Broken and Restored Multiplication

Suzanne DuchampWW-1918-013698

1918·Oil and silver paper on canvas·61 × 50 cm (24 × 19 11/16 in.)

<p>Like many Dada works, those by Suzanne Duchamp weave painting, collage, and language together in complex ways. <em>Broken and Restored Multiplication</em> is filled with visual and verbal metaphors of disorder and breakage: at the center, a schematic Eiffel Tower is turned upside down; just below it, a modern cityscape is reflected in its mirror image. The phrases that run up and down along the surface of the picture further the idea of order upended: "The mirror would shatter, the scaffolding would totter, the balloons would fly away, the stars would dim, etc." Such images and words seemed fitting for the artists who embraced Dada, a cultural movement that emerged in response to World War I.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1918
Medium: Oil and silver paper on canvas
Dimensions: 61 × 50 cm (24 × 19 11/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Suzanne Duchamp

Artist

Suzanne Duchamp

Painting

Suzanne Duchamp was a French painter and collage artist active in the early twentieth century, sister to Marcel and Jacques-Villon. She worked across Cubism and Dada, creating abstract compositions that combined painted and collaged elements on paper and canvas. Her practice remained largely independent of her brothers' more celebrated trajectories, though she participated in the avant-garde circles of Paris during the interwar period.

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