Through the Large Glass

1976

Through the Large Glass documents one of Wilke’s most effective and well-known performances, in which she executed a languid striptease behind the cracked transparent surface of Marcel Duchamp’s famous work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915–23, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1976. Dressed in a fedora and a man’s white satin suit, she strikes a series of poses evoking the style of 1970s fashion photography and then strips, cleverly suggesting bride and bachelor simultaneously. In her self-conscious affectation of a fashion model, Wilke willfully uses her own image and her sexuality to confront the erotic representation of women in art history and popular culture.