Etant Donnés

clipped from: www.nytimes.com
Landscape of Eros, Through the Peephole

Duchamp’s great monument to eros, though, is the tableau called “Étant Donnés: 1. La Chute d’Eau, 2. Le Gaz d’Éclairage” (“Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas”). Created in almost complete secrecy between 1946 and 1966, it was his final work, and also his weirdest and most mysterious. And it is the subject of a potent exhibition at the museum called “Marcel Duchamp: Étant Donnés” which, among other things, finesses the lingering myth that Duchamp ended up abandoning art for a life of chess and cogitation.