Yale University Art Gallery | Yale University Press
252 pages | 364 images
The Société Anonyme was founded in 1920 by Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. Membership included critics, patrons and familiar and lesser-known artists. The book is about the collection and its members. Informed by hundreds of letters, it explores their friendships, collaborations and lives from 1920 to 1950. Because the book is as much about the people and their correspondence as the works of art, it opens with the “Laughing Ass” logo designed by Duchamp for the Société Anonyme stationery, followed by a facsimile of a letter from Roberto Matta to Katherine Dreier, printed on vellum to overlay a photograph of Dreier. In 1941, Dreier gave the thousand-work collection, referred to by the founders as an “experimental museum,” to the Yale University Art Gallery.
