Marcel Duchamp

Lore & Background

Duchamp is notable for his work of anti-art Fountain, where he signed the name 'R. Mutt 1917' on a urinal. For his talk at the American Federation of the Arts in Houston, 'On the Creative Act,' for which he labeled himself a 'mere artist,' Duchamp said, 'Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist, on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity...if we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.' Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, as one of the three artists who helped to establish the post-industrial perspective in art history, and his work is considered the progenitor of conceptual art. His definition of the art coefficient, 'an arithmatic relationship between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed,' lay the groundwork for a more recent generation of artists working through appropriation art, such as Andy Warhol, Beatrice Wood, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince and Sturtevant.

Reader's Guide

Eugene and Lucie Duchamp had seven children, one of whom died as an infant and four of whom became successful artists: Jacques Villon (1875–1963), painter, printmaker, Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876–1918), sculptor and Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (1889–1963), painter, have been the subject of exhibitions alongside Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was close to his sister Suzanne. At eight years old, Duchamp began schooling at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille, in Rouen. Two other students in his class also became well-known artists and lasting friends: Robert Antoine Pinchon and Pierre Dumont. He studied art at the Académie Julian from 1904 to 1905, but preferred playing billiards to attending classes, and the Académie Julian was one of several 'independent' academies that sprang up in reaction to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1905, Duchamp began his compulsory military service with the 39th Infantry Regiment, working for a printer in Rouen. There he learned typography and printing processes—skills he would use in his later work. Owing to his eldest brother Jacques' membership in the prestigious Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture Duchamp's work was exhibited in the 1908 Salon d'Automne, and the following year in the Salon des Indépendants. Fauves and Paul Cézanne's proto-Cubism influenced his paintings, although the critic Guillaume Apollinaire—who was eventually to become a friend—criticized what he called 'Duchamp's very ugly nudes' ('les nus très vilains de Duchamp'), he also prophesized that Duchamp could reconcile art and the people. Alongside many artists of the time, he was intrigued with the concept of depicting the fourth dimension in art. His painting Sad Young Man on a Train embodies this concern. Works from this time also included his first 'machine' painting, Coffee Mill (Moulin à café) (1911), which he gave to his brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon. The later more figurative machine painting of 1914, Chocolate Grinder (Broyeuse de chocolat), prefigures the mechanism incorporated into the Large Glass on which he began work in New York the following year. Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) (1912). The painting depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures. It shows elements of the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, as

Did You Know?

• Duchamp spent the last 25 years of his life in New York City.
• He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, as one of the three artists who helped to establish the post-industrial perspective in art history.
• Eugene and Lucie Duchamp had seven children, one of whom died as an infant and four of whom became successful artists: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti, and Marcel Duchamp.
• Duchamp first submitted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 to the Cubist Salon des Indépendants; Albert Gleizes asked Duchamp's brothers to have him voluntarily withdraw the painting. Duchamp quietly refused, but later t
• The painting was exhibited for the first time at Galeries Dalmau, Exposició d'Art Cubista, Barcelona, 1912, and later at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"People talk of Pablo Picasso as the leader of the Cubists but, strictly speaking, he is no longer a Cubist. Today he is a Cubist, tomorrow he will be something else. The only true Cubists are Gleizes and Metzinger." — Marcel Duchamp "To be looked at [from the other side of his art-work 'The Glass'] with one eye, close to, for almost an hour." — Marcel Duchamp "Painting is over and done with. Who could do anything better than this propeller? Look, could you do that?" — Marcel Duchamp "If a straight horizontal thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter on to a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases [it] creates a new image of the unit of length." — Marcel Duchamp