Jean-Pierre Brisset, Raymond Roussel, Marcel Duchamp:
three men whose names are inextricably linked by their respective intellectual trajectories, creative processes, and reception histories. Similarities between them abound, and can also be perceived in minute biographical details, accidents, and coincidences. Their well-known penchant for treating aesthetic issues as issues of methodology provided all three of them with the impetus to devote themselves to technical innovations, which is maybe a lesser known aspect of their respective works.

Brisset, Roussel, and Duchamp all took out patents at the French Office national de la propriété industrielle: another feather in their cap, so to speak, in addition to their aesthetic achievements. While these technical inventions might seem far removed from their official, canonical bodies of work, it is precisely this distance that could allow us to shed new light on the leitmotivs and obsessions of their creators; they are the flip side of their linguistic, literary, and artistic endeavors, constituting their obscure but highly significant supplement.