Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with
Cubism,
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...
, and
conceptual art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
and
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, and sculptur ...
, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the
plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
Duchamp has had an immense impact on twentieth-century and twenty first-century art, and he had a seminal influence on the development of conceptual art. By the time of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists (such as Henri Matisse) as "
retina
The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...
l" art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted to use art to serve the
mind.
Early life and education
![Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon in the garden of Villon's studio, Puteaux, France, c](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Marcel_Duchamp%2C_Jacques_Villon%2C_Raymond_Duchamp-Villon_in_the_garden_of_Villon%27s_studio%2C_Puteaux%2C_France%2C_c.1913.jpg)
Marcel Duchamp was born at
Blainville-Crevon
Blainville-Crevon () is a commune in the Seine-Maritime ''département'' of the Normandy region of northern France.
Geography
A farming village situated by the banks of the river Crevon in the Pays de Caux, some northeast of Rouen, at the juncti ...
in Normandy, France, to Eugène Duchamp and Lucie Duchamp (formerly Lucie Nicolle) and grew up in a family that enjoyed cultural activities. The art of painter and engraver Émile Frédéric Nicolle, his maternal grandfather, filled the house, and the family liked to play chess, read books, paint, and make music together.
Of Eugene and Lucie Duchamp's seven children, one died as an infant and four became successful artists. Marcel Duchamp was the brother of:
*
Jacques Villon
Jacques Villon (July 31, 1875 – June 9, 1963), also known as Gaston Duchamp, was a French Cubist and Abstract art, abstract painter and printmaker.
Early life
Born Émile Méry Frédéric Gaston Duchamp in Damville, Eure, Damville, Eure, ...
(1875–1963), painter, printmaker
*
Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (5 November 1876 – 9 October 1918) was a French sculptor.
Life and art
Duchamp-Villon was born Pierre-Maurice-Raymond Duchamp in Damville, Eure, in the Normandy region of France, the second son of Eugène and Lucie Ducha ...
(1876–1918), sculptor
*
Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (1889–1963), painter.
As a child, with his two elder brothers already away from home at school in
Rouen, Duchamp was closer to his sister Suzanne, who was a willing accomplice in games and activities conjured by his fertile imagination. At eight years old, Duchamp followed in his brothers' footsteps when he left home and began schooling at the
Lycée Pierre-Corneille
The Lycée Pierre-Corneille (also known as the Lycée Corneille) is a state secondary school located in the city of Rouen, France.
Originally founded by the Jesuits in 1593, the school was secularized following the 1905 French law on the Separa ...
, in Rouen. Two other students in his class also became well-known artists and lasting friends:
Robert Antoine Pinchon
Robert Antoine Pinchon (, 1 July 1886 in Rouen – 9 January 1943 in Bois-Guillaume) was a French Post-Impressionist landscape painter of the Rouen School (''l'École de Rouen'') who was born and spent most of his life in France. He was consist ...
and
Pierre Dumont. For the next eight years, he was locked into an educational regime which focused on intellectual development. Though he was not an outstanding student, his best subject was mathematics and he won two mathematics prizes at the school. He also won a prize for drawing in 1903, and at his commencement in 1904 he won a coveted first prize, validating his recent decision to become an artist.
He learned academic drawing from a teacher who unsuccessfully attempted to "protect" his students from
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
,
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...
, and other
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
influences. However, Duchamp's true artistic mentor at the time was his brother Jacques Villon, whose fluid and incisive style he sought to imitate. At 14, his first serious art attempts were drawings and watercolors depicting his sister Suzanne in various poses and activities. That summer he also painted landscapes in an Impressionist style using oils.
Early work
Duchamp's early art works align with
Post-Impressionist styles. He experimented with classical techniques and subjects. When he was later asked about what had influenced him at the time, Duchamp cited the work of
Symbolist painter Odilon Redon, whose approach to art was not outwardly anti-academic, but quietly individual.
He studied art at the
Académie Julian from 1904 to 1905, but preferred playing billiards to attending classes. During this time Duchamp drew and sold cartoons which reflected his ribald humor. Many of the drawings use verbal
pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
s (sometimes spanning multiple languages),
visual pun
A visual pun is a pun involving an image or images (in addition to or instead of language), often based on a rebus.
Visual puns in which the image is at odds with the inscription are common in cartoons such as ''Lost Consonants'' or ''The Far ...
s, or both. Such play with words and symbols engaged his imagination for the rest of his life.
In 1905, he began his compulsory military service with the 39th Infantry Regiment,
[François Lespinasse, ''Robert Antoine Pinchon: 1886–1943'', 1990, repr. Rouen: Association les amis de l'École de Rouen, 2007, ] working for a printer in Rouen. There he learned
typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), ...
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
The Salon d'Automne (; en, Autumn Salon), or Société du Salon d'automne, is an art exhibition held annually in Paris, France. Since 2011, it is held on the Champs-Élysées, between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, in mid-October. The f ...
, and the following year in the
Salon des Indépendants
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments
* French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home
* Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment
Arts and entertainment
* Salon (Pa ...
.
Fauves and
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...
's
proto-Cubism
Proto-Cubism (also referred to as Protocubism, Early Cubism, and Pre-Cubism or Précubisme) is an intermediary transition phase in the history of art chronologically extending from 1906 to 1910. Evidence suggests that the production of proto-Cubis ...
influenced his paintings, although the critic
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of t ...
—who was eventually to become a friend—criticized what he called "Duchamp's very ugly nudes" ("les nus très vilains de Duchamp"). Duchamp also became lifelong friends with exuberant artist
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
after meeting him at the 1911 Salon d'Automne, and Picabia proceeded to introduce him to a lifestyle of fast cars and "high" living.
In 1911, at Jacques' home in
Puteaux, the brothers hosted a regular discussion group with
Cubist
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
artists including Picabia,
Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstra ...
,
Fernand Léger,
Roger de La Fresnaye
Roger de La Fresnaye (; 11 July 1885 – 27 November 1925) was a French Cubist painter.
Early years and education
La Fresnaye was born in Le Mans where his father, an officer in the French army, was temporarily stationed. The La Fresnayes were ...
,
Albert Gleizes
Albert Gleizes (; 8 December 1881 – 23 June 1953) was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on ...
,
Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
,
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic ge ...
, and
Alexander Archipenko
Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko (also referred to as Olexandr, Oleksandr, or Aleksandr; uk, Олександр Порфирович Архипенко, Romanized: Olexandr Porfyrovych Arkhypenko; February 25, 1964) was a Ukrainian and American ...
. Poets and writers also participated. The group came to be known as the
Puteaux Group
The Section d'Or ("Golden Section"), also known as Groupe de Puteaux or Puteaux Group, was a collective of painters, sculptors, poets and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism. Based in the Parisian suburbs, the group held regular meetings ...
, or the
Section d'Or
The Section d'Or ("Golden Section"), also known as Groupe de Puteaux or Puteaux Group, was a collective of Painting, painters, sculptors, poets and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism (art), Orphism. Based in the Parisian suburbs, the grou ...
. Uninterested in the Cubists' seriousness, or in their focus on visual matters, Duchamp did not join in discussions of Cubist theory and gained a reputation of being shy. However, that same year he painted in a Cubist style and added an impression of motion by using repetitive imagery.
During this period Duchamp's fascination with transition, change, movement, and distance became manifest, and as many artists of the time, he was intrigued with the concept of depicting the
fourth dimension in art
New possibilities opened up by the concept of four-dimensional space (and difficulties involved in trying to visualize it) helped inspire many modern artists in the first half of the twentieth century. Early Cubists, Surrealists, Futurists, and ...
