Marcel Duchamp, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, left no heart untouched. His artworks caused disgust, controversy, admiration, and fascination. Duchamp left an important mark on the history of art. His painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 may have well paved the way for his grand success. In fact, it was this particular painting that made him famous in New York even before he set foot in the USA.
Who Was Marcel Duchamp?
Before diving into details about Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, let’s get acquainted with Marcel Duchamp. These details are of utmost importance in grasping the true meaning of this painting and the way the author reacted to the controversy it steered. Duchamp was a French artist, possibly one of the most renowned in the world of modern art, both in France and the United States.
Marcel began his artistic career by applying Impressionist techniques in painting, then he moved to Renaissance techniques, Fauvist nudes, and the style known as Cubism. In short, Duchamp was going through, as he calls them, swimming lessons, during which he switched from one style to another. All of these attempts could never foreshadow what Duchamp would later turn to.
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterOnly in 1911 did Duchamp start thinking about depicting successive images of the body in movement, as he put it. He “set the idea in motion” by executing Sad Young Man on a Train. This painting aimed to depict two parallel movements—the movement of the train and the movement of the sad young man. Shortly after, he painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. He also made several sketches of it and another painting called Nude Descending a Staircase, No.1. These served as the foundation for the work that would later steer so much controversy in the art world of Paris. As such, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 played a crucial role in the development of Duchamp’s artistic self.
Encore and Nude Descending a Staircase, No.1
As mentioned earlier, Marcel Duchamp did a few sketches before painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, one of which is Encore à cet Astre (Once More to This Star). In an interview, Duchamp confirmed that this particular drawing served as inspiration for the idea of the painting that was to be executed a few months later. All these sketches, including Encore, were done as illustrations for poems written by Jules Laforgue. The drawings highlight Duchamp’s preoccupation with Cubist techniques. The artist’s first version, Nude Descending a Staircase, No.1, isn’t as bold as the second one—we can see an outline of a human being descending a clearly visible staircase. The second version of the Nude was greatly influenced by Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotography—it’s where Duchamp got the elementary parallelism idea from.
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was executed on a large canvas measuring 57 x 35 inches. It depicts a figure descending a staircase. Its movement is represented by multiple successive positions. The main figure is made out of conical and cylindrical elements in brown and greenish tones, while the contour of the body is black. The figure seems to be moving from the top left corner to the bottom right corner. The colors become lighter as the nude comes closer to the bottom of the stairs. On the bottom left, we can see the French title of the painting written in block letters.
According to Duchamp, this painting was done using “elementary parallelism” which he also used in the Sad Young Man on a Train. This technique implied the distortion of the figure in the painting while depicting the body in movement. Duchamp believed that the linear elements following each other like parallels distorted the object.
Compared to the first version of the painting, the figure in the second version seems almost robotic and mechanical, and the viewers can get confused about what they are looking at. You can’t be sure if this is a male or a female nude. Theodore Roosevelt once called the painting A Naked Man Going Down Stairs, for example.
Duchamp was also inspired by chronophotography. Working on the painting might have been one of his first attempts to leave retinal art behind and appeal to the mind. The eroticism of the painting was to be found in the viewer’s mind and not on the canvas.
The Submission to the 1912 Salon des Indépendants
After finishing his work on the painting, Duchamp submitted it to the 1912 Salon des Indépendants without knowing how much this event would alter his life. The members of the committee were outraged when they saw the work. Cubists found no association between eroticism and humor, after all, so they considered it a mockery of Cubism. Furthermore, Cubists also believed that the painting looked more Futurist. Duchamp, on the other hand, denied any assumptions that his painting was Futurist since he didn’t know any of the members of the movement.
As such, the members of the committee asked Duchamp’s siblings who were also artists, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, to talk their brother out of exhibiting the painting. According to them, a painting showing a nude descending a staircase would be incomprehensible to the public and everyone would see it as a joke. Duchamp refused to comment on this. Instead, he went to the show and simply took his painting back.
Shortly after, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was displayed at a Cubist exhibition at the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona. It didn’t impress the public that much and it was only briefly mentioned by the critics. A year later it was exhibited in the Cubist room at the Armory Show in New York City. When he arrived in New York in 1914, Duchamp was surprised to learn that his name was not completely unknown to Americans. Although it caught the public’s attention, the reactions were not entirely positive. Theodore Roosevelt himself stated that Duchamp’s painting was infinitely behind his Navajo bathroom rug.
Nonetheless, this particular painting helped Duchamp’s popularity in the United States. Although not all great, the reactions were more humorous than condemning. American Art News invited readers to analyze and explain what they saw in this work and offered a ten-dollar prize for the best clarification of the mystery behind the painting.
The poem that won the contest was called It’s Only a Man and it goes like this:
You’ve tried to find her,
And you’ve looked in vain
Up the picture and down again
You’ve tried to fashion her of broken bits,
And you’ve worked yourself into seventeen fits;
The reason you’ve failed to tell you I can,
It isn’t a lady but only a man.
Why Did the Indépendants’ Rejection Affect Marcel Duchamp So Much?
Duchamp commented on the Independents’ refusal to exhibit his work by saying: “It helped liberate me completely from the past, in the personal sense of the word. I said, ‘All right, since it’s like that, there’s no question of joining a group – I’m going to count on no one but myself, alone.’”
A rather important shift in this regard happened in October 1911, when Duchamp met Francis Picabia who would become his lifelong friend. According to Duchamp, Picabia was the one who stirred his interest in pursuing a different artistic path. Moreover, since Duchamp was an advocate of change, Picabia proved to him that artists were not bound to repetition.
After the rejection of his painting from the mentioned Salon, Duchamp decided he would not be a part of any art group. And he also decided to pursue a path that went beyond painting. He quickly left for Munich, where he painted his last Cubist works. The fact that the sketches for one of his most significant masterpieces called The Large Glass appeared so quickly after the Nude only confirms how eagerly he was looking for a change. Other works, such as Coffee Grinder, also played a significant role in his detachment from what he called retinal art and his progression toward mechanical drawings.
When he worked on the Coffee Grinder, for example, Duchamp didn’t even realize what door he was opening. He simply painted something meant to be displayed in his brother’s kitchen. In the end, he discovered something aesthetically pleasing to him as an artist. On the other hand, the rejection of the Nude may have served as a wake-up call for him which in the end, gave us his famous readymades.
