Textual Evidence

• Arensberg’s Axiom (Blind Man, Vol. 2)
  Cast as a foundational principle, Axiom sets up the logical frame. Its mock-scientific tone signals that what follows will deal
  in coded systems rather than straightforward meaning.
  

• Arensberg’s Theorem (Blind Man, Vol. 2)
  Using mathematical-poetic language, Theorem evokes pendular motion, suspension, timing, and subtractive drips—
  images that resonate directly with the structure of Morée, where pearls hang amid corrosive drips above an ascending wave.
  

• Title: Morée
  Linguistic hybrid of mourir (“to die”) and morte (“the dead woman”); functions as a self-contained elegy. Serves as a poetic marker for the symbolic death of the Nude figure and Duchamp’s withdrawal from painting. The name encodes Coded Authorship through veiled identity and mourns the feminine subject suspended between Nude No. 2 and No. 3. Central to interpreting the painting as a memorial image.

• Painting: Nude Descending a Staircase No. 3
  No. 3 echoes Morée in subtle but striking ways: the pearls now unmistakable, the heavy black border suggestive of
  mourning, and the dotted signature binding the works together. These shared elements invite us to see the two paintings
  as mutually evocative.
  

• Painting: Mistinguett
  Mistinguett reveals the subtractive process behind Morée. What in Morée appears as corrosive traces is here rendered abstractly
  but clearly, turning process into performance and exposing the method by which those traces were produced.
  

• Photograph: Belle Haleine
  Belle Haleine masquerades as a perfume ad, Duchamp’s self-portrait recast on the label as a pearl-wearing, gender-bending parody. The photographic backdrop nods to the “veil water” process, while the name—Eau de Voilette (“veil water”)—ties disguise and allure back to the corrosive drips of Morée.
  

• In Print: Pearl Pendant
  

  In a 1924 issue of 391, a full-page photograph appears—a single string of pearls, elegantly draped across a dark field—
  inscribed: “Man Ray, Paris.” This striking, solitary presentation attests to the pearl motif’s deliberate, recurrent role within the Dada visual lexicon, and its dissemination through one of the movement’s central organs.

• Collage: Da-Dandy
  A collage of visual allusions, and possibly an unsanctioned adoption of the circle’s shared strategy of oblique reference.

Synthesis

Each of the seven items—Mistinguett, Theorem, Axiom, Belle Haleine, Da-Dandy, Nude No. 3, and Pearl Pendant—form a chain of consilient touchpoints. At the center stands Morée itself, the work to which all others point.

Two works anchor the case most decisively. Mistinguett reveals the subtractive process behind Morée’s corrosive traces, turning what is latent in one painting into explicit performance in another. Theorem provides a verbal counterpart: its language of suspension, incidence, and timing can be tested directly against Morée as object.

Others—whether visual echoes, textual riffs, or parodic extensions—gain power in connection. On their own they may be intriguing; taken together, they establish a pattern stronger than speculation. Bound within a small and deliberate circle, their coherence points to intention: echoes that are layered, interlocked, and carefully shielded from plain view.