Marcel Duchamp

A detailed Summary of Marcel Duchamp

Painter. Born July 28, 1887 in Blainville, France, the son of a notary of Rouen. One of Marcel's brothers, Gaston, known as Jacques Villon, was a painter; another brother, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, was a sculptor. Duchamp moved to Paris at the age of 17 and began to paint. By 1911 he was responding in his painting to cubism, but his subjects were unusually personal and psychologically complex compared to the typical cubist ones.

In his famous Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) Duchamp used a limited cubist palette and faceting of forms but completely contradicted the cubist esthetic in his choice of an ironic title and stress on actual movement. When this painting was exhibited at the Armory Show in New York City in 1913, it created an uproar and was the focal point for derogatory criticism of the show (one critic described the work as "an explosion in a shingle factory").

In 1912-1913 a radical change took place in both Duchamp's life and art. Together with the writer Guillaume Apollinaire and the painter Francis Picabia, he began working out a highly original and mocking concept of art. Duchamp sought out methods of making art in which the artist's hand would not be stressed (using chance an

This phenomenon is comparable to a transference from the artist to the spectator in the form of an esthetic osmosis taking place through the inert matter, such as pigment, piano or marble.

.One of Marcel's brothers, Gaston, known as Jacques Villon, was a painter other brother in sculpting

For many years Duchamp had an underground reputation, with few exhibitions of his works. The leader of the surrealists, Andre Breton, and others made him into a legendary hero whose life and character were as important as his actual artistic productions. Duchamp lived an apparently contented private life, with a happy second marriage in 1954, and he maintained amicable if slightly ironic contacts with many contemporary artists. Only in the 1960s did he become internationally famous on a public level, when many American artists sought him out in New York and studied his works and ideas, because for them he was a far more important figure, with more contemporary relevance, than Pablo Picasso.

. Duchamp moved to Paris at the age of 17 and began to paint

d mechanical methods of drawing and painting). Increasingly language and the nonvisual side of art became important to him. As he later said: "I am interested in ideas--not merely the visual products. I want to put painting once again to the service of the mind."

Marcel Duchamp was born on July 28, 1887 in Blainville, France. He was born into a very artistic family with one brother a painter and the other in sculpting.

In other works, the personal 'art coefficient' is like a arithmetical relation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed.

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Approximate Word count = 1881
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts