Marcel Duchamp was one of the single
most important artists and thinkers of
the 20th century his works completely
revolutionized the trajectory of modern
art and continues to influence
generations of artists and thinkers
today by having asked one of the most
fundamental questions of all what is art
Duchamp was born in Blaineville
Normandy France in 1887 to a
middle-class family that would grow to
include seven children his two older
brothers seen here with Duchamp were
both contemporary artists and studied at
the Parisian Academy Julien Duchamp
followed his brothers paths and began
his early training at the academy as a
painter between 1904 and 1905 Duchamp's
early works were heavily influenced by
the works of fauvists-- like Matisse as
exemplified by le Bohneur de Vivre seen here
later however after Picasso and other
artists popularized the style of cubism
as seen here in Broca's bottles and
fishes Duchamp in 1911 began to adopt
and reinvent this mode of working
combining elements of futurism with
cubism creating some of his most well
known paintings one of Duchamp's
earliest major successes and most
well-known works was his 1912 nude
descending a staircase the work achieved
fame and his native France but gained
arguably even more critical acclaim in
the u.s. after it appeared in the
legendary 1913 New York Armory Show
after 1913 Duchamp withdrew from the
production of art and instead worked as
a librarian where he as he often did
went through a period of intense
academic interest to pursue theoretical
endeavors like physics the sciences and
philosophy after Duchamp returned to the
art world he all but gave up painting
for the rest of his career instead
focusing on the new type of work that
would alter the course of art history
the ready-made as seen here in one of
his earliest ready-mades in advance of a
broken arm ready-mades were everyday
found objects that Duchamp transformed
in artistic creations not by
manipulating the objects themselves but
by altering the conception of them it is
this idea which says Duchamp up for many
as the father of conceptual art in 1915
Duchamp left France and emigrated to the
US where he would spend the majority of
his life where he was afforded the
opportunity to continue his art
experiments his most famous or infamous
rather ready-made was his 1917 fountain
which was a wall urinal laid on its back
and signed by Duchamp as R Mutt
Duchamp submitted the work anonymously
to the New York Society of independent
artists where it was rejected for
showing because according to the board
it was not art
despite their claim that they would show
anything by any artist who paid the
entry fee this led to a great debate
among artists and critics as to whether
it was actually hard or not proponents
of the work and Duchamp himself argued
that merely by choosing the object and
submitting it for display the core
conception of the object was
fundamentally changed from an objective of
function to something completely
purposeless outside of existing as in
art object by 1920 Duchamp begin to
retire again from the world of art but
not before he finished this work the
bride stripped bare by her bachelors
even it was a large mixed-media work
that took him 10 years to complete the
work served as a retrospective of many
of his earlier works and was the last
major work he created before his
retirement duchamp's groundbreaking
approach to art left an indelible mark
on countless artists that would come
after him including Robert Rauschenberg
Roy Lichtenstein Andy Warhol and the
political activist and artist Ai Weiwei
just to name a few
duchamp's life and career was a
testament to inquisition and critical
thought his legacy lives on not only in
textbooks but in almost every artist who
his lived and worked since the 1950s his
approach to art challenged every theory
and rule once applied to the field and
simply by asking one question he was
able to undermine hundreds of years of
convention
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