the artist provacateur
Movements: DADA, Surrealism
Training: from a family of artists (brother is sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon)
Academie Julian (studied Post-Impressionism)
Influences: Cubism and Futurism
Early Career: earliest works are post-impressionist; by 1914 he’s creating ready-mades.
Ready-mades: mundane objects of everyday life; objets trouvé (found objects); little or no alteration. Duchamp’s ready-mades included: snow shovel, bottle rack, urinal, chimney ventilator, comb, typewriter cover, coat rack, ampoule of air
Key Works:
Nude Descending a Staircase,2, 1912.
Cubist/Futurist painting, rejected fr Cubist exhibit 1912, exhibited at Armory 13
Bicycle Wheel, 1913.
In Advance of a Broken Arm, 1915. (snow shovel)
*Watch 10 min. smarthistory video: it will explain Duchamp/Dada in a very straightforward way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRv20I13vqM
Key Works:
Nude Descending a Staircase,2, 1912.
Cubist/Futurist painting, rejected fr Cubist exhibit 1912, exhibited at Armory 13
Bicycle Wheel, 1913.
In Advance of a Broken Arm, 1915. (snow shovel)
*Watch 10 min. smarthistory video: it will explain Duchamp/Dada in a very straightforward way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRv20I13vqM
Fountain, 1917.
L.H.O.O.Q., 1919. (pun: “Elle a chaud au cue” = she has a hot ass)
Bride Stripped Bar of her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23. (considered his masterpiece, but so complicated! don’t worry about analiyzing, just be aware of it - they probably won’t ask about that)
L.H.O.O.Q., 1919. (pun: “Elle a chaud au cue” = she has a hot ass)
Bride Stripped Bar of her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23. (considered his masterpiece, but so complicated! don’t worry about analiyzing, just be aware of it - they probably won’t ask about that)
Late Career: NYC ceased producing art and devoted himself to playing chess, NY Dada, and the Arensberg “salon”. American citizen 1955.
Pseudonym: Rrose Selavy (Eros, c’est la vie)
Patrons: Louis & Walter Arensberg supported his lifestyle
Legacy: paved the way for Pop Art (Warhol), Minimalism (Robert Morris),
Conceptualism (Sol Lewitt), & more importantly changed the way we look at art
Pseudonym: Rrose Selavy (Eros, c’est la vie)
Patrons: Louis & Walter Arensberg supported his lifestyle
Legacy: paved the way for Pop Art (Warhol), Minimalism (Robert Morris),
Conceptualism (Sol Lewitt), & more importantly changed the way we look at art
Nude Descending a Staircase, 2, 1912.:
- Salon des Independents (Paris Cubists) rejected it from the 1912 show. It enjoyed a “success du scandale” at the Armory Show.
- Note the relationship to Edward Muybridge’s photo-sequences anticipating motion pictures. It marks the end of Duchamp’s painting career.
Fountain, signed R. Mutt, original 1917.
Duchamp’s Readymades pdf
Muybridge and Duchamp: images of nude descending staircase w/multiple exposure photography
- Society of Independent Artists (American assoc of artists founded in 1916 in NYC to host un-vetted exhibitions of modern art, Duchamp was on the board). The urinal he submitted under a pseudonym (R. Mutt) was nonetheless rejected from the show. Publicity stunt purportedly unmasked the inherently biased art establishment.
- Unlikely that the other members of the unofficial jury didn’t recognized the work as Duchamp - presumably they were complicit in the act. Nonetheless, the rejection, his resignation, published image (by Stieglitz) and commentary/diatribe by Duchamp on R. Mutt’s behalf in the Blind Man generated a dialogue regarding the nature of art that still resonates today.
- The intention was to shift the focus of art from physical craft to intellectual interpretation.
- Poll of Turner Prize voters found that Urinal was considered the most influential work of modern art
Duchamp’s Readymades pdf
Muybridge and Duchamp: images of nude descending staircase w/multiple exposure photography
DADA: 1915-1923
DADA: anti-war art movement of the european avant-garde with affinities with radical left; encompassing visual and performing arts and literature; expressing anti-war politics through rejection of the prevailing standards in art. Begun in Zurich (many ex-pat artists in neutral Switzerland at the time), became an International movement.
