Centenary of “L’Obligation pour la roulette de Monte-Carlo” by Marcel Duchamp

To mark the centenary of the work, Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer, in collaboration with the Prince’s Palace of Monaco and the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco present the Obligation pour la roulette de Monte-Carlo by Marcel Duchamp, a leading artist of the 20th century and inventor of the readymade.

This personal version of a bond, obligation in French, consists of a photograph taken by Man Ray of Marcel Duchamp, his hair saturated with shaving foam, set against a roulette wheel, in which the artist appears as the horned descendant of the god Pan. In the background, as though to ensure it could not be reproduced, the play on words “moustiques, domestiques, demistock” is repeated as a watermark across the entire document. On the back, excerpts are printed from the statutes of his imaginary company, whose objectives are stated in The Little Review:

“Marcel Duchamp has created a joint stock company of which he is the director. The shares are each sold for 500 francs. The money will be used to perfect a gambling system at Monte Carlo. Shareholders will received 20% interest. […] They are signed twice by Rrose Sélavy [the name of Duchamp’s alter ego and by which he was known, as well as by his own], and he appears as chairman of the company. For those wishing to purchase these unusual artworks as an investment, they have the opportunity to invest in a perfect masterpiece. Just Marcel’s signature is worth more than the 500 francs asked for the bond. Marcel has completely ceased painting and has almost exclusively devoted his last years to playing chess. He will visit Monte Carlo in early January to establish this new company.”

Marcel Duchamp did indeed produce his first Obligation pour la roulette de Monte-Carlo in winter 1924–25 with the aim of financing his elaborate financial conception. Typically Duchampian, this fruitless attempt to strike it big brought together two concepts that were central to his work: chance and value. A dedicated chess player, he stated he wanted to force roulette to become a chess game. In so doing, he addressed the randomness of roulette through calculation and probability. Yet, as is often the case with Duchamp, what is really at stake is to be found elsewhere. It resides in the mechanical idleness of a purposeless game. Essentially, he plays for the sake of playing – not to win, but to avoid losing – maintaining a constant balance between loss and gain, between rationality and passion.

Based on a proposal by Giovanni Casu and Luciano Chessa
Curator: Benjamin Laugier (NMNM)
Scenography: Ahmad Reshad