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Back to Modern and Contemporary British Art

Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) 1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985. Tate. © Estate of Richard Hamilton and Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025.

Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton

13 rooms in Modern and Contemporary British Art

  • Fear and Freedom
  • Construction
  • Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton
  • In Full Colour
  • Ideas into Action
  • Henry Moore
  • Francis Bacon and Henry Moore
  • Balraj Khanna
  • No Such Thing as Society
  • End of a Century
  • Mona Hatoum: Current Disturbance
  • The State We're In
  • Zineb Sedira

This room explores the friendship and collaborations of the artists Richard Hamilton and Marcel Duchamp in the years 1956 to 1968

During the 1950s, Duchamp’s work was not well known in the UK. Hamilton made great efforts to study and champion the older artist, serving as his decipherer and decoder. Through Duchamp, Hamilton was encouraged to reconsider the nature of art and visual perception. He noted, ‘what I admired him most for, was his detachment. It was as though he’s looking at the thing from quite a distance.’

Hamilton first wrote to Duchamp in 1956, volunteering to translate one of his artworks from French into English. The Green Box is an archive of notes and drawings created by Duchamp while making his major glass artwork The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (also known as The Large Glass) from 1915–23. Under Duchamp’s close supervision, Hamilton published The Green Book in 1960. The two artists became friends and remained in regular contact. In 1966 Hamilton curated the UK’s first major Duchamp exhibition at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain). As the original Large Glass was too fragile to travel, Hamilton began a step-by-step reconstruction guided by Duchamp and his notes.

Hamilton found The Large Glass fascinating as a detached study of mechanised desire and sexual frustration in human relationships. This period of research and dialogue with Duchamp, often credited as one of the first conceptual artists, inspired Hamilton to introduce complex ideas and symbolic systems in his own work.

The methodical reconstructions of Duchamp’s work produced by Hamilton question conventional ideas of artistic authorship. The Large Glass on display here was approved and signed by Duchamp in 1965 as a ‘faithful replica’. The other, related works are unique results of creative dialogues between the two artists. Their authorship is open to interpretation.

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was born in Normandy, France. He lived and worked in Paris and New York.

Richard Hamilton (1922–2011) was born in London, UK. He lived and worked in London and Oxfordshire.

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Tate Britain
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Room 18

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Until 5 October 2025

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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp, Glider containing a water mill (in neighbouring metals)  1913–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966

Duchamp’s original Glider study was his first attempt at drawing on glass with lead wire. He filled in the design with oil paint covered with lead foil, pressed on while the paint was still wet to give a stained-glass effect. Hamilton remade the work in 1966. He corrected the discolouration that was by then apparent in the original work, careful not to imitate any effect of ageing.

Gallery label, October 2024

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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton

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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp, Oculist Witnesses  1966, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966

Duchamp made a perspective drawing of three eye charts for The Large Glass. He was interested in optical phenomena – the original French title Térmoins oculiste puns on terms for eye witnesses and opticians’ charts. Duchamp spent three months scraping a silver section of the glass to leave reflecting images. Hamilton did not have time to follow this process. His shortcut was to prepare a silkscreen on silver glass treated with acid. This study is a trial, something Duchamp had not needed to make.

Gallery label, October 2024

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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton

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Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even (The Green Box)  1934

The Green Box is Duchamp’s own publication of the notes, diagrams and studies for The Large Glass. Each handwritten note is reproduced as an exact copy, including torn edges, blots, erasures, revisions and illegible sections. The Green Box is the literary double of The Large Glass, both a documentation of Duchamp’s working process and a guide to understanding the many layers of hidden meaning in the piece. Most of the notes were completed before Duchamp left France for New York in 1915.4

Gallery label, October 2024

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Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton, Nine malic moulds  1914–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965

Nine malic moulds is a sheet of glass with lead wire drawings depicting what Duchamp called the ‘cemetery of uniforms and liveries’. They are outfits worn in nine different jobs that could be held by men, representing the ‘bachelors’. The work also shows the network of ‘capillary tubes’ that connect each of the nine Moulds to the first sequence of Sieves. These designs feature in the lower panel of the full Large Glass. Hamilton remade the study by using a full-size photograph of a drawing that Duchamp had created in 1914.

Gallery label, October 2024

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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp, Sieves  1965, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965

This arc of seven intersecting cones is the first glass reconstruction attempted by Hamilton. It wasn’t a direct remake of a Duchamp work, although he did make a drawing of the subject in 1914. Instead, Hamilton made it to test if he could reproduce the dust effect described in The Green Box: ‘For the sieves in the glass – allow dust to fall on this part, a dust of 3 or 4 months, and wipe well around it in such a way that this dust will be a kind of colour’. Hamilton reflected: ‘So unusual are the techniques that it seems sensible to repeat them.’

Gallery label, October 2024

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Richard Hamilton, The Passage of the Bride  1998–9

The Passage of the Bride shows a first-floor passage and windowed alcove in Hamilton’s home. On the right wall, a framed glass panel includes a view of the lower section of Duchamp’s Large Glass. A woman is visible in the panel, as if in reflection, standing in for the ‘bride’. Hamilton made the work by digitally altering a photograph and painting over the image of the framed mirror with oils. Duchamp’s ideas concerning perspective and image manipulation remained an enduring influence on Hamilton’s artistic approach.

Gallery label, October 2024

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Richard Hamilton, $he  1958–61

$he addresses the way women were portrayed in British and North American popular culture in the 1950s. It brings together fragments of adverts for household appliances with an image of a model taken from Esquire magazine. ‘Sex is everywhere, symbolised in the glamour of mass-produced luxury – the interplay of fleshy plastic and smooth, fleshier metal,’ Hamilton wrote in 1962. ‘This relationship of woman and appliance is a fundamental theme of our culture; as obsessive and archetypal as the Western movie gun duel.’ A holographic plastic eye winks at the viewer ambiguously.

Gallery label, January 2025

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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton

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Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)  1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985

The Large Glass is a diagram depicting an ironic love-making machine of extraordinary complexity. The work is divided into two panels, depicting a machine bride above and her nine bachelors below. They communicate through strange devices and systems, conducting a bizarre robotic courtship ritual without any point of direct contact. Duchamp made The Large Glass with the aim to ‘avoid all contact with traditional painting’, hoping to distance himself from his subject. This reconstruction took Hamilton a year to make. He deliberately set out to construct The Large Glass as it was first conceived, avoiding any signs of aging. Duchamp came to London for the opening of his exhibition in 1966. He agreed to sign the reconstruction and the four glass studies produced by Hamilton, writing on their backs ‘pour copie conforme’ (‘for a faithful replica’).

Gallery label, October 2024

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artworks in Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton

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Art in this room

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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp Glider containing a water mill (in neighbouring metals) 1913–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966
T15852: Oculist Witnesses
Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp Oculist Witnesses 1966, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966
T07744: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even (The Green Box)
Marcel Duchamp The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even (The Green Box) 1934
T15850: Nine malic moulds
Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton Nine malic moulds 1914–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
T15851: Sieves
Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp Sieves 1965, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
L04582: The Passage of the Bride
Richard Hamilton The Passage of the Bride 1998–9
T01190: $he
Richard Hamilton $he 1958–61
T02011: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
Marcel Duchamp The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) 1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985
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