Picasso Gaglione | Marcel Duchamp Rubber Chess Set

Box text reads:

Marcel Duchamp: Rubber Stamp Chess Set

In 1913, French artist Marcel Duchamp achieved overnight notoriety
when his painting, Nude Descending a Staircase, became the sensation
of the Armosy Show, the exhibition that introduced Modern Art to America.

On August 13th, 1918, Duchamp boarded to boat from New York City to
Buenos Aires. In a letter postmarked from Argentina on January 7, 1919,
Duchamp wrote to Louise Arsenberg, the wife of his New York patron,
“I am also going to join local chess club down here to try my hand again.
I had made up a set of rubber stamps (which I designed), with which I
set up the games. I’m sending here an example for Walter.”

By designing a rubber stamp set in order to facilitate the prospect of
playing chess by mail. Duchamp initiated one of the first postal actions
incorporating the use of the rubber stamp medium.

Concept and Design: Picasso Gaglione. Text: John Held, Jr.
Production: Diana Mars and Stephen Caravello.



Founder of VILE magazine (with Ana Banana) Bill or William Gaglione was active in the branch of mail art that favoured goofy pseudonyms (see, ah, Ana Banana, the Cracker Jack Kid, etc) and neo-versions of art movements that came before. Many of his boxed stamp works are credited to others (Ray Johnson, George Brecht, George Maciunas, etc. etc.).