This week, my long held beliefs about Marcel Duchamp were shattered. For years I have been fascinated by his alter-ego female persona Rrose Sélavy. That was the first to go… and then that pesky R. Mutt toilet — discussion of which has graced several of our History of posts (here and here and here). That urinal was not a Duchampian instigation but was first identified as “found” by the Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven. And Baroness Elsa had been merging gender identities for years before Duchamp put on that feathered chapeau.
Freytag-Loringhoven admired Duchamp both artistically and perhaps romantically. One of her early performances consisted of her rubbing a newspaper article about the artist’s famous painting Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) over her naked body and then reciting a poem that ended, “Marcel, Marcel, I love you like Hell, Marcel.” While Duchamp did not return her romantic advances, he did return the admiration for her as an artist, saying, “She’s not a futurist. She is the future.” Some historians suggest that the Baroness’s persona and physical appearance inspired Duchamp to adopt his female alter-ego Rrose Selavy. Openly bisexual in the 1920s, Freytag-Loringhoven’s unapologetic sexuality and promiscuity caused much scandal, even among her avant-garde confrères, and sometimes overshadowed the art she created. — from the biography Baroness Elsa by Irene Gammel.
It’s fraught story of love and intrigue that begs for a revision of art history. What happens when that toilet descends the staircase?
For more scoop read The Mama of Dada published in 2002.
Elsa cut a wide swath as she sashayed through Greenwich Village in her sensational (and oft times gender-bending) outfits made from everyday objects — spoons for earrings, tomato tin cans for a brassiere and vegetables to garnish her hat.
Playing dress up or playing for real isn’t just for fun. Trying on different garments, different costumes gives free reign to the imagination. There is no limit to who, where, what we can be. Elsa was living proof.
