Marcel Duchamp, "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2"

    Our image this week comes a day late, but it is a major painting in the history of art and culture.  The artist is Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968).  

   Duchamp had an interesting life.  He was one of four successful artists coming out of a large family, and certainly the most famous, and influential of the four.  He began as a painter but eventually set aside painting to explore many more artistic and creative ideas.  He had the good fortune to be both highly creative and intelligent.  He and others explored what they called the 4th dimension which (briefly) is a concept simultaneously bringing together multiple views, as observed from differing points of view, all at the same time. Confusing?  I agree.

But it got the creative world thinking and Art was never quite the same.

    "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" is a work from 1912.  It was a monumentally important work because it combined Picasso and Braque's fragmented cubism with the ideas of a group called the Futurists who wanted to show movement in painting.  

   The history of this painting is as interesting as the subject.  It was shown in France before it left for the United States to be exhibited in the famous 1913 Amory Show.  The Amory show began in New York City then traveled to Chicago and finally Boston.  It was a large exhibit featuring American and European artists, however it was the French works that created a huge controversy, and our painting this week was the absolute center of the mayhem.  One art critic called it "an explosion in a shingle factory".  But, scandal or not, many of the French works were sold, and by American buyers, including this one!  And, that is one reason many of these works are in American collections and museums today. 

    In terms of composition, there isn't a great deal to examine as the sole figure is pretty straight forward, being composed as it descends downward.   The background contains similar forms of shapes as the figure, but in dark tones so as not to confuse with the lighted figure.  This is a monochromatic color palette of browns and ecru/beige.  What is fun to consider is:  is the figure male or female, and why no clothing, why nude?  And, how fast is this person moving as it descends?  Certainly a generic human form simplifies so viewers are not lost in unimportant details.  

   Marcel Duchamp created "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" in 1912.   It measures 58 inches high, by 35 inches wide.  It is an oil on canvas, now in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.  

   Make Art a part of your life, it's a beautiful thing to do.