Editing Marcel Duchamp

{{short description|French painter, sculptor, and chess player (1887–1968)}}
{{Redirect|Duchamp}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2020}}
{{Infobox artist
| name             = Marcel Duchamp
| image            = Man Ray, 1920-21, Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, gelatin silver print, Yale University Art Gallery.jpg
| caption          = ''Portrait of Marcel Duchamp'', 1920–21<br />by [[Man Ray]], Yale University Art Gallery
| birth_name       = Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp
| birth_date       = {{birth date|df=yes|1887|7|28}}
| birth_place      = [[Blainville-Crevon]], France
| death_date       = {{death date and age|df=yes|1968|10|2|1887|7|28}}
| death_place      = [[Neuilly-sur-Seine]], France
| field            = Painting, sculpture, film
| training         = 
| movement         = [[Cubism]], [[Dada]], [[conceptual art]]
| works            = ''[[Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2]]'' (1912)<br />''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'' (1917)<br />''[[The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even]]'' (1915–1923)<br />''[[LHOOQ]]'' (1919)<br />''[[Étant donnés]]'' (1946–1966)
| spouse           = {{ubl|{{marriage|Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor|1927|1928|end=divorced}}|{{marriage|[[Alexina Duchamp|Alexina "Teeny" Sattler]]|1954}}}}
| partner          = [[Mary Reynolds (artist)|Mary Reynolds]] (1929–1946)<br/>[[Maria Martins (artist)|Maria Martins]] (1946–1951)
| patrons          = 
| awards           = 
}}

'''Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp''' ({{IPAc-en|UK|ˈ|dj|uː|ʃ|ɒ̃}}, {{IPAc-en|US|dj|uː|ˈ|ʃ|ɒ̃|,_|dj|uː|ˈ|ʃ|ɑː|m|p}};<ref>{{cite EPD|18|Duchamp|page=151}}</ref> {{IPA|fr|maʁsɛl dyʃɑ̃|lang}}; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with [[Cubism]], [[Dada]], [[Futurism]] and [[conceptual art]].<ref>Ian Chilvers & John Glaves-Smith, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art''. [[Oxford University Press]], p. 203</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=1634 |title=Francis M. Naumann, ''Marcel Duchamp'', Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, MoMA, 2009 |publisher=Moma.org |access-date=11 May 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.theartstory.org/artist-duchamp-marcel.htm |title=Marcel Duchamp |website=TheArtStory.org |access-date=8 May 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130627194840/http://www.theartstory.org/artist-duchamp-marcel.htm |archive-date=27 June 2013}}</ref> He is commonly regarded, along with [[Pablo Picasso]] and [[Henri Matisse]], as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the [[plastic arts]] in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tate.org.uk/audio-arts/volume-2/number-4 |title=Tate Modern: Matisse Picasso |work=Tate Etc. |access-date=13 February 2010 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140418055925/http://www.tate.org.uk/audio-arts/volume-2/number-4 |archive-date=18 April 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Searle |first=Adrian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/may/07/artsfeatures |title=A momentous, tremendous exhibition |work=The Guardian |location=London |date=7 May 2002 |access-date=13 February 2010 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131002150325/http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/may/07/artsfeatures |archive-date=2 October 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/matisse.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100508203807/http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/matisse.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=8 May 2010 |last=Trachtman |first=Paul |title=Matisse & Picasso |work=[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]] |date=February 2003 |access-date=13 February 2010}}</ref><ref name="BBC 2010">{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4059997.stm |title=Duchamp's urinal tops art survey |work=[[BBC News]] |access-date=10 December 2010 |date=1 December 2004 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101127184503/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4059997.stm |archive-date=27 November 2010}}</ref> He has had an immense impact on 20th- and 21st-century art, and a seminal influence on the development of conceptual art. By the time of [[World War I]], he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists (such as Henri Matisse) as "retinal," intended only to please the eye. Instead, he wanted to use art to serve the mind.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/duch/hd_duch.htm |title=Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) {{pipe}} Thematic Essay {{pipe}} Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History {{pipe}} the Metropolitan Museum of Art |date=October 2004 |access-date=27 September 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130930180359/http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/duch/hd_duch.htm |archive-date=30 September 2013}} Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) at [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]</ref>

Duchamp is remembered as a pioneering figure partly because of the two famous scandals he provoked -- his ''Nude Descending a Staircase'' that was the most talked-about work of the landmark 1913 [[Armory Show]] -- and his ''Fountain'', a signed urinal displayed in the 1917 [[Society of Independent Artists]] exhibition that nearly single-handedly launched the [[New York Dada]] movement and led the entire{{hyperbole|date=April 2025}} New York art world to ponder the question of "What is art?"

==Early life and education==
[[File:Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon in the garden of Villon's studio, Puteaux, France, c.1913.jpg|thumb|230px|Three Duchamp brothers, left to right: Marcel Duchamp, [[Jacques Villon]], and [[Raymond Duchamp-Villon]] in the garden of Jacques Villon's studio in Puteaux, France, 1914, ([[Smithsonian Institution]] collections)]]
Duchamp was born at [[Blainville-Crevon]] in Normandy, France, to Eugène Duchamp and Lucie Duchamp (née Lucie Nicolle) and grew up in a family that enjoyed cultural activities. The art of painter and engraver Émile Frédéric Nicolle, his maternal grandfather, filled the house, and the family liked to play chess, read books, paint, and make music together.

Of Eugene and Lucie Duchamp's seven children, one died as an infant and four became successful artists. Marcel Duchamp was the brother of:
* [[Jacques Villon]] (1875–1963), painter, printmaker
* [[Raymond Duchamp-Villon]] (1876–1918), sculptor
* [[Suzanne Duchamp|Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti]] (1889–1963), painter.

As a child, with his two elder brothers already away from home at school in [[Rouen]], Duchamp was closer to his sister Suzanne, who was a willing accomplice in games and activities conjured by his fertile imagination. At eight years old, Duchamp followed in his brothers' footsteps when he left home and began schooling at the [[Lycée Pierre-Corneille]], in Rouen. Two other students in his class also became well-known artists and lasting friends: [[Robert Antoine Pinchon]] and [[Pierre Dumont (painter)|Pierre Dumont]].<ref>Guy Pessiot, [https://books.google.com/books?id=u2v3xkP3ekEC&pg=PA271 ''Histoire de Rouen'' volume 2 ''1900–1939 en 800 photographies''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170122200759/https://books.google.com/books?id=u2v3xkP3ekEC&pg=PA271 |date=22 January 2017 }}, repr. Rouen: PTC, 2004, {{ISBN|9782906258877}}, p. 271 {{in lang|fr}}</ref> For the next eight years, he was locked into an educational regime that focused on intellectual development. Though he was not an outstanding student, his best subject was mathematics and he won two mathematics prizes at the school. He also won a prize for drawing in 1903, and at his commencement in 1904 he won a coveted first prize, validating his recent decision to become a professional artist.

Duchamp learned academic drawing from a teacher who unsuccessfully attempted to "protect" his students from [[Impressionism]], [[Post-Impressionism]], and other [[avant-garde]] influences. However, his true artistic mentor at the time was his brother Jacques Villon, whose fluid and incisive style he sought to emulate. At 14, Duchamp's first serious art attempts were drawings and watercolors depicting his sister Suzanne in various poses and activities. That summer he also painted landscapes in an Impressionist style using oils.

==Early work==
Duchamp's early art works align with [[Post-Impressionism|Post-Impressionist]] styles. He experimented with classical techniques and subjects. When he was later asked about what had influenced him at the time, Duchamp cited the work of [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] painter [[Odilon Redon]], whose approach to art was not outwardly anti-academic, but rather quietly individual.

