Esquivons les Ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots Exquis

Marcel Duchamps Esquivons les Ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots Exquis from 1968 is an offset lithograph on a phonographic record that represents one of the most radical experiments in the history of printmaking, transforming a vinyl disc into a support for visual art in a way that challenges every assumption about the nature of prints, multiples, and the relationship between visual and auditory experience. The title, which translates roughly as Let us evade the bruises of the Eskimos with exquisite words, is a typical Duchampian pun that plays on the sound of the French words to create an absurdist chain of associations that connects bodily injury, Arctic peoples, and verbal refinement in a way that refuses logical interpretation while delighting the ear. The phonographic record as support is a gesture that has multiple resonance: it suggests that the image could be played as sound; it transforms a mass-produced object into a work of art; it connects the visual and the auditory in a way that anticipates the multimedia experiments of later conceptual art. The year 1968, the year of Duchamps death and the year of the student revolts that shook Paris and the world, gives the work an elegiac quality appropriate to the final gestures of an artist who had spent his career challenging the assumptions of the art world. The Letter Edged in Black Press, which published the edition, was a collaborative press that produced artists books and multiples, and the choice of this press rather than a conventional art publisher reinforces the works status as a conceptual gesture rather than a commercial product.

Duchamps phonographic record lithograph is one of the most radical experiments in the history of printmaking and multiple production, anticipating the conceptual art and multimedia experiments of the late 20th century. The work influenced the development of artists multiples, conceptual art, and the broader tradition of challenging the boundaries between visual and auditory experience.

A 1968 offset lithograph by Duchamp on a phonographic record, a radical experiment transforming a vinyl disc into a support for visual art with an absurdist French pun title that challenges assumptions about prints, multiples, and the relationship between visual and auditory experience.