. His painting ''Sad Young Man on a Train'' embodies this concern:
First, there's the idea of the movement of the train, and then that of the sad young man who is in a corridor and who is moving about; thus there are two parallel movements corresponding to each other. Then, there is the distortion of the young man—I had called this ''elementary parallelism''. It was a formal decomposition; that is, linear elements following each other like parallels and distorting the object. The object is completely stretched out, as if elastic. The lines follow each other in parallels, while changing subtly to form the movement, or the form of the young man in question. I also used this procedure in the ''Nude Descending a Staircase''.
In his 1911 ''Portrait of Chess Players'' (''Portrait de joueurs d'échecs'') there is the Cubist overlapping frames and multiple perspectives of his two brothers playing chess, but to that Duchamp added elements conveying the unseen mental activity of the players.
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.
''Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2''
Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was ''
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
''Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2'' (French: ''Nu descendant un escalier n° 2'') is a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp. The work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. Before its first pres ...
'' ''(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 both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, and the movement and dynamism of the
Futurists
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...
.
He first submitted the piece to appear at the Cubist
Salon des Indépendants
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments
* French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home
* Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment
Arts and entertainment
* Salon (Pa ...
, but
Albert Gleizes
Albert Gleizes (; 8 December 1881 – 23 June 1953) was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on ...
(according to Duchamp in an interview with Pierre Cabanne, p. 31)
[Peter Brooke, The "rejection" of Nude Descending a Staircase](_blank)
asked Duchamp's brothers to have him voluntarily withdraw the painting, or to paint over the title that he had painted on the work and rename it something else. Duchamp's brothers did approach him with Gleizes' request, but Duchamp quietly refused. However, there was no jury at the Salon des Indépendants and Gleizes was in no position to reject the painting.
The controversy, according to art historian Peter Brooke, was not whether the work should be hung or not, but whether it should be hung with the Cubist group.
Of the incident Duchamp later recalled, "I said nothing to my brothers. But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that." Yet Duchamp did appear in the illustrations to ''
Du "Cubisme"
''Du "Cubisme"'', also written ''Du Cubisme'', or ''Du « Cubisme »'' (and in English, ''On Cubism'' or ''Cubism''), is a book written in 1912 by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. This was the first major text on Cubism, predating ''The Cubist P ...
'', he participated in the ''
La Maison Cubiste (Cubist House)'', organized by the designer
André Mare
Charles André Mare (1885–1932), or André-Charles Mare, was a French painter and textile designer, and co-founder of the Company of French Art (''la Compagnie des Arts Français'') in 1919. He was a designer of colorful textiles, and was one o ...
for the
Salon d'Automne
The Salon d'Automne (; en, Autumn Salon), or Société du Salon d'automne, is an art exhibition held annually in Paris, France. Since 2011, it is held on the Champs-Élysées, between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, in mid-October. The f ...
of 1912 (a few months after the Indépendants); he signed the
Section d'Or
The Section d'Or ("Golden Section"), also known as Groupe de Puteaux or Puteaux Group, was a collective of Painting, painters, sculptors, poets and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism (art), Orphism. Based in the Parisian suburbs, the grou ...
invitation and participated in the Section d'Or exhibition during the fall of 1912. The impression is, Brooke writes, "it was precisely because he wished to remain part of the group that he withdrew the painting; and that, far from being ill treated by the group, he was given a rather privileged position, probably through the patronage of Picabia".
The painting was exhibited for the first time at
Galeries Dalmau
Galeries Dalmau was an art gallery in Barcelona, Spain, from 1906 to 1930 (also known as Sala Dalmau, Les Galeries Dalmau, Galería Dalmau, and Galeries J. Dalmau). The gallery was founded and managed by the Symbolist painter and restorer . Th ...
, ''Exposició d'Art Cubista'', Barcelona, 1912; the first exhibition of Cubism in Spain
[William H. Robinson, Jordi Falgàs, Carmen Belen Lord, ''Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí''](_blank)
Cleveland Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Yale University Press, 2006, Duchamp later submitted the painting to the 1913 "
Armory Show
The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was a show organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1913. It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of ...
" in New York City. In addition to displaying works of American artists, this show was the first major exhibition of modern trends coming out of Paris, encompassing experimental styles of the European
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
, including Fauvism, Cubism, and
Futurism. American show-goers, accustomed to realistic art, were scandalized, and the ''Nude'' was at the center of much of the controversy.
Leaving "retinal art" behind
At about this time, Duchamp read
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen a ...
's philosophical tract, ''
The Ego and Its Own
''The Ego and Its Own'' (german: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum), also translated as ''The Unique and its Property'', is an 1844 work by German philosopher Max Stirner. It presents a post-Hegelian critique of Christianity and traditional moralit ...
'', the study which he considered another turning point in his artistic and intellectual development. He called it "a remarkable book ... which advances no formal theories, but just keeps saying that the ego is always there in everything."
While in Munich in 1912, he painted the last of his Cubist-like paintings. He started ''
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even'' image, and began making plans for ''The Large Glass'' – scribbling short notes to himself, sometimes with hurried sketches. It would be more than ten years before this piece was completed. Not much else is known about the two-month stay in Munich except that the friend he visited was intent on showing him the sights and the nightlife, and that he was influenced by the works of the sixteenth century German painter
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder (german: Lucas Cranach der Ältere ; – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is kno ...
in Munich's famed
Alte Pinakothek
The Alte Pinakothek (, ''Old Pinakothek'') is an art museum located in the Kunstareal area in Munich, Germany. It is one of the oldest galleries in the world and houses a significant collection of Old Master paintings. The name Alte (Old) Pi ...
, known for its Old Master paintings. Duchamp recalled that he took the short walk to visit this museum daily. Duchamp scholars have long recognized in Cranach the subdued ochre and brown color range Duchamp later employed.
The same year, Duchamp also attended a performance of a stage adaptation of
Raymond Roussel
Raymond Roussel (; 20 January 1877 – 14 July 1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his novels, poems, and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French litera ...
's 1910 novel, ''Impressions d'Afrique,'' which featured plots that turned in on themselves, word play, surrealistic sets and humanoid machines. He credited the drama with having radically changed his approach to art, and having inspired him to begin the creation of his ''The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even'', also known as ''The Large Glass''. Work on ''The Large Glass'' continued into 1913, with his invention of inventing a repertoire of forms. He made notes, sketches and painted studies, and even drew some of his ideas on the wall of his apartment.
Toward the end of 1912, he traveled with Picabia, Apollinaire and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia through the
Jura mountains, an adventure that Buffet-Picabia described as one of their "forays of demoralization, which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... the disintegration of the concept of art".
[Mink, J. (2004). Duchamp. Taschen.] Duchamp's notes from the trip avoid logic and sense, and have a surrealistic, mythical connotation.
Duchamp painted few canvases after 1912, and in those he did, he attempted to remove "
painterly" effects, and to use a technical drawing approach instead.
His broad interests led him to an exhibition of aviation technology during this period, after which Duchamp said to his friend
Constantin Brâncuși, "Painting is washed up. Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? Tell me, can you do that?".
Brâncuși later sculpted
bird forms. U.S. Customs officials mistook them for aviation parts and attempted to collect import duties on them.
In 1913, Duchamp withdrew from painting circles and began working as a librarian in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève to be able to earn a living wage while concentrating on scholarly realms and working on his ''Large Glass''. He studied math and physics – areas where exciting new discoveries were taking place. The theoretical writings of
Henri Poincaré particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and that no theory could be considered "true". "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality", Poincaré wrote in 1902. Reflecting the influence of Poincaré's writings, Duchamp tolerated any interpretation of his art by regarding it as the creation of the person who formulated it, not as truth.
