Morée and Rhode Island: The Circumstances of a Rediscovery
Morée resurfaced in Rhode Island in late 2024 after more than a century of silence.
Its appearance was unexpected. No documentation had ever suggested that a work of this type — with clear connections to the conceptual strategies circulating in the Arensberg circle circa 1915–1917 — had survived, let alone traveled through New England.
The painting emerged through a private sale within the state.
Nothing in the known historical record anticipated Rhode Island as the site of reappearance, yet this geographic displacement now forms an important part of the work’s afterlife. What matters for the scholarship is that the painting had remained outside institutional visibility long enough for its original structure — including its signature intervention and surface effects — to survive intact.
Why Rhode Island Matters
Although Rhode Island is not typically associated with early American Dada, the fact that Morée resurfaced there carries several interpretive implications:
1. A Non-Institutional Afterlife
Many experimental works from the mid-1910s circulated informally and unpredictably.
That Morée ended up in Rhode Island aligns with the broader pattern of private, undocumented movement among avant-garde materials of the period.
2. Conditions of Preservation
Its quiet survival outside major collections allowed the painting’s physical evidence to remain undisturbed. The theatrical background, the corrosive vertical drips, the abraded signature, and the punning structure of the title are unusually well preserved — a rarity for works tied to this circle.
3. A New Coordinate in the Study of Early Dada
The Rhode Island resurfacing expands the expected geography of Dada’s material remnants.
It suggests that proto-Dada or Dada-adjacent works may have dispersed more widely in the 1910s than the canonical New York narrative implies.
Implications for Scholarship
The Rhode Island discovery is significant not because of the specifics of its transfer, but because of what the painting clarifies:
the misunderstood logic of the elliptical forms in Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2
the conceptual bridge leading toward Nude No. 3
the emergence of coded authorship strategies in the Arensberg years
the long arc leading toward Étant donnés
Rhode Island becomes the unlikely point at which these conceptual threads rejoined after a century of obscurity.
Conclusion
The rediscovery of Morée in Rhode Island marks the beginning of the painting’s public life.
Its long period of invisibility is consistent with the ambiguity built into its structure — a work designed to withhold identity, frustrate attribution, and operate on a delayed timeline.
That it resurfaced far from the expected places is not an anomaly; it is part of the logic of its making.
Rhode Island becomes the site not of origin, but of recognition: the place where the painting finally re-enters the historical record.