Important Art by Marcel Duchamp
Nude Descending A Staircase (1912)
Nude Descending A Staircase initially met with an unfavorable response at the Salon des Indépendants, dominated by the Cubist avant-garde who objected to what they deemed as its Futurist leanings, but enjoyed a succes de scandale at the 1913 Armory Show in New York. More than a study of the body's movement through space, the work is an early figurative exercise in painting cinematically, akin to Eadweard Muybridge's sequences of photographs that anticipated motion pictures. This painting together with the contemporaneous Passage from Virgin to Bride marks the end of Duchamp's short-lived career as a painter.
3 Standard Stoppages (1913-14)
Art takes on a scientific guise in this intricate piece whose several component parts are neatly displayed alongside or slotted into a bespoke wooden case. To make this piece, which reads like a visual demonstration of the workings of chance, Duchamp dropped three threads, each exactly one meter long, from a height of one meter. He then carefully recorded the random outline of the fallen thread on canvas, glass and wood. Chance also dictated his choice of title: Duchamp apparently hit upon stoppages, French for the "invisible mending" of a garment, after walking past a shop sign advertising sewing supplies.
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, or The Large Glass (1915-1923)
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, or The Large Glass was partly inspired by author Raymond Roussel's use of homophones, words that sound alike but have different meanings. Duchamp frequently resorted to puns and double-meanings in his work.With The Large Glass, he sought to make an artwork that could be both visually experienced and "read" as a text. After attending a performance of Roussel's Impressions d'Afrique, Duchamp envisioned a sculptural assemblage as a stage of sorts. Preliminary studies for this stage, which would have been over nine feet tall, included depictions of an abstracted "bride" being attacked by machine-like figures in chaotic motion. The constructed gadgetry featured between the two glass panels was also likely inspired by Duchamp's study of mathematician Henri Poincare's physics theorems.
Influences and Connections

- Édouard Manet
- Henri Matisse
- Pablo Picasso
- Georges Braque
- Alfred Jarry