Dressing and Undressing Duchamp

Description

Fashion is a subject that has long been marginalized in art history and in museums. And yet, one of the most well-known artists in the twentieth century - Marcel Duchamp - created works that challenge the notion that fashion does not belong in the museum. As well, there is material evidence of his engagement with clothing as part of his oeuvre. This book reveals that clothing and dressing are significant themes that recur in Duchamp's life and his work - including his drawings, his fashioning of his body, his readymades, and in his curatorial gestures. In examining the items of clothing worn by Duchamp and the related traces of his wardrobe management, Duchamp is unmasked as a dandy. His waistcoat readymade series 'Made to Measure' (1957-1961) is in fact a remarkable and deliberate effort to recalibrate the definition of the readymade to include clothing. With this little-studied readymade series, Duchamp established a precedent for sartorial art as a valid form of artistic expression. In considering the material traces of Duchamp's fashioning of his body and identity in his work and life, this book makes a highly original contribution to the understanding of Duchamp's work as well as the significance of the clothed body in the vanguard of Modernism. Ultimately, this book explains the relevance of fashion in the museum to modern audiences today.

Ingrid E. Mida is an art and dress historian, artist and curator. Responsible for the revival of the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection in Canada, Mida is the author Reading Fashion in Art (Bloomsbury, 2020) and lead author of The Dress Detective (Bloomsbury, 2015). She has also contributed chapters and articles to a variety of scholarly publications and is the Editor of The Journal of Dress History. She holds several board appointments for arts organizations and is the recipient of various grants and awards.

Fresh and original, Mida brings astute intellectual insight into Marcel Duchamp's unexplored sartorial entanglements with dress and clothing ... A must read, you will be elated and challenged and then saddened when you realise you have reached the end of this book. * Vicki Karaminas, Massey University, New Zealand * A fascinating examination of Duchamp's self-fashioning and attention to the fashioned body throughout his career. Mida makes an important contribution to our understanding of the readymade and to the porous boundaries between fashion and art. * Justine De Young, Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY, USA *