Duchamp's own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, ''3 Standard Stoppages'' (''3 stoppages étalon''), he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto prepared canvases, one at a time, from a height of 1 meter. The threads landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. He then cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to the "stoppage" backgrounds. The piece appears to literally follow Poincaré's ''School of the Thread'', part of a book on classical mechanics.
In his studio he mounted a bicycle wheel upside down onto a stool, spinning it occasionally just to watch it. Although it is often assumed that the ''Bicycle Wheel'' represents the first of Duchamp's
"Readymades", this particular installation was never submitted for any art exhibition, and it was eventually lost. However, initially, the wheel was simply placed in the studio to create atmosphere: "I enjoyed looking at it just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace."
After World War I started in August 1914, with his brothers and many friends in military service and himself exempted (due to a heart murmur),
[Cabanne, P., & Duchamp, M. (1971). ''Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp''](_blank)
. New York: Viking Press. Hachette UK, 21 July 2009 Duchamp felt uncomfortable in Paris. Meanwhile, ''
Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2'' had scandalized Americans at the
Armory Show
The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was a show organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1913. It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of ...
, and helped secure the sale of all four of his paintings in the exhibition. Thus, being able to finance the trip, Duchamp decided to emigrate to the United States in 1915. To his surprise, he found he was a celebrity when he arrived in New York in 1915, where he quickly befriended art patron
Katherine Dreier
Katherine Sophie Dreier (September 10, 1877 – March 29, 1952) was an American artist, lecturer, patron of the arts, and social reformer. Dreier developed an interest in art at a young age and was afforded the opportunity of studying art in the ...
and artist
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...
. Duchamp's circle included art patrons
Louise
Louise or Luise may refer to:
* Louise (given name)
Arts Songs
* "Louise" (Bonnie Tyler song), 2005
* "Louise" (The Human League song), 1984
* "Louise" (Jett Rebel song), 2013
* "Louise" (Maurice Chevalier song), 1929
*"Louise", by Clan of ...
and
Walter Conrad Arensberg, actress and artist
Beatrice Wood
Beatrice Wood (March 3, 1893 – March 12, 1998) was an American artist and studio potter involved in the Avant Garde movement in the United States; she founded and edited ''The Blind Man'' and '' Rongwrong'' magazines in New York City with Fren ...
and
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
, as well as other
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
figures. Though he spoke little English, in the course of supporting himself by giving French lessons, and through some library work, he quickly learned the language. Duchamp became part of an artist colony in
Ridgefield, New Jersey, across the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
from New York City.
For two years the Arensbergs, who would remain his friends and patrons for 42 years, were the landlords of his studio. In lieu of rent, they agreed that his payment would be ''The Large Glass''. An art gallery offered Duchamp $10,000 per year in exchange for all of his yearly production, but he declined the offer, preferring to continue his work on ''The Large Glass''.
Société Anonyme
Duchamp created the
Société Anonyme in 1920, along with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray. This was the beginning of his lifelong involvement in art dealing and collecting. The group collected modern art works, and arranged modern art exhibitions and lectures throughout the 1930s.
By this time
Walter Pach, one of the coordinators of the 1913 Armory Show, sought Duchamp's advice on modern art. Beginning with Société Anonyme, Dreier also depended on Duchamp's counsel in gathering her collection, as did Arensberg. Later
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim ( ; August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemian and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down wi ...
,
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
directors
Alfred Barr
Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. (January 28, 1902 – August 15, 1981) was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From that position, he was one of the most influential forces in the development of ...
and
James Johnson Sweeney
James Johnson Sweeney (1900–1986) was an American curator, and writer about modern art. Sweeney graduated from Georgetown University in 1922. From 1935 to 1946, he was curator for the Museum of Modern Art. He was the second director of the Solom ...
consulted with Duchamp on their modern art collections and shows.
Dada
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...
or Dadaism was an
art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defi ...
of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. It began in
Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916, and spread to
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
shortly thereafter. To quote Dona Budd's ''The Language of Art Knowledge'',
Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality, and intuition. The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsense word. Others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, comp ...
and Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco (, ; common rendition of the Romanian name Marcel Hermann Iancu ; 24 May 1895 – 21 April 1984) was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Const ...
's frequent use of the words da, da, meaning yes, yes in the Romanian language
Romanian (obsolete spellings: Rumanian or Roumanian; autonym: ''limba română'' , or ''românește'', ) is the official and main language of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. As a minority language it is spoken by stable communities in ...
. Another theory says that the name "Dada" came during a meeting of the group when a paper knife stuck into a French-German dictionary happened to point to "dada", a French word for "hobbyhorse".
The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry,
art manifesto
An art manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement. Manifestos are a standard feature of the various movements in the modernist avant-garde and are still written today. Art manifestos ...
es,
art theory
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
, theatre, and
graphic design, and concentrated its
anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through
anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage poi ...
cultural works. In addition to being anti-war, Dada was also anti-
bourgeois and had political affinities with the radical left.
Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media. Key figures in the movement, apart from Duchamp, included:
Hugo Ball
Hugo Ball (; 22 February 1886 – 14 September 1927) was a German author, poet, and essentially the founder of the Dada movement in European art in Zürich in 1916. Among other accomplishments, he was a pioneer in the development of sound poetry.
...
,
Emmy Hennings
Emmy Hennings (born Emma Maria Cordsen, 17 January 1885 – 10 August 1948) was a poet and performing artist, founder of the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire with her second husband Hugo Ball.
Life and work
Hennings was born on 17 January 1885 in ...
,
Hans Arp,
Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on ...
,
Hannah Höch
Hannah Höch (; 1 November 1889 – 31 May 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collage in which the p ...
,
Johannes Baader
Johannes Baader (June 21, 1875 – January 14, 1955), originally trained as an architect, was a German writer and artist associated with Dada in Berlin.
Life
Baader was born in Stuttgart, where his father worked as a metalworker at the royal ...
,
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, comp ...
,
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
,
Richard Huelsenbeck
Carl Wilhelm Richard Hülsenbeck (aka Charles R. Hulbeck) (23 April 189220 April 1974) was a German writer, poet, and psychoanalyst born in Frankenau, Hessen-Nassau who was associated with the formation of the Dada movement.
Life and work
Huel ...
,
Georg Grosz,
John Heartfield
John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a 20th century German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. ...
,
Beatrice Wood
Beatrice Wood (March 3, 1893 – March 12, 1998) was an American artist and studio potter involved in the Avant Garde movement in the United States; she founded and edited ''The Blind Man'' and '' Rongwrong'' magazines in New York City with Fren ...
,
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, Constructivism (art), constructivism, surrealism ...
, and
Hans Richter, among others. The movement influenced later styles, such as the avant-garde and
downtown music
Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music, which developed in downtown Manhattan in the 1960s.
History
The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono, one of the early Fluxus artists, o ...
movements, and groups including
surrealism,
Nouveau réalisme
Nouveau réalisme (French: new realism) refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. Pierre Restany wrot ...
,
pop art, and
Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
.
Dada is the groundwork to abstract art and sound poetry, a starting point for performance art, a prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of antiart to be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s and the movement that lay the foundation for Surrealism.
New York Dada
New York Dada was a regionalized extension of Dada, an artistic and cultural movement between the years 1913 and 1923. Usually considered to have been instigated by Marcel Duchamp's '' Fountain'' exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society o ...
had a less serious tone than that of European Dadaism, and was not a particularly organized venture. Duchamp's friend
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
connected with the Dada group in Zürich, bringing to New York the Dadaist ideas of absurdity and "anti-art". Duchamp and Picabia first met in September 1911 at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, where they were both exhibiting. Duchamp showed a larger version of his ''Young Man and Girl in Spring'' 1911, a work that had an Edenic theme and a thinly veiled sexuality also found in Picabia's contemporaneous ''Adam and Eve'' 1911. According to Duchamp, "our friendship began right there". A group met almost nightly at the
Arensberg home, or caroused in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. Together with Man Ray, Duchamp contributed his ideas and humor to the New York activities, many of which ran concurrent with the development of his
Readymades and ''The Large Glass''.