[[File:Marcel Duchamp, 1911-12, Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train (Nu -esquisse-, jeune homme triste dans un train), Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.jpg|thumb|Marcel Duchamp, ''Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train (Nu [esquisse], jeune homme triste dans un train)'', 1911–12, oil on cardboard mounted on Masonite, 100 x 73&nbsp;cm (39 3/8 × 28 3/4 in), [[Peggy Guggenheim Collection]], Venice. This painting was identified as a self-portrait by the artist. Duchamp's primary concern in this painting is the depiction of two movements; that of the train in which there is a young man smoking, and that of the lurching figure itself.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/1179 |title=Marcel Duchamp, 1911–12, ''Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train'', Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice |publisher=Guggenheim.org |access-date=11 May 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140512230957/http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/1179 |archive-date=12 May 2014  }}</ref>]]
Duchamp studied art at the [[Académie Julian]]<ref>[http://www.theartstory.org/artist-duchamp-marcel.htm theartstory.org] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130627194840/http://www.theartstory.org/artist-duchamp-marcel.htm |date=27 June 2013 }}</ref><ref>(fr)[https://web.archive.org/web/20180222225657/https://books.google.com/books?id=Rl7vBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT1152&dq=Acad%C3%A9mie+Julian&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj50Iu_qsHPAhUFQBQKHUIzB7w4UBDoAQgnMAI#v=onepage&q=Acad%C3%A9mie%20Julian&f=false Victoria Charles, Joseph Manca, Megan McShane, ''1000 Chefs-d'œuvre de la peinture'']</ref> from 1904 to 1905, but preferred playing billiards to attending classes. The Académie Julian was one of several "independent" academies that sprang up in reaction to the [[Ecole des Beaux-Arts]]. During this time, Duchamp drew and sold cartoons that reflected his ribald humour. Many of his drawings use verbal puns (sometimes spanning multiple languages), [[visual pun]]s, or both. Such play with words and symbols engaged his imagination for the rest of his life.

In 1905, Duchamp began his compulsory military service with the 39th Infantry Regiment,<ref name="François Lespinasse">François Lespinasse, ''Robert Antoine Pinchon: 1886–1943'', 1990, repr. Rouen: Association les amis de l'École de Rouen, 2007, {{ISBN|9782906130036}} {{in lang|fr}}</ref> working for a printer in Rouen. There he learned [[typography]] and printing processes—skills he would use in his later work.

Owing to his eldest brother [[Jacques Villon|Jacques']] membership in the prestigious [[Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture]] Duchamp's work was exhibited in the 1908 [[Salon d'Automne]], and the following year in the [[Salon des Indépendants]]. [[Fauvism|Fauves]] and [[Paul Cézanne]]'s [[proto-Cubism]] influenced his paintings, although the critic [[Guillaume Apollinaire]]—who was eventually to become a friend—criticized what he called "Duchamp's very ugly nudes" ("les nus très vilains de Duchamp").<ref>[https://books.google.fr/books?isbn=2847420436 Pierre Lartigue, ''Rose Sélavy et caetera''], University of Michigan, Le Passage, 2004, p. 65, {{isbn|2847420436}}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.fr/books?isbn=2246630819 Judith Housez, ''Marcel Duchamp: biographie''], Grasset, 2006, p. 93, {{ISBN|2246630819}}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=tKlIAQAAIAAJ Bernard Marcadé, ''Marcel Duchamp: la vie à crédit : biographie''], Flammarion, 2007, p. 28, {{ISBN|2080682261}}</ref> Duchamp also became a lifelong friend of the exuberant artist [[Francis Picabia]] after meeting him at the 1911 Salon d'Automne, and Picabia proceeded to introduce him to a lifestyle of fast cars and "high" living.

In 1911, at Jacques' home in [[Puteaux]], the brothers hosted a regular discussion group with [[Cubism|Cubist]] artists including Picabia, [[Robert Delaunay]], [[Fernand Léger]], [[Roger de La Fresnaye]], [[Albert Gleizes]], [[Jean Metzinger]], [[Juan Gris]], and [[Alexander Archipenko]]. Poets and writers also participated. The group came to be known as the [[Puteaux Group]], or the [[Section d'Or]]. Uninterested in the Cubists' seriousness, or in their focus on visual matters, Duchamp did not join in discussions of Cubist theory and gained a reputation of being shy. However, that same year he painted in a Cubist style and added an impression of motion by using repetitive imagery -- in the process creating his own offshoot of Cubism that more closely resembled [[Futurism]].

During this period, Duchamp's fascination with transition, change, movement, and distance became manifest, and as many artists of the time, he was intrigued with the concept of depicting the [[fourth dimension in art]].<ref>Ian Chilvers & John Glaves-Smith, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art''. Oxford University Press, p. 204</ref> His painting ''Sad Young Man on a Train'' embodies this concern:

<blockquote>First, there's the idea of the movement of the train, and then that of the sad young man who is in a corridor and who is moving about; thus there are two parallel movements corresponding to each other. Then, there is the distortion of the young man—I had called this ''elementary parallelism''. It was a formal decomposition; that is, linear elements following each other like parallels and distorting the object. The object is completely stretched out, as if elastic. The lines follow each other in parallels, while changing subtly to form the movement, or the form of the young man in question. I also used this procedure in the ''Nude Descending a Staircase''.<ref>Cabanne, 1971 p.29.</ref></blockquote>

In his 1911 ''Portrait of Chess Players'' (''Portrait de joueurs d'échecs'') there is the Cubist overlapping frames and multiple perspectives of his two brothers playing chess, but to that Duchamp added elements conveying the unseen mental activity of the players.

Works from this time also included his first "machine" painting, ''Coffee Mill (Moulin à café)'' (1911), which he gave to his brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon. The later more figurative machine painting of 1914, ''Chocolate Grinder'' (''Broyeuse de chocolat''), prefigures the mechanism incorporated into the ''Large Glass'' on which he began work in New York the following year.<ref>Calvin Tomkins, ''The Bride and the Bachelors'', New York 1962, pp.31–2</ref>
[[File:Duchamp - Nude Descending a Staircase.jpg|thumb|right|Marcel Duchamp. ''[[Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2]]'' (1912). Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8". [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]].]]

===''Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2''===
{{main|Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2}}

Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was ''[[Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2]]'' ''(Nu descendant un escalier n° 2)'' (1912). The painting depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures. It shows elements of the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, as well as the movement and dynamism of the [[futurism (art)|Futurists]].

He first submitted the piece to appear at the Cubist [[Salon des Indépendants]], but [[Albert Gleizes]] (according to Duchamp in an interview with Pierre Cabanne, p. 31)<ref name="Peter Brooke">[http://www.peterbrooke.org.uk/a&r/Du%20Cubisme/Part%20two/duchamp Peter Brooke, The "rejection" of Nude Descending a Staircase] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140109091932/http://www.peterbrooke.org.uk/a%26r/Du%20Cubisme/Part%20two/duchamp |date=9 January 2014 }}</ref> asked Duchamp's brothers to have him voluntarily withdraw the painting, or to paint over the title that he had painted on the work and rename it something else. Duchamp's brothers did approach him with Gleizes' request, but Duchamp quietly refused. However, there was no jury at the Salon des Indépendants and Gleizes was in no position to reject the painting.<ref name="Peter Brooke" /> The controversy, according to art historian Peter Brooke, was not whether the work should be hung or not, but whether it should be hung with the Cubist group.<ref name="Peter Brooke" />

Of the incident Duchamp later recalled, "I said nothing to my brothers. But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that."<ref>{{harvnb|Tomkins|1996|p=83}}</ref> Yet Duchamp did appear in the illustrations to ''[[Du "Cubisme"]]'', he participated in the ''[[La Maison Cubiste]] (Cubist House)'', organized by the designer [[André Mare]] for the [[Salon d'Automne]] of 1912 (a few months after the Indépendants); he signed the [[Section d'Or]] invitation and participated in the Section d'Or exhibition during the fall of 1912. The impression is, Brooke writes, "it was precisely because he wished to remain part of the group that he withdrew the painting; and that, far from being ill treated by the group, he was given a rather privileged position, probably through the patronage of Picabia".<ref name="Peter Brooke" />

The painting was exhibited for the first time at [[Galeries Dalmau]], ''Exposició d'Art Cubista'', Barcelona, 1912, the first exhibition of Cubism in Spain.<ref name="Robinson et al">[https://books.google.com/books?id=6EvIx6zOuqgC&q=dalmau&pg=PA319 William H. Robinson, Jordi Falgàs, Carmen Belen Lord, ''Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí''], Cleveland Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Yale University Press, 2006, {{ISBN|0300121067}}</ref> Duchamp later submitted the painting to the 1913 "[[Armory Show]]" in New York City. In addition to displaying works of American artists, this show was the first major exhibition of modern trends coming out of Paris, encompassing experimental styles of the European [[avant-garde]], including Fauvism, Cubism, and [[Futurism]]. American show-goers, accustomed to realistic art, were scandalized, and the ''Nude'' was at the center of much of the controversy.

==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.

