Marcel Duchamp & Sturtevant Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs

Until 23 July 2026

Milan Palazzo Belgioioso

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Thaddaeus Ropac Milan presents an unprecedented artistic and intellectual exchange between two pioneers: Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), the father of Conceptual art, and Sturtevant (1924–2014), whose groundbreaking practice critically interrogated the conceptual structure of art in a post-Duchampian world. A ‘one-man movement’ as Willem de Kooning described him, Duchamp initiated an artistic revolution with his readymades: ordinary objects that he elevated to the status of masterpiece by virtue of his simple choice. Much like Duchamp repudiated ‘retinal art’, Sturtevant’s radical repetitions, from memory, of artworks by her peers sparked a further ‘leap from image to concept’.

Over the course of four decades, Sturtevant repeatedly employed Duchamp’s own style as a medium in order to investigate the ‘understructure’ of his oeuvre: how it was made, consumed and, crucially, canonised. Titled after Sturtevant’s ironic remark, Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs reflects Duchamp’s penchant for witticisms. From Duchamp’s first readymade, Porte-bouteilles (Bottle Rack, 1914/64), through both artists’ erotic objects to Sturtevant’s repetitions of Duchamp’s seminal Fountain (1917), this first-ever exhibition dedicated to both inimitably provocative artists highlights the prescience of their practice in the age of digital reproduction and AI reproducibility.

Marcel Duchamp Nu Descendant un Escalier (Nude Descending a Staircase), 1937 Pochoir-coloured collotype 34.8 × 20.8 cm (13.7 × 8.19...

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Sturtevant Duchamp descendant l’escalier, 1992 Black and white photograph 35 x 28 cm (13.78 × 11.02 in) Ed. 3 of...

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In 1937, Duchamp met the eminent philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, and showed him a collotype copy of his landmark painting, Nu descendant un escalier (N°2) (Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912; Philadelphia Museum of Art). As Benjamin recorded in his diary, he was profoundly marked by the ‘breathtakingly beautiful’ nature of the print, to the extent that he made a note to ‘maybe mention’ it in his visionary essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1935–39). Duchamp’s 1937 collotypes of Nu descendant un escalier – one of which is on view at Thaddaeus Ropac Milan – destabilised Benjamin’s very concept of the incontrovertible ‘aura’ of an original artwork.

Decades later, Sturtevant would repeat Duchamp’s Cubist-Futurist work in Duchamp Nu descendant un escalier (1967), excavating its origins in early cinema and chronophotography to create her own film – which is prominently projected at the entrance of the exhibition – wherein superimposed footage decomposes the movement of the nude artist as she descends a staircase. Sturtevant does not seek to conjure the Benjaminian aura of Duchamp’s work, but precisely to dissect it. Her repetitions embody the quintessential art of ‘grey matter’ that Duchamp lauded.

Marcel Duchamp

Porte-bouteilles (Bottle Rack), 1914/1964
Galvanised iron bottle rack
64.2 × 37.5 cm (25.28 × 14.76 in)
AP, Ed. of 8 + 2AP

Across the exhibition, a cerebral confrontation is staged between Duchamp’s readymades and Sturtevant’s repetitions thereof. Duchamp’s Porte-bouteilles hangs above the main space, looking over its progeny, while his playfully irreverent Trébuchet (Trap, 1917/64) is displayed on the floor, threatening to trip the viewer, just as it once did the artist himself.

A duplicate or a mechanical repetition has the same value as the original. As for distinguishing the real from the fake, imitations from copies, those are totally nonsensical technical questions.
— Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp Peigne (Comb), 1916/1964 Steel comb with painted inscription Comb 16.5 × 3 × 0.2 cm (6.50 × 1.18...

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Marcel Duchamp

Trébuchet (Trap), 1917/1964
Wood and metal coat rack
11.8 × 100.3 × 19.4 cm (4.65 × 39.49 × 7.64 in)
Ed. 1 of 8

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While Duchamp strove to ‘de-deify’ the artist through the seeming non-artistry of the readymade, it ironically contributed to apotheosising him in the pantheon of art history – a process that Sturtevant scrutinises through the exhibited works. For Sturtevant, Duchamp’s readymades epitomise his ‘force of resistance’; in her own words, ‘What Duchamp did no[t] do, not what he did – which is what he did, locates the dynamics of his work. [...] Thus, the grand contradiction is that giving up creativity made him the great creator.’

Sturtevant
Duchamp Fresh Widow, 1992/2012
Enamel paint on wood, leather, glass and resin knobs
77 × 51.5 × 10.5 cm (30.31 × 20.28 × 4.13 in)
Ed. of 6 + 3 AP

As Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs elucidates, Duchamp’s radical readymades are mirrored in Sturtevant’s avant-garde gesture of repetition. Renouncing the primacy of the visual, Sturtevant manually repeated the work of her contemporaries in a paradoxical effort to dematerialise it; to access ‘the silent interior of art’.

Marcel Duchamp
L.H.O.O.Q., 1919–64
Rectified readymade, offset lithograph, white gouache and pencil on paper
30 x 23 cm (11.81 x 9.06 in)

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My intentions are to extend and to develop our present notion of aesthetics, to investigate originality, and to examine the relation between original and origins; opening up space for new thinking.

— Sturtevant

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Sturtevant Duchamp Fountain, 1969 Graphite pencil on paper 29.7 x 21 cm (11.69 x 8.27 in)

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Sturtevant
Fountain, undated
Painted plasticine
7 × 5 × 4 cm (2.8 × 2 × 1.6 in)

The exhibition offers a myriad of Sturtevant’s repetitions of Duchamp’s legendary Fountain, spanning photography, collage, drawing and sculpture. Under Sturtevant’s incisive gaze, Duchamp’s signed urinal becomes the site of a sustained enquiry into its cult status. The discourse surrounding Duchamp’s readymades, rather than the objects themselves, is the true subject of Sturtevant’s work.

Marcel Duchamp
Rotorelief, 1965
Set of 12 images, printed on recto and verso of 6 cardboard disks in colour offset lithography; each disk printed with its title; with wall-mounted motorised turntable unit designed by Duchamp
37.5 × 37.5 × 12 cm (14.76 × 14.76 × 4.72 in)

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Sturtevant
Duchamp Rotary Disc (Lanterne Chinoise), 1969 (detail)
Watercolour, ink and graphite pencil on photocopy, 7 parts
Each 35.5 x 21.5 cm (13.98 x 8.46 in)

The exhibition explores key themes that recur through Duchamp’s practice, ranging from the kinetic to the erotic, which Sturtevant sublimates in her own work. Duchamp’s Rotorelief (1965) spins on a wall-mounted turntable beside Sturtevant’s Duchamp Rotary Disc (Lanterne Chinoise) (1969), her assiduous study of the work, scribbled with annotations and diagrams that probe its creation, instigating a transition from the realm of optical illusion to that of the ideational.

Duchamp’s erotic objects – from his disquieting Objet-dard (Dart-Object, 1951/62) to the subversive Feuille de vigne femelle (Female Fig Leaf, 1951/61) – are further juxtaposed with Sturtevant’s repetitions of his fetish works, such as Duchamp Coin de chasteté (1967). Duchamp’s transgressive works crystallise his perennial interest in eroticism as a central locus of human experience, ‘exploit[ing] the slippages between the work of art and the fetish’ as art historian Paul B. Franklin writes.

Marcel Duchamp Feuille de vigne femelle (Female Fig Leaf), 1951/61 Bronze 9 × 14 × 12.5 cm (3.54 × 5.51...

Marcel Duchamp Objet-dard (Dart-Object), 1951/62 Bronze overlaid with traces of silver-colored paint 7.8 × 19.7 × 9 cm (3.07 ×...

Sturtevant
Duchamp Coin de Chasteté, 1967
Plaster
5.5 x 8 x 4 cm (2.17 x 3.15 x 1.57 in)

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At the core of the exhibition lies Duchamp’s extraordinary De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy, Boîte-en-valise (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy, Box in a Valise, 1966): the artist’s self-curated ‘portable museum’. The self-referential work, which belonged to Duchamp’s wife ‘Teeny’, encloses three miniature replicas as well as 77 reproductions of his work, including a plethora of those on display in Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs and a 1936 photograph of Porte-bouteilles by Man Ray also on view.