The most prominent example of Duchamp's association with Dada was his submission of ''
Fountain
A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect.
Fountains were ori ...
'', a urinal, to the
Society of Independent Artists
Society of Independent Artists was an association of American artists founded in 1916 and based in New York.
Background
Based on the French Société des Artistes Indépendants, the goal of the society was to hold annual exhibitions by avant-gard ...
exhibit in 1917. Artworks in the Independent Artists shows were not selected by jury, and all pieces submitted were displayed. However, the show committee insisted that ''Fountain'' was not art, and rejected it from the show. This caused an uproar among the Dadaists, and led Duchamp to resign from the board of the Independent Artists.
Along with
Henri-Pierre Roché
Henri-Pierre Roché (28 May 1879 – 9 April 1959) was a French author who was involved with the artistic avant-garde in Paris and the Dada movement.
Late in life, Roché published two novels: his first was ''Jules et Jim'' (1953), a semi-autobiog ...
and Beatrice Wood, Duchamp published multiple Dada magazines in New York—including ''
The Blind Man
''The Blind Man'' was an art and Dada journal published briefly by the New York Dadaists in 1917.
History
Henri-Pierre Roché and Marcel Duchamp, visiting from France, organized the magazine with Beatrice Wood in New York City. Mina Loy also c ...
'' and ''
Rongwrong
''Rongwrong'' was a New York Dadaist magazine of which one issue was published in May 1917. The magazine was co-created and edited by Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, and Beatrice Wood.
History
In May 1917, Henri-Pierre Roché played and lost ...
''—which included art, literature, humor and commentary.
When he returned to Paris after World War I, Duchamp did not participate in the Dada group.
Readymades
"Readymades" were
found objects which Duchamp chose and presented as art. In 1913, Duchamp installed a ''
Bicycle Wheel'' in his studio. However, the idea of ''Readymades'' did not fully develop until 1915. The idea was to question the very notion of Art, and the adoration of art, which Duchamp found "unnecessary".
[Interview, BBC TV, Joan Bakewell, 1966]
''
Bottle Rack
The ''Bottle Rack'' (also called ''Bottle Dryer'' or ''Hedgehog'') (''Egouttoir'' or ''Porte-bouteilles'' or ''Hérisson'') is a proto-Dada artwork created in 1914 by Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp labeled the piece a " readymade", a term he used to ...
'' (1914), a bottle-drying rack signed by Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade. ''
In Advance of the Broken Arm
''In Advance of the Broken Arm'', also called ''Prelude to a Broken Arm'', is a 1915 sculpture by Dada artist Marcel Duchamp that consisted of a regular snow shovel with "from Marcel Duchamp 1915" painted on the handle. One explanation for the t ...
'' (1915), a snow shovel, also called ''Prelude to a Broken Arm'', followed soon after. His ''
Fountain
A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect.
Fountains were ori ...
'', a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917.
''Fountain'' was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians.
In 1919, Duchamp made a parody of the ''
Mona Lisa
The ''Mona Lisa'' ( ; it, Gioconda or ; french: Joconde ) is a Half length portrait, half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described ...
'' by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee. To this he added the inscription ''
L.H.O.O.Q.
''L.H.O.O.Q.'' () is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp. First conceived in 1919, the work is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically a rectified ready-made. '', a phonetic game which, when read out loud in French quickly sounds like ''"Elle a chaud au cul"''. This can be translated as "She has a hot ass", implying that the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. It may also have been intended as a Freudian joke, referring to
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
's alleged homosexuality. Duchamp gave a "loose" translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" in a late interview with
Arturo Schwarz
Arturo Umberto Samuele Schwarz (2 February 1924 – 23 June 2021) was an Italian scholar, art historian, poet, writer, lecturer, art consultant and curator of international art exhibitions. He lived in Milan, where he amassed a large collection o ...
. According to
Rhonda Roland Shearer
Rhonda Roland Shearer is an American sculptor, scholar, and journalist, who founded the nonprofit organization Art Science Research Laboratory with her late husband Stephen Jay Gould. The mission statement avows that the lab aims to "infuse intel ...
, the apparent ''Mona Lisa'' reproduction is in fact a copy modeled partly on Duchamp's own face.
Research published by Shearer also speculates that Duchamp himself may have created some of the objects which he claimed to be "found objects".
''The Large Glass''
Duchamp worked on his complex
Futurism-inspired piece ''
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)'' from 1915 to 1923, except for periods in
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
and Paris in 1918–1920. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship. He published notes for the piece, ''The Green Box'', intended to complement the visual experience. They reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and a mythology which describes the work. He stated that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erotic encounter between a bride and her nine bachelors.
A performance of the stage adaptation of
Raymond Roussel
Raymond Roussel (; 20 January 1877 – 14 July 1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his novels, poems, and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French litera ...
's novel ''Impressions d'Afrique'', which Duchamp attended in 1912, inspired the piece. Notes, sketches and plans for the work were drawn on his studio walls as early as 1913. To concentrate on the work free from material obligations, Duchamp found work as a librarian while living in France. After immigrating to the United States in 1915, he began work on the piece, financed by the support of the Arensbergs.
The piece is partly constructed as a retrospective of Duchamp's works, including a three-dimensional reproduction of his earlier paintings ''Bride'' (1912), ''Chocolate Grinder'' (1914) and ''Glider containing a water mill in neighboring metals'' (1913–1915), which has led to numerous interpretations. The work was formally declared "Unfinished" in 1923. Returning from its first public exhibition in a shipping crate, the glass suffered a large crack. Duchamp repaired it, but left the smaller cracks in the glass intact, accepting the chance element as a part of the piece.
Joseph Nechvatal
Joseph Nechvatal (born January 15, 1951) is an American post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses.
Life and work
Joseph Ne ...
has cast a considerable light on ''The Large Glass'' by noting the autoerotic implications of both bachelorhood and the repetitive, frenetic machine; he then discerns a larger constellation of themes by insinuating that autoeroticsm – and with the machine as omnipresent partner and practitioner – opens out into a subversive pan-sexuality as expressed elsewhere in Duchamp's work and career, in that a trance-inducing pleasure becomes the operative principle as opposed to the dictates of the traditional male-female coupling; and he as well documents the existence of this theme cluster throughout modernism, starting with Rodin's controversial
Monument to Balzac
''Monument to Balzac'' is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin in memory of the French novelist Honoré de Balzac. According to Rodin, the sculpture aims to portray the writer's persona rather than a physical likeness. The work was commissioned in 1891 ...
, and culminating in a Duchampian vision of a techno-universe in which one and all can find themselves welcomed.
Until 1969 when the
Philadelphia Museum of Art revealed Duchamp's ''
Étant donnés
''Étant donnés'' (''Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas'', French: ''Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage'') is Marcel Duchamp's last major artwork, which surprised the art world because it believed he had g ...
'' tableau, ''The Large Glass'' was thought to have been his last major work.
Kinetic works
Duchamp's interest in
kinetic art works can be discerned as early as the notes for ''
The Large Glass'' and the ''
Bicycle Wheel'' readymade, and despite losing interest in "retinal art", he retained interest in visual phenomena. In 1920, with help from Man Ray, Duchamp built a motorized sculpture, ''Rotative plaques verre, optique de précision'' ("Rotary Glass Plates, Precision Optics"). The piece, which he did not consider to be art, involved a motor to spin pieces of rectangular glass on which were painted segments of a circle. When the apparatus spins, an optical illusion occurs, where the segments appear to be closed
concentric circles
In geometry, two or more objects are said to be concentric, coaxal, or coaxial when they share the same center or axis. Circles, regular polygons and regular polyhedra, and spheres may be concentric to one another (sharing the same center poi ...
