James Dill

History of Contemporary and Modern Art

Professor Joseph McPartlin

03/06/2018

Formal Analysis Essay

Marcel Duchamp’s Fresh Widow, a miniaturized replica of robin’s egg blue French

window with black leather shrouding it’s once revealing glass, is as much an exemplary nod to

the fundamentals of Dada as it is to Duchamp’s signature claims of what qualifies as art through

the re-representation of everyday modernity. At first glance, Duchamp’s Fresh Widow holds mere

aesthetic and decorative value through the eyes of the ordinary spectator. However, as one

scrutinizes the piece through the lens of the given title, the shrouded meaning and contradictions

begin to reveal itself, similarly to the very cracking of the black leather concealing the

transparency of the world. This masking of society alluded through the piece may in fact be an

expression of the widow’s concealment of her very own inner grieve and sadness, the type of

overwhelming melancholy that is capable of obstructing the outside from peering in as well as

the inside looking out. The deeper symbolism hidden within and beyond the Fresh Widow’s

hauntingly innocent facade is carried harmoniously yet antithetically throughout it’s formalities

and aesthetics, reinforcing the piece expressionistically and formally.

Superficially static and structured, the hauntingly innocent composition of Fresh Widow

exudes a sense of encompassing stability while lines and edges are but the very essence of the

facade. Strict rigidity and machine-like manufacturing is evoked through the methodical

symmetry of the window pane’s grid-like pattern formed by the intersecting wood trimming and

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parallel squares. But it is the very relationship between color, that of the soft, faded robin’s egg

blue and crisp black, that the stability of the piece begins to slip into a state of dissonance. The

harmony embodied within the structural elements turns on itself when innocence meets death.

This state of antithesis is where the piece’s inner expression lies, arousing the chaotic disarray in

which the widow has experienced.

The dichotomy of color exposed within the formalities of Fresh Widow’s facade, is

equally found within the textures of the piece, whose qualities are in a conflicting waltz of there

own. The faded softness and delicate beauty of the wood trimming evokes a nature of

timelessness, while the grain yet smoothness of the leather, whose crisp black surface has begun

to crack with age, holds ephemeral value. This sense of change over time is tied directly into the

conceptual narrative of the piece. The widow’s wall of intensifying grief and emotional

suppression will soon begin to fracture with time, slowly chipping away at the internal facade in

hopes of revealing the world beyond that of her own stream of thought once again.

This conflicting balance of harmony and dissonance is parallel to the spacial relationship

between the piece and the spectator. Occupying both the two dimensional and three dimensional

world, the piece is yet again in a state of limbo. As a physical and material object, the French

windows occupy the three dimensional space of the glass encasement, while illusionistically

invading a space of two dimensional flatness through its ability to hide the world, whether that

be inside or outside, from the spectator. Additionally, due to the reflecting quality of the

encasement, the spectator is able to identify themselves in the space of the gallery. This thus

creates an interesting, possibly unintended perspective for the spectator, whose understanding of

the piece as an object of transparency is contradicted by a layer of shrouding flatness, and doubly

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contradicted by its versatility to propel one’s own space back onto one’s self. This same sense of

reflexivity is tied into the grieving narrative of the widow, whose inner chaotic emotional state

and subconsciousness is reflected outward into space and deflected back upon herself.

Spacial contradiction is equally in play with that of the proportions of the Fresh Widow

and the gallery space itself. Modeled down to a much smaller scale than that of the typical

French window found adorning Bourgeoisie interiors, the piece not only loses it’s original

context, but becomes engulfed by the gallery, alluding to increasingly shrunken proportions.

However, this very decontextualized miniaturization of size is in harmonious dialogue with the

expressionistic elements of the piece, representing the minuscule scale in which the widow may

perceive the world through her eyes of grieve and despair.

Through the decontextualization of the everyday through claims of artistic value, the

Fresh Widow is the archetypal paradigm of the essential essences of the Dada movement.

Coming to age at the climax of WWI, Dada was the epitome of wiping the slate clean, of

destroying traditions and the established norms and practices of the past, while truly forging

onward into the future of modernity with a mindset riddled with subversive rebuttal against

anything accepted. The Dada artists, in particular Marcel Duchamp, questioned conventionalities

of what art could be through unorthodox methods and materials, such as the re-presentation of

the everyday common good, as presented through Fresh Widow’s decontextualized facade of

deception. Like the society in which they were critiquing, Dada was brimming with

contradictions, working and inhabiting the world they have come to critique and reject, while

turning it over onto itself, ultimately disrupting the narrative in which it spreads.

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Like the very fundamentals of Dada, Marcel Duchamp’s Fresh Widow is entranced by

parallels and discrepancies, in a perpetual dialogue between itself, it’s original context, and

spacial relationship with the spectator. Through initial analysis, the purity of the piece’s form is

muddled in an ominous atmosphere of obscurity and caliginosity, forcing the spectator into a

trance of hypnotic analysis through a vortex of back and forth contradictions of where the very

truth of the piece lies. Scummily riddled with deception, Fresh Widow’s formalities and

aesthetics are interconnected through fluctuating unmelodious contradictions, revealing the very

spirit of the piece. Like that of the widow, It is within this maze of dissonant variances that the

spectator must begin to chip away at the ambiguity in order to reveal the clarity on other side.

Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Widow 1920 Miniature French Window, painted wood frame, and panes of glass covered with black leather

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