Few artists can boast of changing modern art the way Marcel Duchamp did. Although he firmly refused to be associated with any art movement per se, his work reflects the outstanding radicality of Dada and, later, the fondness of human sexuality and wordplay that Surrealists have. In his insistence that art should be driven by ideas above all, Duchamp is generally considered the father of conceptual art. He gave up being an artist to play chess in his later years, having lost faith in the art world (“I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.”) Yet, he worked in secret on his last enigmatic work of art, which was unveiled only after his death. (also look at: https://roberttracyphdart473.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/marcel-duchamps-etant-donnes/ )
Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) (1912)
Duchamp’s scandalous masterpiece, Nude Descending a Staircase, didn’t create many ripples when it was first unveiled to the public in France. Despite being displayed in many Cubist exhibitions, it was discounted by contemporary Cubists* of Europe. The artist had hoped to debut the painting in the Salon des Indépendants’s spring exhibition of Cubist works, but it was rejected by the hanging committee, which included Duchamp’s brothers^.
In essence, the painting remains true to Cubism. Its abandonment of any resemblance to nature, its monochromatic palette of warm browns with tinges of green and blue—these are typical traits of Cubist paintings. However, Duchamp’s usage of 20 different static positions to create that odd sense of motion was considered too futuristic to be regarded as a true Cubist work. Many art historians draw a direct relation between this painting and Eadweard Muybridge’s timelapse photography series Woman Walking Downstairs.
When the painting was displayed in the United States as part of the International Exhibition of Modern Art (known today as The Armory Show), it raised a ruckus. The Exhibition was intended to open the American audience to European modern art and push the boundaries of modernism in America, where art still majorly reflected the realistic and naturalistic influences of the 19th century.
Duchamp’s painting was a far cry from what passed as modern art in America at the time. An example is Robert Henri’s Salome Dancer (1909), which shows an actress striding across the stage rather brazenly, tilting her head back and looking directly at the viewer.
The female nude in art was very classical. It was refined, it was still, it was perfect. In comparison, Duchamp’s nude was incomprehensible. The American public was jarred, and the painting received scathing reviews from critics. The New York Times re-named it “Explosion in a Shingle Factory”. A cartoonist famously parodied it with “The Rude Descending the Staircase (Rush Hour at the Subway).” American Art News even made a contest out of “the conundrum of the season,” promising a $10 prize to whoever could find the nude in Duchamp’s unusual work**.
Duchamp was so thrilled by this uproar that it inspired him to move to New York. And though his painting became widely (in)famous, few were concerned with the artist behind it, so he didn't get a lot of name recognition. A few years later, after he embraced Dadaism, he became a veritable frontrunner of modern art.
*Famous Cubist artists include Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
^Duchamp’s brothers had requested him to change the painting’s name. The Salon committee agreed with them, stating ‘a nude doesn’t descend. A nude reclines.’ Duchamp refused to change the name, and a rift was ultimately created between him and his brothers.
Fountain (1917)
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (reproduction), 1917/1964, glazed ceramic with black paint (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) (photo: Dr Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The above image is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, a factory-produced urinal he submitted as a sculpture after painting on the pseudonym R. Mutt. Fountain was submitted to the Society of Independent Artists, one of the first venues for experimental art in the United States (of which Duchamp was a founding member). Duchamp called this new form of art the ‘readymade’: a mass-produced object to which new and unique meaning is induced, transformed into a piece of art by careful selection and naming. It embraces the very thing art is supposed to reject: the cold logic and mechanism of industrial production.
This piece has generated controversy since the second Duchamp submitted it to the Society (it was rejected, although it is now in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts). People have hotly debated whether it can be classified as a “proper” work of art. But controversy aside, Fountain achieved what Duchamp intended to achieve: to simply question—not even to broaden, but just to question—what, exactly, qualifies to be art. What qualities does a work of art need to have? Does it need to reflect craftsmanship? Does it need to be aesthetically enjoyable? Duchamp, in this piece, separates the aesthetical component, its enjoyability, and the skill displayed by the artist and challenges them each. And isn’t that, in a way, what artists always do? They take ordinary, non-decrepit materials and transform them into something that represents more than its literal components. In Duchamp’s case, he has taken a standard urinal and transformed it (albeit very little) into something more than just a urinal.
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915-23)*
Duchamp embarked on making this sculpture for two reasons: he wanted a break from painting, and he wanted to disprove the notion that artists are nothing more than skilled copyists of nature (there is a popular French saying: “stupid as a painter”).
Although this is a two-dimensional work, consisting of two slabs of glass stacked vertically, it is most decisively not a painting. It’s a sculpture (see-through, for the most part) that can be looked at from the front, back and sides. Marcel Duchamp, the artist, was careful to avoid any traditional painting techniques in building this sculpture. Instead, he used Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust gathered over years as it sat uncovered in his studio. After eight years, Duchamp finally stopped working on it, not because it was complete, but because he felt it should remain “definitively unfinished”. When the piece was en route to collector Katherine Drier’s house, it was damaged. Duchamp was ecstatic upon learning this. He said the cracks that appeared across the glass completed in a way that he never could have.
The Large Glass is strange, to say the least. It looks more like a (contorted) diagram for a machine than a work of “art”. In the top panel, the Bride, looking like a tree or an insect of some kind, strips for the Bachelors in the bottom panel (human-like malic moulds).
Marcel Duchamp, annotated detail, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23, oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, dust, two glass panels, 277.5 × 177.8 × 8.6 cm © Succession Marcel Duchamp (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
According to Duchamp, the bachelors fill up with an “illuminating gas” as they get excited by the Bride. They want to reach her but struggle to do so, as they are in another realm (another panel). The “illuminating gas” creates an “imaginary waterfall” that falls on and turns the water wheel (mill), which in turn makes the glider move back and forth. The glider moves the scissors, and the scissors churn the chocolate grinder. During all this motion, the gas from the bachelors fills up the sieves. The liquid is propelled through a magnifying glass (the oculist witnesses) and is shot up into the Bride’s realm. If the bachelors manage to shoot the liquid into one of the draft pistons or nets, they can express their physical love to the Bride. But the nine shots—which Duchamp created by firing matches through a toy canon)—show that none of them has managed to come close.
This (almost unnecessarily) intricate representation of lust and sexual frustration also displays a lot of Duchamp’s scientific curiosity. He imaged the Bride’s realm as a mysterious fourth dimension, while the bachelors occupy common three-dimensional space. The manner in which the Bride displays her eroticism to the bachelors is likened to vibratory waves in the electromagnetic field mobilized in wireless telegraphy. The Bride’s form itself looks like the telegraphic antenna on top of the Eiffel Tower. She can send and receive unseen messages, while the bachelors are not so advanced.
The beauty of Duchamp’s Large Glass is in its absurdity (much like a lot of Dadaist works). It isn’t an emotional overture; it doesn’t tell a lesson; it doesn’t flaunt skill or accuracy to the real world. Duchamp brings together art, science, and sex and makes it oddly hilarious.
*The Green Box is a carefully reproduced collection of handwritten notes by Marcel Duchamp about his bewildering The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.
Dr Lara Kuykendall, “Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass),” in Smarthistory, March 6, 2016, accessed July 17, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/duchamp-largeglass/.
