Jasper Johns’s Duchamp Casts

Marcel Duchamp, Study for Prière de Toucher, 1947, plaster cast in a little box, collection Philadelphia Museum, a 1997 gift of Enrico Donati I kept thinking about Jasper Johns’s plaster casts while seeing the Duchamp show at MoMA, maybe because Duchamp made plaster casts of body parts, and some of the best ones belonged to Jasper Johns. The plaster cast of a breast in a wooden box is the first thing in that gallery, and next to it is a standing copy of the book, Prière de Toucher (also 1947), which he made with Enrico Donati. Holy smokes, doing 30 seconds of research, the Philadelphia Museum describes this as carved plaster, not cast? Is it not made with a mold set into a little tray for casting? Is it a relief carving, taken down from a thicker block of plaster? plaster casts installation view, Marcel Duchamp at MoMA, image: Jonathan Dorado for MoMA The point is, right in front of these are two vitrines with early (1950) painted plaster casts related to the eventual nude figure in…