Marcel Duchamp
De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy, Boîte-en-valise (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy, Box in a Valise), 1966
Original box, covered with red leather, with 3 miniature objects and 77 reproductions after original works by the artist
41.2 × 38.3 × 9.5 cm (16.22 × 15.08 × 3.74 in)
Ed. of 75

Man Ray
Porte-bouteilles de Marcel Duchamp, 1936
Gelatin silver contact print
12 × 9.1 cm (4.53 × 3.43 in)

Similarly entrancing, Sturtevant’s Duchamp Ciné (1992) draws the viewer towards an enigmatic coffee grinder handle beneath the projection of her film, which, when turned, activates a flow of vignettes of Sturtevant’s repetitions of Duchamp’s oeuvre glimpsed through a small aperture in the wall.

The work harks back to the experimental viewing apparatus devised by Duchamp’s friend Frederick Kiesler for the exhibition of Boîte-en-valise at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in 1942. Simultaneously evoking Harking back to Duchamp’s own peephole tableau and final work, Étant donnés (1966; Philadelphia Museum of Art), Sturtevant’s inventive voyeuristic device functions like an interactive retrospective of the artists’ entwined practices.

Frederick Kiesler’s kinetic display conceived for Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise at the Art of This Century gallery, 1942.

Marcel Duchamp, Ciné-Sketch: Adam and Eve (Marcel Duchamp and Bronia Perlmutter), 1924-25 (detail). MMK, Frankfurt

Sturtevant
Duchamp Relâche, 1967
Black and white photograph hand print
23 × 17.4 cm (9.06 × 6.85 in)

Sturtevant’s repetitions avowedly ‘throw out representation’ altogether to delve even further into their metaphysical power as objects of art. For writer Bruce Hainley, ‘Sturtevant repeats works for the necessity of a catalytic recognizability, sparking an investigation of what allows ‘art’ to be, so that the entirety of the structure of art is reconsidered horizontally not linearly.’

Sturtevant
Duchamp Wanted, 1991
Off set print
32.5 x 25.5 cm (12.8 x 10.04 in)

Pushing authorial ambiguities further, Sturtevant merges her artistic identity with that of Duchamp’s strategic alter ego – and potential co-author of the Boîte-en-valise – Rrose Sélavy, in a mini-slide of Duchamp Wanted (1992). Fascinatingly, when Duchamp and Sturtevant first met, she showed him Duchamp Relâche (1967), a repetition she made with Robert Rauschenberg. As Sturtevant recalled, ‘Marcel [...] said, “Where did you get that?” So you never knew, did he realize that was not his photo or did he really think it was his photo?’

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Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs sheds light on the unremitting spirit of subversion that unites Sturtevant and Duchamp, both of whom fundamentally challenged and redefined the meaning of art through their practice. The exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac Milan will coincide with the major retrospective of Duchamp’s work opening at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, on 12 April 2026.

Marcel Duchamp Eau & gaz à tous les étages, 1959 Container for the deluxe editions of Sur Marcel Duchamp by...

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One of the special features of our retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art is that it really tells the story of not just how Duchamp became an artist who used replication as a strategy in his own work very early, beginning before World War I, but how different strategies of replication became central to his work from the 1920s through to the 1960s – when there was a Duchamp boom and he became a kind of superstar in the art world, creating an increasing need for exhibition copies of his works. Replication became ever more important in new ways. That is part of his legacy for the generations of artists who came afterwards and it is part of his legacy for Sturtevant’s practice of repetition. I think it’s very interesting that our retrospective at MoMA and the exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac are happening at the same time.

— Matthew Affron, Curator of Modern Art, Philadelphia Art Museum & co-curator of Marcel Duchamp, MoMA, New York, 12 April—22 August 2026, then travelling to Philadelphia Art Museum.