==Readymades==
{{main|Readymades of Marcel Duchamp}}
"Readymades" were [[found objects]] which Duchamp chose and presented as art. In 1913, Duchamp installed a ''[[Bicycle Wheel]]'' in his studio. The Bicycle Wheel was an idea of  Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. However, the idea of ''Readymades'' did not fully develop until 1915. The idea was to question the very notion of Art, and the adoration of art, which Duchamp found "unnecessary".<ref name="bbc">Interview, BBC TV, Joan Bakewell, 1966</ref>

{{blockquote| My idea was to choose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see.<ref name="bbc" />}}

''[[Bottle Rack]]'' (1914), a bottle-drying rack signed by Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade. ''[[In Advance of the Broken Arm]]'' (1915), a snow shovel, also called ''Prelude to a Broken Arm'', followed soon after. His ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'', a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917.<ref name="Cabanne, P"/> ''Fountain'' was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians.<ref name="BBC 2010" />

<!--  Commented out:  -->
[[File:Marcel Duchamp, 1919, L.H.O.O.Q.jpg|thumb|Marcel Duchamp, 1919, ''[[L.H.O.O.Q.]]''<ref name="dadart">[http://www.dadart.com/dadaism/dada/035a-duchamp-cage.html Marcel Duchamp 1887–1968, dadart.com]</ref>]]
In 1919, Duchamp made a parody of the ''[[Mona Lisa]]'' by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee. To this he added the inscription ''[[L.H.O.O.Q.]]'', a phonetic game which, when read out loud in French quickly sounds like ''"Elle a chaud au cul"''. This can be translated as "She has a hot ass", implying that the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. It may also have been intended as a Freudian joke, referring to [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s alleged homosexuality. Duchamp gave a "loose" translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" in a late interview with [[Arturo Schwarz]]. According to [[Rhonda Roland Shearer]], the apparent ''Mona Lisa'' reproduction is in fact a copy modeled partly on Duchamp's own face.<ref name="asrl">{{cite web |url=http://www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/panorama.htm |title=Mona Lisa: Who is Hidden Behind the Woman with the Mustache? |access-date=27 April 2008 |publisher=Art Science Research Laboratory |year=2003 |author=Marting, Marco De |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080320203734/http://www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/panorama.htm |archive-date=20 March 2008}}</ref> Research published by Shearer also speculates that Duchamp himself may have created some of the objects which he claimed to be "found objects".

== Antecedent ==
[[File:Alphonse Allais.jpg|thumb|Alphonse Allais, ''Des souteneurs encore dans la force de l'âge et le ventre dans l'herbe boivent de l'absinthe''. Carriage Curtain, before 1897.]]
In 2017–2018, the French expert Johann Naldi found and identified seventeen unpublished works in a private collection, classified as a national treasure on May 7, 2021 by the French Ministry of Culture, including ''Des souteneurs encore dans la force de l'âge et le ventre dans l'herbe'' by [[Alphonse Allais]]'','' consisting of a green carriage curtain suspended from a wooden cylinder.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Philippe |first=Dagen |date=May 10, 2021 |title=Dix-neuf œuvres des Arts incohérents classées trésor national |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2021/05/10/dix-neuf-uvres-des-arts-incoherents-classees-tresor-national_6079757_3246.html |journal=Le Monde}}</ref> This work was certainly exhibited at the [[Incoherents]] exhibitions in Paris between 1883 and 1893. According to Johann Naldi, this work is the oldest known readymade and was a source of inspiration for Marcel Duchamp.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Johann |first=Naldi |title=Arts incohérents, Discoveries and new perspectives |publisher=Lienart |date=April 2022 |isbn=978-2-35906-368-4 |location=Paris}}</ref>

==''The Large Glass''==
{{main|The Large Glass}}
[[File:Duchamp LargeGlass.jpg|thumb|right|''[[The Large Glass]]'' (1915–1923) [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] Collection]]
Duchamp worked on his complex [[Futurism]]-inspired piece ''[[The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even]] (The Large Glass)'' from 1915 to 1923, except for periods in [[Buenos Aires]] and Paris in 1918–1920. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship. He published notes for the piece, ''The Green Box'', intended to complement the visual experience. They reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and a mythology which describes the work. He stated that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erotic encounter between a bride and her nine bachelors.

A performance of the stage adaptation of [[Raymond Roussel]]'s novel ''Impressions d'Afrique'', which Duchamp attended in 1912, inspired the piece. Notes, sketches and plans for the work were drawn on his studio walls as early as 1913. To concentrate on the work free from material obligations, Duchamp found work as a librarian while living in France. After immigrating to the United States in 1915, he began work on the piece, financed by the support of the Arensbergs.

The piece is partly constructed as a retrospective of Duchamp's works, including a three-dimensional reproduction of his earlier paintings ''Bride'' (1912), ''Chocolate Grinder'' (1914) and ''Glider containing a water mill in neighboring metals'' (1913–1915), which has led to numerous interpretations. The work was formally declared "Unfinished" in 1923. Returning from its first public exhibition in a shipping crate, the glass suffered a large crack. Duchamp repaired it, but left the smaller cracks in the glass intact, accepting the chance element as a part of the piece.

[[Joseph Nechvatal]] has cast a considerable light on ''The Large Glass'' by noting the autoerotic implications of both bachelorhood and the repetitive, frenetic machine; he then discerns a larger constellation of themes by insinuating that autoeroticsm – and with the machine as omnipresent partner and practitioner – opens out into a subversive pan-sexuality as expressed elsewhere in Duchamp's work and career, in that a trance-inducing pleasure becomes the operative principle as opposed to the dictates of the traditional male-female coupling; and he as well documents the existence of this theme cluster throughout modernism, starting with Rodin's controversial [[Monument to Balzac]], and culminating in a Duchampian vision of a techno-universe in which one and all can find themselves welcomed.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Joseph Nechvatal |date=18 October 2018 |title=Before and Beyond the Bachelor Machine |journal=Arts |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=67 |doi=10.3390/arts7040067 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

Until 1969 when the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] revealed Duchamp's ''[[Étant donnés]]'' tableau, ''The Large Glass'' was thought to have been his last major work.

==Kinetic works==
[[File:Marcel Duchamp, photo Man Ray, 391 n. 13, July 1920.jpg|thumb|Marcel Duchamp, 1918, ''A regarder d'un oeil, de près, pendant presque une heure, To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour''. Photograph by Man Ray, published in [[391 (magazine)|391]], July 1920 (N13), [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York]]
Duchamp's interest in [[kinetic art]] works can be discerned as early as the notes for ''[[The Large Glass]]'' and the ''[[Bicycle Wheel]]'' readymade, and despite losing interest in "retinal art", he retained interest in visual phenomena. In 1920, with help from Man Ray, Duchamp built a motorized sculpture, ''Rotative plaques verre, optique de précision'' ("Rotary Glass Plates, Precision Optics"). The piece, which he did not consider to be art, involved a motor to spin pieces of rectangular glass on which were painted segments of a circle. When the apparatus spins, an optical illusion occurs, where the segments appear to be closed [[Concentric objects|concentric circles]]. Man Ray set up equipment to photograph the initial experiment, but when they turned the machine for the second time, a [[drive belt]] broke and caught a piece of the glass, which after glancing off Man Ray's head, shattered into bits.<ref name="TomkinsBio"/>{{rp|227–228}}

After moving back to Paris in 1923, at [[André Breton]]'s urging, with financing by [[Jacques Doucet (fashion designer)|Jacques Doucet]], Duchamp built another optical device based on the first one, ''Rotative Demisphère, optique de précision'' (Rotary Demisphere, Precision Optics). This time the optical element was a globe cut in half, with black concentric circles painted on it. When it spins, the circles appear to move backward and forward in space. Duchamp asked that Doucet not exhibit the apparatus as art.<ref name="TomkinsBio"/>{{rp|254–255}}

''Rotoreliefs'' were the next phase of Duchamp's spinning works. To make the optical "play toys", he painted designs on flat cardboard circles and spun them on a phonographic turntable. When spinning, the flat disks appeared three-dimensional. He had a printer produce 500 sets of six of the designs, and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them. The venture was a financial disaster, but some optical scientists thought they might be of use in restoring three-dimensional [[stereoscopic]] sight to people who have lost vision in one eye.<ref name="TomkinsBio"/>{{rp|301–303}} In collaboration with Man Ray and [[Marc Allégret]], Duchamp filmed early versions of the ''Rotoreliefs'', and they named the film ''[[Anémic Cinéma]]'' (1926). Later, in [[Alexander Calder]]'s studio in 1931, while looking at the sculptor's kinetic works, Duchamp suggested that these should be called ''[[Mobile (sculpture)|mobiles]]''. Calder agreed to use this novel term in his upcoming show. To this day, sculptures of this type are called "mobiles".<ref name="TomkinsBio"/>{{rp|294}}

