Dressing and Undressing Duchamp
Ebook
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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.
Through analysing artist Marcel Duchamp’s engagement with clothing and dress, this previously unexamined material reveals a deeper understanding of the artist, the concept of the readymade, and the relationship between fashion and art.
Marcel Duchamp is one of the most iconic artists of the 20th century but his relationship to clothing, specifically his waistcoat readymade series, has not previously been studied
Analysis of the link between the “readymade” as a definition for a mass-manufactured article of clothing and Duchamp’s use of the term to describe a work of art
An insight and a thoughtful response to the question of whether “fashion is art?”
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
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.
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.
- Title: Dressing and Undressing Duchamp
- Author: Ingrid E. Mida
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 224
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350236141, 9781350236110, 135023611X, 1350236144
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350236141
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T12:11:11Z
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.