1

Marcel Duchamp 1

MARCEL DUCHAMP *
(1887-1968)
1
MARCEL DUCHAMP (b. Henri-Robert-Marcel, Blainville, Seine-Maritime, Normandy, July 28,
1887; d. Neuilly-sur-Seine, October 2, 1968). French painter and sculptor.

1. INTRODUCTION

More than any other artist of the 20th century, the art and ideas of Marcel Duchamp have 1.1 Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1917
served to exemplify the range of possibilities inherent in a more conceptually oriented approach Photograph by Edward Steichen
Philadelphia Museum of Art
to the art-making process. Not only is his work of historical importance—from his early
experiments with Cubism to his association with the Dada and Surrealist movements—but
his conception of the readymade has decisively affected our understanding of what constitutes
an object of art, a controversial topic that has definitively altered the course of 20th-century
aesthetic theory. Duchamp refused to accept the standards and practices of an established
art system, conventions that were considered essential to attain fame and financial success: he
refused to repeat himself, to develop a recognizable style and to show his work regularly. It is
the more theoretical aspects implicit to both his art and life that have had the most profound
impact on artists later in the century, allowing us to identify Duchamp as one of the most
influential artists of the modern era.

2. LIFE AND WORK

(i) Early Artistic Experiments

Marcel Duchamp was born into a family of artists. His maternal grandfather, Emile-Frédéric 1.2 Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon,
Nicolle (1830-1894), was a painter and engraver of landscapes, who specialized in local village Raymond Duchamp-Villon in
Puteaux, ca. 1912
scenes. His older brothers, the painter and printmaker Jacques Villon (1875-1963) and the Photographer unknown
sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), began their careers as illustrators, but went Philadelphia Museum of Art
on to make notable contributions to Cubism, while his younger sister Suzanne Duchamp
(1889-1963) became a painter and, with her husband Jean
Crotti (1878-1958), co-founded Tabu, an offshoot of Dada.
At the age of fifteen, Duchamp tried his hand at
painting, beginning a series of landscapes executed in an
Impressionist style, inspired, as he later acknowledged, by
reproductions he had seen of paintings by Monet. After
completing his schooling in Rouen, he joined his older
brothers in Paris, with the idea of pursuing his career as an
artist. From October 1904 through July 1905, Duchamp
was enrolled in painting classes at the Académie Julian but,
by his own admission, preferred playing billiards. In these
years he kept a small sketchbook, filling it with quickly
drawn images of his brothers and sisters, as well as with

* “Marcel Duchamp,” The Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1997), vol. 9, pp. 354-60.
2 THE RECURRENT, HAUNTING GHOST
1.3 Marcel Duchamp, Munich, 1912
Photograph by H. Hoffmann
Philadelphia Museum of Art
1.4 Marcel Duchamp, New York,
1915
Photograph by Pach Brothers
Studio (Vanity Fair, September
1915)
casual renderings of people he had seen on the streets of Paris: a policeman, knife-grinder,
gasman, vegetable vendor, peasant, funeral coachman, etc. (a repertoire of images that would be
recalled in his later work). Through contacts provided by his brothers, Duchamp supplemented
his income by producing cartoons for publication in a number of Parisian journals, such as Le
Rire and Le Courrier Français; some of these drawings were exhibited at the first Salon des
Artistes Humoristes in 1907. His paintings were exhibited publicly for the first time in 1909,
at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne, as well as in the first exhibition of the
Société Normande de Peinture Moderne in Rouen.
In 1910, Duchamp’s paintings began to emulate the structured compositions and modulated
brushstrokes of Cézanne, although in most instances, color is added with the intensity of latent
Fauvism. These qualities are particularly evident in his Portrait of the Artist’s Father (18.1) and
The Chess Game (20.3); the latter is a relatively large composition depicting his brothers and
their wives relaxing in the garden of their home and studio in Puteaux, a suburb of Paris. It
was there that Duchamp joined his brothers on Sunday afternoon gatherings, where he was
to encounter a host of artists and writers associated with the avant-garde, notably Guillaume
Apollinaire, Henri-Martin Barzun, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Roger de la Fresnaye,
František Kupka, Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. Through
his contact with the painters and sculptors in this group, Duchamp’s own work began to
incorporate the indeterminate spatial structure and planar fragmentation common to most
Cubist painting.
It was Cubism, as well as his knowledge of the repetitive images in chronophotography
(particularly those of the French photographer Etienne-Jules Marey and the American Edweard
Muybridge), that most directly affected Duchamp’s conception of his most famous painting,
Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (2.1), a picture painted in January 1912 but, as the title
indicates, based on a preliminary study dating from the previous year. Although this work has
often been described as a stylistic fusion of Cubism and Futurism (sometimes referred to as
“Cubo-Futurist”), Duchamp later maintained that when it was painted, he had not yet seen any
examples of Futurist painting firsthand (the first major Futurist exhibition opened in Paris at
the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in February 1912).
A few months after it was painted, Duchamp submitted his Nude
Descending to the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, but the hanging
committee—which was dominated by Cubists, including his brothers
and a number of friends—objected to the painting, particularly to its title
(inscribed directly on the canvas), which they thought too provocative, not
in keeping with the more traditional subjects they determined appropriate
for serious Cubist painting. Duchamp withdrew his submission, an event
that became the turning point in his artistic career. Before the end of the
year, however, the painting was given two public showings: first in May at an
exhibition of Cubism at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, and in October
at the Salon de la Section d’Or, Galerie de la Boétie in Paris. But it was
only when this painting was shown in New York at the Armory Show in
February 1913, where it became the cause célèbre of the exhibition, that
Duchamp’s name and reputation became forever linked to the notoriety
of this picture.
(ii) Transition
During the spring of 1912, Duchamp continued to experiment with
Cubist forms in motion in a brilliant series of drawings and paintings that
conflated human forms with mechanical imagery. Rather than focus on
the movement of a single figure—as in the Nude Descending—these works
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Marcel Duchamp 3

