Marcel Duchamp

Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French-American artist, chess player, and inventor who played a key role in the development of the avant-garde in the United States and in New York City, where he spent the last 25 years of his life. Duchamp is notable for his work of anti-art Fountain, where he signed the name "R. Mutt 1917" on a urinal. For his talk at the American Federation of the Arts in Houston, "On the Creative Act", for which he labeled himself a 'mere artist', Duchamp said, "Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist, on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity...if we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it.From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

The life and work of Marcel Duchamp

“..perhaps the most important art-theorist and avant-garde provocateur of the 20th century. He directed attention away from the work of art as a material object, and instead presented it as something which was essentially an idea: he shifted the emphasis from making to thinking. “Edward Lucie-Smith.

Marcel Duchamp was born at Blainville in Normandy, one of six children. In 1904 he followed his brothers to Paris and studied for one year at the Academie Julian. He was influenced by the Post-Impressionists and the Fauvists but his early works already showed that he was less interested in technique but more so in ideas. By 1909 Duchamp had work exhibited at the Salon des Independents and the Salon d’Automne. His first major success was ‘Nude Descending a Staircase No.1’ (1911). It was shown at the Armory Show in 1913 and was the subject of considerable controversy. The painting and its version ‘No. 2’ showed his interest in photography particularly in the way he conveyed a sense of movement. However, he abandoned painting concentrating instead on his ‘ready-mades’.

Having relocated to New York and being a key figure in the Dada scene there, he produced probably his most famous work, the ready-made ‘Fountain’ (1917). It consisted of a urinal signed R. Mutt and established his reputation as a ground-breaking artist challenging the accepted notion of what comprised a work of art. After a year in Buenos Aires playing chess he returned to Paris to create his Mona Lisa parody replete with moustache, beard and rude inscription. In 1920 he was back in New York and began work on what many regard as his conceptual masterpiece, ‘The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even'(1920-1933). A nine foot high structure incorporating an upper and lower glass panel set in an aluminium framework, the work became one of the most discussed pieces of its day and still causes a great deal of discussion. Duchamp divided his time between his art and his chess. He was regarded as one of the finest players in France and took part in four Olympic tournaments.

Duchamp was an iconoclastic figure on the one hand deriding the pretensions of art and on the other exploring its possibilities. He is seen as the godfather of modern art, predicting movements such as Conceptualism, Minimalism and even Pop Art. He was one of the key exponents of the avant-garde and was instrumental in raising the profile of the Surrealists in France and the United States. He was exploring radical ideas in art up until the end of his career with his final work, ‘Given:1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas’ proving as challenging and provocative as anything else he had produced in his career