Take a long look at these two photographs. Notice anything?

The one on the top is of Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven. The one on the bottom is of Rrose Sélavy AKA Marcel Duchamp. Both are attibuted to Man Ray circa 1920-21.

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.

What do you call a day when the shoe drops? Are you still waiting for the other one?

What do you say when you discover a counter story to one you have held for so very long?

There are the days before and the days after a profound revelation. What happens when one gets to the source of a deeply entrenched narrative and find the truth is not as you thought or as you were taught?

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.

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.

And would ya take a look at this!!!

I did not know that back in 2017, I was already channeling the Baroness in this uncanny likeness Richard snapped in the garden on August 15.