presented subjects of opposing sexual identity: a king and queen (inspired by

the pieces and movement of a chess game); a virgin and bride (as well as the
transition from one to the other); and, finally, a bride in the company of her
bachelors. These themes were further explored and more precisely defined
during the course of an intensely productive two-month sojourn to Munich
in the summer of 1912, at which time Duchamp produced a drawing that
depicted a bride who appears to be spun around and stripped of her clothing
by two mechanical beings that surround her. He gave this drawing the title
The Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris),
identifying a thematic preoccupation to which he returned repeatedly over the
next ten years.
Through the painter Francis Picabia, Duchamp learned about the writings
of Max Stirner (1806-1856), a German philosopher who was a contemporary
of the socialist writers Marx and Engels, but who, in opposition to their thinking,
believed that the right of an individual was to be held supreme, considered
above and beyond the needs of society.1 As Duchamp later revealed, it was
Stirner’s writings that motivated the conception of his 3 Standard Stoppages,
1913-14 (26.1), a measuring device to be used exclusively in his own work,
designed to challenge the authority of the standard meter (25.7). This work
consists of three separate measuring devices—“rulers” whose lengths and
curving profiles were determined in accordance with the “laws of chance,” by
allowing a meter-long length of string to drop freely from the height of one meter. Chance 1.5 Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1920
operations were also utilized to determine the sequence of notes on a musical scale in a Photograph by Man Ray
The J. Paul Getty Museum,
number of musical scores that Duchamp composed in 1913, such as Musical Erratum (Private Los Angeles
Collection, New York).
In 1913, Duchamp abandoned the traditional tools and techniques of painting, a decision
prompted by his desire to elevate art and the art-making process to a system that went
beyond the purely visual, or “retinal” as he later called it. His adoption of an overtly intellectual
approach was in conscious opposition to the French expression “d’être bête comme un peintre”
[to be stupid like a painter], which presumed that painting was an essentially mindless activity.
Concerns such as these led Duchamp to investigate complex theories of higher geometry and
to adopt the mechanical drafting techniques generally reserved for more scientific disciplines,
such as physics and engineering. It was probably Duchamp’s intellectual preoccupations that
led him in 1913 to ask himself the momentous question: “Can one make works which are not
works of ‘art’?” (4.10)—a question he answered before the end of the year with his creation
of the Bicycle Wheel (lost or destroyed; known through photographs and subsequent replicas:
6.1), a relatively simple ensemble consisting of nothing more than the inverted fork and wheel
of a bicycle mounted onto the seat of an ordinary household stool.2 Although he did not
identify it as such when it was made, this was the first readymade, traditionally defined as
any commonplace, prefabricated object, which, with or without alteration, is isolated from its
functional context and elevated to the status of art by the mere act of an artist’s selection.