Key Figures: Marcel Duchamp
also: Man Ray and others, (see below)
Name: means nothing - nonsense (be aware that it’s often said to mean “hobby horse” which is oddly enough, nonsense)
Characteristics:
Zurich: Founded in Zurich, 1916 (Cabaret Voltaire) artists: Hans Arp, Hugo Ball
Berlin: George Grosz, Helmut Herzfeld(aka John Heartfield), Otto Dix, Raoul Hausman, Hannah Hoch
Hanover: Kurt Schwitters (“Merz” (for Kommerz) similar to cubist collage
Cologne: Max Ernst
America: Marcel Duchamp, Picabia, Man Ray
Key Works:
Duchamp’s Ready-mades.
Hugo Ball, Performing at Cabaret Voltaire (1916).
Arp, Collage with Squares Arranged by Laws of Chance, 1916.
Picabia, Love Parade, 1917.
Hoch, Cut with a Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919.
Schwitters, Merzpicture 46A. The Skittle Picture, 1921.
Man Ray, The Gift, 1921.
Man Ray, Indestructible Object (or Object to Be Destroyed), 1923.
Man Ray, Violin of Ingres, 1924.
Breton, Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse) with Andre Breton, Max Morise, Jeanette Tanguy, Pierre Naville, Benjamin Peret, Yves Tanguy and Jacques Prevert, 1928.
dadaists = monteurs (mechanics): collage, photomontage, assemblages & ready-mades
collage:
Photomontage:
assemblage:
automaton: a moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being.
Influenced: Surrealism, Fluxus, Nouveau Realisme, and Pop Art [Duchamp’s Snow Shovel juxtaposed with Jim Dine’s A Black Shovel, number 2 - Naumann] ; Dada is the starting point for performance art & prelude to postmodernism
The Artstory synopsis of Dada Movement
Key Figures: Marcel Duchamp
also: Man Ray and others, (see below)
Name: means nothing - nonsense (be aware that it’s often said to mean “hobby horse” which is oddly enough, nonsense)
Characteristics:
- “anti-art”; nonsense, anti-bourgeois. antirational, anarchic, humorous;
- response to the horrors of WWI
- manifest in performances, festivals, readings, erotic art,
- found objects (ready-mades) and photomontage.
- Dada sought a fresh start (“tabula rasa”) for culture - forget the past and re-envision society.
- Embraced chaos and irrationality because “reason” and “logic” of bourgeois capitalist society had led to the senseless war.
- Represented the opposite of everything art & traditional aesthetics stood for.
Zurich: Founded in Zurich, 1916 (Cabaret Voltaire) artists: Hans Arp, Hugo Ball
Berlin: George Grosz, Helmut Herzfeld(aka John Heartfield), Otto Dix, Raoul Hausman, Hannah Hoch
Hanover: Kurt Schwitters (“Merz” (for Kommerz) similar to cubist collage
Cologne: Max Ernst
America: Marcel Duchamp, Picabia, Man Ray
Key Works:
Duchamp’s Ready-mades.
Hugo Ball, Performing at Cabaret Voltaire (1916).
Arp, Collage with Squares Arranged by Laws of Chance, 1916.
Picabia, Love Parade, 1917.
Hoch, Cut with a Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919.
Schwitters, Merzpicture 46A. The Skittle Picture, 1921.
Man Ray, The Gift, 1921.
Man Ray, Indestructible Object (or Object to Be Destroyed), 1923.
Man Ray, Violin of Ingres, 1924.
Breton, Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse) with Andre Breton, Max Morise, Jeanette Tanguy, Pierre Naville, Benjamin Peret, Yves Tanguy and Jacques Prevert, 1928.
dadaists = monteurs (mechanics): collage, photomontage, assemblages & ready-mades
collage:
Photomontage:
assemblage:
automaton: a moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being.
Influenced: Surrealism, Fluxus, Nouveau Realisme, and Pop Art [Duchamp’s Snow Shovel juxtaposed with Jim Dine’s A Black Shovel, number 2 - Naumann] ; Dada is the starting point for performance art & prelude to postmodernism
The Artstory synopsis of Dada Movement
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