Marcel Duchamp

• Cubism
• Dada
• Readymade
• Iconoclast
Nude Descending
Staircase, Cubism,
1912
• Influenced by
Picasso’s Cubism
• With Picasso the
subject is seen from
different points of
view.
• Here the subject is
depicted in motion.
• He was influenced by
the photographs of
Muybridge.
• Muybridge was
interested in using
photography to show
the figure in motion.
Muybridge
• Here is a strobe light
photo of Duchamp
descending a staircase.
• It was made years after
the painting to illustrate
his intention.
• The painting was
rejected by Cubists
because it used
cubism for a different
purpose.
• Duchamp then
rejected cubism.
• He would soon reject
all established styles.
• This work was shown at
the famous Armory show
of 1913 in New York.
• The show showcased
modern art to America.
• The press had a field-day
criticizing the work.
• They called it an
“explosion in a shingle
factory.”
 Dada
• Dada is a movement, not a style.
• It began as a reaction to middle-class
values, and the insanity of WWI.
• It began as a literary movement, but soon
included the other arts.
• It is meant to shock, and resulted in works
that are irrational, confrontational, and
even absurd.
 Dada
• Dada is based on chance, and not reason
or emotion like the art styles that came
before it.
• Dada is anti-art, anti-beauty, anti-form,
and anti-traditional.
• Duchamp became the unofficial leader of
Dada in the visual arts.
• His work provokes the viewer to ask the
question: “what is art?”.
 Dada
• In Duchamp’s work the idea is more
important than the product, or even the
process.
Bicycle Wheel, Dada,
1913
 Readymade
• An industrial,
mass produced
object that is
exhibited as art.
• It is not a new
object but on for
which a new idea
has been
created.
• According to
Duchamp’s
theory an artist
needed to do
two things to
an object in
order to make
art.
2. Change its
context.
3. Displace its
function.
• Duchamp said he
created it for his own
amusement.
• It is art that moves.
• It is also
interactive.
• It is similar to objects
used to demonstrate
laws of physics:
5. angular momentum
6. Centrifugal force
• Duchamp
studied physics
as a hobby
while working
in a library.
Bottle Rack, 1914
• This was an ordinary rack
(mass produced) for
drying bottles.
• It became art when he
Bottle
chose it.Rack, 1914
• He put it in his studio then
in a gallery (changed its
context).
• He didn’t use it to dry
bottles (displaced its
function).
• This is a ready-made.
• By choosing it,
imagining it as art,
and showing
Bottle Rack, it1914
in an
exhibition, it became
art.
• He even chose it
randomly (Dada).
In advance of Broken Arm, 1915

• The title suggests

something disabling
and mysterious.
• Duchamp created a new
idea for a banal object.
• The idea helps to make
it art.
• There is no skill or
technique involved.
 Fountain, 1917
• The subject is really
Aesthetics.
• Aesthetics is the
philosophy of art and
beauty.
• Duchamp wants the
viewer to look at it
and consider what art
really is.
• The title reverses the
function of the object.
• He signed it, as artists
often do to their work,
for the purpose of
authentication.
• In doing so he is
mocking the traditions
& practices of artists.
• This is what an
iconoclast does.
• He submitted the
work to an unjuried
show.
• Unjuried means all
work submitted to a
show are hung
without judgement
about quality or taste.
• The group hanging
the show (Society for
Independent Artists)
considered it too
shocking & distasteful
to hang.
 Fountain – exhibited under
the pseudonym R. Mutt
• Duchamp defended the piece in the magazine
The Blind Man, (which he edited), with these
words:

"Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the

fountain or not has no importance. He chose. He
took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its
useful significance disappeared under a new title
and point of view ...[creating] a new thought for
that object."
 L.H.O.O.Q ,1919
• Pronounced in
French the title
of the work
phonetically
makes a joke out
of Da Vinci’s
masterpiece.
• L.H.O.O.Q was a
direct attack on
Renaissance art,
and the standards
and conventions it
represented.
• He put a moustache
on the Mona Lisa.
• Like a vandal he
attacks traditional
views of art and
beauty.
• This is exactly the
kind of thing an
iconoclast does.
Young Man and
Girl in Spring

Duchamp

1911
 Three Standard Stoppages
1913-14
• Duchamp dropped three threads, each a meter
long, on to the same number of Prussian blue
pieces of canvas.
• Then they were stuck to the surfaces without any
adjustments to the curves that were determined by
chance.
• He then cut up the cloth and stuck it to glass
plates, finally encasing them in a wooden box.
• Three wooden "rulers," cut following the same
curves, were then added. (Ramirez 35)
• The objects were meant to mock standards.
• His work pokes fun at the standard meter, an
actual object, kept in the International Office of
Measurements and Weights in Paris.
• Duchamp said that 3 Standard Stoppages
opened the way "to escape from those
traditional methods of expression long
associated with art.”
• Duchamp called most art “retinal painting"
-art designed for the luxuriance of the eye.
• Retinal painting required formal intelligence
and a skillful hand on the part of the artist.
• The Stoppages depended on chance which,
paradoxically, they "standardized."
Network of Stoppages, 1914
• The work is created with chance and random
acts.
• The Fauvist painting Young Man and Girl in
Spring, 1911 is cropped with black paint.
• The artist then uses the tracings of Three
Standard Stoppages to create a network of
lines.
• He numbers the lines.
• In doing so he creates a new work by
incorporating two old ones.
• This work was also used to plan a future
work.
• It contains a scale plan for Large Glass.
The Large Glass,1915-23

• The work is painted on

glass.
• Because the work is
transparent it incorporates
the real world.
• It was broken during
shipment.
• Duchamp was not upset; he
considered this random
chance event the finishing
touch.