Editing Marcel Duchamp (section)

==Leaving "retinal art" behind==
At about this time, Duchamp read [[Max Stirner]]'s philosophical tract, ''[[The Ego and Its Own]]'', the study which he considered another turning point in his artistic and intellectual development. He called it "a remarkable book ... which advances no formal theories, but just keeps saying that the ego is always there in everything."<ref>{{harvnb|Tomkins|1996|p=unknown}}</ref>

While in Munich in 1912, he painted the last of his Cubist-like paintings. He started ''[[The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even]]'' image, and began making plans for ''The Large Glass'' – scribbling short notes to himself, sometimes with hurried sketches. It would be more than ten years before this piece was completed. Not much else is known about the two-month stay in Munich except that the friend he visited was intent on showing him the sights and the nightlife, and that he was influenced by the works of the sixteenth century German painter [[Lucas Cranach the Elder]] in Munich's famed [[Alte Pinakothek]], known for its Old Master paintings. Duchamp recalled that he took the short walk to visit this museum daily. Duchamp scholars have long recognized in Cranach the subdued ochre and brown color range Duchamp later employed.<ref name="Naumann">{{cite web|last=Naumann|first=Francis M.|title=Marcel Duchamp Slept Here|url=http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/11/art/marcel-duchamp-slept-here|work=The Brooklyn Rail|access-date=16 December 2014|date=6 November 2012|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141216191723/http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/11/art/marcel-duchamp-slept-here|archive-date=16 December 2014}}</ref>

The same year, Duchamp also attended a performance of a stage adaptation of [[Raymond Roussel]]'s 1910 novel, ''Impressions d'Afrique,'' which featured plots that turned in on themselves, word play, surrealistic sets and humanoid machines. He credited the drama with having radically changed his approach to art, and having inspired him to begin the creation of his ''The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even'', also known as ''The Large Glass''. Work on ''The Large Glass'' continued into 1913, with his invention of inventing a repertoire of forms. He made notes, sketches and painted studies, and even drew some of his ideas on the wall of his apartment.

Toward the end of 1912, he traveled with Picabia, Apollinaire and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia through the [[Jura mountains]], an adventure that Buffet-Picabia described as one of their "forays of demoralization, which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... the disintegration of the concept of art".<ref name="Mink, J. 2004. Duchamp. Taschen">Mink, J. (2004). Duchamp. Taschen.</ref> Duchamp's notes from the trip avoid logic and sense, and have a surrealistic, mythical connotation.

Duchamp painted few canvases after 1912, and in those he did, he attempted to remove "[[painterly]]" effects, and to use a technical drawing approach instead.

His broad interests led him to an exhibition of aviation technology during this period, after which Duchamp said to his friend [[Constantin Brâncuși]], "Painting is washed up. Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? Tell me, can you do that?".<ref name="Mink, J. 2004. Duchamp. Taschen"/> Brâncuși later sculpted [[Bird in Space|bird forms]]. U.S. Customs officials mistook them for aviation parts and attempted to collect import duties on them.

In 1913, Duchamp withdrew from painting circles and began working as a librarian in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève to be able to earn a living wage while concentrating on scholarly realms and working on his ''Large Glass''. He studied math and physics – areas where exciting new discoveries were taking place. The theoretical writings of [[Henri Poincaré]] particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and that no theory could be considered "true". "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality", Poincaré wrote in 1902.<ref>Poincaré, H. (1902) Science and Hypothesis. London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., p. xxiv.</ref> Reflecting the influence of Poincaré's writings, Duchamp tolerated any interpretation of his art by regarding it as the creation of the person who formulated it, not as truth.<ref>Mink, J. (2000). Marcel Duchamp. Art as Anti-Art. Taschen Verlag.</ref>

Duchamp's own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, ''3 Standard Stoppages'' (''3 stoppages étalon''), he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto prepared canvases, one at a time, from a height of 1 meter. The threads landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. He then cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to the "stoppage" backgrounds. The piece appears to literally follow Poincaré's ''School of the Thread'', part of a book on classical mechanics.

