DUCHAMP
1887–1968 • DADA, SURREALISM
Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)
1912 OIL ON CANVAS
147 × 89.2 CM (57 × 35 IN)
PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, PHILADELPHIA, PA, US
When this work was shown at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, it provoked criticism; the following year at the New York Armory Show, it scandalized the American public but made Duchamp instantly popular. The fragmented figure portrays action as she walks downstairs. As well as physical movement, the theme also represents the passage of time.
Although he participated in several movements and is linked with Dada and Surrealism, Marcel Duchamp was an individual artist who produced relatively few works. However, his original and fertile ideas have affected art and artists up to the present day. By advising art collectors, he also helped to shape contemporary artistic tastes.
The son of a notary, Duchamp was born near Rouen, France. Three of his siblings became artists: Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876–1918), Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (1889–1963) and Jacques Villon (1875–1963). At 17, Duchamp went to Paris. He enrolled at the Académie Julian, although he rarely attended classes. In 1905, he began compulsory military service, where he learned typography and printing processes. Three years later, he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and the following year, at the Salon des Indépendants. He experimented with various styles, including Symbolism, Cubism and Fauvism. In 1911, at his brother Jacques’ home in Puteaux, he joined a discussion group with other artists and writers including Francis Picabia (1879–1953), Robert Delaunay (1885–1941), Léger (1881–1955) and Juan Gris (1887–1927). They were nicknamed the Puteaux Group and their paintings, focusing on visual sensations, became called Orphism or Orphic Cubism. Meanwhile, Duchamp experimented with methods of showing movement on canvas.
After 1913, Duchamp hardly used conventional artists’ materials again. He exhibited his first ready-mades—manufactured everyday objects taken out of context to make viewers see them with fresh eyes. From 1915 until 1923 he lived mainly in New York, where he had become well-known. With Man Ray (1890–1976) and Picabia he formed a Dada group. Dada was a movement that started in neutral Switzerland and the US in response to the horrors of World War I. In questioning a society that allowed the war to happen, Dada defied accepted artistic traditions. It aimed to offend and to this end, at the exhibition of a new Society for Independent Artists in 1917, Duchamp submitted Fountain. It was a urinal and he turned it upside down and signed it with the pseudonym, R. Mutt. Two years later, he added a mustache, beard and graffiti to a print of the Mona Lisa. During his time in New York, he worked on a composition called The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even or The Large Glass, made of oil and varnish, glass, collage and other materials. Never completed, the enigmatic work has been the subject of much interpretation and symbolizes many things, including dreams, wishes and the unconscious.
From 1923, Duchamp lived once more in Paris, spending more time playing chess and writing about art than producing it. By 1942, he settled again in New York. There he helped to edit the Surrealist journal VVV, and organized a Surrealist exhibition. His witty, often irreverent legacy has inspired a vast number of subsequent artists and art movements.
Key Works
Transition of Virgin into a Bride 1912, THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, US
In Advance of the Broken Arm 1915, YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART, NEW HAVEN, CT, US
The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even or The Large Glass 1915–23, THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, PHILADELPHIA, PA, US
Reproduction of L.H.O.O.Q. 1919, THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, PHILADELPHIA, PA, US
O’KEEFFE
1887–1986 • AMERICAN MODERNISM
Calla Lily Turned Away
1923 PASTEL ON CARDBOARD
35.6 × 27.6 CM (14 × 11 IN)
THE GEORGIA O’KEEFFE MUSEUM, SANTA FE, NM, US
From the time of her marriage, O’Keeffe began producing magnified still lifes of flowers. Fascinated by them, she produced over 200 flower paintings. The calla lily became a regular subject, which she painted in extreme close-up, cutting off the edges and emphasizing their curving contours.
A major figure in 20th-century American art, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe blended both the figurative and the abstract in her powerful paintings of flowers, buildings, bones, shells and landscapes.
Born in Wisconsin on a dairy farm, O’Keeffe was the second of seven children. From an early age, her artistic talents became apparent, and from the age of 18, she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then at the Art Students’ League in New York, under William Merritt Chase (1849–1916). In 1908, she won the William Merritt Chase still life prize: a scholarship to attend an outdoor summer school in New York, but declaring that she could never distinguish herself as a painter, she went to work in Chicago as a commercial artist. She did not paint for four years, claiming that the smell of turpentine made her sick. In 1912, however, she attended an art class at the University of Virginia Summer School, where she was introduced to the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) by Alon Bement (1876–1954). Essentially, this was that artists should express ideas and feelings through harmonious arrangements of line, color and tonal contrasts.
From 1912 to 1914, she taught art in schools, and took classes from Dow himself at the Teachers’ College of Columbia University from 1914 to 1915. For a few years, she worked as a teaching assistant to Bement and also taught at Columbia College in South Carolina, where she produced a series of unusual, innovative, flowing abstract charcoal drawings. When the internationally known photographer and modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) saw them, he planned an exhibition for her at his New York art gallery, 291. But when she learned that the exhibition was to take place without her permission, she went to 291 to complain. Stieglitz immediately offered her financial support to paint for a year in New York, which she accepted and left her teaching job. She and Stieglitz married in 1924 and she began producing numerous large-scale vibrant flower paintings and a series of New York buildings. But to stop critics from making Freudian interpretations of these works, she turned to different subjects and to painting more representationally.
She was soon recognized as one of America’s most important artists, with an ability to capture flickering light, large and small structures and delicate color gradations. After Stieglitz’s death, she moved to New Mexico, where she depicted her surroundings with flowing lines and clear colors. She painted there from 1929 until 1984, when because of failing eyesight, she began working in clay rather than paint.
Key Works
Music, Pink and Blue No. 2 1919, WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK, US
Orange and Red Streak 1919, THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, PHILADELPHIA, PA, US
Black Iris III 1926, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, US
Oriental Poppies 1928, WEISMAN ART MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS, MN, US
New York, Night 1929, SHELDON MUSEUM OF ART, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA ART GALLERIES, LINCOLN, NE, US
Patio with Cloud 1956, MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM, MILWAUKEE, WI, US