Marcel Duchamp's First Readymade, Bicycle Wheel

Marcel Duchamp’s First Readymade, Bicycle Wheel

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 196451” x 25” x 16.5”, Combine, 4/8, Milan — Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1964
51” x 25” x 16.5”, Combine, 4/8, Milan

Shelley Lake

Artists Writing (APG-5330-OL): Art History

September 22, 2019

At the turn of the twentieth century, experimental photography and motion pictures were all the rage. Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge invented chronophotography, new technology that brought space time relationships to light.[1] Under the influence of their masterworks, young Marcel Duchamp painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.

In one of Marey’s books, I saw an illustration of how he indicated people who fence, or horses galloping, with a system of dots delineating the different movements...That’s what gave me the idea for the execution of Nude Descending a Staircase. I used this method a little in the sketch, but especially in the final form of the picture.

–– Marcel Duchamp[2]

Duchamp’s Paris of 1913 was the capital of the art world–but that was about to change. Described by Julian Street as “the explosion of a shingle factory”,[3] Nude Descending a Staircase took the New York Armory Show by storm. Paradoxically, a Frenchman would soon become America’s tour de force. The Nude that Paris refused, suddenly became an American enigma. When asked about his contribution to painting Duchamp said “Movement in art, motion in art, had never really been exploited.”[4]

That year the Armory Show would mark the dawn of an American century and Duchamp was just getting started. New York was smart to embrace what Paris had forsaken.

With the Armory Show behind him, provocateur Duchamp set his sights on a new orbit, the readymade. “Duchamp began to create work with a conceptual base and an intellectual complexity that challenged previous notions about both art and art making.”[5] He balanced the wheel of a bicycle on a kitchen stool and called his gesture[6] Bicycle Wheel. “The work is, in one sense, the natural heir to Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, because it didn’t try to replicate movement, it moved.”[7] With his first interactive kinetic sculpture, Bicycle Wheel, Duchamp redefined the role of spectator as a partner in the creative act.[8]

Other readymades followed, each readymade more visually indifferent than the next. By authorizing mass produced found objects Duchamp undermined the idea of a unique artwork.[9] Duchamp increasingly eliminated the hand from the art making process, careful to keep mind over matter, often embracing chance. He decoupled body from mind. The master chess player thought one century ahead. In the readymade, Duchamp took himself–The Artist–off a Pedestal–and in doing so, became immortalized.

With no desire to lead or follow a movement, Duchamp launched a timeless revolution. Man Ray, Picabia, Dali, Johns, Lichtenstein, Tinguely, Hamilton, Haring, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Arman, Baldessari, Warhol, Weiwei, Walker, Levine, Prince, Holzer, Banksy, Hirst, Koons, countless others came to appreciate the breadth of his legacy.

When asked about his contempt for retinal art, art that only appeals to the eye, Duchamp made this observation:

CABANNE: Where does your antiretinal attitude come from?

DUCHAMP: From too great an importance given to the retinal. Since Courbet, it’s been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone’s error...

CABANNE: Your position was considered exemplary, but was hardly followed.

DUCHAMP: Why would you follow it? You can’t make money with it.[10]

[1] Etienne-Jules Marey, “Analysis of the Horse’s Motions through Chronophotography,” Scientific American Supplement, no. 1180 (August 13, 1898): 18922–24.

[2] Pierre Cabanne, “Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp,” in Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, Translated from the French by Ron Padgett (London: Da Capo Press, 1971), 34.

[3] Julian Street, “Why I Became a Cubist,” Everybody’s Magazine, no. 28 (June 1913), https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v12n2/gallery/street_j/cubist_page.shtml.

[4] Francis Roberts, “From the Archives: An Interview with Marcel Duchamp, From 1968,” ARTnews (blog), January 18, 2019

[5] Ted Snell, “Here’s Looking at: Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel 1913,” The Conversation, 3

[6] Annette Lin, “Why Jeff Koons Is a Natural Successor to Marcel Duchamp,” Artsy, May 20, 2019, 8

[7] Snell, “Here’s Looking at,” 3.

[8] Snell, 6.

[9] Snell, 5.

[10] Cabanne, “Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp,” 43.