Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) 1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985. Tate. © Estate of Richard Hamilton and Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2024.
14 rooms in Modern and Contemporary British Art
This room explores the friendship and collaborations of the artists Richard Hamilton and Marcel Duchamp in the years 1956 to 1968
During the 1950s, Duchamp’s work was not well known in the UK. Hamilton made great efforts to study and champion the older artist, serving as his decipherer and decoder. Through Duchamp, Hamilton was encouraged to reconsider the nature of art and visual perception. He noted, ‘what I admired him most for, was his detachment. It was as though he’s looking at the thing from quite a distance.’
Hamilton first wrote to Duchamp in 1956, volunteering to translate one of his artworks from French into English. The Green Box is an archive of notes and drawings created by Duchamp while making his major glass artwork The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (also known as The Large Glass) from 1915–23. Under Duchamp’s close supervision, Hamilton published The Green Book in 1960. The two artists became friends and remained in regular contact. In 1966 Hamilton curated the UK’s first major Duchamp exhibition at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain). As the original Large Glass was too fragile to travel, Hamilton began a step-by-step reconstruction guided by Duchamp and his notes.
Hamilton found The Large Glass fascinating as a detached study of mechanised desire and sexual frustration in human relationships. This period of research and dialogue with Duchamp, often credited as one of the first conceptual artists, inspired Hamilton to introduce complex ideas and symbolic systems in his own work.
The methodical reconstructions of Duchamp’s work produced by Hamilton question conventional ideas of artistic authorship. The Large Glass on display here was approved and signed by Duchamp in 1965 as a ‘faithful replica’. The other, related works are unique results of creative dialogues between the two artists. Their authorship is open to interpretation.
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was born in Normandy, France. He lived and worked in Paris and New York.
Richard Hamilton (1922–2011) was born in London, UK. He lived and worked in London and Oxfordshire.
Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton, Nine malic moulds 1914–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
Nine malic moulds is a sheet of glass with lead wire drawings depicting what Duchamp called the ‘cemetery of uniforms and liveries’. They are outfits worn in nine different jobs that could be held by men, representing the ‘bachelors’. The work also shows the network of ‘capillary tubes’ that connect each of the nine Moulds to the first sequence of Sieves. These designs feature in the lower panel of the full Large Glass. Hamilton remade the study by using a full-size photograph of a drawing that Duchamp had created in 1914.
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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even (The Green Box) 1934
The Green Box is Duchamp’s own publication of the notes, diagrams and studies for The Large Glass. Each handwritten note is reproduced as an exact copy, including torn edges, blots, erasures, revisions and illegible sections. The Green Box is the literary double of The Large Glass, both a documentation of Duchamp’s working process and a guide to understanding the many layers of hidden meaning in the piece. Most of the notes were completed before Duchamp left France for New York in 1915.4
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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton
Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp, Sieves 1965, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
This arc of seven intersecting cones is the first glass reconstruction attempted by Hamilton. It wasn’t a direct remake of a Duchamp work, although he did make a drawing of the subject in 1914. Instead, Hamilton made it to test if he could reproduce the dust effect described in The Green Box: ‘For the sieves in the glass – allow dust to fall on this part, a dust of 3 or 4 months, and wipe well around it in such a way that this dust will be a kind of colour’. Hamilton reflected: ‘So unusual are the techniques that it seems sensible to repeat them.’
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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp, Oculist Witnesses 1966, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966
Duchamp made a perspective drawing of three eye charts for The Large Glass. He was interested in optical phenomena – the original French title Térmoins oculiste puns on terms for eye witnesses and opticians’ charts. Duchamp spent three months scraping a silver section of the glass to leave reflecting images. Hamilton did not have time to follow this process. His shortcut was to prepare a silkscreen on silver glass treated with acid. This study is a trial, something Duchamp had not needed to make.
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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton
Richard Hamilton, The Passage of the Bride 1998–9
The Passage of the Bride shows a first-floor passage and windowed alcove in Hamilton’s home. On the right wall, a framed glass panel includes a view of the lower section of Duchamp’s Large Glass. A woman is visible in the panel, as if in reflection, standing in for the ‘bride’. Hamilton made the work by digitally altering a photograph and painting over the image of the framed mirror with oils. Duchamp’s ideas concerning perspective and image manipulation remained an enduring influence on Hamilton’s artistic approach.
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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton
Richard Hamilton, $he 1958–61
$he explores contemporary symbols of desire and their interconnected relationships. Imagery recalling adverts for mass produced household appliances and fragments of the female body from magazines are presented together, deconstructing the seductive tendencies of consumerism. While making $he Hamilton was translating Duchamp’s notes from The Green Box. He wrote: ‘This relationship of woman and appliance is a fundamental theme of our culture; as obsessive and archetypal as the Western movie gun duel.’
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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) 1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985
The Large Glass is a diagram depicting an ironic love-making machine of extraordinary complexity. The work is divided into two panels, depicting a machine bride above and her nine bachelors below. They communicate through strange devices and systems, conducting a bizarre robotic courtship ritual without any point of direct contact. Duchamp made The Large Glass with the aim to ‘avoid all contact with traditional painting’, hoping to distance himself from his subject. This reconstruction took Hamilton a year to make. He deliberately set out to construct The Large Glass as it was first conceived, avoiding any signs of aging. Duchamp came to London for the opening of his exhibition in 1966. He agreed to sign the reconstruction and the four glass studies produced by Hamilton, writing on their backs ‘pour copie conforme’ (‘for a faithful replica’).
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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton
Art in this room
Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton
Nine malic moulds
1914–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
Marcel Duchamp
The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even (The Green Box)
1934
Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp
Sieves
1965, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp
Oculist Witnesses
1966, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966
Richard Hamilton
The Passage of the Bride
1998–9
Richard Hamilton
$he
1958–61
Marcel Duchamp
The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985
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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp
Glider containing a water mill (in neighbouring metals)
1913–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966