17.07 - 10.04 2020

The Fresh Widow is 100 years old (1920-2020)

Constructed by a carpenter in accordance with Duchamp’s instructions, Fresh Widow is a reduced scale version of the traditional floor-length French window. Duchamp covered the glass panes with panels of black leather, obstructing the metaphorical view through the window that is associated with illusionistic painting. With the change of three letters, Duchamp transforms “French window” into the title “Fresh Widow”, a pun that points to the recent war and the bawdy tradition of amorous (or “fresh”) widows of soldiers.

The inscription at the base:
“COPYRIGHT ROSE SELAVY 1920”, is the first time that
the name of Duchamp's female alter ego appears on one of his works.

Duchamp’s original version of Fresh Widow is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Under Duchamp’s supervision, the Milanese dealer Arturo Schwarz made an edition of eight identical reproductions of Fresh Widow in 1964, using photographs and descriptions of the original.

He also explains that the window is a classic ambivalent sexual symbol that, according to Freud, stands for the “body’s openings”. Also, in a 1966 interview with Cabanne, Duchamp noted that “fresh” means “smart”, thus simultaneously adding to the personification already discussed and alluding to the wittiness of the Readymade.

The window in the world, the window in the picture

Formulated in 1434 by Leon Battista Alberti, the notion that a painting is like an open window influenced generations of painters. At the start of the twentieth century, the window, reduced to its framework, was employed as a motif and a symbol in order to test the function of painting as a means of reproduction. To the degree that the window is empty, its painted depiction denies us a perspective of the world.

With Fresh Widow, the replica of a French window whose panes are covered in black leather, Marcel Duchamp postulated a farewell from illusionist painting in 1920. At the same time, it marked a new beginning.

Marcel Duchamp, ‘Fresh Widow’, 1920 - covers & citations