==Musical ideas==
Between 1912 and 1915, Duchamp worked with various musical ideas. At least three pieces have survived: two compositions and a note for a musical happening. The two compositions are based on [[Aleatoric music|chance operations]]. ''Erratum Musical'', written for three voices, was published in 1934. ''La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même. Erratum Musical'' is unfinished and was never published or exhibited during Duchamp's lifetime. According to the manuscript, the piece was intended for a mechanical instrument "in which the virtuoso intermediary is suppressed". The manuscript also contains a description for "An apparatus automatically recording fragmented musical periods," consisting of a [[funnel]], several open-end cars and a set of numbered balls.<ref>Petr Kotik. Liner Notes to CD "The Music of Marcel Duchamp", Edition Block + Paula Cooper Gallery, 1991.</ref> These pieces predate [[John Cage]]'s ''[[Music of Changes]]'' (1951), which is often considered the first modern piece to be conceived largely through random procedures.<ref>Randel, Don Michael. 2002. The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians. {{ISBN|0-674-00978-9}}.</ref>

In 1968, Duchamp and John Cage appeared together at a concert entitled "Reunion", playing a game of chess and composing [[Aleatoric music]] by triggering a series of [[photoelectric cell]]s underneath the [[chessboard]].<ref name="toutfait.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Articles/lotringer.html |title="Becoming Duchamp" by Sylvère Lotringer |publisher=Toutfait.com |access-date=11 May 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130312133029/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Articles/lotringer.html |archive-date=12 March 2013  }}</ref>

==Rrose Sélavy==
[[File:Label for the Belle Haleine cropped.png|thumb|left|200px|''Rrose Sélavy'' (Marcel Duchamp), 1921 photograph by Man Ray, art direction by Marcel Duchamp, silver print, {{cvt|5+7/8|×|3+7/8|in|mm}}, [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]]]]
[[File:Monte Carlo Bond 1924.jpg|thumb|Monte Carlo Bond with signatures from Rrose Sélavy and Marcel Duchamp, issued 1 November 1924]]
"Rrose Sélavy", also spelled Rose Sélavy, was one of Duchamp's pseudonyms. The name, a [[pun]], sounds like the French phrase {{lang|fr|[[Eros (concept)|Eros]], c'est la vie}}, which may be translated as "Eros, such is life." It has also been read as {{lang|fr|arroser la vie}} ("to make a toast to life"). Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray showing Duchamp dressed as a woman. Through the 1920s Man Ray and Duchamp collaborated on more photos of Sélavy. Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed several creations with it.

Duchamp used the name in the title of at least one sculpture, ''[[Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy?]]'' (1921).  The sculpture, a type of readymade called an [[assemblage (art)|assemblage]], consists of an [[Medical thermometer#Oral|oral thermometer]], a couple of dozen small cubes of [[marble]] resembling sugar cubes and a [[cuttlefish bone]] inside a [[birdcage]]. Sélavy also appears on the label of ''[[Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette]]'' (1921), a readymade that is a perfume bottle in the original box. Duchamp also signed his film ''Anémic Cinéma'' (1926) with the Sélavy name.

The inspiration for the name Rrose Sélavy has been thought to be [[Belle da Costa Greene]], [[J. P. Morgan]]'s librarian at [[The Morgan Library & Museum]] (formerly The Pierpont Morgan Library) who, following his death, became the Library's director, working there for a total of forty-three years. Empowered by J. P. Morgan, and then by his son Jack, Greene built the collection buying and selling rare [[manuscripts]], books and art.<ref>[http://www.toutfait.com/online_journal_details.php?postid=866 Duchamp Bottles Belle Greene: Just Desserts For His Canning] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121027213202/http://www.toutfait.com/online_journal_details.php?postid=866 |date=27 October 2012}} by Bonnie Jean Garner.</ref>

Rrose Sélavy, and the other pseudonyms Duchamp used, may be read as a comment on the fallacy of romanticizing the conscious individuality or subjectivity of the artist, a theme that is also a prominent subtext of the [[Readymades of Marcel Duchamp|readymades]]. Duchamp said in an interview, "You think you're doing something entirely your own, and a year later you look at it and you see actually the roots of where your art comes from without your knowing it at all."<ref>{{cite book |last=Tomkins |first=Calvin |title=Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews |year=2013 |publisher=ARTBOOK {{!}} D.A.P. |location=New York, NY |isbn=978-1936440399 |page=49}}</ref> The [[Pérez Art Museum Miami]], in Florida, holds the piece ''Boîte-en-valise (De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy),'' or in English, ''Box in a Valise (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy)'' created from 1941–61, in the museum's collection.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Boîte-en-valise (De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy) (Box in a Valise (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy)) • Pérez Art Museum Miami |url=https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2000.22a-r |access-date=2023-09-05 |website=Pérez Art Museum Miami |language=en-US}}</ref>  

From 1922, the name Rrose Sélavy also started appearing in a series of [[aphorism]]s, puns, and [[spoonerism]]s by the French [[surrealism|surrealist]] poet [[Robert Desnos]]. Desnos tried to portray Rrose Sélavy as a long-lost aristocrat and rightful queen of France. Aphorism 13 paid homage to Marcel Duchamp: {{lang|fr|Rrose Sélavy connaît bien le marchand du sel}} ‒ in English: "Rrose Sélavy knows the merchant of salt well"; in French the final words sound like Mar-champ Du-cel. Note that the "salt seller" aphorism – "mar-chand-du-sel" – is a phonetic [[anagram]] of the artist's name: "mar-cel-du-champ". (Duchamp's compiled notes are entitled, "Salt Seller".) In 1939 a collection of these aphorisms was published under the name of Rrose Sélavy, entitled, {{lang|fr|Poils et coups de pieds en tous genres}}.

== Transition from art to chess ==
[[File:Man Ray, 1920, Three Heads (Joseph Stella and Marcel Duchamp), gelatin silver print, 20.7 x 15.7 cm, Museum of Modern Art.jpg|thumb|Man Ray, 1920, ''Three Heads'' ([[Joseph Stella]] and Marcel Duchamp, painting bust portrait of Man Ray above Duchamp), gelatin silver print, 20.7 × 15.7&nbsp;cm, [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York]]
In 1918, Duchamp took leave of the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the ''Large Glass'', and went to [[Buenos Aires]], where he remained for nine months and often played [[chess]]. He [[woodcarving|carved]] his own [[chess set]] from wood with help from a local craftsman who made the [[Knight (chess)|knights]]. He moved to Paris in 1919, and then back to the United States in 1920. Upon his return to Paris in 1923, Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist. Instead, his main interest was chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.

Duchamp is seen, briefly, playing chess with Man Ray in the short film ''[[Entr'acte (film)|Entr'acte]]'' (1924) by [[René Clair]]. He designed the 1925 poster for the Third French Chess Championship, and as a competitor in the event, finished at fifty percent (3–3, with two draws), earning the title of [[chess master]]. During this period his fascination with chess so distressed his first wife that she glued his pieces to the [[chessboard]]. Duchamp continued to play in the French Championships and in the [[Chess Olympiad]]s from 1928 to 1933, favoring [[hypermodernism (chess)|hypermodern]] openings such as the [[Nimzo-Indian]].

Sometime in the early 1930s, Duchamp reached the height of his ability, but realized that he had little chance of winning recognition in top-level chess. In the following years, his participation in chess tournaments declined, but he discovered [[correspondence chess]] and became a chess journalist, writing weekly newspaper columns. While his contemporaries were achieving spectacular success in the art world by selling their works to high-society collectors, Duchamp observed,  "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be [[commercialized]]. Chess is much purer than art in its social position."<ref>Time Magazine. 10 March 1952</ref> On another occasion, Duchamp elaborated, "The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."<ref>"Marcel Duchamp." Kynaston McShine.1989.</ref>

{{Chess diagram
| tleft
|
|  |rd|  |  |  |  |  |
|  |pl|rl|  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |pd|  |
|  |pl|  |  |  |  |  |pd
|  |  |  |  |  |kl|  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |kd|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

| Duchamp's Problem with White to play<ref>{{cite web |title=Marcel Duchamp's Problem - Chess Forums |url=https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/marcel-duchamps-problem |website=Chess.com |access-date=19 January 2018 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180119121038/https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/marcel-duchamps-problem |archive-date=19 January 2018}}</ref>
}}

In 1932, Duchamp teamed with chess theorist [[Vitaly Halberstadt]] to publish ''L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées'' ([[Opposition (chess)|Opposition]] and Sister Squares are Reconciled), known as [[corresponding squares]]. This treatise describes the [[Corresponding squares#Lasker-Reichhelm position|Lasker-Reichhelm position]], an extremely rare type of position that can arise in the [[Chess endgame|endgame]]. Using [[Enneagram (geometry)|enneagram]]-like charts that fold upon themselves, the authors demonstrated that in this position, the most Black can hope for is a [[Draw (chess)|draw]].

