Collections: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Through the Large Glass

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This image is presented as a "thumbnail" because it is protected by copyright. The Brooklyn Museum respects the rights of artists who retain the copyright to their work.

Through the Large Glass

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.


• Artist: Hannah Wilke, American, 1940-1993
• Medium: 16mm film on video, color, silent, 10 minutes
• Dates: 1976
• Collections: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
• Museum Location: This item is not on view
• Accession Number: 2008.38
• Credit Line: Frank Sherman Benson Fund
• Copyright: © Hannah Wilke
• Image: Overall, CUR.2008.38.jpg. Photograph courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.
Hannah Wilke (American, 1940-1993). Through the Large Glass, 1976. 16mm film on video, color, silent, 10 minutes Brooklyn Museum, Frank Sherman Benson Fund, 2008.38 (Photo: Photograph courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York., CUR.2008.38.jpg)