Donnés, 1966. I position Duchamp’s collages within the larger canon of art history and present direct comparisons between historical and contemporary examples of collage and Duchamp’s practice to rethink both the history of collage and Duchamp’s legacy. I will specifically focus on the important qualities of this medium, which are tied to social and cultural critique, as well as its ability to (re)think and (re)imagine ideas of the present and the future. By examining Duchamp’s collage work, this paper offers a broader understanding Duchamp’s contributions to the history of modern art.