(iii) The Large Glass

Duchamp’s aesthetic and intellectual preoccupations of this period—mechanomorphic

imagery, themes of sexual opposition, chance operations, higher dimensional geometry, playful
1.6 Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1920
physics, objects already made—would, in varying ways, all find their application in the conception Photograph by Man Ray
and design of the most complex and intricate work of his creation, The Bride Stripped Bare by Philadelphia Museum of Art
Her Bachelors, Even, a large construction on two glass panels, better known by its abbreviated
title, the Large Glass (3.1). Most of the details for this masterwork were determined in a
series of sketches and preparatory studies completed in Paris in 1913-14, though its actual
4 THE RECURRENT, HAUNTING GHOST
1.7 Marcel Duchamp, 1923
Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz
National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.
1.8 Marcel Duchamp, 1926
Photograph by P. Fresson
Beinecke Library, Yale University,
New Haven
construction would not begin until after the artist moved to New
York in 1915. Duchamp later explained that the idea for the subject
of this work—which is divided into two separate sections: the Bride’s
domain confined to the upper panel of glass, the Bachelors below—
came from the games he had seen in country fairs, where, in order to
win a prize, contestants throw balls at the figure of a bride and her
surrounding retinue. Although this may have been the initial source
of inspiration for its subject, some subsequent scholars have chosen
to interpret the Large Glass as a more personal and self-referential
statement, pointing out, for example, that the French title contains an
amalgam of Duchamp’s first name: MAR[iée] (bride) / CEL[ibataires]
(bachelors).3
From the time when the Large Glass was conceived, and
throughout its physical construction, Duchamp kept a series of
elaborate and detailed notes referring to every facet of its iconography
and production. Initially, he wanted these notes to be compiled and
made available to viewers in the form of a catalogue attached to the
Large Glass itself, a sort of literary guide that was to be consulted in
order to follow the workings of its individual elements in a step-by-
step fashion. Although this catalogue never materialized, Duchamp
eventually published his notes in two limited facsimile editions: The
Green Box, 1934 (4.1) and A l’Infinitif, 1967 (4.8), both of which serve as important sources of
information on the preparation and theoretical framework of the Large Glass. With Duchamp’s
approval and assistance, these notes were subsequently ordered and translated by a number
of scholars. Finally, in 1983, a group of unpublished notes were gathered and arranged for
posthumous publication (4.14).
Even when Duchamp’s notes are consulted, however, we are never informed if the Bride
in the upper section of the glass (whose biomorphic forms are based on an earlier painting)
ever attains union with her sexually aroused Bachelors (represented by the nine mold-like
figures below). What is evident, however, is that the pseudo-machinery of this elaborate
construction is designed with one primary function in mind: to exercise the rites of courtship
and lovemaking. According to the notes, it is the Bride’s desire that stimulates the Bachelors
and which, in turn, causes the flow of “illuminating gas” into their bodies. In response they
seem to receive a constant source of energy from the flow of an “imaginary waterfall” that
descends upon the blades of a “glider” or “sleigh” attached to the base of the “Chocolate
Grinder” positioned in the immediate central foreground. The fact that none of the elements
in this fanciful construction appear to “function”—neither literally nor figuratively—and the
ultimate lack of fulfillment is just one of many intentionally frustrating and futile aspects of
its design. Indeed, in 1923, after seven years of work on this project, Duchamp signed the
Large Glass, leaving it in a state of permanent incompletion. After an exhibition in 1926, the
glass was accidentally shattered in transit, an occurrence Duchamp accepted as yet one more
aspect of its design determined by chance (later, in 1936, he would spend weeks painstakingly
reassembling the pieces).
(iv) New York
Because of a minor heart ailment, Duchamp was exempt from military conscription.
When World War I erupted in 1914, the American painter Walter Pach (1883-1958), who had
earlier been one of the organizers of the Armory Show, convinced Duchamp to take a trip to
the United States. On June 15, 1915, he arrived in New York, where, because of the scandalous
reception given to his Nude a few years earlier, he was immediately accorded celebrity status.
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Marcel Duchamp 5

Pach took Duchamp directly to the home of Walter and Louise Arensberg, wealthy collectors
of modern art who were to become the artist’s most enthusiastic and dedicated patrons. It
would not be long before this retiring young Frenchman became the center of attention at
evening gatherings held at the Arensbergs’ large and impressive studio on the upper west side
in Manhattan (18.4 and 18.5). These soirées constituted an unofficial salon—comparable to
the open house held by Gertrude Stein in Paris—where a host of avant-garde writers and
artists sought artistic camaraderie. It was here that Duchamp renewed his acquaintance with
a number of Frenchmen seeking refuge in America during the war years: Albert Gleizes, Juliette
Roche, Francis and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, Jean and Yvonne Crotti and Henri-Pierre Roché. It
was also through the Arensbergs that he was introduced to a host of notable American artists,
many of whom were to become lifelong friends: Katherine Dreier, Charles Demuth, Man Ray,
Charles Sheeler, Louise and Allen Norton, Beatrice Wood and others.
In the fall of 1916, it was the Arensbergs and their coterie who were the principal founders
of the Society of Independent Artists, a group devoted to staging annual, jury-free exhibitions in 1.9 Marcel Duchamp, Paris, 1926
New York. For their first exhibition, held at the Grand Central Palace in April 1917, Duchamp Photograph by Man Ray
submitted an ordinary urinal, to which he gave the simple but suggestive title Fountain, and Gilman Paper Company,
New York
inscribed: “R. Mutt / 1917” (7.1). A majority of the society’s directors declared that this piece
of plumbing was “by no definition, a work of art” and, consequently, they refused to exhibit
it. Duchamp and Arensberg immediately resigned from the organization, but the Fountain was
not quickly forgotten. Positioned on its back, it was recorded in a well-known photograph by
Alfred Stieglitz that appeared in the second and last issue of The Blind Man, accompanied by
editorials devoted to its defense written by Beatrice Wood and Louise Norton. Shortly after
the exhibition, the controversial sculpture mysteriously disappeared.
During his first two years in America, Duchamp was a passive though influential participant
in the New York avant-garde: he showed his work in a number of small group exhibitions, 1.10 Marcel Duchamp aboard the
continued the construction of the Large Glass, and issued an occasional readymade. In order Paris, 1927
Photographer unknown
to earn extra pocket money, he gave French lessons; his pupils included the Stettheimer Private Collection, Paris
sisters—Carrie, Ettie and Florine—wealthy socialites and artists in their own right who were
to become exceptionally close friends. Although Duchamp resisted
accepting specific commissions, at the request of Katherine Dreier he
completed Tu m’ (22.4), a long rectangular painting designed to fit into
a space above a bookshelf in her house. The title of this work probably
was derived from the French tu m’emmerdes, loosely translated as “you
bore me,” which is precisely what the activity of painting seems to have
done to Duchamp. This was his very last oil-on-canvas composition.
Because of America’s entry into the war, in August 1918 Duchamp
departed for Buenos Aires, where he was to remain for a little less than
a year. There he spent most of his time playing chess, but managed to
complete a study for the lower section of the Large Glass: a construction
on glass bearing the elaborate title To Be Looked at (From the Other
Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour (3.6). He
returned to Paris in June 1919, staying with Picabia for about six months.
There he came into contact with many of the members of the French
Dada group, which included André Breton, Tristan Tzara, Louis Aragon,
Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault and others. It was at this time that he
inscribed a postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa with the five letters
“L.H.O.O.Q.” (8.1), which, when read aloud in French, produces a ribald
commentary on Leonardo’s legendary masterpiece.
On his return to New York in January 1920, Duchamp resumed
contact with a number of his American friends, particularly Man Ray,
whose aesthetic sensibilities were so much in keeping with Duchamp’s
6 THE RECURRENT, HAUNTING GHOST
1.11 Marcel Duchamp, 1930
Photograph by Man Ray
Private Collection, New York
1.12 Marcel Duchamp, 1938
Photograph by Denise Bellon
Estate of Denise Bellon, Paris
1.13 Marcel Duchamp, New York,
ca. 1945
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten
Private Collection, New York
that, over the course of the ensuing year and a half, he was to become Duchamp’s closest
artistic confidant and collaborator. Together they tried to produce an anaglyphic film (which
was destroyed in the developing process), and, because of his photographic skills, Man Ray
was enlisted to document a number of Duchamp’s creations. In a photograph entitled Dust
Breeding, he recorded layers of dust that had accumulated on the surface of the Large Glass and
in 1920 he took several pictures of an optical construction on which Duchamp was working at
the time (13.9 and 13.10). Man Ray also took the only known pictures of Duchamp dressed
in drag, posing as Rose Sélavy, his notorious female alter ego (10.4 and 19.16). Together with
Katherine Dreier, Duchamp and Man Ray were the founding members of the Société Anonyme:
Museum of Modern Art 1920, the first organization in America devoted exclusively to the
display and promotion of modern art. In 1921, Duchamp and Man Ray produced the single
issue of New York Dada (10.6), the only official public manifestation of the Dada movement to
take place in the United States.
(v) A Life of Art and Chess: Paris Between the Wars
In 1923, Duchamp returned to France, where, apart from three brief trips to America, he
remained for the next twenty years. Sojourns within Europe were made to attend various
chess tournaments, in which he usually participated as a member of the French team. In 1924,
he became chess champion of Haute-Normandie, and for the next ten years, his enthusiasm for
the game intensified as his professional play improved. In 1932, a special passion for endgame
situations resulted in the publication of Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled (20.17),
which he wrote in collaboration with the German chess master Vitaly Halberstadt. While the
book shall probably forever be judged an obscure contribution to the literature of chess, its
unique layout and design, which Duchamp painstakingly prepared, should qualify the publication
as a curious, if not significant, contribution to the history of graphic design.
During the early 1920s, Duchamp became well known in art circles for having abandoned
painting, and knowledge of his professional involvement with the game of chess caused many
to conclude that he had ceased artistic activities altogether. While it is true that he preferred
to assume a low profile in the art world, steadfastly declining offers to exhibit his work
publicly, he continued to develop ideas that had been explored in his earlier work. When the
occasion presented itself, for example, he would release an occasional pun, a phrase or two
incorporating an amusing play on words—oftentimes with scurrilous implications—literary
games that had been a growing interest from the time of his youth. But, perhaps in an effort
to perpetuate the notion of a private persona, these puns were usually published under the
name of his female pseudonym, Rrose Sélavy (the first name now spelled with a double “r,”
which Duchamp thought created an appropriate and amusing reference to the French arroser,
meaning “to wet” or “to moisten”), or as modern scholars have observed, a homonyn with the
French eros c’est la vie.
Just as the readymade had presented an alternative to traditional sculpture, it may have
been the reputation Duchamp had established for having ceased painting that led him to
investigate an alternate mode of artistic expression that still pertained to the concerns of
traditional painting. Whatever his motives may have been, from as early as 1918, he began
a serious study of the scientific principles that were considered of critical importance to
the creation of painted images: namely, perspective and optics. Through experiments that
continued over the course of the following twenty-year period, Duchamp made repeated
efforts to generate an effect of depth on a two-dimensional surface, at first through the use
of shadows or stereoscopic images, and later by means of elaborate motorized devices. In
Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics) (13.8), for example, the sensation of a compressed space is
created when a series of fragmented circular shapes (painted on the ends of rectangular glass
plates) are aligned and spun rapidly. This experiment was followed a few years later by Rotary
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Marcel Duchamp 7

1.14 Marcel Duchamp, 1946

Photograph by George Karger
Marcel Duchamp Archive,
Philadelphia Museum of Art
8 THE RECURRENT, HAUNTING GHOST
1.15 Marcel Duchamp, ca. 1946-47
Photograph by André Rogi
[pseudonym of Rózsi Klein]
Archives Jean-Jacques Lebel,
Paris
Demisphere (Precision Optics) (13.13), in which a series of concentric circles aligned in the shape
of a spiral and painted onto a convex surface are spun in a circular motion, producing the
sensation of an ambiguous, undulating space. Similar experiments were conducted throughout
the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in an unsuccessful attempt to commercialize his optical
experiments. He designed a series of spirals and objects positioned on circular geometric
patterns, which he had inexpensively printed and mass-produced in an unnumbered edition of
500 (13.1). When set in motion on the turntable of an ordinary 33 rpm record player, these
disks were intended to create a sensation of depth. In 1935, these Rotoreliefs, as he called them,
were offered for sale at an annual inventors fair on the Concours Lepine in Paris, an effort that
resulted in few sales.
Throughout his life Duchamp maintained an aversion to the more commercial aspects of
the art system, particularly where his own work was concerned, yet he openly acted as an agent
or broker in placing work he admired in various public and private collections (he continued
in these years to serve as the principal advisor and European agent for the Arensbergs and
Dreier). In partnership with Henri-Pierre Roché and Mrs. Charles Rumsey, in 1927 Duchamp
arranged to purchase a group of Brancusi’s sculptures, as well as two of his own paintings,
from the estate of the New York lawyer John Quinn, works of art that he sold over the years
to supplement his income. Nevertheless, he continued to live frugally, inhabiting a small and
sparely decorated studio on the rue Larrey in Paris, a space well known for a door Duchamp
installed in the corner of the main living area (25.1). This door could be swung in one direction
to close the entrance to the bedroom, and in another to close the bathroom, but not both at
the same time, defying the old French adage: “A door must be either open or closed.” For an
exhibition in 1964, Duchamp had this door detached, replacing it with a replica to serve the
practical needs of future inhabitants of the studio.
In spite of the fact that many of Duchamp’s friends were active participants in the Dada
and Surrealist movements, his work bore no stylistic affinity with either one of these artistic
enterprises. Nevertheless, he continued to promote the activities of his friends, supporting the
basic ideology of Dada throughout his life, and he participated in various Surrealist exhibitions
held in Paris and New York. Perhaps recognizing the inappropriateness of his work in a
traditional context, in 1935 he began a six-year project of assembling miniature reproductions
of his work for inclusion in a one-man portable museum, which, because the first limited
editions were packed into a leather suitcase, he called the Boîte-en-valise, or Box in a Valise (see
Chapter 14).
(vi) New York Again and the Etant donnés
In 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Paris, Duchamp again left for America, bringing
with him many examples of his newly assembled miniature museum. In New York, he renewed
contact with his Surrealist friends, many of whom gathered at the home and gallery of the
wealthy collector and patron of the arts Peggy Guggenheim (who exhibited Duchamp’s valise
in her gallery, Art of this Century, in a special installation designed by the visionary architect
and sculptor Frederick Kiesler: 14.18). It seems to have been at some point shortly after his
arrival in America that Duchamp concluded that in order for an artist to remain free of outside
influences, he needed to go “underground,” keeping his activities secret. This is precisely what
Duchamp did himself when, in 1942, he moved into a studio on West 14th Street and, with the
exception of one or two close friends, told no one about a major project he was to work on
intermittently in this space for the next twenty years.
The project Duchamp worked on in secrecy for more than two decades is entitled Etant
donnés: 1˚ La Chute d’eau, 2˚ Le Gaz d’éclairage [Given: 1˚ The Waterfall, 2˚ The Illuminating
Gas] (16.1-16.2). Essentially, as the complete title implies, this work represents a literal
manifestation of those elements that were meant to be invisible or rendered only abstractly
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Marcel Duchamp 9

in the Large Glass. Etant donnés is a large three-dimensional tableau, where, through two tiny
peepholes in an old Spanish door, we are accorded the view of an unclothed, anonymous
woman lying on her back with her legs spread, holding in one hand a glowing gas lantern, while
in the background, a waterfall flows endlessly in silence.
Duchamp began construction of Etant donnés in 1946, although he seems to have had the
idea for the work some years earlier, probably at around the time he met and fell in love with
Maria Martins (1894-1973), a Brazilian sculptor who lived with her husband and three teenage
children in Washington, D.C., but who maintained a studio in New York throughout the 1940s.
Duchamp’s relationship with Maria (she exhibited her work only under her first name) was a
closely guarded secret, not made public until long after the death of both artists. Today it is
known that their affair inspired Duchamp to make the Etant donnés, and that the nude figure
was formed from casts taken of her body. Just as for the Large Glass, the finished work was
preceded by a number of preparatory studies, and several independent works were derived
from it. It can be demonstrated, for example, that three small erotic objects dating from the
early 1950s—Female Fig Leaf, 1950, Objet-Dard, 1951, and Wedge of Chastity, 1954 (Chapter
17)—are all either thematically or physically related to the production of this last major work.
In accordance with Duchamp’s wishes, after his death in 1968, Etant donnés was placed on
public display next to his other works in the Arensberg Collection at the Philadelphia Museum
of Art; today, this last great masterpiece can be carefully examined in relation to numerous
other examples of the artist’s work originally acquired by the Arensbergs and now preserved
in the modern collections of that museum. 1.16 Marcel Duchamp, 1947
Photograph by Arnold Eagle
Private Collection, New York
3. INFLUENCE and LEGACY

