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Lot Essay
The Association Duchamp Villon Crotti has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work.
“Twice was I born,” Jean Crotti declared in a Dadaist curriculum vitae. “First, in 1878, from a father and mother, and the second time, in 1915, from myself...by means of self-procreation and self-delivery, without an umbilical cord” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1983, p. 82). His second birth was, of course, in his art, to which there was a witness, an exemplary figure who weaves in and out elsewhere among these art works beyond boundaries—Marcel Duchamp.
As a citizen of neutral Switzerland, Crotti was not subject to French conscription during the First World War, and with his wife Yvonne he left Paris in 1915 to visit his brother in Ohio. They stayed thereafter in New York, until September 1916. Duchamp and Picabia had taken up residence in Manhattan several months earlier. Crotti was probably already acquainted with both men, and in New York become a close friend. His earlier work in Paris drew on elements of Fauvism and Orphism. “But after only six months in America,” Francis Naumann has stated, “he could easily be ranked among the most noteworthy and original members of the French avant-garde” (op. cit., 1994, p. 101). The present Les forces mécaniques de l'amour en mouvement is a key work of this period.
Crotti accompanied Duchamp when the latter purchased the rectangular, curved-blade snow shovel, which he signed and inscribed “In Advance of a Broken Arm,” the second of the series of readymades he created during his wartime stay in New York—it is the first he designated with this term (Schwarz, no. 332). Both men admired the implement’s shape, not seen in France; an interviewer quoted Crotti’s pronouncement, “As an artist I consider that shovel the most beautiful object I have ever seen” (The Evening World, New York, 4 April 1916, p. 3).
The shovel, eventually lost, hung from the ceiling of Duchamp’s studio in the Lincoln Arcade Building at 1947 Broadway, which he invited Crotti to use during his stay. Crotti became fascinated with Duchamp’s meticulous and painstaking crafting of the forms in lead foil and wire for The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even), 1915-1923 (Schwarz, no. 404). Crotti embarked on a series of five assemblages created from various materials affixed to painted glass (Bertoli, nos. 16-08, 16-10, 16-12 through 16-14), of which the Les forces mécaniques de l'amour en mouvement has been the most widely exhibited. There is an extraordinary parallel between Duchamp's masterpiece The Bride Stripped Bare whose glass cracked while in transit from an exhibition in 1926 and Crotti’s Les forces mécaniques de l'amour en mouvement which also exhibits cracks in this case in the lower corner of the glass only. Both artists consciously chose to leave the glass in this fractured state feeling that it had become part of the work.
This mysterious, abstract composition became known to many New Yorkers in 1916, when a photograph of it appeared in the Evening World article on Crotti and Duchamp cited above. While not actually included in the “Cubist” exhibition mentioned, the so-called Four Musketeers group show—Crotti, Duchamp, Gleizes and Metzinger—at the Montross Gallery, Les forces mécaniques intrigued the interviewer, who visited the artist in the Lincoln Arcade studio. Placing a light behind the red disc Crotti explained that it represented “love.” The blue disc beneath it signified the “ideal”; the largest circle was “green for hope.” “Further to the right,” Crotti added, “I have indicated the extent to which love may carry human beings by suggesting an aeroplane...The brass indicates machinery, energy, power” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1983, p. 14).
Crotti painted an actual-size gouache study for Les forces mécaniques (Bertoli, no. 16-09), showing the work in reverse, to guide him in painting the final composition, which he needed to execute on the back of the glass plate. When seen from the front, the finished composition reads from left to right as Crotti intended it. His use of the metal forms and wire contours derives from Duchamp’s technique in creating the Large Glass. Regarding the idea of a light source behind the composition, William A. Camfield noted that Duchamp discussed “the ‘execution of the picture by means of luminous sources,’ and again the possibility is raised that Crotti provided a practical application for one of Duchamp’s precepts” (ibid., p. 14).
Crotti and his wife returned to Paris in September 1916. Their marriage was coming apart; they divorced in December 1917. Yvonne in New York joined Marcel Duchamp on his voyage to Buenos Aires in August 1918, but remained with him there only a short time before heading home to Paris. In April 1919, Crotti married Duchamp’s sister Suzanne. Together they formed in late 1921 their own insurgent offshoot of the Paris Dada movement, which they called Tabu Dada.