The theme of the "endgame" is important to an understanding of Duchamp's complex attitude toward his artistic career. Irish playwright [[Samuel Beckett]] was an associate of Duchamp, and used the theme as the narrative device for the 1957 play of the same name, ''[[Endgame (play)|Endgame]]''. In 1968, Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage, at a concert entitled "Reunion". Music was produced by a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard, triggered sporadically by normal game play.<ref name="toutfait.com"/>

On choosing a career in chess, Duchamp said, "If [[Bobby Fischer]] came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him—as if anyone could—but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted."<ref>Brady, Frank: ''Bobby Fischer: profile of a prodigy'', Courier Dover Publications, 1989; p. 207.</ref>

Duchamp left a legacy to chess in the form of an enigmatic endgame problem he composed in 1943. The problem was included in the announcement for Julian Levi's gallery exhibition ''Through the Big End of the Opera Glass'', printed on translucent paper with the faint inscription: "White to play and win". Grandmasters and endgame specialists have since grappled with the problem, with most concluding that there is no solution.<ref>Beliavsky, A & Mikhalchishin, A., ''Winning Endgame Technique'', Batsford, 1995.</ref>

==Later artistic involvement==
Although Duchamp was no longer considered to be an active artist, he continued to consult with artists, art dealers and collectors. From 1925 he often traveled between France and the United States, and made New York's Greenwich Village his home in 1942. He also occasionally worked on artistic projects such as the short film ''Anémic Cinéma'' (1926), ''[[De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy (La Boîte-en-valise)|Box in a Valise]]'' (1935–1941), ''Self Portrait in Profile'' (1958) and the larger work ''Étant Donnés'' (1946–1966). In 1943, he participated with [[Maya Deren]] in her unfinished film ''[[The Witch's Cradle]]'', filmed in [[Peggy Guggenheim]]'s [[Art of This Century gallery]], in which his hands manipulate the string game, Cat's Cradle, while his body is enmeshed in stop-motion-animated twine.

From the mid-1930s onward he collaborated with the [[Surrealists]]; however, he did not join the movement, despite the coaxing of [[André Breton]]. From then until 1944, together with [[Max Ernst]], [[Eugenio Granell]], and Breton, Duchamp edited the Surrealist periodical ''[[VVV (magazine)|VVV]]'', and served as an advisory editor for the magazine ''[[View (magazine)|View]]'', which featured him in its March 1945 edition, thus introducing him to a broader American audience.

Duchamp's influence on the art world remained behind the scenes until the late 1950s, when he was "discovered" by young artists such as [[Robert Rauschenberg]] and [[Jasper Johns]], who were eager to escape the dominance of [[Abstract Expressionism]]. In 1959, the publication in both French and English of Robert Lebel's catalogue raisonné made his work more widely accessible.<ref>Lebel, Robert. ''Marcel Duchamp''. New York: Grove Press, 1959.</ref> He was a co-founder of the international literary group [[Oulipo]] in 1960. Interest in Duchamp was reignited in the 1960s, and he gained international public recognition. In 1963, curator [[Walter Hopps]] organized Duchamp's first retrospective exhibition at the [[Pasadena Art Museum]], and there he appeared in an iconic photograph playing chess opposite nude model [[Eve Babitz]], photographed by [[Julian Wasser]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Appleford |first=Steve |date=2023-02-09 |title=Julian Wasser, Famed L.A. Photojournalist, Dies at 89 |url=https://lamag.com/news/julian-wasser-famed-l-a-photojournalist-dies-at-89 |access-date=2024-04-14 |website=LAmag |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Anolik">{{cite magazine |last=Anolik |first=Lili |title=All About Eve—and Then Some |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/03/eve-babitz-los-angeles-party-scene |magazine=Vanity Fair |access-date=1 March 2014 |date=March 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140228110425/http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/03/eve-babitz-los-angeles-party-scene |archive-date=28 February 2014}}</ref> The photograph was later described by the [[Smithsonian Archives of American Art]] as being "among the key documentary images of American modern art".<ref name=Karlstrom>{{cite web |last=Karlstrom |first=Paul |title=Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14 |url=http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-eve-babitz-12164 |work=Archives of American Art |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |access-date=1 March 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140306082515/http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-eve-babitz-12164 |archive-date=6 March 2014}}</ref>

Artist and collaborator [[Richard Hamilton (artist)]] organized a retrospective at The [[Tate Gallery]]  in 1966. Other major institutions, including the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] and the [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York, followed with a retrospective of Duchamp's work in 1973. He was invited to lecture on art and to participate in formal discussions, as well as sitting for interviews with major publications. As the last surviving member of the Duchamp family of artists, in 1967 Duchamp helped to organize an exhibition in Rouen, France, called ''Les Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp''. Parts of this family exhibition were later shown again at the [[Musée National d'Art Moderne]] in Paris.

===Exhibition design and installation art===
[[File:Duchamp Mile of String.jpg|thumb|''His Twine'', by Duchamp, from "First Papers of Surrealism". Photo by John Schiff, 1942.]]
Duchamp participated in the design of the 1938 [[Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme]], held at the Galerie des Beaux-arts, Paris. The show was organised by [[André Breton]] and [[Paul Éluard]], and featured "Two hundred and twenty-nine artworks by sixty exhibitors from fourteen countries... at this multimedia exhibition."<ref name="widewalls">{{cite web |title=Behind The Scenes of the Legendary International Surrealist Exhibition {{!}} Widewalls |url=https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/international-surrealist-exhibition-1938 |access-date=2020-08-18 |website=www.widewalls.ch}}</ref> The Surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a creative act, thus working collaboratively in its staging.  Marcel Duchamp was named as "Generateur-arbitre", Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst were listed as technical directors, Man Ray was chief lighting technician and [[Wolfgang Paalen]] responsible for "water and foliage".<ref>{{cite book |title=Jubiläums-Ausstellung Mannheim 1907: Internationale Kunst- und Grosse Gartenbau-Ausstellung, vom 1. Mai bis 20. Oktober : offizieller Katalog der Gartenbau-Ausstellung / |date=1907 |publisher=Internationale Kunst- und Grosse Gartenbau-Ausstellung |location=Mannheim |doi=10.5962/bhl.title.118599|url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/205794 }}</ref>

''Plus belles rues de Paris'' (The most beautiful streets of Paris) filled one side of the lobby with mannequins dressed by various Surrealists.<ref name="widewalls" /> The main hall, or the ''Salle de Superstition'' (Room of Superstition), was "a cave-like [[Gesamtkunstwerk]]" notably including Duchamp's [[Installation art|installation]], ''Twelve Hundred Coal Bags Suspended from the Ceiling over a Stove'', which was literally 1,200 stuffed coal bags suspended from the ceiling.<ref name="artbeat">{{cite web |title=NYAB Event - "Display of the Centuries. Frederick Kiesler and Contemporary Art" Exhibition |url=http://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2015/C28C |access-date=2020-08-17 |website=www.nyartbeat.com}}</ref><ref name="Tate">{{cite web |last=Tate |title=Duchamp, Childhood, Work and Play: The Vernissage for First Papers of Surrealism, New York, 1942 – Tate Papers |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/22/duchamp-childhood-work-and-play-the-vernissage-for-first-papers-of-surrealism-new-york-1942 |access-date=2020-08-17 |website=Tate}}</ref> The floor was covered by Paalen with dead leaves and mud from the [[Montparnasse Cemetery]]. In the middle of the grand hall underneath Duchamp's coal sacks, Paalen installed an artificial water-filled pond with real [[Nymphaeaceae|water lilies]] and reeds, which he called ''Avant La Mare''. A single light bulb provided the only illumination,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/interviews/hirschhorn/popup_8.html |title=Marcel Duchamp |publisher=Toutfait.com |access-date=11 May 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130302054012/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/interviews/hirschhorn/popup_8.html |archive-date=2 March 2013  }}</ref> so patrons were given [[flashlight]]s with which to view the art (an idea of Man Ray), while the aroma of [[Coffee roasting|roasting coffee]] filled the air. Around midnight, the visitors witnessed the dancing shimmer of a scantily dressed girl who suddenly arose from the reeds, jumped on a bed, shrieked hysterically, then disappeared just as quickly. Much to the Surrealists' satisfaction, the exhibition scandalized many of the guests.