Compared with artists of the magnitude of Picasso and

Matisse, Duchamp exerted relatively little influence on the
work of his immediate contemporaries. On the other hand, his
art and ideas were of singular importance to a number of close
friends and associates—such as Man Ray, Jean Crotti, Joseph
Stella, Francis Picabia, John Covert, and others—each of whom
would, in separate ways, incorporate the legacy of his work
into their own. Only in the last decade of his life, however,
did Duchamp’s work become known to a larger audience.
With the opening to the public of the galleries installed with
the Arensberg Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in
1954, followed by the publication of the first major monograph
on the artist by Robert Lebel in 1959, Duchamp became a near-
legendary figure among vanguard artists living in both America
and Europe. A generation of painters and sculptors in the
1950s and 1960s professed their admiration for the man and
openly acknowledged the influence of his work: Roberto Matta
Echaurren, Robert Rauschenberg, Arman, Jasper Johns, Allan
Kaprow, Richard Hamilton, Robert Morris, Jean Tinguely, Andy
Warhol, Joseph Kosuth, and the composer John Cage, among
many others (Chapters 28 through 33). Duchamp was seventy-
six years old when the first full-scale retrospective of his work
was held at the Pasadena Museum of Art in 1963. After his
death in 1968, major exhibitions were held at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York
(1973), the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou,
Paris (1977), and the Palazzo Grassi,Venice (1993).
10 THE RECURRENT, HAUNTING GHOST

Duchamp could be considered the single most important historical figure to affect the
formation and direction of the Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual Art movements of the 1960s
and 1970s. Indeed, if we view Duchamp’s contribution in terms of the general ideological shift
that took place during the second half of the 20th century—where man slowly progressed
from a dependency upon industrialization to a more intellectually oriented role within an
information-gathering society (as our increasing dependency upon the computer suggests)—
then Duchamp’s art was not only ahead of its time, but its intellectual content could well be
understood as an accurate indicator of what will take place in the future.4

1.17 Marcel Duchamp, 1958

Photograph by Henri Marceau
Philadelphia Museum of Art

1.18 Marcel Duchamp, ca. 1960

Photograph by Richard Hamilton
Collection Jean-Jacques Lebel,
Paris

Notes:
1
When this entry on Duchamp was written, I had
2
I would later determine that this sequence was
speculated that it was during Duchamp’s sojourn in reversed: that Bicycle Wheel was made first, and that the
Munich that he had become familiar with the writings of question came later (see “Retroactive Readymades,”
Max Stirner. However, from a note written by Frederick Chapter 12).
Kiesler—based on an interview with Duchamp that
took place in the mid-1940s—I have subsequently
3
First noted and published by Ulf Linde in his essay
learned that he “met (was introduced to the writings “MARiée CELibataire,” in Arturo Schwarz, ed., Marcel
of) Stirner through Picabia” (see Eva Kraus and Valentina Duchamp Ready-Mades, etc (1913-1964), Galleria
Sonzogni, eds., “Wanted: Original Manuscript on Marcel Schwarz, Milan, 1964, pp. 39-68.
Duchamp,” Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online
Journal, vol. 2, no. 5 [April 2003]). These authors claim
4
This last sentence was changed by the editors to read
that I stated “Duchamp discovered Stirner during the “his [Duchamp’s] importance can be judged not only in
time he spent in Munich,” when, in actual fact, I had terms of his artistic influence but also as a harbinger of
qualified that statement by writing “it may have been changes in society at large.”
in Munich that Duchamp discovered the writings of
Max Stirner” (emphasis added; see Naumann, Marcel
Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction [New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999], p. 46).
 Marcel Duchamp
1 11

1.19 Marcel Duchamp, 1968

Photograph by John D. Schiff
Philadelphia Museum of Art