Fetish Materials
Among his contemporaries, Duchamp was one of the most adventurous when it came to incorporating unorthodox materials into his works, many of which have fetishistic associations. This is apparent in the varying tactile qualities of the foam-rubber breast and velvet used to create Please Touch, the titillating tulle in his drawing Tutu (1909), the black vinyl of ...pliant, ...de voyage (Traveler’s Folding Item), a 1964 replica of a lost 1916 readymade, or the synthetic fur that imitates pubic hair in Couple de tabliers de blanchisseuse (Couple of Laundress’s Aprons) (1959). These fetish materials, which are often sexually suggestive in themselves, entice the viewer to ‘please touch’.

Gendering the Fetish
As he had done in Please Touch, Duchamp isolated other fragments of the body to create fetish objects laden with erotic significance, such as the trio of objects that he made in the 1950s and issued in bronze editions the following decade: Feuille de vigne femelle (Female Fig Leaf) (1950), Objet-dard (Dart-Object) (1951), and Coin de chasteté (Wedge of Chastity) (1954). Originating as plaster castoffs from the nude female mannequin he was creating for his final masterwork, Étant donnés (1946–66), each of these objects is playfully suggestive: Dart-Object is blatantly (if limply) phallic, Female Fig Leaf fails to conceal the erogenous zones and Wedge of Chastity enacts a sexual duality through its interlocking bronze and dental-plastic pieces.

‘A salvo against hegemonic masculinity, the Frenchman’s work [...] brims with gender play, often inflected through verbal and visual puns,’ writes Franklin. This non-binary conception of gender is evident in Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), an altered reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) that also invokes the fetishist implications of body hair. In this iconic artwork, as well as in his 1964 reedition of it, Duchamp appended a moustache and goatee to her face, simultaneously laying claim to the masterpiece and masculinising its subject. Although he restored her original hairlessness in a later work, L.H.O.O.Q. rasée (L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved) (1965), the title implies that the Mona Lisa is, in fact, a clean-shaven man in drag.

‘A salvo against hegemonic masculinity, the Frenchman’s work [...] brims with gender play, often inflected through verbal and visual puns,’ writes Franklin. This non-binary conception of gender is evident in Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), an altered reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) that also invokes the fetishist implications of body hair. In this iconic artwork, as well as in his 1964 reedition of it, Duchamp appended a moustache and goatee to her face, simultaneously laying claim to the masterpiece and masculinising its subject. Although he restored her original hairlessness in a later work, L.H.O.O.Q. rasée (L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved) (1965), the title implies that the Mona Lisa is, in fact, a clean-shaven man in drag.

A historic survey consisting of more than thirty artworks, Please Touch: Marcel Duchamp and the Fetish will feature several exceptional loans from major private and public collections, including the Staatliche Schlösser, Gärten und Kunstsammlungen Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Schwerin, Germany, and the Duchamp estate.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an extensive thematic essay by curator Paul B. Franklin.