In 1942, for the ''First Papers of Surrealism'' show in New York, surrealists called on Duchamp to design the exhibition. He created an installation, ''His Twine'', commonly  known as the "mile of string", it was a three-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works.<ref name="Tate" /><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/interviews/hirschhorn/popup_9.html |title=Marcel Duchamp |publisher=Toutfait.com |access-date=11 May 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140623062319/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/interviews/hirschhorn/popup_9.html |archive-date=23 June 2014  }}</ref> Duchamp made a secret arrangement with an associate's son to bring young friends to the opening of the show. When the formally-dressed patrons arrived, they found a dozen children in athletic clothes kicking and passing balls, and skipping rope. When questioned, the children were told to say "Mr. Duchamp told us we could play here". Duchamp's design of the catalog for the show included "found", rather than posed, photographs of the artists.

Breton with Duchamp organized the exhibition "Le surréalisme en 1947" in the [[Galerie Maeght]] in Paris after the war and named set designer [[Frederick John Kiesler|Frederick Kiesler]] as architect.<ref name="artbeat" />

== ''Étant donnés'' ==
{{main|Étant donnés}}
[[File:Etant donnes.jpg|thumb|''[[Étant donnés]]'', 1946–1966, [[mixed media]], posthumously and permanently [[Installation art|installed]] in the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] in 1969]]
Duchamp's final major art work surprised the art world, which believed he had given up art for chess 25 years earlier. Entitled ''[[Étant donnés]]: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage'' ("Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas"), it is a tableau, visible only through a peep hole in a wooden door.<ref>{{cite web |title=Tourfait Notes: Exterior view|url=http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Notes/pop_1.html|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304032808/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Notes/pop_1.html |archive-date=4 March 2016 |access-date=11 May 2014 |publisher=Toutfait.com}}</ref> A nude woman may be seen lying on her back with her face hidden, legs spread, and one hand holding a gas lamp in the air against a landscape backdrop.<ref>{{cite web |title=Tourfait Notes: Interior view|url=http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Notes/pop_2.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140202001156/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Notes/pop_2.html |archive-date=2 February 2014 |access-date=11 May 2014 |publisher=Toutfait.com}}</ref> Duchamp had worked secretly on the piece from 1946 to 1966 in his [[Greenwich Village]] studio while even his closest friends thought he had abandoned art. The torso of the nude figure is based on Duchamp's lover, the Brazilian sculptor [[Maria Martins (artist)|Maria Martins]], with whom he had an affair from 1946 to 1951.<ref>Cotter, Holland. [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/arts/design/28duchamp.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& "Duchamp in Philadelphia – Peepholes Onto a Landscape of Eros"], ''[[The New York Times]]''. Retrieved 23 September 2014.</ref>

== Personal life ==
Throughout his adult life, Duchamp was a passionate smoker of Habana cigars.<ref>{{cite web |author=door K-films |url=http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdxdm6_les-grandes-repetitions-extraits-de_music |title=see him on film |publisher=Dailymotion.com |date=5 July 2010 |access-date=11 May 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140512220326/http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdxdm6_les-grandes-repetitions-extraits-de_music |archive-date=12 May 2014}}</ref>

Duchamp became a United States citizen in 1955.<ref>{{cite web |title=Marcel Duchamp |url=https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/marcel-duchamp |website=Guggenheim |access-date=26 June 2017 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170703130334/https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/marcel-duchamp |archive-date=3 July 2017}}</ref>

In June 1927, Duchamp married {{ill|Lydie Sarazin-Levassor|fr|Lydie Sarazin-Levassor|lt=Lydie Sarazin-Levassor;}} however, they divorced six months later. It was rumored that Duchamp had chosen a [[marriage of convenience]], because Sarazin-Levassor was the daughter of a wealthy automobile manufacturer. Early in January 1928, Duchamp said that he could no longer bear the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and they were soon divorced.<ref>[[Pontus Hultén|Hulten, Pontus]]. ''Marcel Duchamp, Work and Life: Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy, 1887–1968.'' Pages 8–9 June (1927) to 25 January (1928). {{ISBN|0-262-08225-X}}.</ref>

Between 1946 and 1951 [[Maria Martins (artist)|Maria Martins]] was his mistress.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/arts/design/28duchamp.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2& |title=Landscape of Eros, Through the Peephole |last=Cotter |first=Holland |date=27 August 2009 |website=The New York Times |access-date=22 February 2018}}</ref>

In 1954, he and [[Alexina Duchamp|Alexina "Teeny" Sattler]] married. They remained together until his death.

Duchamp was an atheist.<ref>{{cite book|title=Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp|publisher=Da Capo Press|isbn=9780786749713|page=106|quote=Cabanne: "Do you believe in God?" Duchamp: "No, not at all."|date=21 July 2009}}</ref>

==Death and burial==
[[File:Marcel Duchamp's gravestone in Rouen, France.jpg|thumb|Marcel Duchamp's gravestone in [[Rouen]], France with the epitaph, ''D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent'' (Besides, it's always the others who die)]]
Duchamp died suddenly and peacefully in the early morning of 2 October 1968 at his home in [[Neuilly-sur-Seine]], France. After an evening dining at home with his friends [[Man Ray]] and [[Robert Lebel (art critic)|Robert Lebel]], Duchamp retired at 1:05&nbsp;am, collapsed in his studio, and died of heart failure.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hn5f4u3PUVoC&q=Marcel+Duchamp+died+peacefully&pg=PA19 |title=Rudolf Ernst Kuenzli, Francis M. Naumann, essay by Arturo Schwarz, ''Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the Century, Issue 16 of Dada surrealism'', MIT Press, 1991, ISBN 0262610728 |access-date=11 May 2014 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170122092134/https://books.google.com/books?id=Hn5f4u3PUVoC&pg=PA19&dq=Marcel+Duchamp+died+peacefully&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Mg3KUcGACYjK4ASZx4CAAQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Marcel%20Duchamp%20died%20peacefully&f=false |archive-date=22 January 2017  |isbn=9780262610728 |last1=Kuenzli |first1=Rudolf E. |last2=Naumann |first2=Francis M. |year=1991 |publisher=MIT Press }}</ref>

He is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France, with the [[epitaph]], "D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent" ("Besides, it's always the others who die").

==Legacy==
Many critics consider Duchamp to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century,<ref>{{Cite book|first1=Calvin|last1=Tomkins|isbn=0805057897|title=Duchamp:A biography|quote=Regarded by many in the art world as the most influential artist of the century|date=15 March 1998|publisher=Henry Holt and Company }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dada-companion.com/duchamp/archive/aia_2000_nodelman.pdf|title=Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit. – Review – book review|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111004043913/http://www.dada-companion.com/duchamp/archive/aia_2000_nodelman.pdf|archive-date=4 October 2011|access-date=29 July 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.understandingduchamp.com/author/duchamp.html|title=Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717155830/http://www.understandingduchamp.com/author/duchamp.html|archive-date=17 July 2011|access-date=29 July 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham1.html|title=Duchamp & Androgyny: The Concept and its Context|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110919013720/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham1.html|archive-date=19 September 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mfa.org/collections/publications/marcel-duchamp|title=Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110809051945/http://www.mfa.org/collections/publications/marcel-duchamp|archive-date=9 August 2011}}</ref> and his output influenced the development of post–World War I [[Art of Europe|Western art]]. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of [[Western art history|Western art]] during this period.<ref name="TomkinsBio">Tomkins: ''Duchamp: A Biography''.</ref><!--I don't know what pages right now. I'll have to read the book again. -sparkit--> He challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and rejected the emerging art market, through subversive anti-art.<ref>Tomkins, 1966, p.38-39</ref> He famously dubbed a urinal art and named it ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]''. Duchamp produced relatively few artworks and remained mostly aloof of the avant-garde circles of his time. He went on to pretend to abandon art and devote the rest of his life to chess, while secretly continuing to make art.<ref>Ian Chilvers & John Glaves-Smith, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art''. Oxford University Press, p. 205</ref> In 1958 Duchamp said of creativity,

