Throughout art history, there have been many connections and encounters between creatives. When brought to light, they become valuable stories to retell. Yet, while some of these connections are well documented, others have slipped under the radar. This visual essay is dedicated to such a happenstance: a little-known encounter between two cultural pioneers, the French artist Marcel Duchamp and the Hong Kong-based graphic designer Henry Steiner.

In 2018, M+ acquired a collection of works, rare books, and publications by and related to Marcel Duchamp from esteemed scholar Francis M. Naumann. The collection includes a hardcover book titled Marcel Duchamp: from the Green Box (1957), which contains English translations of notes from The Green Box (officially known as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) (1934).

Marcel Duchamp: from the Green Box was designed by Henry Steiner, then a student at the Yale School of Art in Connecticut. Steiner visited Duchamp in his New York apartment and took photographs of the artist in his home environment. This young student later became revered as the father of graphic design in Hong Kong, where he is particularly known for his iconic corporate branding, such as the ubiquitous HSBC logo.

It brings together two significant figures from different creative fields. Their collaboration also provides a lens for us to examine how commonalities in their backgrounds shaped their respective artistic languages.

The connection between the two creative pioneers started with The Green Box.

The Green Box (1934) is a thoughtfully crafted artist’s book, boxed in an edition of 300, as well as twenty ‘deluxe’ editions. In each box, Duchamp meticulously replicated the original sketches and notes he had created in preparation for ‘The Large Glass’ by using the exact same colours of ink and paper stock.

Additionally, in the event that the original note was on a piece of torn-out paper, Duchamp used metal masks, a type of metal plates, to laboriously replicate any torn edges. The compilation of seemingly random notes containing quotes, ideas, photos, illustrations, and musical scores became a riddle in itself. There were no instructions or clues given by the artist as to how those materials should be read; it all depended on the viewers’ choices. Duchamp’s extreme dedication to documentation and its details asserted that the thinking process of artmaking is equally important to the artwork itself. Art does not only consist of objects for display, but also includes the trains of thought inspired by daily minutiae that are produced by artists’ minds.

Twenty years after The Green Box was first published, the ideas within it still piqued many people’s interest. Art historian and Yale University professor George Heard Hamilton proposed to Duchamp that they collaborate on an English-translated, excerpted version of The Green Box in 1956. Titled Marcel Duchamp: from the Green Box, the book highlights twenty-five of Duchamp’s most thought-provoking notes produced in the course of making ‘The Large Glass’. Some of these notes are infused with humour and contain insightful glimpses into Duchamp’s conceptual repertoire, such as:  ‘If a horizontal/straight thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter on to a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases and creates a new image of the unity of length.’ Practically, the book also provided English readers who didn’t know any French access to Duchamp’s ideas.

Aside from translating The Green Box, George Heard Hamilton was also tasked with finding a designer for the book so that Duchamp’s ideas could be visualised. He sought advice from Alvin Eisenman, the founder and head of Yale’s graphic-design programme. Eisenman recommended the young Steiner, then in his second year of study, for this unique task.    

Reminiscing about his visit to Duchamp’s apartment at East 58th Street in New York in 1957, Steiner recalls the serendipity of encountering two remarkable name plaques next to the doorbell: ‘Duchamp’ and ‘Matisse’. The latter belonged to the art dealer Pierre Matisse, son of  Henri Matisse. This proximity underscored the frequent art exchanges between Europe and the United States, and within individual networks, in the post-war period.

While photographing Duchamp's portrait for the book cover, Steiner was surprised that both Duchamp’s appearance and demeanour were those of a formal gentleman. He dressed conservatively, contrary to general presumptions of how bohemian artists might appear, and the young Steiner was immediately impressed by the intellectual range of the artist. Among the manuscripts of notes the two worked on, Steiner pointed to the quote ‘Reciprocal Readymade: Use a Rembrandt as an ironing-board’ as one of his favourites. The unorthodox way Duchamp approached art left a unique impression on the young Steiner.

Steiner incorporated Duchamp’s hand-torn notes on the cover of Marcel Duchamp: From the Green Box. When applied to a book cover, the artist’s sketches and notes resemble a graphic designer’s paper mock-ups of possible layouts. The cross-disciplinary nature of the work speaks to the fluidity between various disciplines of visual culture; in this case, how conceptual art offers inspiration and tools for graphic design.

The Story Continues

Four years after his encounter with Duchamp, Steiner moved to Hong Kong to develop his career in the up-and-coming heart of Asia. At that time, in the 1960s, Hong Kong attracted creative talent from all over the world. Just as Duchamp brought new ideas with him when he moved to the United States, Steiner, too, brought his creative vision to Asia. Steiner executed many of the designs that ultimately shaped Hong Kong’s visual culture and daily life, from banknotes and corporate logos to food packaging. His design language stood out for being culturally astute, celebrating the attributes and commonalities of both east and west, merging cultures into a playful vernacular that mirrored the social fabric of Hong Kong. 

The brief encounter between the established artist Marcel Duchamp and the young designer Henry Steiner exemplifies how makers from different generations who share a personal history of exile may arrive at similar strategies in their creative work. Duchamp’s The Green Box reveals an artist whose uprooting inspired a new, portable kind of work consisting of not only objects, but of a meticulous archive of ideas and instructions, while Steiner’s use of cut-and-paste and collage in his designs wove together visual fragments from wide-ranging contexts.

The pursuit of art that echoed through Duchamp and Steiner’s lived experiences was marked by migration. This, and their openness to embracing new and other influences, helped form the unique perspectives with which these makers have enriched our collective visual culture.

Watch Henry Steiner discuss his projects in Hong Kong in this interview. Engage with the interactive journey to learn more about Marcel Duchamp’s life and art.

Image at top: Cover design mock-up by Henry Steiner for Marcel Duchamp: From the Green Box (1957). Courtesy of Graphic Communication Ltd.

Credits

Produced by M+
Written by: Hester Chan, Lok Wong
English editorial: Dorothy So, Kate Reilley, Russell Storer
Chinese editorial: Amy Leung, Lap-wai Lam
English to Chinese Translation: Amy Li
Layout: Amy Leung
Special thanks: Henry Steiner, Association Marcel Duchamp, Francis M. Naumann, Doryun Chong, Tina Pang, Johannes E. Hoerning, Jacqueline Chan, Ling Law, Chris Sullivan