Under the Influence of Marcel Duchamp, Even

Under the Influence of Marcel Duchamp, Even

Shelley Lake

Artists Writing: Biography

September 15, 2019

Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp died suddenly in his Paris studio at the age of 81. The man who ushered in a new way of thinking about art had changed the world forever.

More than fifty years after his death, Duchamp–the godfather of conceptualism, fulfilled his dream of immortality. As he had hoped, Duchamp continues to challenge everything we think we know about art.

The legacy of Marcel Duchamp began on July 28th, 1887 in Blainville, about 80 miles northwest of Paris. Marcel was the third of seven children, six of whom survived. His father was a notary who raised a family of artists. Marcel’s siblings Jacques, Raymond and Suzanne were artists. Maternal Grandfather Emile Frederic Nicolle was a painter and engraver.

The early Parisian success of elder brothers Jacques and Raymond helped pave the way for Marcel’s scholarship and career. While observing his Fauvist and Cubist contemporaries, Duchamp began experimenting with drawing and painting. Duchamp’s first exhibitions in 1909 at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne were well received. Sales came easily–but everything was about to change.

In 1912, Duchamp’s masterwork Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was refused by the prestigious Salon des Indépendants. Scandal ensued and the picture was withdrawn. From that moment forward, Duchamp abandoned conventional painting to develop an entirely new methodology.

Enter the readymade.

Duchamp conceived his first readymade in 1913 with Bicycle Wheel. He combined two found objects, a bicycle wheel and a stool. This became not only the first readymade but also the first interactive kinetic sculpture.

According to Duchamp, “It’s very difficult to choose an object, because, at the end of fifteen days, you begin to like it or hate it. You have to approach something with indifference, as if you had no aesthetic emotion.”

While Duchamp was reinventing himself, 1913 saw the inauguration of the Armory Show, the first important exhibition of modern art in America. Duchamp’s brothers were intimate with curator Walter Pach. Pach saved room for all three brothers, featuring four of Marcel’s strongest works, including the recently rejected Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. All four paintings sold and Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 became an international phenomenon.

With the success of the Armory Show, Duchamp visited New York City in 1915 and immediately established a Manhattan studio. He lived mainly in New York from 1915 to 1923, in Paris from 1923 to 1942, and returned to New York in 1942.

Duchamp may be most famous for the readymade urinal Fountain, signed R. Mutt, authorized in 1917. The artwork was refused by the Society of Independent Artists, even though Duchamp was a founding member.

Duchamp worked tirelessly between 1913 and 1923 on The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), shown at the Brooklyn Museum in 1927. This piece resides at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, home to Duchamp’s most extensive collection.

Duchamp’s last great monument to eros was a secret project entitled Etant Donnés. He worked underground for more than 20 years, and the work could only be revealed after death.

In the words of Robert Motherwell, “Duchamp was the great saboteur, the relentless enemy of painterly painting, the asp in the basket of fruit.”