Marcel Duchamp

To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour

Buenos Aires 1918

Oil, silver leaf, lead wire, and magnifying lens on glass (cracked), mounted between panes of glass in a standing metal frame, 20 1/8 x 16 1/4 x 1 1/2" (51 x 41.2 x 3.7 cm), on painted wood base, 1 7/8 x 17 7/8 x 4 1/2" (4.8 x 45.3 x 11.4 cm)

Not on view

This exploration of optics is Duchamp’s final study on glass for the Bachelor Apparatus that comprises the lower pane of The Large Glass (1915–23). If a viewer follows the title’s teasing instruction (meant “to sound like an oculist’s prescription”) and looks through the convex lens embedded in the work’s glass pane, the surrounding environment appears inverted. Duchamp created the silver pattern of radiating lines seen here based on an optician’s vision test; the motif, which he called the Oculist Witness, would later appear in The Large Glass. Like that of The Large Glass, this work’s final appearance was determined by accident, in patterns of extensive cracking caused by breakage.

Gallery label from

Marcel Duchamp, April 12–August 22, 2026

Gallery label from 2020

The words forming this work’s title are inscribed (in French) on a strip of metal glued across the composition’s approximate center and appearing to invite viewers to look through a lens haloed by concentric circles and mounted between two panes of glass. Peering through the convex lens “for almost an hour” is supposed to have a hallucinatory effect as the view is dwarfed, flipped, and otherwise distorted. Duchamp delighted in the fact that the glass shattered while being transported, welcoming the mechanics of chance into the work.

Provenance Research Project

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

The artist
Katherine S. Dreier (d. 1952), West Redding, Connecticut. [Purchased from Duchamp], by 1936
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Katherine S. Dreier Bequest, 1953

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Provenance Research Project
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Medium Oil, silver leaf, lead wire, and magnifying lens on glass (cracked), mounted between panes of glass in a standing metal frame, 20 1/8 x 16 1/4 x 1 1/2" (51 x 41.2 x 3.7 cm), on painted wood base, 1 7/8 x 17 7/8 x 4 1/2" (4.8 x 45.3 x 11.4 cm)
Dimensions Overall 22" (55.8 cm) high
Credit Katherine S. Dreier Bequest
Object number 150.1953
Department Painting & Sculpture

Explore more

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

American, born France. 1887–1968 188 works online

When Marcel Duchamp created his most famous work—the industrially produced urinal Fountain —it was largely ignored. Fountain was the high point of Duchamp’s campaign to dismantle and expand the boundaries of what constitutes a work of art; it had begun four years earlier, when he asked, “Can one make works that are not ‘of art’?

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