Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was born on 28 July, 1887 near Blanville, France. His maternal grandfather was Frederic Emile Nicole, painter and engraver, and his mother painted landscapes. This influenced not only Marcel Duchamp but also four of his siblings to become involved in art. His first painting dates back to when he was 15 years old, and depicts landscape in Blanville. This painting reflects his family’s love for Impressionism especially for the works of Claude Monet.
After his two older brothers left home to pursue a career in art, he joined them in 1904 in Paris, to study at the Academie Julian. Because he was influenced by Impressionism at such early age, this style was present in his work for a very long time. In his 1968 BBC
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Instead he was exploring intellectual approach in which the concept and the idea itself mattered more than the visual representation.
Duchamp abandoned painting for more radical experiments which included readymades and kinetic, almost mechanical works. Amongst his few paintings Nude descending a staircase is the most famous one.
The nude descending a staircase
Nude descending a staircase is the painting that made Duchamp famous. When it was exhibited at Armory Show in New York, 1913 it enjoyed scandalous success. Altough the painting caused public outrage, it was the focal point of the exhibition outshining the works of other artists which included Cezanne, Gauguin, and Pablo Picasso.
The New York Times compared it to “an explosion in a shingle factory”, and American Art News called it “the conundrum of the season”, offering a hefty ten dollar reward “to find the lady”. J. F. Griswold’s published a caricature titled The Rude Descending a Staircase (Rush Hour at the Subway), in The New York Evening Sun on March 20, 1913.
Duchamp was not concerned with the negative review, on the contrary, he enjoyed it. After all the major characteristic of his work is to provoke.