List of Related Works

To understand Morée, you first need to understand the six traits that define a Dada artwork.
This page breaks them down one by one. We call them “coded gestures”—not because they’re secret,
but because they work like signals: recurring strategies used to disrupt meaning, authorship, function, and beauty.

Each of these gestures first appears in Morée—subtly encoded, quietly radical.
What follows is a list of later works that repeat them, often with sharper intent.
They may look different, but the gestures are the same.

Morée Didn't Follow Dada. It Predicted It.

SIX CODED GESTURES, ONE ORIGIN

Every tab below opens a visual tactic that defined Dada.
But each one appeared first—in Morée, before Dada even had a name.

Author/Title Punning

Definition—The manipulation, withholding, or playful disguise of authorship through pseudonyms, canceled signatures, or coded identity.

Morée: —The artist signs the painting with a pseudonym that echoes the style and elegance of “Erté,” only to partially scrape it away. This isn’t just concealment—it’s performance. The name is a deliberate misdirection: borrowed glamour masking authorship. If by Duchamp, it would mark his earliest known use of pseudonymous misdirection in paint—predating even the “R. Mutt” signature.

Other Examples: —Apolinére Enameled, Fountain, God,
Jeanne Marie Bourgeois, Tu m’, L.H.O.O.Q., Da-Dandy, Rrose Sélavy, Cacodylate Eye, De Portraits, Belle Haleine,
Cadeau (Gift)

Subversion of Glamour

Definition —Aesthetic beauty, luxury, or ornament is exaggerated, inverted, or mocked—often appearing as empty or synthetic.

Morée: —The pearls—once emblems of refinement and bourgeois taste—are stripped of all glamour. Suspended in an acidic, deteriorating wash, they hover just above a consuming wave, as if beauty itself were moments from drowning.

Other Examples: —Jeanne Marie Bourgeois, L.H.O.O.Q., Rrose Sélavy, Belle Haleine

Drips as Sabotage

Definition —Drips or stains are not expressive but corrosive. They mar or undermine an image’s authority or meaning.

Morée: —Veil-like vertical drips are layered across the surface, disrupting clarity and elegance. These are not expressive flourishes—they actively degrade the image, mimicking corrosion or accidental damage. The drips call attention to the medium’s instability, pushing paint beyond depiction into dissolution. In this way, they seem to attack both the image and the idea of image-making itself.

Other Examples: —Jeanne Marie Bourgeois, Belle Haleine.

Denial of Function

Definition —A useful object is made deliberately useless. Its intended function is interrupted, reversed, or perverted.

Morée: —The painting simulates a commercial image—an advertisement or product still-life—but corrodes its own utility. Painted on a standardized reproduction board, it appears ready for mechanical duplication, yet deliberately thwarts that purpose. The image resists photography, its glossy surface disrupted and its subject eroded, as if designed to fail its commercial function.

Other Examples: —Fountain, God, Cadeau/Gift,

Surface Disruption

Definition —The integrity of the image surface is physically or conceptually violated. Cuts, intrusions, or insertions interrupt pictorial unity.

Morée: —There is visible scraping, and abrasion of the signature as well as partial removal of a topmost paint layer. These acts violate the image’s continuity. Paint is not used to depict but to interfere—to break the surface as a stable field.

Other Examples: —Jeanne Marie Bourgeois; Tu m’,
CacoDylate Eye, De Portraits

Artistic Citation

Definition —An existing image, style, or motif is quoted or repurposed—used as conceptual material within a new context.

Morée: —The pearls seem to reference Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 and especially No. 3, where their form was singled out for refinement—visually amplified into rhythmic flourish. In Morée, they are quoted but now in collapse: no longer a symbol of motion or modernity, but of arrested decay, as if Duchamp were turning his own vocabulary against itself.

Other Examples: —Jeanne Marie Bourgeois, God, Tu m’. L.H.O.O.Q., Da-Dandy, Cacodylate Eye, De Portraits,
Belle Haleine

MORÉE IS THE STARTING POINT

Examples of the Six Coded Gestures, 1916–1921

Every work on this list came later—
but each one echoes something first seen in Morée.
Together, they form a trail of ideas that
shaped the core of New York Dada.

1916