reality”, Poincar wrote in 1902.
Duchamp’s own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, 3 Standard Stoppages (3 stoppages talon), he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto prepared canvases, one at a time, from a height of 1 meter. The threads landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. He then cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to each of the “stoppage” backgrounds. The piece appears to literally follow Poincar’s School of the Thread, part of a book on classical mechanics.
Work on The Large Glass continued into 1913, with his invention of inventing a repertoire of