Dressing and Undressing Duchamp. This item is unavailable.Dressing and Undressing Duchamp

Among the vast body of material on iconoclastic artist Marcel Duchamp, an aspect that is little-studied is his engagement with clothing. 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.

Ingrid E. Mida (PhD, Art History & Visual Culture) is an art and dress historian. Responsible for the revival of the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection in Canada, Dr. Mida is the author of books, chapters, and articles on fashion and art, research methods in fashion and art history, curatorial practice, and museum studies.