User:Vexations/draft/9 Malic Moulds

Nine Malic Moulds (French: Neuf moules mâlic) is a work by Marcel Duchamp from 1914–15. The original from 1914-15 is in the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

A 1963 replica is in the collection of the Norton Simon Museum. Other replicas exists in an edition of 9. Mâlic is possibly derived from mâle (French for male) and would mean something like male-ish.(Tomkins 89) Golding has suggested that it is a pun on the word "phallic" (Golding 65). 9 Malic Moulds is Duchamp's first work on glass.

The nine molds represent the bachelors; they are sculptural moulds, from which as cast is to be made. From the top of each mould runs a capillary tube. The tubes follow the outlines of the standard stoppages and converge at the first of the tamis, a series of "sieves" or "parasols". Through the capillary tubes flows an "illuminating gas", that casts the bachelors in their form.

From a conversation with Pierre Cabanne:

PC: You continued elaborating the Large Glass with the Three Malic Moulds...

MD: No, there were nine of them.

PC: Right. But you started by making three. Almost at the same time as the Three Standard Stoppages, and perhaps for the same reason.

MD: No, at first I thought of eight and I thought, that’s not a multiple of three. It didn’t go with my idea of threes. I added one, which made nine. There were nine Malic Moulds. How did they come? I did a drawing, in 1913, in which there were eight–the ninth wasn't yet there. It came six months later. The idea is amusing because they are molds. And to mold what ? Gas. That is, gas is introduced into the molds, where it takes the shape of the soldier, the department-store delivery boy, the cuirassier, the policeman, the priest, the station master, etc., which are inscribed on my drawing. Each is built on a common horizontal plane, where lines intersect at the point of their sex. All that helped me realize the glass entitled Nine Malic Moulds, which was made in 1914–1915. The mold side is invisible. I always avoided doing something tangible, but with a mold it doesn’t matter, because it’s the inside I didn’t want to show. The Nine Malic Moulds were done in lead; they are not painted, they are each waiting to be given a color. I denied myself the use of color: lead is a color without being one. This is the kind of thing I was working on at that time.

The drawing that Duchamp refers to in the quote above is Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries, No. 1 from1913.