somecollegekid asked: Can you explain the Chess piece by Duchamp please?

Sure! While he was living in Buenos Aires at the end of the First World War, Duchamp designed a chess set for his own use. There is some debate about whether he carved the pieces himself or not. He is often credited with handmaking every piece except for the four knights, which he claimed to have had made by a local artisan. However, the precision of the other pieces has lead many scholars to believe that they were mechanically produced, with Larry List going so far as to claim that the knights were the ONLY pieces Duchamp actually carved himself.

Here is a link to a brief online article by Francis Naumann on the subject. Hope this helps :)

http://www.toutfait.com/articals.php?id=4301

leighannzig asked: what was the interesting reading you did on the peephole piece?

It was “Re-placing Duchamp’s Eroticism: ‘Seeing’ Etant Donnes from a Feminist Perspective,” by Amelia Jones. It’s included in her book Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp. The whole book is amazing, but I found this chapter particularly useful in terms of the gendered gaze one adopts while looking through the peepholes.