Duchamp

When is a urinal no longer a urinal? WhenMarcel Duchamp(1887–1968) declared it to be art. The uproar that greeted the French artist’sFountain(1917), a porcelain urinal installed in a gallery, sent shock waves through the art world establishment that continue to reverberate to the present day.

Duchamp made a career out of challenging our notions of what art isand, in the process, opened our minds to hitherto unknown possibilities. After an oblique version of Cubism in his early career, the artist made his name withNude Descending a Staircase(1912), a groundbreaking blend of abstraction, Cubism, and Futurism, with a controversially mechanical titular nude. Around the same time, Duchamp began his forays into the now-iconic“readymades”– seemingly random found objects which Duchamp would present as art, includingBicycle Wheel(1913),Bottle Rack(1914), and a snow shovel, labeledPrelude to a Broken Arm(1915).

Duchamp went on to cause even further apoplexy among traditionalists with outrages such asL.H.O.O.Q.(1919), in which he presented acheap copy of da Vinci’sMona Lisawith a mustache and beard penciled onand, for good measure, the auditory pun of the title (which, when read aloud in French, sounds like “Elle a chaud au cul” – “She has a hot ass”).

This bookdistills all the daring and the scandal of Duchamp”s art into one essential overviewwhich introduces not only one pioneering creative but also a critical moment in Western art. It is here, amid the assaults on Old Masters and the fractured poetry of found objects, that theart world first transitioned from “retinal” experiences to what would evolve into conceptual practice.