Obligation pour la roulette de Monte-Carlo by Marcel Duchamp, 2025

The atrium of the Monte-Carlo CasinOpera — 1 May – 8 May 2025

​Marcel Duchamp (1887, Blainville-Crevon – 1968, Neuilly-sur-Seine)

​Obligation pour la roulette de Monte-Carlo, no 27 c. 1924

​Collage avec photographie de Man Ray sur une lithographie,

​Collections de S.A.S. le Prince de Monaco

To mark the 100th anniversary of L’Obligation pour la roulette de Monte-Carlo, Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer has partnered with the Palais Princier and the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (NMNM) to bring one of Duchamp’s most subversive works home.

This personal version of a bond, obligation in French, consists of a photograph taken by Man Ray of Marcel Duchamp, his hair saturated with shaving foam, set against a roulette wheel, in which the artist appears as the horned descendant of the god Pan. 

Marcel Duchamp did indeed produce his first Obligation pour la roulette de Monte-Carlo in winter 1924–25 with the aim of financing his elaborate financial conception. Typically Duchampian, this fruitless attempt to strike it big brought together two concepts that were central to his work: chance and value. A dedicated chess player, he stated he wanted to force roulette to become a chess game. In so doing, he addressed the randomness of roulette through calculation and probability. Yet, as is often the case with Duchamp, what is really at stake is to be found elsewhere. It resides in the mechanical idleness of a purposeless game. Essentially, he plays for the sake of playing – not to win, but to avoid losing – maintaining a constant balance between loss and gain, between rationality and passion.

Based on a proposal by Giovanni Casu and Luciano Chessa

Curator: Benjamin Laugier (NMNM)

Scenography: Ahmad Reshad 

Production: Stamp