Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

Marcel Duchamp, Nude
Descending a Staircase, No. 2
Painted in 1912 by Marcel
Duchamp. The work is displayed in the
permanent exhibition of Louis and Walter Arensberg Collection at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia. The painting combines elements of
both the Cubist and Futurist movements. In the painting, Duchamp depicts motion
by successive superimposed images, similar to stroboscopic motion photography, assembled
in such a way as to suggest rhythm and
suggest the movement of the figure merging into itself.
Duchamp first submitted the work to appear in
a Cubist show at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, but jurist Albert Gleizes
asked Duchamp's brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, to have
him voluntarily withdraw the painting, or paint over the title that he had
painted on the work and rename it something else. The hanging committee
objected to the work on the grounds that it had "too much of a literary
title", and that "a nude never descends the stairs—a nude
reclines".
His older brothers informed
their him that the hanging committee of the Salon des Indépendants, which
included themselves, had rejected his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. These
Cubist painters had refused to display the painting on the grounds that "A
nude never descends the stairs--a nude reclines." Although the work was
shown in the Salon de la Section d'Or in October 1912, Duchamp never forgave
his brothers and former colleagues for censoring his work, Of the incident
Duchamp recalled,
“I said
nothing to my brothers. But I went immediately to the show and took my painting
home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I
saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that.”
On a personal level the painting
means more than the romanticism of the “tortured artist” surrounded by the
historical events of the painting. The Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
represents an artist solution to his surrounding culture. It shows the
awareness the artist had of the trends at the time of the works creation. Art
is not simply the struggle of paint, light; color and the shape. Art is the struggle
of one to identify and create a langue to one’s peers and develop a deep spiritual
and emotional bond thru the work.