| Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 | |
|---|---|
| French:Nu descendant un escalier n° 2 | |
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| Artist | Marcel Duchamp |
| Year | 1912 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 147 cm × 89.2 cm (57+7⁄8 in × 35+1⁄8 in) |
| Location | Philadelphia Museum of Art,Philadelphia |
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (French:Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) is a 1912 painting byMarcel Duchamp. The work is widely regarded as aModernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. Before its first presentation at the 1912Salon des Indépendants in Paris it was rejected by theCubists as being tooFuturist. It was then exhibited with the Cubists atGaleries Dalmau'sExposició d'Art Cubista, in Barcelona, 20 April – 10 May 1912.[1] The painting was subsequently shown, and ridiculed, at the 1913Armory Show in New York City.
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was reproduced byGuillaume Apollinaire in his 1913 book,Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques. It is now in the Louise andWalter Arensberg Collection of thePhiladelphia Museum of Art.[2]
The work, anoil painting on canvas with dimensions of 147 cm × 89.2 cm (57.9 in × 35.1 in) in portrait, seemingly depicts a figure demonstrating an abstract movement in itsochres and browns. The discernible "body parts" of the figure are composed of nested,conical andcylindrical abstract elements, assembled together in such a way as to suggest rhythm and convey the movement of the figure merging into itself. Dark outlines limit the contours of the body while serving asmotion lines that emphasize the dynamics of the moving figure, while the accented arcs of the dotted lines seem to suggest a thrusting pelvic motion. The movement seems to be rotatedcounterclockwise from the upper left to the lower right corner, where thegradient of the apparently frozen sequence corresponding to the bottom right to top left dark, respectively, becomes moretransparent, the fading of which is apparently intended to simulate the "older" section. At the edges of the picture, the steps are indicated in darker colors. The center of the image is an amalgam of light and dark, that becomes more piqued approaching the edges. The overall warm, monochrome brightpalette ranges from yellow ochre to dark, almost black tones. The colors are translucent. At the bottom left Duchamp placed the title "NU DESCENDANT UN ESCALIER" in block letters, which may or may not be related to the work. The question of whether the figure represents a human body remains unanswered; the figure provides no clues to its age, individuality, or character, while the gender of "nu" is male. Shortly before his unexpected death in 1967, in an interview with Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp commented on the surprising success ofNude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 at the Armory Show (see below). "What contributed to the interest provoked by the canvas was its title. One just doesn't do a nude woman coming down the stairs ... it seemed scandalous."[3]
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The painting combines elements of both theCubist andFuturist movements. In the composition, Duchamp depicts motion by successive superimposed images, similar to stroboscopic motion photography. Duchamp also recognized the influence of thechronophotography ofÉtienne-Jules Marey and others, particularlyMuybridge'sWoman Walking Downstairs from his 1887 picture series, published asThe Human Figure in Motion.[4]
Duchamp submitted the work to appear with the Cubists at the 28th exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, Paris, 25 March through 16 May 1912. It appeared under the number 1001 of the catalogue, entitled simplyNu descendant l'escalier, notNu descendant un escalier n° 2. This catalogue revealed the title of the painting to the general public for the first time, even though the painting itself would be absent from the exhibition.[5]
Duchamp's brothers,Jacques Villon andRaymond Duchamp-Villon, sent by the hanging committee, asked him to voluntarily withdraw the painting, or paint over the title and rename it something else. According to Duchamp, Cubists such asAlbert Gleizes found that his nude wasn't quite in line with what they had already investigated [tracée].[6][7] The hanging committee objected to the work, Duchamp stressed, on the grounds that it had "too much of a literary title", and that "one doesn't paint a nude descending a staircase, that's ridiculous... a nude should be respected".[6][8][9]
