Et tu, Duchamp ?

The works of Subodh Gupta, conceived using everyday objects, are part of the ready-made movement. Gupta has always considered himself the artistic heir to Marcel Duchamp. The French father of conceptual art is an essential source for Gutpa’s work, with the Indian artist famously claiming that “the language of art is the same all over the world”.

His sculpture Et tu, Duchamp ? (whose title refers to Julius Caesar’s last words to his ally-turned-conspirator) establishes an imaginary dialogue with Duchamp who, in 1919, defying all propriety, put a goatee beard and moustache on the Mona Lisa in his painting L.H.O.O.Q. With Duchampian transformations from the serious to the burlesque, from the sublime to the trivial, from the feminine to the masculine, Gupta responds with another series of displacements: from two to three dimensions, from lightness to weight, from paper to bronze.

Et tu, Duchamp ?, part of the Pinault Collection, was shown at the Punta della Dogana in Venice at the "Eloge du Doute" (“In Praise of Doubt”) exhibition (2011-2013) and then in 2014 at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco at the “Arts Lovers - Histoires d’art dans la collection Pinault” ("Arts Lovers - Histories of art in the Pinault Collection") exhibition.