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Born: 1887
Died: 1968
Summary of Marcel Duchamp
Few artists have had a bigger impact on the course of art history than Marcel Duchamp. By challenging the definition of art with his early readymades, he created waves of controversy that are still relevant today. Duchamp’s longstanding interest in how desires and human sexuality operate is connected to the Surrealists, even though he claimed to not be affiliated with any creative movement. This is because he likes to toy with words. The most commonly held belief is that Duchamp is the father of conceptual art because of his firm belief that ideas were paramount above all other considerations when it came to art.
He feared falling into a creative rut, which is why Duchamp refused to stick to one of the standard routes that many artists take and instead feared becoming repetitive. Duchamp’s last years were spent playing chess in private, even as he created a mysterious, post-death masterpiece that wasn’t disclosed until after his death.
Duchamp came up with the term “readymade” which has come to describe ordinary items taken out of their normal environment and seen as art purely by the artist’s designation. A well-known example of this kind of thing is readymades, or objects that Duchamp simply described as “readymade” and others would describe as “a kind of art.”
Duchamp rejected only visual enjoyment as simple and made concept-driven art, preferring more intellectual techniques. He was dedicated to his optics and perspective studies and therefore spent time looking into kinetic equipment, which influenced how many futurist and surrealist painters drew machinery and motion.
His work has subversive humour, a propensity for witty jokes, and is full of sex puns and double entendres, contributing to his reputation as a delightful artist. He conveyed common words in an original way by making puns with them. His work’s contribution, especially in the language, established the ground for Conceptual art.
Childhood
Marcel Duchamp’s family were all artists and they lived in Normandy. Blainville Mayor Jean-Paul Rousseau and painter Jeanne Rousseau brought up their children in the French countryside. Activities at home included chess, reading, sketching, and music. A gift from his family, Marcel’s first work Landscape at Blainville (1902) shows that he was influenced by Claude Monet at the tender age of fifteen. After both of his brothers left home to become painters in 1904, Marcel, who had been very close to them, followed them to Paris to study painting at the Académie Julian. Jacques Villon paid for Marcel’s schooling and paid him for his cartoons.
Early Life
In the early 1900s, Duchamp was able to learn about new painting movements in Paris. Duchamp loved Fauvism, Cubism, and Impressionism because of their use of colour and form. He had a very personal reason for being drawn to Cubism, since he saw Cubism as the movement which fundamentally distorted the human eye’s perspective of the world. Early Modernism was defined by the interplay between the body and space via the lens of technology. Duchamp is credited with showing this first in Nude Descending A Staircase (1912), which contains revolutionary ideas that influenced the work of fellow Modernists.
This idea appealed to Duchamp, who had a common interest in artists such as Odilon Redon, a Symbolist painter and graphic artist. Early in his career, Duchamp fell in love with the mysterious allure of Symbolist subjects like the elusive femme fatale. Duchamp was interested in sexual identity and desire, and therefore was attracted to Dadaism and Surrealism because of this fascination.
Mid Life
Francis Picabia was a 25-year-old painter when he bumped into Marcel Duchamp in 1911. He introduced Duchamp to Raymond Roussel, a surrealist author, and the same year, Picabia, Duchamp, and Guillaume Apollinaire all watched an adaptation of Roussel’s Impressions d’Afrique. Duchamp found himself altered in a profound way, in part because of the challenging situations Roussel so delightfully posed for him. For the first time, he believed it was better to be inspired by a writer rather than another painter. He said, “felt that as a painter it was much better to be influenced by a writer than by another painter.” Cross-genre pollination will cause the artist to use a more varied approach to art production.
Following his relocation to New York in 1915, Duchamp built many readymades. He signed works that he discovered, including a snow shovel, a urinal, and a bicycle wheel. These pieces, which allude to topics like desire, sexuality, and childhood memories, show the error of enshrining avant-garde art practise.
In addition, he dedicated seven years (1915-1923) to the completion of his masterpiece, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, or The Large Glass. This was the other piece he was recognised for. As an act of rebellion against conventional notions of artistry, this work—which included panels of glass sandwiching machinery—was Duchamp’s first “aesthetic manifesto” (in a theory he called the “Retinal Shudder”). Even The Large Glass, which shows a lot of sexual yearning and stimulation, is clearly a reflection of Duchamp’s own artwork.
Late Life
Duchamp travelled between New York and Paris to take part in Surrealism’s rapid rise in France, engaging in various types of artistic projects that he worked on alone or with other surrealists, in many media. Duchamp stayed away from groups, since he believed that the politics that accompany them were distasteful. The Surrealists had no claim on him, and he never belonged to them. And more importantly, he wasn’t really a member of Dada. In the opinion of museum director and writer Catherine Craft, Duchamp’s readymades were created before the Dada movement was founded in Zurich.
