Wanted: $2,000 Reward
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
Lithograph, 1961 (replica of 1923 original)
Frances Beatty and Allen Adler
© 2009 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris / Succession Marcel Duchamp
Originally created in 1923, Duchamp’s Wanted: $2,000 Reward was the last work of art he completed before leaving New York in 1923 to return to Paris. Duchamp based the work on a joke notice designed for tourists that he found in a New York restaurant. He pasted two head shots of himself on the poster and had a printer add another alias to those already listed: that of his recently created alter ego Rrose Sélavy.
Although Wanted mounts a challenge to traditional conceptions of the creative process, the work, which Duchamp re-created at key moments in his career, also played a significant role in the construction of his artistic identity. This version, based on the now-lost original, is a replica intended for Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, a portable museum of his work.
Listen to co-curator Anne Goodyear discuss this image:
