Tonsorial comet
Some have asked about the Flickr icon. It's from Man Ray's La Tonsure photo of Duchamp sporting a rather fine haircut in 1920 or 21. He had George de Zayas shave a comet (its "tail being an appendage of the headlight child") into his barnet. More pictures of it Jennifer Gough-Cooper amd Jacques Caumont's 'Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy' (1 Nov 1921), in the big Thames and Hudson catalogue.
Lather wings
Man Ray is responsible for many of the well-known photos of MD. In 1924 Ray took a set of photos "while his hair and face were in a white lather during a shave and shampoo, his "hair sculpted into the winged head of Mercury, Roman god of science and commerce, patron of vagabonds and thieves" (Ephemerides, 1 Nov 1924)". MD used these on a series of thirty bonds he raised with which to fund a trip to Monte Carlo to beat the roulette wheel.
Combing out
Duchamp has agreed to design the cover of Transition no.26: using the same image of the silvered metal comb standing almost vertically on a mat, grey-green ground, the title of the review laid next to it, in the same perspective, is printed in gold.
James Joyce's reaction when he sees Duchamp's cover is to tell Sylvia Beach that the comb is the one he will use to "comb out" his Work in Progress, some pages of which are published in the same number of Transition. Other contributors to this issue include Raymond Queneau, Man Ray, and Alexander Calder. (Ephemerides, 15 Dec 1936)
Work in Progress would be published as Finnegans Wake, 1939. The comb is MD's readymade of 1916, and on its spine are the words "3 ou 4 gouttes de hauteur n'ont rien a faire avec la sauvagerie" (3 or 4 drops of height have nothing to do with savagery).
More on Duchamp and Joyce from Ian Hays.
Comments