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 was the first artist to elevate a urinal to the status of an art form. 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. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out."
Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, as one of the three artists who helped to establish the post-industrial perspective in art history, and his work is considered the progenitor of Conceptual art. His definition of the art coefficient, "an arithmatic relationship between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed," lay the groundwork for a more recent generation of artists working through appropriation art, such as Andy Warhol, Beatrice Wood, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince and Sturtevant.
Early life and education
thumb|230px|Three Duchamp brothers, left to right: Marcel Duchamp, [[Jacques Villon, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon in the garden of Jacques Villon's studio in Puteaux, France, 1914, (Smithsonian Institution collections)]]
Eugene and Lucie Duchamp had seven children, one of whom died as an infant and four of whom became successful artists: Jacques Villon (1875–1963), painter, printmaker, Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876–1918), sculptor and Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (1889–1963), painter, have been the subject of exhibitions alongside Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was close to his sister Suzanne. At eight years old, Duchamp began schooling at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille, in Rouen. Two other students in his class also became well-known artists and lasting friends: Robert Antoine Pinchon and Pierre Dumont. He studied art at the Académie Julian from 1904 to 1905, but preferred playing billiards to attending classes, and the Académie Julian was one of several "independent" academies that sprang up in reaction to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1905, Duchamp began his compulsory military service with the 39th Infantry Regiment, working for a printer in Rouen. There he learned typography and printing processes—skills he would use in his later work.
Early 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, and the following year in the Salon des Indépendants. Fauves and Paul Cézanne's proto-Cubism influenced his paintings, although the critic Guillaume Apollinaire—who was eventually to become a friend—criticized what he called "Duchamp's very ugly nudes" ("les nus très vilains de Duchamp"), he also prophesized that Duchamp could reconcile art and the people.
Alongside many artists of the time, he was intrigued with the concept of depicting the fourth dimension in art. His painting Sad Young Man on a Train embodies this concern:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
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.
thumb|right|Marcel Duchamp. [[Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912). Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8". Philadelphia Museum of Art.]]
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (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 the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, as well as the movement and dynamism of the Futurists.
He first submitted the piece to appear at the Cubist Salon des Indépendants, but Albert Gleizes (according to Duchamp in an interview with Pierre Cabanne, p. 31) 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. Yet Duchamp did appear in the illustrations to Du "Cubisme", he participated in the La Maison Cubiste (Cubist House), organized by the designer André Mare for the Salon d'Automne of 1912 (a few months after the Indépendants); he signed the Section d'Or 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". Duchamp later submitted the painting to the 1913 "Armory Show" 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, 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's philosophical tract, The Ego and Its Own, 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 in Munich's famed Alte Pinakothek, 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'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 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". 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?". 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."
thumb|upright=1.6|Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 21 June 1917, New York City
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), Duchamp felt uncomfortable in Paris. Meanwhile, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 had scandalized Americans at the Armory Show, 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 and artist Man Ray. Duchamp's circle included art patrons Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg, actress and artist Beatrice Wood and Francis Picabia, as well as other avant-garde 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 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, as an experimental exhibition context that predates the Museum of Modern Art as the first modern art collection in the US.
Dada
thumb|Photograph of Duchamp's [[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain (1917) by Alfred Stieglitz]]
thumb|The cover of the second (and final) issue of [[The Blind Man (May 1917) featured a graphic reference to Duchamp's painting The Chocolate Grinder. The issue is best known for its response to Fountain not being displayed at the purportedly open inaugural exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists. ]]
Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. It began in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1916, and spread to Berlin shortly thereafter. To quote Dona Budd's The Language of Art Knowledge,
<blockquote>Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. 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 and Marcel Janco's frequent use of the words da, da, meaning yes, yes in the Romanian language. 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".</blockquote>
The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestoes, art theory, theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art 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, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Richard Huelsenbeck, Georg Grosz, John Heartfield, Beatrice Wood, Kurt Schwitters, and Hans Richter, among others. The movement influenced later styles, such as the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including surrealism, Nouveau réalisme, pop art, and Fluxus.
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
New York Dada had a less serious tone than that of European Dadaism, and was not a particularly organized venture. Duchamp's friend Francis Picabia 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. 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 urinal, to the Society of Independent Artists 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.