Word: duchamps
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Then, in 1912, comes the most disputed canvas of the prewar epoch. "The first study was almost naturalistic," Duchamp remembered. "At least it showed some hunks of flesh. Right after that, though, I started in to make a painting on the same subject that was a long way from being naturalistic." It was a way from which no traveler returned. Nude Descending a Staircase was at once the scandal and centerpiece of exhibitions from Paris to New York. The work was no mere rendering of cubist theory. It was mechanistic, sensual and impudent. It held nothing sacred−not even...
Excluded from movements, Duchamp cut his solitary path to recognition. Wit, spontaneity and above all irony−the imposition of the actual upon the ideal−became his guiding principles. As the Philadelphia exhibition happily recalls, he exhibited a Mona Lisa with mustache and a prized collection of dust. Sometimes he showed found objects under the punning name Rrose Sélavy; in a fit of ennui he invented a new art form, "readymades," prosaic articles given fresh contexts. One, a snow shovel, is labeled In Advance of the Broken Arm and signed by Duchamp. The other, entitled Fountain...
...antiart, Duchamp's work became a lunatic cornerstone for Dada, the movement that celebrated disorder, chance, anarchism−anything to reverse the stultified, rational societies that had led to World War I. Thereupon, Duchamp renounced canvas forever. He became a fixture of the New York art scene, painted on glass, composed musical pieces by making a random choice of notes, and dropped pieces of string, then froze them to a board with a glue...
...this was preamble to his immense glass-and-metal masterwork The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. This rich, elusive composition is a bulwark against interpretation; it contains satires and celebrations of mechanics, Christian mysticism and sexual fantasy−including some of Duchamp's cherished obsessions, a "male" chocolate grinder and a mechanical bride with a reservoir of "love gasoline." The Bride is no facile construction, as Duchamp makes clear in detailed annotations reminiscent of Da Vinci's code notebooks. The artist worked on his construction for eight years, then abandoned his Bride...
Creative Spirit. So is Duchamp. In his "retirement" Duchamp summed up his early fatigue with "retinal" art. "I was interested in ideas," he recalled, "not merely in visual products. I wanted to put painting again in the service of the mind." It is the mind that still reacts, both to Duchamp's career and to his immeasurable influence. His works now appear to be essences, concentrations of theory and expression that have nourished the creative spirit for six decades. His juggled compositions antedate John Cage by a generation. His readymades anticipate the objects of Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol...