Marcel Duchamp's 'Tu m'' and Katherine Dreier's Vision for Art and Interior Design

In 1918, Katherine Sofie Dreier commissioned Marcel Duchamp to create 'Tu m'', his last oil painting, which he disliked for being too decorative. Dreier, a patron and co-founder of the Société Anonyme with Duchamp and Man Ray in 1920, organized the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926, which inspired Alfred Barr, future MoMA director. The painting includes a bottle brush, dice, safety pins, shadows of three ready-mades (including Bicycle Wheel), and a hand painted by sign painter A. Klang. Duchamp called it 'a kind of inventory of all my previous work.' Dreier, who championed integrating modern art into domestic interiors, commissioned architect Friedrich Kiesler to design a 'television room' for the 1926 exhibition, showing artworks sequentially. Duchamp later created the 'Boîte-en-valise' (1936-1941), a portable museum of his works, inspired by Kiesler's 1937 article on 'The Large Glass' in Architectural Record, illustrated by Berenice Abbott. Kiesler also designed the Art of This Century gallery for Peggy Guggenheim in 1942, featuring a special niche for Duchamp's works viewed through a glass, operated by a spiral wheel.