Nude Descending A Staircase Marcel Duchamp Analysis

In Abstract Expressionism - a certain construction of the world we call “individuality” is revealed in its true, that is to say, contingent, vulgarity. And so is painting; or rather, so are paintings like Hofmann’s “The Garden” and Adolph Gottlieb’s “Black, Blue Red” - done as they were under the sign or spell of such a construction, by “individuals” believing utterly (innocently, idiotically) in its power.

Two sculptures, among others, lie in the outskirts of the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA. One of them, The Walking Man, is a bronze sculpture created by French sculptor Auguste Rodin in 1905. The other, made more than 100 years later, is T.E.U.C.L.A., a large scale steel sculpture made by minimalist sculptor Richard Serra. Although it may seem like these works have more differences than similarities, both emphasize the processes of their creation and are major movements away from the classical tradition of sculpture. However, The Walking Man and T.E.U.C.L.A. also differ in several aspects that reflect their respective artists’ personal portrayals of modern sculpture. These aspects include: mode of production, composition and the arrangement of volumes, the play of light and shadow, and visual experience. Together these elements of formal organization work together to convey meaning in both of these works. Rodin’s deliberate rejection of refinement and disregard for the direct translation of the unformed to formed in The Walking Man represent the process and spontaneity of reality, while Serra’s use of curvature and aperture in T.E.U.C.L.A. models the spaces people move through and the perceptive skills they use in life and nature.

This essay will demonstrate how two revolutionary artists, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage still play a significant role in contemporary art practice and theory today.

Duchamp’s works are both seen as postmodern as they use postmodern conventions such as appropriation and parody (as seen in L.H.O.O.Q) and recontextualisation in ‘Fountain’ (above).

Picasso is an abstract artist, and therefore is thought of as “unskilled,” by the way he accentuates parts of the human figure. Picasso’s art had the most impact on the twentieth century. Even though he suggests going against what he had learned academically, it is important to know that he had started at a very young age. His father was a drawing teacher and a conservator at a small museum. Soon after his father became a professor at the art academy in Barcelona, the young Picasso completed the entrance examinations and was accepted to the school’s upper-level program. Picasso went to Paris determined to work through the avant-gardes’ techniques and subjects to better understand such art.

Duchamp once said, "An artist should be a destroyer of tradition." By this he believed a persons artwork should be different than any other, causing it to stick out dramatically.

Jean-Michel Basquiat emerged from the punk scene in New York as a street-smart graffiti artist. He successfully crossed over his downtown origins to the international art gallery circuit. Basquiat’s work is one of the few examples of how an early 1980’s American graffiti-based could become a fully recognized artist. Despite his work’s unstudied appearance, Basquiat very skillfully and purposefully brought together in his art a host of disparate traditions, practices and styles to create a unique kind of visual collage. His work is an example of how American artists of the 1980’s could reintroduce the human figure in their work after the wide success of minimalism and conceptualism.

While Picasso’s Demoiselles is not a true Cubist work, it was nonetheless a major step towards Cubism. It features nude figures and background that are so distorted they seem to forgo any spatial depth. The softness of classical female bodies are restructured by Picasso into

In David’s painting there is a clarity and crispness that is similar to a photograph, yet his figures maintain a baby like softness. Gerard’s implied texture of the clothes and environment are softer than David’s giving the painting a more realistic appearance. David and Gerard both show in these paintings that they have a very good understanding of human anatomy and form. The figures in both painting have a good sense of underlying structure and weight.

As he was uttering all this, I wrote it all down, trying to make it fit into the significance behind the discovery of his signature style. He went on to tell me big part of the story follows the departure from his parents’ side. He said he went on to travel the globe, he studied art in Paris, found the love of his life. He commented that the sheer joy of just living life the way he wanted to steer it, allowed him to collect a bundle of memories and that it all has inspired his art. Life itself is a ceaseless source of inspiration and it morphed into his primary artistic influence: “I didn’t just sit one day and said ‘I’m going to have my own distinguished style.’ My art depicts aspects that are part of our normality—we just aren’t aware of

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even falls into the category of anti-art. It was a large-scale project unlike anything else. Duchamp wanted to move away from “retinal” art- art that appealed only to the eye- and create a new kind of art. He wanted to engage the mind instead of the eye, in ways that provoke the observer to participate and think. Duchamp wondered “Can one make works of art which

Since the beginning of art, typical mediums have consisted of oil paints, marble, pastels, and charcoals. As time has progressed, and aesthetics have changed, so has the extensive list of mediums found in art. One medium in particular, known as the use of “found objects” has become increasingly more popular since the days of the Renaissance. Found object art can be as straightforward as Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” which is a urinal fountain that is simply orientated sideways and signed; this, bordering the line between art and an object from everyday life, brings forth many questions and lots of public controversy. Art has always caused this same controversy, but one main argument frequently surrounding found objects is the extent unto which the piece must be abstracted or reincorporated in order to be considered “art.”

The works ‘Blaze’ and ‘Fragment 1/7’ by Bridget Riley and the work Six Geometric Figures (+ Two) by Sol LeWitt all share many aspects of art in common however they are very distinct in terms of the different materials, techniques and the emotions they provoke. Though the artworks can be looked at in different ways, these are all pieces that at first are perceived to mean nothing, but it is evident what the aim of the artists is after an indepth view.

One thing I found interesting is with Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase is that it follows the notion with Jirousek’s photo art, that it a time-lapse photography. I am not a fan of his work, and I believe the uproar that came about due to his painting was just, even though it was for a different reason, I do not like it because it is very abstract and hard to

In a ‘tradition breaking spirit’ [D’Alleva, 2012], that characterised modernist artists, early in the twentieth century, Duchamp abandoned traditional ideas and techniques, to create a new kind of ‘art’, one that the idea behind a work of art is more important that its visual realization, the ‘retinal’. The ready-mades was the product of Duchamp’s questioning what art is.