It was also believed that the descending nude came too close to the influences of ItalianFuturism. Yet theSection d'Or Cubists tolerated and even enjoyed the presence of foreign artists (e.g.,Constantin Brâncuși,František Kupka,Alexander Archipenko,Amedeo Modigliani andJoseph Csaky). During the month of February 1912, a large Futurist exhibition was held in Paris at the GalerieBernheim-Jeune. Duchamp later denied the Futurist influence, claiming that the distance between Paris and Italy was too large for any tenable influences to occur.[10][11]
In an interview with the museum curator Katherine Kuh, Marcel Duchamp spoke about hisNude Descending a Staircase and its relation to Futurism and the photographic motion studies of Muybridge and Marey:
In 1912 ... the idea of describing the movement of a nude coming downstairs while still retaining static visual means to do this, particularly interested me. The fact that I had seen chronophotographs of fencers in action and horse galloping (what we today call stroboscopic photography) gave me the idea for theNude. It doesn't mean that I copied these photographs. The Futurists were also interested in somewhat the same idea, though I was never a Futurist. And of course the motion picture with its cinematic techniques was developing then too. The whole idea of movement, of speed, was in the air.[12][13]
Duchamp later recalled of the relation between motion and his nude:
My aim was a static representation of movement, a static composition of indications of various positions taken by a form in movement—with no attempt to give cinema effects through painting. The reduction of a head in movement to a bare line seemed to me defensible.[14][15]
And with regard to the petition by the hanging committee of the Indépendants:
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.[16]
Despite the controversy—whether it was seen as such at the time or not—the work was shown with its original title at theSalon de laSection d'Or, Galerie de la Boétie, October 1912, and with the same group of artists that exhibited at the Indépendants. His work also appeared in the illustrations toDu "Cubisme", and he participated in theLa Maison Cubiste (Cubist House), organized by the designerAndré Mare for theSalon d'Automne of 1912 (a few months after the Indépendants). "The impression is", writes art historian Peter Brooke, "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".[17]
It has been claimed (by others) that Duchamp never forgave his brothers and former colleagues for censoring his work.[2]
The painting was exhibited for the first time atGaleries Dalmau,Exposició d'Art Cubista, Barcelona, 1912.[18] Duchamp subsequently submitted the painting to the 1913Armory Show in New York City, where Americans, accustomed to naturalistic art, were scandalized. The painting, exhibited in the 'Cubist room', was submitted with the titleNu descendant un escalier,[19] was listed in the catalogue (no. 241) with the French title.[20] A postcard printed for the occasion showed the painting for the first time with the English translationNude Descending a Staircase.[21]Julian Street, an art critic forThe New York Times wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory," and cartoonists satirized the piece. It spawned dozens of parodies in the years that followed.[22] A work entitledFood Descending a Staircase was exhibited at a show parodying the most outrageous works at the Armory, running concurrently with the show at The Lighthouse School for the Blind. InAmerican Art News, there were prizes offered to anyone who could find the nude.[23]
After attending theArmory Show and seeing Marcel Duchamp's nude, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote: "Take the picture which for some reason is called 'A Naked Man Going Down Stairs'. There is in my bathroom a really good Navajo rug which, on any proper interpretation of the Cubist theory, is a far more satisfactory and decorative picture. Now, if, for some inscrutable reason, it suited somebody to call this rug a picture of, say, 'A Well-Dressed Man Going Up a Ladder', the name would fit the facts just about as well as in the case of the Cubist picture of the 'Naked Man Going Down Stairs'. From the standpoint of terminology each name would have whatever merit inheres in a rather cheap straining after effect; and from the standpoint of decorative value, of sincerity, and of artistic merit, the Navajo rug is infinitely ahead of the picture."[24][25]
During the Armory Show the painting was bought by the San Francisco lawyer and art dealer Frederic C. Torrey, who hung it in his home inBerkeley. In 1919, after commissioning a full-size copy of the work, Torrey sold the original toLouise and Walter Conrad Arensberg.[26] In 1954 it entered the collection of thePhiladelphia Museum of Art as abequest from the Arensbergs. There it is displayed as part of the permanent collection alongside preliminary studies and a later copy by Duchamp.[27]
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 Duchamp and the Ready-Mades,Smarthistory |
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