Grand Pier Pavilion Illuminated

~Late in his life, when Duchamp discussed the origins of the Bride of the Large Glass, he sometimes mentioned the booths at country fairs “where you have the wedding scene and you have big balls that you throw at the heads of the bride, the bridegroom, and the guests…”Duchamp, as quoted in Hamilton and Hamilton, 1959 BBC interview (Audio Arts Magazine cassette). See also, Schuster, “Marcel Duchamp, vite,” p. 143. Indeed, popular entertainment was one of Duchamp’s sources for the Large Glass—from his discussion in the Box of 1914 of a carnival barrel game as a “‘sculpture’ of skill”Box of 1914, in SS, p. 23. to the Toboggan component of the Bachelor Apparatus, based on the Grand Toboggan slide that accompanied the Grand Roue, or ferris wheel, at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in...