. Man Ray set up equipment to photograph the initial experiment, but when they turned the machine for the second time, a
drive belt broke and caught a piece of the glass, which after glancing off Man Ray's head, shattered into bits.
After moving back to Paris in 1923, at
André Breton's urging, with financing by
Jacques Doucet, Duchamp built another optical device based on the first one, ''Rotative Demisphère, optique de précision'' (Rotary Demisphere, Precision Optics). This time the optical element was a globe cut in half, with black concentric circles painted on it. When it spins, the circles appear to move backward and forward in space. Duchamp asked that Doucet not exhibit the apparatus as art.
''Rotoreliefs'' were the next phase of Duchamp's spinning works. To make the optical "play toys", he painted designs on flat cardboard circles and spun them on a phonographic turntable. When spinning, the flat disks appeared three-dimensional. He had a printer produce 500 sets of six of the designs, and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them. The venture was a financial disaster, but some optical scientists thought they might be of use in restoring three-dimensional
stereoscopic sight to people who have lost vision in one eye.
In collaboration with Man Ray and
Marc Allégret, Duchamp filmed early versions of the ''Rotoreliefs'', and they named the film ''
Anémic Cinéma
''Anemic Cinema'' or ''Anémic Cinéma'' is a 1926 Dada/surrealist experimental film by Marcel Duchamp (credited to his alter ego, Rrose Sélavy), made in collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret.
The seven-minute film is composed of alt ...
'' (1926). Later, in
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and hi ...
's studio in 1931, while looking at the sculptor's kinetic works, Duchamp suggested that these should be called ''
mobiles
Mobile may refer to:
Places
* Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city
* Mobile County, Alabama
* Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S.
* Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels
* Mobile ( ...
''. Calder agreed to use this novel term in his upcoming show. To this day, sculptures of this type are called "mobiles".
Musical ideas
Between 1912 and 1915, Duchamp worked with various musical ideas. At least three pieces have survived: two compositions and a note for a musical happening. The two compositions are based on
chance operations. ''Erratum Musical'', written for three voices, was published in 1934. ''La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical'' is unfinished and was never published or exhibited during Duchamp's lifetime. According to the manuscript, the piece was intended for a mechanical instrument "in which the virtuoso intermediary is suppressed". The manuscript also contains a description for "An apparatus automatically recording fragmented musical periods," consisting of a
funnel
A funnel is a tube or pipe that is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, used for guiding liquid or powder into a small opening.
Funnels are usually made of stainless steel, aluminium, glass, or plastic. The material used in its construct ...
, several open-end cars and a set of numbered balls. These pieces predate
John Cage's ''
Music of Changes
''Music of Changes'' is a piece for solo piano by John Cage. Composed in 1951 for pianist and friend David Tudor, it is a ground-breaking piece of Indeterminacy (music), indeterminate music. The process of composition involved applying decisions m ...
'' (1951), which is often considered the first modern piece to be conceived largely through random procedures.
In 1968, Duchamp and John Cage appeared together at a concert entitled "Reunion", playing a game of chess and composing
Aleatoric music
Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word ''alea'', meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the ...
by triggering a series of
photoelectric cell
A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon. s underneath the
chessboard.
Rrose Sélavy
![Label for the Belle Haleine cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Label_for_the_Belle_Haleine_cropped.png)
"Rrose Sélavy", also spelled Rose Sélavy, was one of Duchamp's pseudonyms. The name, a
pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
, sounds like the French phrase , which may be translated as "Eros, such is life." It has also been read as ("to make a toast to life"). Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray showing Duchamp dressed as a woman. Through the 1920s Man Ray and Duchamp collaborated on more photos of Sélavy. Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed several creations with it.
Duchamp used the name in the title of at least one sculpture, ''
Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy?'' (1921). The sculpture, a type of readymade called an
assemblage, consists of an
oral thermometer, a couple of dozen small cubes of
marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphose ...
resembling sugar cubes and a
cuttlefish bone inside a
birdcage
A birdcage (or bird cage) is a cage designed to house birds as pets.
Antique (or antique-style) birdcages are often popular as collectors' items or as household decor but most are not suitable for housing live birds, being too small, improper ...
. Sélavy also appears on the label of ''
Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette'' (1921), a readymade that is a perfume bottle in the original box. Duchamp also signed his film ''Anémic Cinéma'' (1926) with the Sélavy name.
The inspiration for the name Rrose Sélavy has been thought to be
Belle da Costa Greene
Belle da Costa Greene (November 26, 1879 – May 10, 1950) was an American librarian best known for managing and developing the personal library of J. P. Morgan. After Morgan's death in 1913, Greene continued as librarian for his son, Jack ...
,
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known ...
's librarian at
The Morgan Library & Museum
The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th ...
(formerly The Pierpont Morgan Library) who, following his death, became the Library's director, working there for a total of forty-three years. Empowered by J. P. Morgan, and then by his son Jack, Greene built the collection buying and selling rare
manuscripts, books and art.
Rrose Sélavy, and the other pseudonyms Duchamp used, may be read as a comment on the fallacy of romanticizing the conscious individuality or subjectivity of the artist, a theme that is also a prominent subtext of the
readymades. Duchamp said in an interview, "You think you're doing something entirely your own, and a year later you look at it and you see actually the roots of where your art comes from without your knowing it at all."
From 1922, the name Rrose Sélavy also started appearing in a series of
aphorism
An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by ...
s, puns, and
spoonerism
A spoonerism is an occurrence in speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words in a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and ordained minister William Archibald Spooner, w ...
s by the French
surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
poet
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos (; 4 July 1900 – 8 June 1945) was a French poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.
Biography
Robert Desnos was born in Paris on 4 July 1900, the son of a licensed dealer in game and poultry at the '' H ...
. Desnos tried to portray Rrose Sélavy as a long-lost aristocrat and rightful queen of France. Aphorism 13 paid homage to Marcel Duchamp: ‒ in English: "Rrose Sélavy knows the merchant of salt well"; in French the final words sound like Mar-champ Du-cel. Note that the "salt seller" aphorism – "mar-chand-du-sel" – is a phonetic
anagram of the artist's name: "mar-cel-du-champ". (Duchamp's compiled notes are entitled, "Salt Seller".) In 1939 a collection of these aphorisms was published under the name of Rrose Sélavy, entitled, .
Transition from art to chess
In 1918, Duchamp took leave of the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the ''Large Glass'', and went to Buenos Aires, where he remained for nine months and often played
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
. He
carved
Carving is the act of using tools to shape something from a material by scraping away portions of that material. The technique can be applied to any material that is solid enough to hold a form even when pieces have been removed from it, and ...
his own
chess set
A chess set consists of a chessboard and White and Black in chess, white and black chess pieces for playing chess. There are sixteen pieces of each color: one King (chess), king, one Queen (chess), queen, two Rook (chess), rooks, two Bishop (chess ...
from wood with help from a local craftsman who made the
knights. He moved to Paris in 1919, and then back to the United States in 1920. Upon his return to Paris in 1923, Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist. Instead, his main interest was chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.
Duchamp is seen, briefly, playing chess with Man Ray in the short film ''
Entr'acte
(or ', ;Since 1932–35 the French Academy recommends this spelling, with no apostrophe, so historical, ceremonial and traditional uses (such as the 1924 René Clair film title) are still spelled ''Entr'acte''. German: ' and ', Italian: ''inte ...
