Artist, anti-artist, joker, trickster, shape-shifter—the Loki of 20th-century art—Marcel Duchamp broke every rule, questioned every tradition, and launched the New York art world into the future. And then, just as suddenly, he appeared to lose interest and devote himself to chess.
When his work exploded like an art bomb in New York in the 1910s, American art was still stuck in the 19th century, if not the Renaissance. Bored with tradition, Duchamp set about reinventing art itself: what it is, what it’s for, how it’s made. He hung a snow shovel from the ceiling, turned a urinal upside down, and “painted” with dust and string between two panes of glass. He built op-art mobiles, explored gender fluidity, and reduced his oeuvre to a suitcase-sized portable museum. Then, apparently done with making art, he walked away.
Only after his death did the world discover he’d secretly spent two decades on one final, mystifying work: a peep-show-like installation suggesting that the act of looking at art is itself voyeuristic. Not being around to explain it was his ultimate, thought-provoking prank.
His contemporaries were shocked—he was even kicked out of his own exhibition once—but Duchamp, with a wink, prodded them to think differently. Virtually every American art movement of the mid-to-late 20th century can trace its lineage back to his offhand-seeming gestures. Today, he's discussed and imitated more than ever.
Marcel Duchamp in New York explores how the city shaped his radical vision. Escaping the bourgeois conventions of France (“The things life forces men into—wives, three children, a country house, three cars!”), Duchamp found New York liberating and alive with visionaries. “New York itself is a complete work of art,” he declared. After years of intermittent visits, he made it home—and it was there, in its electric atmosphere, that he created much of his most groundbreaking work.
