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Definition: Duchamp, Marcel from Philip's Encyclopedia

French painter. A radical art theorist, his Nude Descending a Staircase outraged visitors to the Armory Show. He produced few paintings, concentrating on abolishing the concept of aesthetic beauty. He was a leading member of New York Dada, inventing the concept of the 'ready-made'. His Fountain consisted of nothing but a urinal. His main work, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), is a 'definitively unfinished' painting of metal collage elements on glass.

Duchamp, Marcel

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
1887-1968 US painter Born in Blainville, France, he moved to Paris to join his two artistic brothers in 1904. Associated with several modern movements including Cubism and Futurism, he shocked his generation with such works as Coffee-Mill (1911) and Nude Descending a Staircase (1912, Philadelphia), and was one of the pioneers of Dadaism, the anti-art protest, which favoured the presentation of energy and change above classical aesthetic values and fulminated against mechanization. In 1914 he introduced the first "ready-made" by signing a bottle-rack and declaring it to be art. In 1915 he left Paris for New York City, where he worked for eight years on a ten-foot (3m) high composition in glass and metal, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even , known as The Large Glass , in which many of the shapes were obtained by chance effects, such as dust blown on to the drawings. He described this in his Green Box notes (1933). He edited the US art magazine VVV (1942-44), and became a US…
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Full text Article Duchamp, Marcel

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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Full text Article Marcel Duchamp 1887–1968

From The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
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Full text Article Fountain

From Brewer's Curious Titles
The title given by the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) to one of his ‘ ready-mades’ - a urinal placed on its side (1915). It was signed ‘ R. Mutt’, the name of a firm of sanitary engineers. As a member of the jury of the first New York Salon des Indépendents , Duchamp submitted this work to…
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The title of two remarkably kinetic paintings (1911 and 1912) by the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), subtitled respectively ‘ No 1 ‘ and ‘ No 2’. They have become as much an icon of early modernism as Picasso's Les DEMOISELLES D'AVIGNON . In a cubist style, the pictures evoke a sense of motion…
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A painting on two large panels of glass by the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968); it is also called The Large Glass (to distinguish it from the same artist's Little Glass). The work consists of meticulously painted but indecipherable fragments of machinery (although a coffee grinder is apparent). …
| 103 words
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Full text Article Duchamp

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary Full text Article Biographical Names
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Full text Article Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

From Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable
The remarkably kinetic painting (1912) by the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) has become as much an icon of early Modernism as Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon . In a Cubist style, the picture evokes a sense of motion by repeating fragments of the same figure down a diagonal. Duchamp himself…
| 113 words
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Full text Article Dadaism

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
An anarchic and iconoclastic art movement, which began at Zürich in 1916 and arose from indignation and despair at the catastrophe of the First World War. Its supporters, writers and painters, sought to free themselves from all artistic conventions and what they considered cultural shams. Dadaism…
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Full text Article Dadaism

From Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable
An anarchic and iconoclastic art movement, which began at Zurich in 1916 and arose from indignation and despair at the catastrophe of the First World War. Its supporters, writers and painters, sought to free themselves from all artistic conventions and what they considered cultural shams. Dadaism…
| 202 words
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Leon Hartt, Marcel Duchamp, and Mrs. Hartt (b/w photo)
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