“Twice was I born,” Jean Crotti declared in a Dadaist curriculum vitae. “First, in 1878, from a father and mother, and the second time, in 1915, from myself...by means of self-procreation and self-delivery, without an umbilical cord” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1983, p. 82). His second birth was, of course, in his art, to which there was a witness, an exemplary figure who weaves in and out elsewhere among these art works beyond boundaries—Marcel Duchamp.
As a citizen of neutral Switzerland, Crotti was not subject to French conscription during the First World War, and with his wife Yvonne he left Paris in 1915 to visit his brother in Ohio. They stayed thereafter in New York, until September 1916. Duchamp and Picabia had taken up residence in Manhattan several months earlier. Crotti was probably already acquainted with both men, and in New York become a close friend. His earlier work in Paris drew on elements of Fauvism and Orphism. “But after only six months in America,” Francis Naumann has stated, “he could easily be ranked among the most noteworthy and original members of the French avant-garde” (op. cit., 1994, p. 101). The present Les forces mécaniques de l'amour en mouvement is a key work of this period.
Crotti accompanied Duchamp when the latter purchased the rectangular, curved-blade snow shovel, which he signed and inscribed “In Advance of a Broken Arm,” the second of the series of readymades he created during his wartime stay in New York—it is the first he designated with this term (Schwarz, no. 332). Both men admired the implement’s shape, not seen in France; an interviewer quoted Crotti’s pronouncement, “As an artist I consider that shovel the most beautiful object I have ever seen” (The Evening World, New York, 4 April 1916, p. 3).
The shovel, eventually lost, hung from the ceiling of Duchamp’s studio in the Lincoln Arcade Building at 1947 Broadway, which he invited Crotti to use during his stay. Crotti became fascinated with Duchamp’s meticulous and painstaking crafting of the forms in lead foil and wire for The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even), 1915-1923 (Schwarz, no. 404). Crotti embarked on a series of five assemblages created from various materials affixed to painted glass (Bertoli, nos. 16-08, 16-10, 16-12 through 16-14), of which the Les forces mécaniques de l'amour en mouvement has been the most widely exhibited. There is an extraordinary parallel between Duchamp's masterpiece The Bride Stripped Bare whose glass cracked while in transit from an exhibition in 1926 and Crotti’s Les forces mécaniques de l'amour en mouvement which also exhibits cracks in this case in the lower corner of the glass only. Both artists consciously chose to leave the glass in this fractured state feeling that it had become part of the work.
This mysterious, abstract composition became known to many New Yorkers in 1916, when a photograph of it appeared in the Evening World article on Crotti and Duchamp cited above. While not actually included in the “Cubist” exhibition mentioned, the so-called Four Musketeers group show—Crotti, Duchamp, Gleizes and Metzinger—at the Montross Gallery, Les forces mécaniques intrigued the interviewer, who visited the artist in the Lincoln Arcade studio. Placing a light behind the red disc Crotti explained that it represented “love.” The blue disc beneath it signified the “ideal”; the largest circle was “green for hope.” “Further to the right,” Crotti added, “I have indicated the extent to which love may carry human beings by suggesting an aeroplane...The brass indicates machinery, energy, power” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1983, p. 14).
Crotti painted an actual-size gouache study for Les forces mécaniques (Bertoli, no. 16-09), showing the work in reverse, to guide him in painting the final composition, which he needed to execute on the back of the glass plate. When seen from the front, the finished composition reads from left to right as Crotti intended it. His use of the metal forms and wire contours derives from Duchamp’s technique in creating the Large Glass. Regarding the idea of a light source behind the composition, William A. Camfield noted that Duchamp discussed “the ‘execution of the picture by means of luminous sources,’ and again the possibility is raised that Crotti provided a practical application for one of Duchamp’s precepts” (ibid., p. 14).
Crotti and his wife returned to Paris in September 1916. Their marriage was coming apart; they divorced in December 1917. Yvonne in New York joined Marcel Duchamp on his voyage to Buenos Aires in August 1918, but remained with him there only a short time before heading home to Paris. In April 1919, Crotti married Duchamp’s sister Suzanne. Together they formed in late 1921 their own insurgent offshoot of the Paris Dada movement, which they called Tabu Dada.