A geometry textbook, this Readymade was literally exposed to the elements. It was opened face up, suspended in midair and rigged to the corners of an outdoor porch. The book was left suspended in this manner for an extended length of time and the weather took its toll on it. The wind tore its pages, the rain drenched it, and the sun bleached and faded its ink over time. Unhappy Readymade was made in this manner not by Duchamp, but by his sister Suzanne. She was instructed to make it through written correspondence with her brother. Ramirez notes that this Readymade was in fact to be her wedding present (45).
Harriet and Sidney Janis explain that this « treatise seriously got the facts of life » (Masheck 37). It « epitomizes the conflict between human knowledge and the eternal verities. Duchamp accepts as inevitable the action of the forces of nature, the changes which time effects, its proclivity for corroding, destroying, reducing to rubbish all that man builds, is its haste in covering all human traces with dust » (Masheck 37-8).
The title clearly illustrates Duchamp’s personification of the textbook by assigning it human feelings. Just like a human, it is not happy to be left outside in the unpredictable weather for an extended length of time. Similar personification may be seen in a number of other Readymades as well, including Fresh Widow.
This Readymade also addresses Duchamp’s interest in chance, for no one can ever precisely predict the weather and how it will affect atextbook. In a sense, just like in Three Standard Stoppages, chance is the true artist of this Readymade. However, authorship is, of course, a complex issue here as well. After all, Duchamp and his sister both may seem to be the artist.
In a 1966 interview, Duchamp provided the following explanation of this unique Readymade:
»It was a geometry book, which he had to hang by strings on the balcony of his apartment in the rue Condamine; the wind had to go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages. Suzanne did a small painting of it, ‘Marcel’s Unhappy Readymade.’ That’s all that’s left, since the wind tore it up. It amused me to bring the idea of happy and unhappy into readymades, and then the rain, the wind, the pages flying, it was an amusing idea… » (61).
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Juan Pablo Macías