Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was a French-American painter, sculptor, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and Conceptual art. He is widely regarded as one of the three artists—along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse—who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century.
Born into an artistically gifted family in Normandy, Duchamp’s early work was influenced by Post-Impressionism and Fauvism. However, he quickly moved toward a unique form of Cubism. His painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) created a sensation at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, cementing his fame in America. The work was criticized for being unintelligible but is now seen as a masterpiece of the modernist era, capturing motion in a static medium.
Duchamp is perhaps best known for inventing the “Readymade”—an ordinary manufactured object designated by the artist as a work of art. The most famous example is Fountain (1917), a standard porcelain urinal signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt.” This piece challenged the very definition of art, shifting the focus from physical craft to intellectual interpretation (“retinal art” vs. “art at the service of the mind”).
In the 1920s, Duchamp ostensibly abandoned art to become a professional chess player, famously stating that “While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” However, he continued to work on secret projects, including his enigmatic masterwork, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass).
For the last two decades of his life, he worked in absolute secrecy on Étant donnés (1946–1966), a permanently installed diorama viewable only through a peephole in a wooden door, which was revealed to the public only after his death. His legacy is foundational to almost all postmodern and conceptual art practices.
Active in others filds : Professional Chess (Chess Master), Puns & Anagrams (under the alter ego Rrose Sélavy), Exhibition Design.
