Sixteen Miles of String (art installation), 1942 (b/w photo)

The exhibition "First Papers of Surrealism" was curated by Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp and opened in Manhattan on October 14, 1942. For the staging of the exhibition, Duchamp created the installation "Sixteen Miles of String" that was hung up throughout the exhibition space. Marcel Duchamp might have been one of the most important artists of the 20th century, together with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque; like them, he created quite influential works in the Cubist style. He then changed his course and embarked on Dada and conceptual art, which he considered to serve "the mind", as opposed to just "the eye". Together with his American friend and patron, Katherine Sophie Dreier, he founded the Société Anonyme for the advancement of abstract art. Next to his far ranging artistic work, Duchamp was also a librarian, a mathematician, a musician, a writer and a chess player. (Marc field 094)