Artfinder — Experience the art of discovery. Kubrick et le Web. Duchamp’s Dahlia or The Man Ray Mystery « OMBRES BLANCHES. A door of perception? The first time that I read something about The Black Dahlia murder was in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon . It must have been around the same time that I read Robert Lebel’s study on Marcel Duchamp.
I was immediately struck by the similarities of the gruesome photo to be found in Anger’s book and Marcel Duchamp’s Etant donnés – his last work of art which he secretively prepared from 1947 – 1968. Imagine how surprised I was when I read Jonathan Wallis brilliant article Case Open and/or Unsolved at tout-fait The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal in which he suggests that Etant donnés could have indeed been inspired by the famous murder case.
The parallels between the Black Dahlia and Étant donnés are numerous. In mid-January 1947 Duchamp returned from a stay in Europe, arriving in New York at the moment the Dahlia case began to unfold. Jonathan Wallis seems to be unaware of Steve Hodel’s true-crime account Black Dahlia Avenger. Like this: Like Loading... Quand les technologies du 21 ème siècle animent l'histoire de l'art... — Éducnet.