The conference at which the original version of this paper was delivered, Marcel Duchamp et l''rotisme, Universit' d'Orl'ans, December 2005, was the first major conference on Duchamp to have taken place in France in over thirty years. It was timed to coincide with the Dada exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou'possibly the largest and best researched exhibition that has ever been devoted to the Dada movement, which later traveled to the Smithsonian in Washington DC'and involved leading scholars of Dada and surrealism from around the globe, including Jennifer Mundy, Collections Research Director at the Tate and curator of its highly praised 2001 exhibition Surrealism: Desire Unbound, and Michael R. Taylor, Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (which holds the largest collection of Duchamp's work in the world, including 'tant donn's). The book in which the piece appears is simultaneously published both in English (Cambridge Scholars Press) and French (Les Presses du r'el, Dijon) editions. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and poststructuralist semiotics, this chapter develops new and original readings of two seminal works in the history of modern art, Duchamp's 'tant donn's and Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde, in relation both to one another and to the work of other artists, including Andr' Masson's 1938 Mannequin and Hans Bellmer's 1933-1936 dolls. It extends recent critical perspectives, especially re-readings of surrealism, developed in the writings of Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Dawn Ades and others. The chapter draws on wider research for his book All the Beauties of the World: Prague, Surrealism, and the Erotics of Modernity, which is due for completion in 2008, and contracted to Princeton University Press. RAE_import_type : Chapter in book RAE_uoa_type : LICA