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Wise Cracks

Wise Cracks

The glass windows on the 7th Floor Bridge (located near the library's art and art history holdings) appear cracked. On closer scrutiny, the cracks match the breaks in Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass (also known as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even). An even closer inspection reveals that the cracked lines are comprised of jokes and puns, sand-blasted into the surface of the glass. Duchamp shattered art-making tradition, using puns, irony and complicated layering to emphasize the conceptual over the retinal.

Location: bridge on southern end of the Seventh Floor