In his studio he mounted a bicycle wheel upside down onto a stool, spinning it occasionally just to watch it. Although it is often assumed that the ''Bicycle Wheel'' represents the first of Duchamp's [[Readymades of Marcel Duchamp|"Readymades"]], this particular installation was never submitted for any art exhibition, and it was eventually lost. However, initially, the wheel was simply placed in the studio to create atmosphere: "I enjoyed looking at it just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace."<ref>Mink, J. (2004) Duchamp. Taschen, p. 48.</ref>

[[File:Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 21 June 1917, New York City.jpg|thumb|upright=1.6|''Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp'', 21 June 1917, New York City]]
After World War I started in August 1914, with his brothers and many friends in military service and himself exempted (due to a heart murmur),<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=4mtdCwAAQBAJ&dq=Marcel+Duchamp+military+service+world+war+one&pg=PA347 Paul B. Franklin, ''The Artist and His Critic Stripped Bare: The Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp and Robert Lebel''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171115201216/https://books.google.com/books?id=4mtdCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA347&dq=Marcel+Duchamp+military+service+world+war+one&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7_-PsmcDXAhVBbhQKHZaxAoYQ6AEIOTAD |date=15 November 2017 }}, Getty Publications, 1 June 2016, {{ISBN|1606064436}}</ref><ref name="Cabanne, P">[https://books.google.com/books?id=4SNKDgAAQBAJ&dq=cabanne%2C+Marcel+Duchamp+military+service&pg=PT14 Cabanne, P., & Duchamp, M. (1971). ''Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171115143609/https://books.google.com/books?id=4SNKDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT14&dq=cabanne,+Marcel+Duchamp+military+service&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwje6oi3mMDXAhXHWxQKHTsbBb8Q6AEIKDAA |date=15 November 2017 }}. New York: Viking Press. Hachette UK, 21 July 2009</ref> Duchamp felt uncomfortable in Paris. Meanwhile, ''[[Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2]]'' had scandalized Americans at the [[Armory Show]], and helped secure the sale of all four of his paintings in the exhibition. Thus, being able to finance the trip, Duchamp decided to emigrate to the United States in 1915. To his surprise, he found he was a celebrity when he arrived in New York in 1915, where he quickly befriended art patron [[Katherine Dreier]] and artist [[Man Ray]]. Duchamp's circle included art patrons [[Walter Conrad Arensberg|Louise]] and [[Walter Conrad Arensberg]], actress and artist [[Beatrice Wood]] and [[Francis Picabia]], as well as other [[avant-garde]] figures. Though he spoke little English, in the course of supporting himself by giving French lessons, and through some library work, he quickly learned the language. Duchamp became part of an artist colony in [[Ridgefield, New Jersey]], across the [[Hudson River]] from New York City.<ref>[http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=63436 "Icons of twentieth century photography come to Edinburgh for major Man Ray exhibition"], ArtDaily. Retrieved 15 December 2013. "In 1915, whilst at Ridgefield artist colony in New Jersey, he [Man Ray] met the French artist Marcel Duchamp and together they tried to establish a New York outpost of the Dada movement."</ref>

For two years the Arensbergs, who would remain his friends and patrons for 42 years, were the landlords of his studio. In lieu of rent, they agreed that his payment would be ''The Large Glass''. An art gallery offered Duchamp $10,000 per year in exchange for all of his yearly production, but he declined the offer, preferring to continue his work on ''The Large Glass''.

===Société Anonyme===
Duchamp created the [[Société Anonyme (art)|Société Anonyme]] in 1920, along with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray. This was the beginning of his lifelong involvement in art dealing and collecting. The group collected modern art works, and arranged modern art exhibitions and lectures throughout the 1930s.

By this time [[Walter Pach]], one of the coordinators of the 1913 Armory Show, sought Duchamp's advice on modern art. Beginning with Société Anonyme, Dreier also depended on Duchamp's counsel in gathering her collection, as did Arensberg. Later [[Peggy Guggenheim]], [[Museum of Modern Art]] directors [[Alfred Barr]] and [[James Johnson Sweeney]] consulted with Duchamp on their modern art collections and shows.

