Hommage à Duchamp: To and for Rose Sélavy, 1973

This edition is part of Arman’s Hommage à Duchamp, a set of works created in tribute to Marcel Duchamp and centred on chess, a game that played an important role in Duchamp’s life and in his friendship with Arman. The accumulation of chess pieces, densely suspended in transparent resin, embodies Arman’s signature practice of transforming repeated everyday objects into unified sculptural compositions.

The chess-piece accumulation forms part of a larger assemblage incorporating images of breasts, cigars, and a chessboard bearing variations of the moustache and goatee Duchamp famously added to the Mona Lisa. Housed together in a box resembling a chess-piece case, selected elements spell out “A ROSE SELAVY ARMAN,” referencing Duchamp’s female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. Arman and Duchamp played numerous games of chess in Paris and New York during the 1960s; Arman later recalled that chess was the reason for their closeness, despite winning only one game in ten against Duchamp.