Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp: Love and Death, even

Marcel Duchamp's stature in history of art has grown steadily since the 1930's, largely because several artistic movements have embraced him as their founding father.
But although his influence is comparable only to that of Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp continues to be relatively unknown outside his narrow circle of followers.

Avant-garde

In fact, Marcel Duchamp was at the center of all of the major artistic debates of his time, and although he came to be associated with a variety of avant-garde art forms, Marcel Duchamp, always retained an inimitable individuality. His two great preoccupations were the nature of scientific truth and a feeling for love with its natural limit, death. Marcel Duchamp's works all speak of eroticism in a way that pushes the socially acceptable to its outer limits.

Influence of Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887 – October 2, 1968) was a French artist whose work and ideas had considerable influence on the development of post-World War II Western art, and his advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the Western art world. The influence of Marcel Duchamp continues into the 21st century.

Dada

Living and working in a studio in Montparnasse, Marcel Duchamp's early works were Post-Impressionist in style but he would become perhaps the most influential of the Dada artists. A student at the Académie Julian, his influence is still strongly felt to this day by contemporary artists.

Readymade

Marcel Duchamp developed the term readymade in 1915 to refer to found objects chosen by the artist as art. Marcel Duchamp assembled the first readymade, a bicycle wheel mounted on a stool entitled "Bicycle Wheel" in 1913, the same time as his painting "Nude Descending A Staircase" was attracting the attention of critics at a international exhibition of modern art. "Bottle Rack" (1914), a bottle drying rack signed by Marcel Duchamp, is considered to be the first pure readymade. In "Advance of the Broken Arm" (1915), a snow shovel, followed soon after. His "Fountain", a urinal, which he signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917.

The Large Glass

In 1923 Marcel Duchamp concluded work on his "The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even" (The Large Glass), a piece he began construction of in 1915. The work is documented through his numerous notes and studies as well as preliminary works.Juan Antonio Ramirez undertakes a step-by-step interpretation of Marcel Duchamp's "Large Glass", examining the evolution of each and every element from initial concept through to its final inclusion, or disappearance. Of great interest is Ramirez' discovery if an hitherto unpublished iconographic sources, including medical and industrial catalogues, school manuals, advertisements and physics and mathematics textbooks.

Surrealist periodical VVV

After 1923 he devoted much of his time to chess but from the mid-1930s onwards he collaborated with the Surrealists and participated in their exhibitions. Marcel Duchamp settled permanently in New York in 1942. From then until 1944, together with Max Ernst, Eugenio Granell and André Breton, Duchamp edited the Surrealist periodical VVV, in New York.

Crucial figure of modern art

In "Duchamp: Love and Death, even" Juan Antonio Ramirez addresses a number of intriguing questions, such as the meaning of the artist's ground-breaking ready-mades and his famous installation "Etant donnés".
"Duchamp: Love and Death, even" by Juan Antonio Ramirez is a seminal monograph for understanding this crucial figure of modern art.