<blockquote>The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.<ref>Marcel Duchamp, from Session on the Creative Act, Convention of the American Federation of Arts, Houston, Texas, April 1957.</ref></blockquote>

Duchamp in his later life explicitly expressed negativity toward art. In a BBC interview with Duchamp conducted by [[Joan Bakewell]] in 1968 he compared art with religion, saying that he wished to do away with art the same way many have done away with religion. Duchamp goes on to explain to the interviewer that "the word art etymologically means to do", that art means activity of any kind, and that it is our society that creates "purely artificial" distinctions of being an artist.<ref>{{cite web|title=Joan Bakewell in conversation with Marcel Duchamp|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04826th|website=BBC Arts|year=1968|access-date=8 October 2016|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160926044032/http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04826th|archive-date=26 September 2016}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | url = https://archive.org/details/marcelduchampart00rudo | url-access = registration | page = [https://archive.org/details/marcelduchampart00rudo/page/234 234] | quote = bbc 1966 interview duchamp joan bakewell. | title = Marcel Duchamp | publisher = MIT Press | isbn = 9780262610728 | last1 = Kuenzli | first1 = Rudolf Ernst | last2 = Naumann | first2 = Francis M | year = 1990 | df = dmy-all }}</ref>

A quotation erroneously attributed to Duchamp suggests a negative attitude toward later trends in 20th century art:

{{blockquote|This Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did. When I discovered the ready-mades I sought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my readymades and found aesthetic beauty in them, I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.}}

However, this was written in 1961 by fellow Dadaist [[Hans Richter (artist)|Hans Richter]], in the second person, i.e. "You threw the bottle-rack...". Although a marginal note in the letter suggests that Duchamp generally approved of the statement, Richter did not make the distinction clear until many years later.<ref>[http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_5/articles/girst2/girst1.html "(Ab)Using Marcel Duchamp: The Concept of the Readymade in Post-War and Contemporary American Art"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060507233803/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_5/articles/girst2/girst1.html |date=7 May 2006}} by Thomas Girst at toutfait.com, Issue 5, 2003.</ref>

Duchamp's attitude was more favorable, however, as evidenced by another statement made in 1964:

{{blockquote|Pop Art is a return to "conceptual" painting, virtually abandoned, except by the Surrealists, since [Gustave] Courbet, in favor of retinal painting... If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas.<ref>Rosalind Constable, "New York's Avant-garde, and How It Got There", ''New York Herald Tribune'', May 17, 1964, p. 10, cited in Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, "Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy, 1887–1968", in Pontus Hulten, ed., ''Marcel Duchamp'', Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993, entry for May 17, 1964. See also [[Campbell's Soup Cans#Interpretation]].</ref>}}

The [[Marcel Duchamp Prize|Prix Marcel Duchamp]] (Marcel Duchamp Prize), established in 2000, is an annual award given to a young artist by the [[Centre Georges Pompidou]]. In 2004, as a testimony to the legacy of Duchamp's work to the art world, a panel of prominent artists and art historians voted ''Fountain'' "the most influential artwork of the 20th century".<ref name="BBC 2010" /><ref>{{Cite news |last1=Higgins |first1=Charlotte |date=2004-12-02 |title=Work of art that inspired a movement ... a urinal |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/dec/02/arts.artsnews1 |access-date=2023-04-11 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>

[[File:Marcel Duchamp (Rrose Selavy), Man Ray, 1920-21, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Marcel Duchamp (Rrose Selavy) and Man Ray, ''[[Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette]]'', 1920–1921]]

==Art market==
On 17 November 1999, a version of ''Fountain'' (owned by the critic and gallerist [[Arturo Schwarz]]) was sold at [[Sotheby's]], New York, for $1,762,500 to Dimitris Daskalopoulos, who declared that ''Fountain'' represented the origin of [[contemporary art]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/18/arts/more-records-for-contemporary-art.html |title=More Records for Contemporary Art |last=Vogel |first=Carol |date=18 November 1999 |work=The New York Times |access-date=24 November 2018}}</ref> The price set a world record, at the time, for a work by Marcel Duchamp at public auction.<ref>[https://www.toutfait.com/marcel-duchamp-money-is-no-object-the-art-of-defying-the-art-market/ Francis M. Naumann, "The Art Defying the Art Market"], ''Tout-fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal'', vol. 2, 5, April 2003</ref><ref>[http://www.thecityreview.com/s02pco1.html Carter B. Horsley, ''Contemporary Art & 14 Duchamp Readymades''], The City Review, 2002</ref> The record has since been surpassed by a work sold at [[Christie's]] Paris, titled ''[[Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette]]'' (1921). The readymade of a perfume bottle in its box sold for a record $11.5&nbsp;million (€8.9&nbsp;million).<ref>[http://www.artnews.com/2009/03/03/saint-laurent-collection-soars-at-christies-paris/ Laurie Hurwitz, ''Saint Laurent Collection Soars at Christie's Paris'']. Duchamp's ''Belle haleine–Eau de voilette'', 1921</ref>

==Selected works==
{{main|List of works by Marcel Duchamp}}
<gallery widths="180px" heights="180px">
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1910, Joueur d'échecs (The Chess Game), oil on canvas, 114 x 146.5 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art.jpg|Marcel Duchamp, 1910, ''Joueur d'échecs'' (''The Chess Game''), oil on canvas, 114 x 146.5&nbsp;cm, [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]]
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1911, Coffee Mill (Moulin à café), oil and graphite on board, 33 x 12.7 cm, Tate, London.jpg|Marcel Duchamp, 1911, ''Coffee Mill (Moulin à café)'', oil and graphite on board, 33 x 12.7&nbsp;cm, [[Tate]], London. Reproduced in ''[[Du "Cubisme"]]''
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1911, La sonate (Sonata), oil on canvas, 145.1 x 113.3 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art.jpg|Marcel Duchamp, 1911, ''La sonate (Sonata)'', oil on canvas, 145.1 x 113.3&nbsp;cm, [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]]. Exhibited at ''Exposició d'Art Cubista'', Barcelona, [[Galeries Dalmau]], Barcelona, 1912 (reproduced in catalogue)
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1912, Le Roi et la Reine entourés de Nus vites (The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes), oil on canvas, 114.6 x 128.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art.jpg|Marcel Duchamp, 1912, ''Le Roi et la Reine entourés de Nus vites'' (''The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes''), oil on canvas, 114.6 x 128.9&nbsp;cm, [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]]
File:Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, in the Frederick C. Torrey home, c. 1913.jpg|Marcel Duchamp, ''[[Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2]]'', in the Frederick C. Torrey home, c. 1913
</gallery>

==See also==
* [[Shock art]]
* [[Stereokinetic stimulus]]
* [[Fourth dimension in art]]
* ''[[Hommage à Marcel Duchamp]]'' (1947 painting by his friend, [[Victor Brauner]])
* ''[[Fountain Archive]]''
* ''[[Transatlantic_(TV_series)|Transatlantic]]'' (portrayal in 2023 TV series)

==Notes==
{{reflist|30em}}

==References==
* {{cite book |last=Tomkins |first=Calvin |title=Duchamp: A Biography |date=1996 |isbn=0-8050-5789-7 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company, Inc}}
* Tomkins, Calvin: ''Duchamp: The World of Marcel Duchamp 1887–'', Time Inc., 1966. {{ISBN|158334148X}}
* Ian Chilvers & John Glaves-Smith: ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art''. [[Oxford University Press]], pp.&nbsp;202–205
* Seigel, Jerrold: ''The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp'', University of California Press, 1995. {{ISBN|0-520-20038-1}}
* Hulten, Pontus (editor): ''Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life'', The MIT Press, 1993. {{ISBN|0-262-08225-X}}
* Yves Arman: ''Marcel Duchamp plays and wins'', ''Marcel Duchamp joue et gagne'', Marval Press, 1984
* Cabanne, Pierre: ''Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp'', Da Capo Press, Inc., 1987 Reprint of the 1979 London edition (1969 in French), {{ISBN|0-306-80303-8}}. Notable for having contributions by [[Jasper Johns]], [[Robert Motherwell]], and [[Salvador Dalí]] 
* [[Irene Gammel|Gammel, Irene]]: [http://ryerson.ca/mlc/inside29.html ''Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity'']. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
* {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080618192849/http://www.toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=866 |date=18 June 2008 |title=Duchamp Bottles Belle Greene: Just Desserts For His Canning}} by Bonnie Jean Garner (with text boxes by [[Stephen Jay Gould]])
* Gibson, Michael: Duchamp-Dada, (in French, Nouvelles Editions Françaises-Casterman, 1990) International Art Book Award of the Vasari Prize in 1991.
* Sanouillet, Michel and Peterson, Elmer: ''The Writings of Marcel Duchamp''. NY: Da Capo Press, 1989. {{ISBN|0-306-80341-0}}
* Sanouillet, Michel and Matisse, Paul: ''Marcel Duchamp: Duchamp du signe'' suivi de ''Notes'', Flammarion, 2008. {{ISBN|978-2-08-011664-2}}
* [[Catherine Perret]]: Marcel Duchamp, le manieur de gravité, Ed. CNDP, Paris, 1998
* [[Stefan Banz|Banz, Stefan]] (ed.): ''Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall'', JRP-Ringier, Zürich, 2010. {{ISBN|978-3-03764-156-9}}
* Jean-Marc Rouvière: ''Au prisme du readymade, incises sur l'identité équivoque de l'objet préface de Philippe Sers et G. Litichevesky'', Paris L'Harmattan 2023 {{ISBN|978-2-14-031710-1}}

