Marcel Duchamp was an amazingly multifaceted personality - for many years he played chess professionally and at the same time managed to become famous as an avant-garde artist. Today he is considered one of the most influential and original innovators in the art of the twentieth century.
Early work
Marel Duchamp was born in July 1887 in Normandy in a large family of a notary. In 1904, he moved from the province to Paris with the aim of receiving an art education at the Julian Academy, but a year later he quit this educational institution and went into "free swimming".
In the early period of creativity, Duchamp was clearly influenced by such masters as Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse. He created bold color schemes, but still did not go beyond the framework of traditional trends.
Then Duchamp as an artist began to drift towards Cubism. In 1912, he created a canvas with the beautiful name "Naked, descending the stairs." The author himself explained that he wanted to show motion in this work using static means. In fact, he combined several images of the same abstract female figure on a two-dimensional plane. At first, the picture seemed to many controversial - even Cubist artists did not accept it. But now this work is considered a classic of modernist art.
Duchamp redids
In 1913, the twenty-five-year-old Duchamp realized that he was no longer interested in easel painting, and put forward the concept of "readymade" ("finished products"). According to Marcel Duchamp, any commonplace object that the artist chose among many others, signed and put on public display, can be considered a work of art. The essence of this concept is perfectly expressed, for example, by Duchamp's works such as Bicycle Wheel (year of creation - 1913) and Bottle Dryer (1914)
In 1915, the artist, who was not taken into the World War I army fighting on the fronts for medical reasons, emigrated to the United States (since then he lived alternately in the States and in France). At one of the American art exhibitions in 1917, Duchamp presented his famous readymade "Fountain". In fact, it was just a 180-degree urinal with the date and signature "R. Mutt" (this, of course, is a made-up name).
With such works, Duchamp challenged not only traditional formats of art, but also art as such. On the other hand, he made it possible to look at familiar, utilitarian things from a completely unexpected angle.
LHOOQ, Big Glass and Anemic Cinema
In 1919, Duchamp created a work called LHOOQ. Strictly speaking, he simply took a reproduction of Mona Lisa and painted a neat mustache and beard on the girl. In the future, the artist made another 38 versions of LHOOQ in different sizes and styles.
From 1915 to 1923, Duchamp worked on his most ambitious creation - “The Bride, Undressed by Her Bachelors, One in Two Faces” (another common name is “Big Glass”). The basis of this composition are two identical glass plates mounted on top of each other and separated by an aluminum frame. On the bottom plate are depicted "nine bachelors." Their silhouettes resemble clothespins, and they are all connected to the strange mechanical apparatus on the right. As for the upper plate, it is left to the "bride". This "bride" is an asymmetric design consisting of rods, cylinders, wires and drilled squares. The total size of the "Big Glass" is 272 by 176 centimeters.
In the twenties, Marcel Duchamp often participated in public actions of Dadaists and surrealists, was published in their magazines and almanacs.
An innovative artist was noted at that time and in avant-garde cinema. In 1924, he starred in the silent short film Intermission, directed by Rene Claire. Two years later, in 1926, Duchamp, together with other avant-garde man Man Ray, created the amazing film Anemic Cinema. This film shows mainly geometric objects and chess combinations. In the credits, as one of the authors, Roza Selyavi is indicated - this is Duchamp's most famous pseudonym.
