Nude Descending A Staircase

Nude Descending A Staircase was first rejected in 1912 at the twenty-eighth exhibition of the Société des Artistes

Indépendants in Paris.

Duchamp (1887-1968) had initially submitted the painting to be presented alongside the Cubists, but they thought it closer to

Futurism. They asked him to either withdraw the painting, paint over areas of it, or rename it.

The committee had refused the painting on the grounds that it ‘had too much of a literary title’ and argued that it was a ridiculous notion to have a nude descending a staircase, perceiving it to have no relationship to reality.

They believed that a nude should be ‘respected’ and only painted under the prevailing conventions: depicted ‘realistically’, as a passive reclining virgin, or an over-arching harlot.

Duchamp was overcome by an intellectual crisis that progressively forced him to abandon the very practice that had validated him.

It was reported that ‘drawing and painting appeared to him as a kind of trickery that tended towards the senseless glorification of the hand and of nothing else.’

The 1913 Armory Show popularised modern art in New

York’ and it would be here that Duchamp’s painting would be publicly rejected for the second time.

Unused to the likes of Marcel Duchamp and his iconoclastic way of seeing the world anew, American art audiences found the Nude Descending A Staircase repugnant.

It was reviled venomously by Julian Street, art critic for the

New York Times, who likened it to an ‘explosion in a shingle factory.’

Duchamp was twenty-five when he painted Nude Descending A Staircase, abstractly depicting a figure that appeared mechanical, having all the stages of movement; past, present, and future exist within one painting, at the same time.

Duchamp was interested in stroboscopic motion photography and was particularly influenced by Marey’s Man Walking, 1890 and Muybridge’s Woman Walking Downstairs, 1887, both of whom he drew upon in his depiction of a successive and overlapping figure.

A labyrinth of staircases ascend from the top right hand of the painting, at acute angles layered on top of each other to produce rhythm and shape-shifting movement.

In 1917 Duchamp submitted a porcelain urinal for the exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants; it was signed under the pseudonym ‘R. Mutt’ and titled Fountain.

The rules of the exhibition stated that ‘all works would be accepted from artists who paid the fee’ but Fountain was refused.

At the time Duchamp was a board member of the Society and there was heated debate about whether Fountain was a piece of art or not.

Fountain was displayed at the exhibition but hidden out of sight during the show, partly behind a curtain.

Controversy and debate about Fountain continued to be stirred up by the New York Dadaists, to whom Duchamp was a messiah.

In their small magazine The Blind Man they wrote:

‘Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance.

‘He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.’

Duchamp is one of those rare individuals whose influence directly altered the course of art history, dividing it into a before and an after.

Even today Duchamp’s ‘readymade objects’ do not seem inclined to age or become irrelevant.

They still appear as audacious as the day he created them.

Apart from Duchamp’s love of chess there is little written about the intimate details of his life, other than his sexual partners.

At the end of spring of 1927 Duchamp met Lydie Fischer

Sarazin-Levassor and by June they were married. Francis

Picabia acted as their witness and Man Ray filmed the ceremony.

According to Lydie’s memoirs of her marriage to Duchamp, playing ‘chess was just as indispensable to Marcel as his daily meals.’

His obsession with the game grew, and he eventually became a chess grandmaster, and an Olympic chess player for the French team.

Lydie one day was so overcome with jealousy that she glued his chess pieces to the board. In January 1928 they divorced.

A close friend of the artist used to keep a diary, in which

Duchamp’s sexual exploits were meticulously listed, including

Duchamp’s adventure with three young ladies, and his habitual desire for ‘very vulgar women’.

In 1946 Duchamp began a love affair with Maria Martins, the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to the United States, which would last for several years.

During this period, Duchamp gave her a token of his affection: a small collage that consisted of an abstract figure made of sperm spread across a dark velvet surface.

A biographer noted that, ‘Duchamp was a big smoker of cigars yet never took any drugs, steering clear of the Parisian opium dens at the turn of the 20th century. Late in his life he was once slipped LSD without his knowledge. According to his wife, it was the only time she had to remove his shoes before he went to bed.’

During an interview in 1933 Duchamp declared that, ‘the modern artist must hate Picasso in order to make something new.’

However, with Duchamp’s rising fame and success, Picasso was infuriated and perplexed by him.

When Picasso learned of Duchamp’s death, he said, after a long pause, ‘He was wrong!’ while proclaiming of contemporary artists, ‘They loot Duchamp’s store and change the wrapping.’

Duchamp was ever self-effacing and once drily commented, ‘I would have wanted to work, but deep down I’m enormously lazy. I like living, breathing, better than working. ‘I don’t think that the work I’ve done can have any social importance whatsoever in the future.’