Passing Fancy
A small perfume bottle dyed green and labeled Belle Haleine, Eau De Voilette—“Beautiful Breath, Veil Water”—by iconoclastic artist Marcel Duchamp sold at auction at Christie’s in 2009 for $11,489,968. The title Duchamp gave this enigmatic objet is believed to allude to Belle Da Costa Greene, an imperious figure who ran J.P. Morgan’s library, a few steps down Madison Avenue from the financier’s former Manhattan residence. Fresh off the boat from France in 1915, Duchamp had needed money; a mutual acquaintance put him onto Greene, who in her capacity as Morgan’s librarian hired the new arrival as a translator. Greene let Duchamp go after six weeks, a period during which Greene doubtless irked and intrigued the artist, as she did so many others. The bottle originally held a Rigaud brand perfume, Un air embaumé, and was made of peach-colored glass. Duchamp dyed the container green, perhaps an allusion to the Belle Da Costa Greene story as well as a play on her family name. Aficionados (see “Decoding Duchamp,” p. 57) argue that in creating the work Duchamp was encoding references to his temporary patroness. The artist used the piece as an element on the cover of the only issue of the modernist magazine New York DADA, produced in collaboration with the versatile, innovative American artist Man Ray in 1921. He did not display the work until 1965, 15 years after Greene died.
Duchamp was among a circle of artists and scholars acquainted with the green-eyed Greene, who for her time lived the fast life. She dressed and behaved flamboyantly—drinking and smoking, traveling solo, enjoying numerous suitors, and conducting an affair with a married man. Greene had entered Morgan’s orbit in 1905 through the banker’s nephew, Junius Morgan, an acquaintance from her job. Greene and the younger Morgan, both bibliophiles, worked at the Princeton University Library in New Jersey. Introduced by Junius, Greene, who was 26 but claimed to be 23, hit it off with the 64-year-old tycoon. Morgan hired her as a librarian, in which role she not only oversaw and