'' (1924) by
René Clair
René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981), born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He wen ...
. He designed the 1925 poster for the Third French Chess Championship, and as a competitor in the event, finished at fifty percent (3–3, with two draws), earning the title of
chess master. During this period his fascination with chess so distressed his first wife that she glued his pieces to the
chessboard. Duchamp continued to play in the French Championships and also in the
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 an ...
s from 1928 to 1933, favoring
hypermodern openings such as the
Nimzo-Indian
The Nimzo-Indian Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves:
:1. d4 Nf6
:2. c4 e6
:3. Nc3 Bb4
Other move orders, such as 1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.d4 Bb4, are also feasible. In the ''Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings'', the Nimzo-India ...
.
Sometime in the early 1930s, Duchamp reached the height of his ability, but realized that he had little chance of winning recognition in top-level chess. In the following years, his participation in chess tournaments declined, but he discovered
correspondence chess and became a chess journalist, writing weekly newspaper columns. While his contemporaries were achieving spectacular success in the art world by selling their works to high-society collectors, Duchamp observed, "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be
commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position." On another occasion, Duchamp elaborated, "The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."
In 1932, Duchamp teamed with chess theorist
Vitaly Halberstadt
Vitaly Halberstadt (20 March 1903, Odessa – 25 October 1967, Paris) was a French chess player, theorist, tactician, problemist, and, above all, a noted endgame study composer.
Born in Odessa, in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire (pre ...
to publish ''L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées'' (
Opposition
Opposition may refer to:
Arts and media
* ''Opposition'' (Altars EP), 2011 EP by Christian metalcore band Altars
* The Opposition (band), a London post-punk band
* '' The Opposition with Jordan Klepper'', a late-night television series on Com ...
and Sister Squares are Reconciled), known as
corresponding squares
In chess, two squares are corresponding squares (also known as relative squares, sister squares, or coordinate squares) if the occupation of one of these squares by a king requires the enemy king to move to the other square in order to hold the pos ...
. This treatise describes the
Lasker-Reichhelm position, an extremely rare type of position that can arise in the
endgame
Endgame, Endgames, End Game, End Games, or similar variations may refer to:
Film
* ''The End of the Game'' (1919 film)
* ''The End of the Game'' (1975 film), short documentary U.S. film
* ''Endgame'' (1983 film), 1983 Italian post-apocalyptic f ...
. Using
enneagram-like charts that fold upon themselves, the authors demonstrated that in this position, the most Black can hope for is a
draw
Draw, drawing, draws, or drawn may refer to:
Common uses
* Draw (terrain), a terrain feature formed by two parallel ridges or spurs with low ground in between them
* Drawing (manufacturing), a process where metal, glass, or plastic or anything ...
.
The theme of the "endgame" is important to an understanding of Duchamp's complex attitude toward his artistic career. Irish playwright
Samuel Beckett was an associate of Duchamp, and used the theme as the narrative device for the 1957 play of the same name, ''
Endgame
Endgame, Endgames, End Game, End Games, or similar variations may refer to:
Film
* ''The End of the Game'' (1919 film)
* ''The End of the Game'' (1975 film), short documentary U.S. film
* ''Endgame'' (1983 film), 1983 Italian post-apocalyptic f ...
''. In 1968, Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage, at a concert entitled "Reunion". Music was produced by a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard, triggered sporadically by normal game play.
On choosing a career in chess, Duchamp said, "If
Bobby Fischer
Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 1 ...
came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him—as if anyone could—but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted."
Duchamp left a legacy to chess in the form of an enigmatic endgame problem he composed in 1943. The problem was included in the announcement for Julian Levi's gallery exhibition ''Through the Big End of the Opera Glass'', printed on translucent paper with the faint inscription: "White to play and win". Grandmasters and endgame specialists have since grappled with the problem, with most concluding that there is no solution.
Later artistic involvement
Although Duchamp was no longer considered to be an active artist, he continued to consult with artists, art dealers and collectors. From 1925 he often traveled between France and the United States, and made New York's Greenwich Village his home in 1942. He also occasionally worked on artistic projects such as the short film ''Anémic Cinéma'' (1926), ''
Box in a Valise'' (1935–1941), ''Self Portrait in Profile'' (1958) and the larger work ''Étant Donnés'' (1946–1966). In 1943, he participated with
Maya Deren
Maya Deren (born Eleonora Derenkowska, uk, Елеоно́ра Деренко́вська, links=no; in her unfinished film ''
The Witch's Cradle'', filmed in
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim ( ; August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemian and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down wi ...
's
Art of This Century gallery.
From the mid-1930s onward he collaborated with the
Surrealists; however, he did not join the movement, despite the coaxing of
André Breton. From then until 1944, together with
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...
,
Eugenio Granell
Eugenio Fernández Granell (28 November 1912 – 24 October 2001), recognised as the last Spanish Surrealist, was an artist, professor, musician and writer.
As a political activist in the early 20th century, Granell was characterised by his ...
, and Breton, Duchamp edited the Surrealist periodical ''
VVV'', and served as an advisory editor for the magazine ''
View'', which featured him in its March 1945 edition, thus introducing him to a broader American audience.
Duchamp's influence on the art world remained behind the scenes until the late 1950s, when he was "discovered" by young artists such as
Robert Rauschenberg and
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...
, who were eager to escape the dominance of
Abstract Expressionism. He was a co-founder of the international literary group
Oulipo
Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...
in 1960. Interest in Duchamp was reignited in the 1960s, and he gained international public recognition. In 1963, the
Pasadena Art Museum
The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds.
Overview
The Norton ...
mounted his first retrospective exhibition, and there he appeared in an iconic photograph playing chess opposite nude model
Eve Babitz
Eve Babitz (May 13, 1943 – December 17, 2021) was an American visual artist and author best known for her semi-fictionalized memoirs and her relationship to the cultural milieu of Los Angeles.
Early life and education
Babitz was born in Holly ...
.
The photograph was later described by the
Smithsonian Archives of American Art
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...
as being "among the key documentary images of American modern art".
The
Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
hosted a large exhibit of his work in 1966. Other major institutions, including the
Philadelphia Museum of Art and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, followed with large showings of Duchamp's work. He was invited to lecture on art and to participate in formal discussions, as well as sitting for interviews with major publications. As the last surviving member of the Duchamp family of artists, in 1967 Duchamp helped to organize an exhibition in Rouen, France, called ''Les Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp''. Parts of this family exhibition were later shown again at the
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. In 2021 it ranked 10th in t ...
in Paris.
Exhibition design and installation art
Duchamp participated in the design of the 1938
Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, held at the Galerie des Beaux-arts, Paris. The show was organised by
André Breton and
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement.
In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...
, and featured "Two hundred and twenty-nine artworks by sixty exhibitors from fourteen countries... at this multimedia exhibition."
The Surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a creative act, thus working collaboratively in its staging. Marcel Duchamp was named as "Generateur-arbitre", Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst were listed as technical directors, Man Ray was chief lighting technician and
Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Robert Paalen (July 22, 1905 in Vienna, Austria – September 24, 1959 in Taxco, Mexico) was an Austrian-Mexican painter, sculptor, and art philosopher. A member of the Abstraction-Création group from 1934 to 1935, he joined the influ ...
responsible for "water and foliage".
''Plus belles rues de Paris'' (The most beautiful streets of Paris) filled one side of the lobby with mannequins dressed by various Surrealists.
The main hall, or the ''Salle de Superstition'' (Room of Superstition), was "a cave-like
Gesamtkunstwerk
A ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (, literally 'total artwork', translated as 'total work of art', 'ideal work of art', 'universal artwork', 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of al ...
