Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) French American, Album Cover. 1968 Cover for the portfolio 'SMS'. Duchamp created a seven minute recording of himself reading transposed letters, words and syllables. The record can be removed and played. This work was one Duchamp's last pieces. He died shortly after his SMS contribution. This piece directly related to earlier recordings and record-shaped artworks made by the famous Dadaist, Surrealist and father of conceptual art. Marcel Duchamp is known for Dada, avant-garde, cubism, assemblage. Marcel Duchamp, born in Blainville, France, became a painter and sculptor who was part of the early 20th-century Dada movement that blurred the boundaries between these two aspects of fine art. In league with Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Hans Arp, Man Ray, and Kurt Schwitters, Duchamp held to the Dada credo that "everything the artist spits out is art." Duchamp made his first big impression in the American art scene with his entry of Nude Descending the Staircase at the 1913 Armory Show in New York. This event was the first organized exhibition in the United States that included avant-garde artwork from Europe, and the biggest French names were Picasso and Braque. However, Duchamp and his artist brothers, Jacques Villon, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon received the most advance publicity of the French entries, because the press built them up "as a family of avant-garde artists; pictures of them in their garden at Puteaux were the only photographs of contemporary European artist distributed by the Association". Overall Size; 15 7/8 x 24 3/4 in. Sight Size: 14 1/2 x 23 3/8 in. #5228 Location K1