www.museumpeace.com/dau/0013f.htm

Duchamp After Unbekannt
Stephen Lauf

2026.03.28
Gruß aus München

On 14 October 2025 I wrote: ". . . figured out the story behind this image too."

The story is, that while the image of a period Löwenbräukeller postcard is within the 21 June 1912 entry of the Ephemerides on or about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy, 1887-1968 (1993), there is no accompanying explanation as to the date of the card, nor from where the image may have come, nor whether Duchamp even knew of the image's existence. One can only surmise that the authors present this image coincidental to Duchamp's 1912 arrival at Munich because they feel it may well be the (newly discovered?) inspiration for the reputedly enigmatic To Have the Apprentice in the Sun, the singular drawing within Duchamp's Box of 1914.

Despite there being no verification of a direct connection between Duchamp and the Löwenbräukeller postcard, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe at the end of her essay, "From Movement to Movens: Marcel Duchamp--Aviation gasoline from Munich" in Marcel Duchamp in Munich 1912 (2012), explains Duchamp's connection thusly:

The other depiction of a floating world between heaven and earth Duchamp discovers in Munich can be found on a postcard: :Greetings from Munich--Löwenbräukeller".³⁴ In this heaven, preparations are being made for a delivery of beer to be served by winged beings. One of the elves, seated on a bicycle, glides at high velocity down a rope stretched between earth and the clouds, holding beer steins in her hand. To Marcel Duchamp, the picture must have recalled the sight of Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia on a bicycle seat taking off for her first flight at Toussus-le-Noble, and coming back down to earth.
The formal composition of these "Greetings" can be found in a small drawing on music paper, Avoir l'apprenti dans le soleil [To Have the Apprentice in the Sun]. The bicyclist, racing uphill on a sheet of music paper--which implicitly integrates him into the space of a musical notation--traces a large curved letter L (elle); read in musical terms, as suggested by the paper, the tiny loop may signify not only the "sol" (Latin for soleil, or sun), but also as the key of "sol," of G. Surely we are not supposed to think of Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia ... He included this little work in his first Box, the Box of 1914 (1912-14), made in an edition of three.
34. Gough-Cooper and Caumont, "Ephemerides" ~~(see note 10)~~, June 21, 1912.

This prompted me to do a google image-search using the Löwenbräukeller postcard, which ultimately produced surprising results:

Apparently, the original version of the Löwenbräukeller postcard is an ubiquously German postcard first published 1899-1901. Interestingly . . .

. . . Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor--"the fastest man in the world"--on the front of the November 1, 1898, edition of the French sports magazine La Vie au grand air. For probably the first time in modern sport history, a black athlete was marketed as a star and seen by thousands of people in a short space of time, in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Denmark, and Holland. Who knows, perhaps delivery of Max Bergmann's invitation for Duchamp to visit him in Munich arrived via the latest typically German postcard.

2025.03.28
451 Rhawn Gallery

2001.03.28
theological pomo
Yesterday, I read a very interesting article of Duchamp's last work in Art In America (which I received yesterday). The piece is written like a detective story (albeit unwittingly), and is exactly the type of art history I like. I was throughout reminded of my 'investigations' and 'discoveries' regarding Piranesi's Ichnographia Campus Martius and also the architecture(?) of St. Helena. There is a Duchamp quote in the article that makes an uncanny connection to the Campo Marzio, even.
Steve

Duchamp striptease quondam Piranesi, even
In Francis M. Naumann's "Marcel and Maria", a fascinating article on Duchamp's Ètant Donnès in Art in America, April 2001, Duchamp is quoted as having said the following:
"I want to grasp things with the mind the way the penis is grasped by the vagina."
Naumann's article is all about finding clues about meaning purposely hidden by Duchamp within his oeuvre.
Piranesi's Ichnographia Campus Martius contains a nimiety of purposely hidden clues as well.

1960.03.28
1960. Monday, New York City
To assist Douglas MacAgy, now director of the Dallas Museum, who is organizing an exhibition of lesser known artists, Duchamp writes to Marceau of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Has he any knowledge of the request made to Henry Clifford at the museum for loans from the Arensberg Collection, namely the painting by John Covert and four Morton Schambergs? Duchamp reminds Marceau: "[MacAgy] and his wife, you know undoubtedly, have always organized interesting exhibitions in San Francisco [8.4.1949], Houston [22.3.1957] etc."
Ephemerides

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Duchamp After Unbekannt