Marcel Duchamp

Artist Biography

Marcel Duchamp, born in Blainville, France, became a painter and sculptor who was part of the early 20th-century Dada movement that blurred the boundaries between these two aspects of fine art. In league with Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Hans Arp, Man Ray, and Kurt Schwitters, Duchamp held to the Dada credo that "everything the artist spits out is art'. Duchamp made his first big impression in the American art scene with his entry of "Nude Descending the Staircase' at the 1913 Armory Show in New York. This event was the first organized exhibition in the United States that included avant-garde art, prints and posters from Europe, and the biggest French names were Picasso and Braque. However, Duchamp, and the Dada artists, received the most advance publicity of the French entries, because the press built it up "as a family of avant-garde artists; pictures of them in their garden at Puteaux were the only photographs of contemporary European artist distributed by the Association'.

In 1915, Duchamp came to New York for his first extended stay, and of course, his reputation as being among the avant-garde was already established from the Armory Show two years earlier. He was readily accepted into the social and intellectual circle of Walter and Louise Arensberg, wealthy collectors of modernist art. Two years later, the Arensbergs with Duchamp spearheaded a group called the Society of Independent Artists, whose goal was to hold exhibitions that allowed anyone to exhibit anything if they paid the six-dollar entry fee. But according to Beatrice Wood, Duchamp again became the subject of controversy when two days before the exhibition began, "there was a glistening white object in the storeroom getting readied to be put on the floor.” It was a urinal on its side and was signed R. Mutt. Unknown to his fellow organizers, Duchamp was the anonymous entrant.

George Bellows asserted that the urinal was a joke and should not be allowed, but Walter Arensberg said that the whole purpose of the exhibition was freedom of expression. Bellows retorted: "You mean to say, if a man sent in horse manure glued to a canvas that we would have to accept it.” Apparently Bellows carried the argument, because the urinal was rejected, and Duchamp resigned from the Society of Artists. He also attempted in 1917 to publish journals on Dada art, but they had minimal reception. After 1918, Duchamp painted very few art, prints and posters and devoted himself to making collages, constructions, and optical machines. In 1920, he and Katherine Dreier founded the Societe Anonyme, an organization to exhibit leading-edge artwork and to form a modern art collection. For much of his life, Duchamp lived back and forth between New York and Paris and also spent time in California. In the 1950s, he became an American citizen.

Marcel Duchamp Art, Prints and Posters Collection