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Marcel Duchamp To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour Buenos Aires 1918

  • MoMA, Floor 5, 505 The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries

The words forming this work’s title are inscribed (in French) on a strip of metal glued across the composition’s approximate center and appearing to invite viewers to look through a lens haloed by concentric circles and mounted between two panes of glass. Peering through the convex lens “for almost an hour” is supposed to have a hallucinatory effect as the view is dwarfed, flipped, and otherwise distorted. Duchamp delighted in the fact that the glass shattered while being transported, welcoming the mechanics of chance into the work.

Gallery label from 2020
Medium
Oil, silver leaf, lead wire, and magnifying lens on glass (cracked), mounted between panes of glass in a standing metal frame, 20 1/8 x 16 1/4 x 1 1/2" (51 x 41.2 x 3.7 cm), on painted wood base, 1 7/8 x 17 7/8 x 4 1/2" (4.8 x 45.3 x 11.4 cm)
Dimensions
Overall 22" (55.8 cm) high
Credit
Katherine S. Dreier Bequest
Object number
150.1953
Copyright
© 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp
Department
Painting and Sculpture

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The artist
Katherine S. Dreier (d. 1952), West Redding, Connecticut. [Purchased from Duchamp], by 1936
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Katherine S. Dreier Bequest, 1953

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