Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel

12 November 2012

Bicycle Wheel (Roue de Bicyclette), 1998
Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu
Carbon bicycle wheel, Philippe Stark’s design stool
153 x 63 x 30 cm
Pablo Rico Collection, Mexico 


In 1998 Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu collaborated on an obvious remake of Marcel Duchamp’s Roue de Bicyclette, his first “readymade” object. Duchamp combined a bicycle wheel, a fork and a stool to create a machine which served no purpose, subverting accepted norms of art. The original, 1913 version was lost, but Duchamp re-created the object in 1951. Vu and Jakober’s version uses a carbon wheel and a stool designed by Phillippe Starck.

Roue de Bicyclette
Marcel Duchamp, 1951 (third version, after lost original of 1913)
Metal wheel mounted on painted wood stool
129.5 x 63.5 x 41.9 cm
The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

In 1493, exactly 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was finishing the preparations for casting the equestrian monument (4 times life size), which Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan commissioned in memory of his father some 12 years earlier. 

Good News from the Skies

Good News from the Skies

Inspired by the exhibition And Now the Good News, which focusing on the relationship between mass media and art, we prepared horoscope readings based on the chapters of the exhibition. Using the popular astrological language inspired by the effects of the movements of celestial bodies on people, these readings with references to the works in the exhibition make fictional future predictions inspired by the horoscope columns that we read in the newspapers with the desire to receive good news about our day. 

Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico was born on July 10, 1888, in Volos, Greece, to an Italian family. His mother, Gemma Cervetto, was from a family of Genoa origin, but most likely she was born in Izmir. His father, Evaristo, was born on June 21, 1841 in the Büyükdere district of Istanbul.