The Dada Perfume That Shattered Marcel Duchamp's Auction Record

Marcel Duchamp, Belle Haleine - Eau De Voilette (Beautiful Breath - Veil Water) (1921) sold for $11.36m (EUR8.91m) at Christie's Paris on February 23, 2009.

The bottle of perfume and label, which features Duchamp as his female alter ego, and its violet colored oval cardboard box had been traded four times before.

In 1921, Duchamp and Man Ray created a unique prototype of a range of perfume for the French artist's female alter ego, Rose Sélavy. Ray's portrait of Duchamp in drag features on the label of the readymade perfume bottle.

Duchamp called the perfume "Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water)" a word play combining associations of expensive scent and ordinary mouthwash. The finished product was launched on the cover of New York Dada, a single-issue magazine edited by Duchamp and Ray.

Duchamp later signed the box of the perfume bottle with the name Rrose Sélavy (using the double-r), and presented it as a gift to a former lover, Yvonne Crotti, who kept it for the rest of her life.

In 1990, the romantic, "assisted readymade" was acquired by Yves Saint Laurent and his former lover and longstanding business partner, Pierre Bergé.

The sale beat Duchamp's previous auction record by $9.76m, a 600% rise. The previous record was set by Fountain (conceived 1917, fabricated 1964), which sold for $1.6m at Sotheby's on November 17, 1999. The fifth in an edition of eight urinals, fabricated under Duchamp's supervision in 1964, was bought by the collector Dimitri Daskalopolos.

A Brief History of Duchamp at Auction