Dust Breeding
or
Elevage de Poussiere


Main Readymade
Original version, 1920
Original Version:

1920, New York
Jedermann Collection
photograph of back of Duchamp's Large Glass
(gelatin silverprint from original negative)
readymade?
7.2 x 11 cm

This Readymade is a photograph by Man Ray of the reverse of Duchamp's critical work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23). An inscription on the back of the original print records that it was taken in Duchamp's studio at 1947 Broadway, New York several months after his return from Paris in January 1920. Dust Breeding acts as a snapshot forever capturing the momentary accumulation of dust in the sieves on the glass. Sheets appropriately terms the piece "a landscape of dust bunnies" (38).

Replica, 1964

Man Ray provided the following explanation of this Readymade: "While the bride lay on her face, decked out in her bridal finery of dust and debris, I exposed her to my sixteen candle camera. Within one patient hour was fixed once for all the Domaine de Duchamp. Elevage de poussieres; didn't we raise the dust, though, old boy!" (Sheets 38).

Replicas:
1) Contact Print from original negative
Private Collection, Japan

2) 1964, Paris
Edition of ten prints from original negative (detail)


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