Dressing and Undressing Duchamp

by Ingrid E. Mida

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350236127
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/21/2024
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	7.45(w) x 9.65(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

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 Jourbanal of Dress History. She holds several board appointments for arts organizations and is the recipient of various grants and awards.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Drawing Duchamp: Fashioning the Figure
2. Dressing Duchamp: Unmasking the Dandy
3. Dressing Up: Readymade Identities
4. Made to Measure: Recalibrating the Readymade
5. Reading the Readymade: The Thingly Nature of Fashion in the Museum

End-Game

Bibliography
Image Credits
Index

Editorial Reviews

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

“Thanks to Ingrid E. Mida, we now have an exhaustive overview of [fashion as artistic strategy], many of which have been overlooked by the countless theorists of this ubiquitous modern artist. Mida shows us that despite the crowdedness of the field of 'Duchamp Studies', a fashion book is overdue … Led by appealing photographic evidence, the author takes us on an ambitious jourbaney from Duchamp's own wardrobe to those of his female friends, from gender to industrial manufacturing, adjusting her analytic scope as her objects of study change.” —Jeppe Ugelvig, Visual Studies

“Fascinating and beautifully illustrated ... a genuine contribution both to Duchampian studies, but more importantly to the centrality of clothing and fashion to conceptual art practice.” —Costume: The Jourbanal of The Costume Society

From the Publisher