Duchamp’s work is now included in art history since his perspective and works match those of the Dada movement. Later on, after Dada had been replaced by Surrealism, Duchamp was able to be tied to Dada, thus include his work in art history, yet be involved only to a limited extent in the movement.
Duchamp created a female alter ego, Rrose Selavy, in 1920 to examine gender issues fully. This included an edition of eight signed bottle racks, his Bottle Rack series, which was a famous exhibition by Duchamp in 1936. The artist’s belief in his own exceptionalism, which emerged in his work as early as 1915, influenced his isolation from the wider art world.
For decades, Duchamp created a twisted, sexual scene he named Etant donnes in a hidden corner of his studio (the work is currently permanently installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art). He shunned the public eye and would only play chess with a small number of selected guests until his death in 1968.
Duchamp had a mostly silent role in New York avant-garde circles until he was found by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in the 1950s. He unexpectedly agreed to be associated with the Dada movement years after it had collapsed, demonstrating that he was open to having his reputation tied to a movement, without having to identify with the usual pressures that come with it. Almost in the movement and therefore in art history, Duchamp left his name.
Famous Art by Marcel Duchamp
Fountain
1971
Fountain, the most famous of the readymades, was submitted under the alias R. Mutt to the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. The initial R meant for Richard, which was French slang for “moneybags” and Mutt stood for JL Mott Ironworks, a New York-based business that made the porcelain urinal. After the piece was rejected by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on the grounds that it was unethical, proponents of the work contested this allegation, claiming that when an object was chosen for exhibition by an artist, it was given new meaning. Fountain broke new territory by pushing the boundaries of what defines a work of art.
L.H.O.O.Q
1919
L.H.O.O.Q is a scandalous altered postcard copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa by Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp pencilled a moustache and a goatee over Mona Lisa’s upper lip and chin for this “assisted” (which suggested a degree of manipulation as opposed to the “unassisted”) readymade, and re-titled the artwork. “Elle a chaud au cul,” which approximately translates as “She has a hot ass.” is a play on the French pronunciation of the letters. Rather than transforming an everyday, manufactured product into a work of art, as he does in the majority of his readymades, Duchamp begins L.H.O.O.Q with a depiction of an iconic masterwork that he debunks in a humorous manner.
Etant Donnes
1945-1966
Etant donnes is a diorama visible through two eyeholes installed behind a hefty wooden door obtained in Spain and brought to New York. A naked lady, presumably dead, with her legs splayed, holds a lit gas light in the scene. The background is a mountainous scene based on a photograph Duchamp took in Switzerland. Etant donnes is considered Duchamp’s second significant work, having been created in secret over a period of more than two decades. He wrote a full installation manual, which is facsimile-reproduced and accessible in print. Etant donnes appears to be a clear allusion to Courbet’s work Origine du Monde at first look (1866).
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver
- Few artists have had a bigger impact on the course of art history than Marcel Duchamp.
- By challenging the definition of art with his early readymades, he created waves of controversy that are still relevant today.
- Duchamp’s longstanding interest in how desires and human sexuality operate is connected to the Surrealists, even though he claimed to not be affiliated with any creative movement.
- This is because he likes to toy with words.
- The most commonly held belief is that Duchamp is the father of conceptual art because of his firm belief that ideas were paramount above all other considerations when it came to art.He feared falling into a creative rut, which is why Duchamp refused to stick to one of the standard routes that many artists take and instead feared becoming repetitive.
- Duchamp’s last years were spent playing chess in private, even as he created a mysterious, post-death masterpiece that wasn’t disclosed until after his death.Duchamp came up with the term “readymade” which has come to describe ordinary items taken out of their normal environment and seen as art purely by the artist’s designation.
- A well-known example of this kind of thing is readymades, or objects that Duchamp simply described as “readymade” and others would describe as “a kind of art.”Duchamp rejected only visual enjoyment as simple and made concept-driven art, preferring more intellectual techniques.
- He was dedicated to his optics and perspective studies and therefore spent time looking into kinetic equipment, which influenced how many futurist and surrealist painters drew machinery and motion.His work has subversive humour, a propensity for witty jokes, and is full of sex puns and double entendres, contributing to his reputation as a delightful artist.
- He conveyed common words in an original way by making puns with them.
- His work’s contribution, especially in the language, established the ground for Conceptual art.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
