“50 Shades Of Grey”: Duchamp Did It First
‘A rival to the erotic bestseller “Fifty Shades of Grey” caught my eye the other day,’ writes Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. ‘It wasn’t the shadowy sensual cover of the prominently displayed paperback in a branch of Smiths that intrigued me so much as the title: “The Bride Stripped Bare.” This naughty novel takes its title from one of the great works of art of the 20th century.Looking it up, I found “The Bride Stripped Bare” by Nikki Gemmell was first published in 2003 but it is being promoted afresh, with a darkly alluring cover, to tap into the market discovered by “Fifty Shades.”
‘Its title alludes to Marcel Duchamp’s work of art “The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even,” which the subversive Frenchman started in America in 1915 and finished in 1923. Sometimes known simply as the “Large Glass,” this modern classic can be found today in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.’
