Marcel+Duchamp


 * A quote by artist Marcel Duchamp "You cannot define electricity. The same can be said of art. It is a kind of inner current in a human being, or something which needs no definition.” Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp born on 28 July 1887 in Normandy, France and died on 2 October 1968. At the age of 8, he enrolled to the Lycee Pierre-Corneille, where for the next eight years he went through a process of intellectual and academic development. Although he was not a brilliant student, his strengths lay in the subjects like mathematics and drawing.After a winning a prize for drawing, he was influenced to pursue art as a career. He followed in the footsteps of his brother, Jacques Villon, whose artistic styles he wanted to pursue.By the age of 14, he transformed his drawings into masterpiece works, with the usage of watercolors for landscapes. His early works depict Post-Impressionist styles as well as classical techniques. From 1904 to 1905, he studied art at the Academie Julian, but was more absorbed in playing chess than attending classes. He was a French, naturalized American painter, sculptor, chess player and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, conceptual art and Dada. Duchamp is a highly regarded yet controversial painter. Duchamp was one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Some of his most famous works were a porcelain urinal fountain (yes a toilet can be a piece of art), nude staircase, and even making a parody of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Duchamp has had an major impact on twentieth-century and twenty first-century art. By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists as "retinal" art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted to put art back in the service of the mind. He wanted art to make you feel something and for you to make up your own kind of story for the sculpture or painting in front of you. **
 * Duchamp's work makes for much enjoyment. He fashioned puns out of everyday expressions which he conveyed through visual means. The dimension of his work in particular paved the way for Conceptual art. His artwork was what most artwork is not. Funny! Duchamp wanted artwork to have a new meaning, not just a picture, but deep interesting artwork that makes you think hard about it. In his career Duchamp and the Surrealist artist Enrico Donati hand-colored 999 foam rubber "falsies," or false breasts, to glue onto black velvet which adhered to the removable book covers. He was the most out of the box artist in the world. He took a urinal which started off as an elaborate prank designed to poke fun at American avant-garde art, became one of most influential artworks of the 20th century. Duchamp’s china urinal laid on its back and signed R Mutt has taken on the iconic status once reserved for creations of the order of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. It is the work, in short, that got art where it is today. **
 * Duchamp showed that everyday objects like a bicycle wheel or a toilet can be artwork. It's just what you make of it. He influenced so many people even Andy Warhol when he paved the way of pop art. Among the qualities that Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp share are a belief in the everyday object, an interest in language and puns, and an interest in pop art. In 2010 the Andy Warhol Museum held an exhibition examining the artistic links between these two art icons ‘Twisted Pair: Marcel Duchamp/Andy Warhol’. The show revealed that Warhol himself owned over thirty works by Duchamp, including a copy of the ‘Fountain’ urinal, which he acquired by trading away three of his portraits. Marcel Duchamp changed the world by signing a urinal and calling it art. **
 * By: Jaden Easton **