" notably including Duchamp's
installation
Installation may refer to:
* Installation (computer programs)
* Installation, work of installation art
* Installation, military base
* Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...
, ''Twelve Hundred Coal Bags Suspended from the Ceiling over a Stove'', which was literally 1,200 stuffed coal bags suspended from the ceiling.
The floor was covered by Paalen with dead leaves and mud from the
Montparnasse Cemetery. In the middle of the grand hall underneath Duchamp's coal sacks, Paalen installed an artificial water-filled pond with real
water lilies
''Water Lilies'' (or ''Nymphéas'', ) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). The paintings depict his flower garden at his home in Giverny, and were the main focus of his artisti ...
and reeds, which he called ''Avant La Mare''. A single light bulb provided the only illumination, so patrons were given
flashlights with which to view the art (an idea of Man Ray), while the aroma of
roasting coffee filled the air. Around midnight, the visitors witnessed the dancing shimmer of a scantily dressed girl who suddenly arose from the reeds, jumped on a bed, shrieked hysterically, then disappeared just as quickly. Much to the Surrealists' satisfaction, the exhibition scandalized many of the guests.
In 1942, for the ''First Papers of Surrealism'' show in New York, surrealists called on Duchamp to design the exhibition. He created an installation, ''His Twine'', commonly known as the "mile of string", it was a three-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works.
Duchamp made a secret arrangement with an associate's son to bring young friends to the opening of the show. When the formally-dressed patrons arrived, they found a dozen children in athletic clothes kicking and passing balls, and skipping rope. When questioned, the children were told to say "Mr. Duchamp told us we could play here". Duchamp's design of the catalog for the show included "found", rather than posed, photographs of the artists.
Breton with Duchamp organized the exhibition "Le surréalisme en 1947" in the
Galerie Maeght
The Galerie Maeght is a gallery of modern art in Paris, France, and Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The gallery was founded in 1936 in Cannes. The Paris gallery was started in 1946 by Aimé Maeght. The artists exhibited are mainly from France and Spa ...
in Paris after the war and named set designer
Frederick Kiesler as architect.
''Étant donnés''
Duchamp's final major art work surprised the art world, which believed he had given up art for chess 25 years earlier. Entitled ''
Étant donnés
''Étant donnés'' (''Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas'', French: ''Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage'') is Marcel Duchamp's last major artwork, which surprised the art world because it believed he had g ...
: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage'' ("Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas"), it is a tableau, visible only through a peep hole in a wooden door. A nude woman may be seen lying on her back with her face hidden, legs spread, and one hand holding a gas lamp in the air against a landscape backdrop. Duchamp had worked secretly on the piece from 1946 to 1966 in his
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
studio while even his closest friends thought he had abandoned art. The torso of the nude figure is based on Duchamp's lover, the Brazilian sculptor
Maria Martins, with whom he had an affair from 1946 to 1951.
Personal life
Throughout his adult life, Duchamp was a passionate smoker of Habana cigars.
Duchamp became a United States citizen in 1955.
In June 1927, Duchamp married
Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor; however, they divorced six months later. It was rumored that Duchamp had chosen a
marriage of convenience
A marriage of convenience is a marriage contracted for reasons other than that of love and commitment. Instead, such a marriage is entered into for personal gain, or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as a political marriage. There are ...
, because Sarazin-Lavassor was the daughter of a wealthy automobile manufacturer. Early in January 1928, Duchamp said that he could no longer bear the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and they were soon divorced.
Between 1946 and 1951
Maria Martins was his mistress.
In 1954, he and
Alexina "Teeny" Sattler married. They remained together until his death.
Duchamp was an atheist.
Death and burial
![Marcel Duchamp's gravestone in Rouen, France](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Marcel_Duchamp%27s_gravestone_in_Rouen%2C_France.jpg)
Duchamp died suddenly and peacefully in the early morning of 2 October 1968 at his home in
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. After an evening dining at home with his friends
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...
and
Robert Lebel, Duchamp retired at 1:05 am, collapsed in his studio, and died of heart failure.
He is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France, with the
epitaph
An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...
, "D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent" ("Besides, it's always the others who die").
Legacy
Many critics consider Duchamp to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, and his output influenced the development of post–World War I
Western art
The art of Europe, or Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period between the Paleo ...
. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of
Western art
The art of Europe, or Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period between the Paleo ...
during this period.
[Tomkins: ''Duchamp: A Biography''.] He challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and rejected the emerging art market, through subversive anti-art. He famously dubbed a urinal art and named it ''
Fountain
A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect.
Fountains were ori ...
''. Duchamp produced relatively few artworks and remained mostly aloof of the avant-garde circles of his time. He went on to pretend to abandon art and devote the rest of his life to chess, while secretly continuing to make art. In 1958 Duchamp said of creativity,
The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
Duchamp in his later life explicitly expressed negativity toward art. In a BBC interview with Duchamp conducted by
Joan Bakewell
Joan Dawson Bakewell, Baroness Bakewell, (''née'' Rowlands; born 16 April 1933), is an English journalist, television presenter and Labour Party peer. Baroness Bakewell is president of Birkbeck, University of London; she is also an author a ...
in 1968 he compared art with religion, saying that he wished to do away with art the same way many have done away with religion. Duchamp goes on to explain to the interviewer that "the word art etymologically means to do", that art means activity of any kind, and that it is our society that creates "purely artificial" distinctions of being an artist.
A quotation erroneously attributed to Duchamp suggests a negative attitude toward later trends in 20th century art:
However, this was written in 1961 by fellow Dadaist
Hans Richter, in the second person, i.e. "You threw the bottle-rack...". Although a marginal note in the letter suggests that Duchamp generally approved of the statement, Richter did not make the distinction clear until many years later.
Duchamp's attitude was more favorable, however, as evidenced by another statement made in 1964:
The
Prix Marcel Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp Prize), established in 2000, is an annual award given to a young artist by the
Centre Georges Pompidou. In 2004, as a testimony to the legacy of Duchamp's work to the art world, a panel of prominent artists and art historians voted ''Fountain'' "the most influential artwork of the 20th century".
Art market
On 17 November 1999, a version of ''Fountain'' (owned by
Arturo Schwarz
Arturo Umberto Samuele Schwarz (2 February 1924 – 23 June 2021) was an Italian scholar, art historian, poet, writer, lecturer, art consultant and curator of international art exhibitions. He lived in Milan, where he amassed a large collection o ...
) was sold at
Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
, New York, for $1,762,500 to Dimitris Daskalopoulos, who declared that ''Fountain'' represented the origin of
contemporary art
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic co ...
. The price set a world record, at the time, for a work by Marcel Duchamp at public auction. The record has since been surpassed by a work sold at
Christie's Paris, titled ''
Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette'' (1921). The readymade of a perfume bottle in its box sold for a record $11.5 million (€8.9 million).
Laurie Hurwitz, ''Saint Laurent Collection Soars at Christie's Paris''
Duchamp's ''Belle haleine–Eau de voilette'', 1921
Selected works
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1910, Joueur d'échecs (The Chess Game), oil on canvas, 114 x 146.5 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art.jpg, Marcel Duchamp, 1910, ''Joueur d'échecs'' (''The Chess Game''), oil on canvas, 114 x 146.5 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1911, Coffee Mill (Moulin à café), oil and graphite on board, 33 x 12.7 cm, Tate, London.jpg, Marcel Duchamp, 1911, ''Coffee Mill (Moulin à café)'', oil and graphite on board, 33 x 12.7 cm, Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, London. Reproduced in ''Du "Cubisme"
''Du "Cubisme"'', also written ''Du Cubisme'', or ''Du « Cubisme »'' (and in English, ''On Cubism'' or ''Cubism''), is a book written in 1912 by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. This was the first major text on Cubism, predating ''The Cubist P ...