==Further reading==
* Arturo Schwarz, ''The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp'', Delano Greenidge Editions, 1995
* Anne D'Harnoncourt (Intro), ''Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp... in resonance'', Menil Foundation, Houston, 1998, {{ISBN|3-89322-431-9}}
* [[Linda Dalrymple Henderson]], ''Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works'', Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998
* Paola Magi, ''Caccia al tesoro con Marcel Duchamp'', Edizioni Archivio Dedalus, Milano, 2010, {{ISBN|978-88-904748-0-4}}
* Paola Magi: ''Treasure Hunt With Marcel Duchamp'', Edizioni Archivio Dedalus, Milano, 2011, {{ISBN|978-88-904748-7-3}}
* Marc Décimo: ''Marcel Duchamp mis à nu. A propos du processus créatif'' (''Marcel Duchamp Stripped Bare. Apropos of the creative Act''), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2004 {{ISBN|978-2-84066-119-1}}.
* Marc Décimo:''The Marcel Duchamp Library'', perhaps (''La Bibliothèque de Marcel Duchamp, peut-être''), Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2002.
* Marc Décimo, ''Le Duchamp facile'', Les presses du réel, coll. "L'écart absolu / Poche", Dijon, 2005
* Marc Décimo (dir.), ''Marcel Duchamp et l'érotisme'', Les presses du réel, coll. « L'écart absolu / Chantier », Dijon, 2008
* T.J. Demos, ''The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp'', Cambridge, MIT Press, 2007.
* Lydie Fischer Sarazin-Levassor, ''A Marriage in Check. The Heart of the Bride Stripped by her Bachelor, even'', Les presses du réel, Dijon (France), 2007.
* J-T. Richard, ''M. Duchamp mis à nu par la psychanalyse, même'' (M. Duchamp stripped bare even by psychoanalysis), éd. L'Harmattan, Paris (France), 2010.
* Chris Allen (Trans), Dawn Ades (Intro), ''Three New York Dadas and The Blind Man: Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, Beatrice Wood'', Atlas Press, London, 2013, {{ISBN|978-1900565431}}

==External links==
{{Library resources box|by=yes|onlinebooks=no|about=yes|wikititle=Marcel Duchamp}}{{Commons category}}
{{Wikiquote}}
'''Duchamp works'''
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Marcel Duchamp}}
* [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] houses the [[Walter Conrad Arensberg|Arensbergs]]' large collection of Duchamp's work. ([http://www.philamuseum.org/ website])
* {{MoMA artist|1634}}
* An explanation about the ''Roue de bicyclette'' by Duchamp ([https://web.archive.org/web/20160303170849/http://www.the3graces.info/random_duchamp.htm website])
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20081004024543/http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-Duchamp_en/ENS-duchamp_en.html Dossier : Marcel Duchamp, Centre Pompidou]
<!--The works of Marcel Duchamp are copyrighted in the U.S. until at least 2039-->
* [http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51446.html Philadelphia Museum of Art ''Portrait of Chess Players'' (''Portrait de joueurs d'échecs'')] (1911).
* ''[http://www.toutfait.com/popup/articles/wallis/popup24.htm Philadelphia Museum of Art The Green Box]''. Notes and studies for ''[[The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even]]''. (1915–1923)
* ''[http://www.ubu.com/film/duchamp.html Anémic Cinéma]'' film (1926)
* [http://cdm15264.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16075coll3/id/14 Marcel Duchamp "Apropos of Myself" The Baltimore Museum of Art: Baltimore, Maryland, 1963] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130522022737/http://cdm15264.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16075coll3/id/14 |date=22 May 2013 }} Accessed 26 June 2012
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20150217100933/http://www.museum-schwerin.com/headnavi/duchamp-research-centre/ Duchamp Research Centre] at the [[Staatliches Museum Schwerin]]
* {{FrenchSculptureCensus}}

'''Essays by Duchamp'''
* Marcel Duchamp: ''The Creative Act'' (1957) [http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/audio5E.html Audio]

'''General resources'''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110312112731/http://toutfait.com/ ''Toutfait'': The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal]
* [http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/duchamp/ Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Poraiture] – online exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
* [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-eve-babitz-12164 Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14], a model of Duchamp's from the Smithsonian [[Archives of American Art]]
* [https://www.duchamparchives.org/ Duchamp Research Portal], archival collections and works of art from the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]], [[Centre Pompidou]], and Association Marcel Duchamp

'''Audio and video'''
* [http://www.ltmrecordings.com/marcelduchamp.html] Duchamp audio CD ''Musical Erratum + In Conversation'' at [[LTM Recordings|LTM]]
* [http://www.ubu.com/sound/duchamp.html] Marcel Duchamp: Various Statements and Interviews at [[Ubuweb]]
* [http://www.ltmrecordings.com/fdrcat.html ''Voices of Dada'', ''Futurism & Dada Reviewed'' and ''Surrealism Reviewed''] – readings by Duchamp on audio CDs
* [http://www.ubu.com/film/duchamp.html] Films of Marcel Duchamp at Ubuweb
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20040816123824/http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/duchamp_legacy.htm ''Duchamp's Legacy''] with [[Richard Hamilton (artist)|Richard Hamilton]] and Sarat Maharaj from [[Tate Britain]]. ([[RealPlayer]] required.)
*[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DzwADsrOEJk An Conversation with Marcel Duchamp and James Johnson Sweeney], National Broadcasting Company, 1956
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X_OoyzVxdY Marcel Duchamp Arrivato a cosa? Got to what?] in Italian language from the Pasadena Art Museum, 1971. Video released by art critic and curator dr [[Alain Chivilò]] in 2021.

'''Chess'''
* {{chessgames player|36967}}
* [https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/duchamp.html ''Marcel Duchamp and Chess''] by [[Edward Winter (chess historian)|Edward Winter]]

{{Marcel Duchamp|state=expanded}}
{{Dada}}
{{Cubism}}
{{Modernism}}
{{Authority control (arts)}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Duchamp, Marcel}}
[[Category:Works by Marcel Duchamp| ]]
[[Category:1887 births]]
[[Category:1968 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century French chess players]]
[[Category:20th-century French sportsmen]]
[[Category:20th-century French male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century French non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:20th-century French painters]]
[[Category:20th-century French male artists]]
[[Category:20th-century French sculptors]]
[[Category:Artists from New York City]]
[[Category:Académie Julian alumni]]
[[Category:Chess Olympiad competitors]]
[[Category:French conceptual artists]]
[[Category:French cubist artists]]
[[Category:Dada]]
[[Category:French atheists]]
[[Category:French chess players]]
[[Category:French chess writers]]
[[Category:French experimental filmmakers]]
[[Category:French emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:French librarians]]
[[Category:French male painters]]
[[Category:French male sculptors]]
[[Category:French mixed-media artists]]
[[Category:French parodists]]
[[Category:French surrealist artists]]
[[Category:Lycée Pierre-Corneille alumni]]
[[Category:French modern artists]]
[[Category:Oulipo members]]
[[Category:Pataphysicians]]
[[Category:People from Seine-Maritime]]
[[Category:Artists from Normandy]]
[[Category:People from Greenwich Village]]
[[Category:People from Ridgefield, New Jersey]]
[[Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States]]
[[Category:Sibling artists]]
[[Category:Sportspeople from Seine-Maritime]]
[[Category:Recycled art artists]]
[[Category:Dadaists]]
[[Category:20th-century French artists]]
[[Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters]]
[[Category:Writers from Bergen County, New Jersey]]