===Dada===
[[File:Marcel Duchamp, 1917, Fountain, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz.jpg|thumb|Photograph of Duchamp's ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'' (1917) by [[Alfred Stieglitz]]]]
[[File:The blind man MET b1120124 001.jpg|thumb|The cover of the second (and final) issue of ''[[The Blind Man]]'' (May 1917) featured a graphic reference to Duchamp's painting ''The Chocolate Grinder''. The issue is best known for its response to ''Fountain'' not being displayed at the purportedly open inaugural exhibition of the [[Society of Independent Artists]]. ]]
[[Dada]] or Dadaism was an [[art movement]] of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. It began in [[Zürich]], Switzerland, in 1916, and spread to [[Berlin]] shortly thereafter.<ref>de Micheli, Mario (2006). ''Las vanguardias artísticas del siglo XX.'' Alianza Forma. pp. 135–137</ref> To quote Dona Budd's ''The Language of Art Knowledge'',

<blockquote>Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of [[World War I]]. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the [[Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich)|Cabaret Voltaire]] in Zürich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality, and intuition. The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsense word. Others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists [[Tristan Tzara]] and [[Marcel Janco]]'s frequent use of the words da, da, meaning yes, yes in the [[Romanian language]]. Another theory says that the name "Dada" came during a meeting of the group when a paper knife stuck into a French-German dictionary happened to point to "dada", a French word for "hobbyhorse".<ref>Budd, Dona, ''The Language of Art Knowledge'', Pomegranate Communications, Inc.</ref></blockquote>

The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, [[art manifesto]]es, [[aesthetics|art theory]], theatre, and [[graphic design]], and concentrated its [[anti-war]] politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through [[anti-art]] cultural works. In addition to being anti-war, Dada was also anti-[[bourgeois]] and had political affinities with the radical left.

Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media. Key figures in the movement, apart from Duchamp, included: [[Hugo Ball]], [[Emmy Hennings]], [[Hans Arp]], [[Raoul Hausmann]], [[Hannah Höch]], [[Johannes Baader]], [[Tristan Tzara]], [[Francis Picabia]], [[Richard Huelsenbeck]], [[Georg Grosz]], [[John Heartfield]], [[Beatrice Wood]], [[Kurt Schwitters]], and [[Hans Richter (artist)|Hans Richter]], among others. The movement influenced later styles, such as the avant-garde and [[downtown music]] movements, and groups including [[surrealism]], [[Nouveau réalisme]], [[pop art]], and [[Fluxus]].

<blockquote>Dada is the groundwork to abstract art and sound poetry, a starting point for performance art, a prelude to [[postmodernism]], an influence on pop art, a celebration of antiart to be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s and the movement that lay the foundation for Surrealism.<ref>Marc Lowenthal, translator's introduction to [[Francis Picabia]]'s ''I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation''</ref></blockquote>

[[New York Dada]] had a less serious tone than that of European Dadaism, and was not a particularly organized venture. Duchamp's friend [[Francis Picabia]] connected with the Dada group in Zürich, bringing to New York the Dadaist ideas of absurdity and "anti-art". Duchamp and Picabia first met in September 1911 at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, where they were both exhibiting.  Duchamp showed a larger version of his ''Young Man and Girl in Spring'' 1911, a work that had an Edenic theme and a thinly veiled sexuality also found in Picabia's contemporaneous ''Adam and Eve'' 1911.  According to Duchamp, "our friendship began right there".<ref>'' Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia''; Edited by Jennifer Mundy; TATE 2008; p. 12</ref> A group met almost nightly at the [[Walter Arensberg|Arensberg]] home, or caroused in [[Greenwich Village]]. Together with Man Ray, Duchamp contributed his ideas and humor to the New York activities, many of which ran concurrent with the development of his [[Readymades of Marcel Duchamp|Readymades]] and ''The Large Glass''.

The most prominent example of Duchamp's association with Dada was his submission of ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'', a urinal, to the [[Society of Independent Artists]] exhibit in 1917. Artworks in the Independent Artists shows were not selected by jury, and all pieces submitted were displayed. However, the show committee insisted that ''Fountain'' was not art, and rejected it from the show. This caused an uproar among the Dadaists, and led Duchamp to resign from the board of the Independent Artists.<ref name="TomkinsBio"/>{{rp|181–186}}

Along with [[Henri-Pierre Roché]] and Beatrice Wood, Duchamp published multiple Dada magazines in New York—including ''[[The Blind Man]]'' and ''[[Rongwrong]]''—which included art, literature, humor and commentary.

When he returned to Paris after World War I, Duchamp did not participate in the Dada group.