Marcel Duchamp: The Complete Story
Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal R. Mutt in 1917 and rearranged the twentieth century. Then he told everyone he had quit art for chess, and spent twenty of those years secretly building one last work behind a locked Manhattan door.
In 2004 five hundred art professionals voted Fountain the most influential artwork of the modern era, ahead of Picasso. The perpetrator would have found the vote hilarious.
Marcel Duchamp at a glance:
1887: born near Blainville in Normandy, into a family that produces four artists from six children.
1912: Nude Descending a Staircase is refused by his own Cubist friends, then detonates at New York's Armory Show a year later.
1917: a urinal signed R. Mutt tests the Independents' promise to show everything; the original vanishes within weeks.
1942: settles permanently in New York, publicly retired, privately at work on a twenty-year secret.
1968: dies in Neuilly after a dinner with Man Ray; the tombstone joke was written in advance.
The nude that scandalized two countries
Duchamp was born near Blainville in Normandy on July 28, 1887, younger brother of two artists. His Nude Descending a Staircase, No.
2 was refused by his own Cubist friends at the 1912 Independants, his brothers delivering the news, and he quietly withdrew it, and something else with it: his faith in artistic movements.
At the 1913 Armory Show in New York the same canvas caused a national scandal, mocked as an explosion in a shingle factory, and made him famous in America before he had ever crossed the ocean.
1913-1917: the readymades
In Paris he mounted a bicycle wheel on a stool in 1913, bought a bottle rack in 1914, and in New York in 1917 submitted a porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt to an exhibition whose rules said all entries would be accepted.
It was hidden from view anyway; Stieglitz photographed it; the original vanished. The gesture asked whether choosing could be making, and art schools have been arguing about it every day since.
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The Large Glass, and the cracks he approved
From 1915 to 1923 Duchamp built The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, a two-meter sandwich of glass, lead wire, and dust, and abandoned it as definitively unfinished.
When the panels cracked in transit in 1926 he declared the cracks an improvement, completing the work by chance. It stands in Philadelphia, spiderweb and all.
The myth: he gave it all up for chess
Duchamp really did become a chess master, playing for France in international team events and co-writing a treatise on endgames, and for decades the story ran that he had abandoned art entirely.
Then he died, and Etant donnes was revealed: a peephole tableau he had been building in secret from 1946 to 1966 while giving interviews about having stopped.
The prank was the length of a career, and Philadelphia installed it in 1969 exactly as his manual instructed.
Rrose, the epitaph, and where to see him
He signed works as Rrose Selavy, his female alter ego photographed by Man Ray, and became an American citizen in 1955.
Duchamp died at Neuilly on October 2, 1968; his tombstone in Rouen carries the epitaph he wrote: besides, it is always the others who die.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds the world's essential Duchamp room, with the Large Glass and Etant donnes, and the Pompidou and MoMA keep readymade replicas he authorized in 1964.
The twenty-year secret
While the world believed he had stopped, Duchamp spent two decades building a last work in secret: Étant donnés, a weathered wooden door with two peepholes.
Through them: a flickering waterfall, a landscape, and a sprawled figure that has divided viewers since Philadelphia unveiled the piece in 1969, a year after his death.
He left an assembly manual so precise it reads as a final readymade: instructions for a posthumous magic trick.
The museum in a suitcase
From 1935 he miniaturized his life's work into the Boîte-en-valise: a case of 69 reproductions, tiny urinal included.
He assembled them in editions for decades, sometimes to pay rent. A portable museum was also a pension plan.
The joke has teeth: if art is idea, postcard scale loses nothing. The valise argues the entire career in luggage form.
Money games
In 1919 he paid his dentist with a hand-drawn check, and in 1924 he issued Monte Carlo bonds, with Man Ray's photo of him as shareholder bait, to fund a roulette system.
The system roughly broke even, slowly, which he reported as a triumph of boredom over chance.
He lived partly by placing works with collectors, the Arensbergs above all, steering his own catalogue into museum hands piece by piece: the artist as his own estate manager, decades early.
The Marcel Duchamp questions that keep coming up
What is a readymade? An ordinary manufactured object promoted to artwork by the artist's choice and signature, a category Duchamp invented between 1913 and 1917.
What happened to the original Fountain? Lost, probably thrown out, soon after its 1917 rejection. The versions in museums are replicas Duchamp authorized in 1964.
Did Duchamp really quit art for chess? He was a genuine chess master, but no. He worked on Etant donnes in secret for twenty years while claiming to have stopped, and it was revealed only after his death.
Where can I see Duchamp? The Philadelphia Museum of Art above all, home of the Large Glass and Etant donnes, plus the Pompidou in Paris and MoMA in New York.
How much does a Duchamp cost? The editions carry the market: a 1964 Fountain replica brought 1.76 million dollars in 1999. The unique works barely exist outside museums.
Was he really that lazy? He cultivated the pose. The notes, the valises and the Étant donnés manual reveal a meticulous worker who simply preferred to call himself a breather.
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A readymade carved in stone
Duchamp wrote his own punch line and had it carved in stone. His grave in Rouen reads: besides, it is always the others who die. He is the only major artist whose tombstone is a readymade joke, and it still works.
