In the avant-garde Parisian world of Montparnasse, Bronia Perlmutter—later known as Bronia Clair—appeared in Ciné-Sketch, a Dada performance staged between acts of Francis Picabia’s ballet Relâche. The episode captured the era’s deliberate assault on conventional theatrical and social decorum: Perlmutter appeared nude beside Marcel Duchamp in poses evoking Adam and Eve as represented in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s imagery. The scene fused live performance, erotic provocation, art-world celebrity, and the Dada movement’s taste for absurdity and scandal. Man Ray photographed the tableau, turning what had been an ephemeral stage event into a lasting image of 1920s Parisian avant-garde culture. Decades later, the photograph acquired a second life in the art market, selling for $167,000 at Christie’s in 1999. The episode also illuminates the precarious visibility of women in the Montparnasse demimonde: Clair’s modeling made her essential to the period’s artistic mythology, even as her husband, filmmaker René Clair, reportedly discouraged her from discussing that chapter of her life until after his death in 1981.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1920s
The Nude Dada Tableau: Bronia Clair, Marcel Duchamp, and Picabia’s 1924 Relâche Interlude
Bronia Clair, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray / 1920s
In the avant-garde Parisian world of Montparnasse, Bronia Perlmutter—later known as Bronia Clair—appeared in Ciné-Sketch, a Dada performance staged between acts of Francis Picabia’s ballet Relâche. The episode captured the era’s deliberate assault on conventional theatrical and social decorum: Perlmutter appeared nude beside Marcel Duchamp in poses evoking Adam and Eve as represented in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s imagery. The scene fused live performance, erotic provocation, art-world celebrity, and the Dada movement’s taste for absurdity and scandal. Man Ray photographed the tableau, turning what had been an ephemeral stage event into a lasting image of 1920s Parisian avant-garde culture. Decades later, the photograph acquired a second life in the art market, selling for $167,000 at Christie’s in 1999. The episode also illuminates the precarious visibility of women in the Montparnasse demimonde: Clair’s modeling made her essential to the period’s artistic mythology, even as her husband, filmmaker René Clair, reportedly discouraged her from discussing that chapter of her life until after his death in 1981.
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