A Poster within a Poster

What seems obvious now

is that most artists would make better conmen —

to make art is no different from running

a complex pyramid scheme

staging an elaborate hoax

or faking one’s own mysterious death

No grand swindle on earth could be more brazen

than an act of fraudulence framed for public display

each perfect crime signed off by an airtight alibi

and a half dozen aliases for good measure

In response to Marcel Duchamp's '"A Poster within a Poster" for "By or of Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy," Pasadena Art Museum, October 8 to November 3, 1963' 1963.

See the artwork that inspired this poem in the flesh, along with more than 100 of Marcel Duchamp’s world-renowned pieces in ‘The Essential Duchamp’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 27 April – 11 August 2019.