''
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1911, La sonate (Sonata), oil on canvas, 145.1 x 113.3 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art.jpg, Marcel Duchamp, 1911, ''La sonate (Sonata)'', oil on canvas, 145.1 x 113.3 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Exhibited at ''Exposició d'Art Cubista'', Barcelona, Galeries Dalmau
Galeries Dalmau was an art gallery in Barcelona, Spain, from 1906 to 1930 (also known as Sala Dalmau, Les Galeries Dalmau, Galería Dalmau, and Galeries J. Dalmau). The gallery was founded and managed by the Symbolist painter and restorer . Th ...
, Barcelona, 1912 (reproduced in catalogue)
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1912, Le Roi et la Reine entourés de Nus vites (The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes), oil on canvas, 114.6 x 128.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art.jpg, Marcel Duchamp, 1912, ''Le Roi et la Reine entourés de Nus vites'' (''The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes''), oil on canvas, 114.6 x 128.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art
File:Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, in the Frederick C. Torrey home, c. 1913.jpg, Marcel Duchamp, ''Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
''Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2'' (French: ''Nu descendant un escalier n° 2'') is a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp. The work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. Before its first pres ...
'', in the Frederick C. Torrey home, c. 1913
See also
* Shock art
Shock art is contemporary art that incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience. It is a way to disturb "smug, complacent and hypocritical" people. While the art form's proponents argue that it is "imbedded with ...
* Stereokinetic stimulus
* Fourth dimension in art
New possibilities opened up by the concept of four-dimensional space (and difficulties involved in trying to visualize it) helped inspire many modern artists in the first half of the twentieth century. Early Cubists, Surrealists, Futurists, and ...
* '' Fountain Archive''
Notes
References
* Tomkins, Calvin: ''Duchamp: A Biography'', Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1996.
* Tomkins, Calvin: ''Duchamp: The World of Marcel Duchamp 1887–'', Time Inc., 1966.
* Ian Chilvers & John Glaves-Smith: ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art''. Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, pp. 202–205
* Seigel, Jerrold: ''The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp'', University of California Press, 1995.
* Hulten, Pontus (editor): ''Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life'', The MIT Press, 1993.
* Yves Arman: ''Marcel Duchamp plays and wins'', ''Marcel Duchamp joue et gagne'', Marval Press, 1984
* Cabanne, Pierre: ''Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp'', Da Capo Press, Inc., 1987 Reprint of the 1979 London edition (1969 in French), . Notable for having contributions by Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...
, Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of the New York School, which also inc ...
, and Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...
* Gammel, Irene
''Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity''
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
* by Bonnie Jean Garner (with text boxes by Stephen Jay Gould)
* Gibson, Michael: Duchamp-Dada, (in French, Nouvelles Editions Françaises-Casterman, 1990) International Art Book Award of the Vasari Prize in 1991.
* Sanouillet, Michel and Peterson, Elmer: ''The Writings of Marcel Duchamp''. NY: Da Capo Press, 1989.
* Sanouillet, Michel and Matisse, Paul: ''Marcel Duchamp: Duchamp du signe'' suivi de ''Notes'', Flammarion, 2008.
* Catherine Perret: Marcel Duchamp, le manieur de gravité, Ed. CNDP, Paris, 1998
* Banz, Stefan (ed.): ''Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall'', JRP-Ringier, Zürich, 2010.
Further reading
* Arturo Schwarz, ''The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp'', Delano Greenidge Editions, 1995
* Anne D'Harnoncourt (Intro), ''Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp... in resonance'', Menil Foundation, Houston, 1998,
* Linda Dalrymple Henderson
Linda Dalrymple Henderson (born 1948) is a historian of art whose research involves the connections between modern art, science and technology, and the occult. She is the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor in Art History at the University of T ...
, ''Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works'', Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998
* Paola Magi, ''Caccia al tesoro con Marcel Duchamp'', Edizioni Archivio Dedalus, Milano, 2010,
* Paola Magi: ''Treasure Hunt With Marcel Duchamp'', Edizioni Archivio Dedalus, Milano, 2011,
* Marc Décimo: ''Marcel Duchamp mis à nu. A propos du processus créatif'' (''Marcel Duchamp Stripped Bare. Apropos of the creative Act''), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2004 .
* Marc Décimo:''The Marcel Duchamp Library'', perhaps (''La Bibliothèque de Marcel Duchamp, peut-être''), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2002.
* Marc Décimo, ''Le Duchamp facile'', Les presses du réel, coll. "L'écart absolu / Poche", Dijon, 2005
* Marc Décimo (dir.), ''Marcel Duchamp et l'érotisme'', Les presses du réel, coll. « L'écart absolu / Chantier », Dijon, 2008
* T.J. Demos, ''The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp'', Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007.
* Lydie Fischer Sarazin-Levassor, ''A Marriage in Check. The Heart of the Bride Stripped by her Bachelor, even'', Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2007.
* J-T. Richard, ''M. Duchamp mis à nu par la psychanalyse, même'' (M. Duchamp stripped bare even by psychoanalysis), éd. L'Harmattan, Paris (France), 2010.
* Chris Allen (Trans), Dawn Ades (Intro), ''Three New York Dadas and The Blind Man: Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, Beatrice Wood'', Atlas Press, London, 2013,
External links
Duchamp works
*
* Philadelphia Museum of Art houses the Arensbergs' large collection of Duchamp's work.
website
*
* An explanation about the ''Roue de bicyclette'' by Duchamp
(1911).
* '' ttp://www.toutfait.com/popup/articles/wallis/popup24.htm Philadelphia Museum of Art The Green Box'. Notes and studies for '' The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even''. (1915–1923)
*
Anémic Cinéma
' film (1926)
Marcel Duchamp "Apropos of Myself" The Baltimore Museum of Art: Baltimore, Maryland, 1963
Accessed 26 June 2012
Duchamp Research Centre
at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin
*
Essays by Duchamp
* Marcel Duchamp: ''The Creative Act'' (1957
Audio
General resources
''Toutfait'': The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal
Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Poraiture
– online exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14
a model of Duchamp's from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...
Duchamp Research Portal
archival collections and works of art from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, and Association Marcel Duchamp
Audio and video
Duchamp audio CD ''Musical Erratum + In Conversation'' at LTM Recordings, LTM
Marcel Duchamp: Various Statements and Interviews at Ubuweb
UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives.
Philo ...
''Voices of Dada'', ''Futurism & Dada Reviewed'' and ''Surrealism Reviewed''
– readings by Duchamp on audio CDs
Films of Marcel Duchamp at Ubuweb
with Richard Hamilton and Sarat Maharaj from Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
. (RealPlayer
RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm, including MP3 ...
required.)
An Conversation with Marcel Duchamp and James Johnson Sweeney
National Broadcasting Company, 1956
Chess
*
by Edward Winter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Duchamp, Marcel
1887 births
1968 deaths
20th-century chess players
20th-century French male writers
20th-century French non-fiction writers
20th-century French painters
20th-century French male artists
20th-century French sculptors
Artists from New York City
Académie Julian alumni
Chess Olympiad competitors
French conceptual artists
Cubist artists
Dada
French atheists
French chess players
French chess writers
French experimental filmmakers
French emigrants to the United States
French librarians
French male painters
French male sculptors
French mixed-media artists
French parodists
French surrealist artists
Lycée Pierre-Corneille alumni
Modern artists
Oulipo members
Pataphysicians
People from Seine-Maritime
People from Greenwich Village
People from Ridgefield, New Jersey
People with acquired American citizenship
Sibling artists
Sportspeople from Seine-Maritime
Recycled art artists
French dadaist
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters