79 Facts About Marcel Duchamp

Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art.

Marcel Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.

Marcel Duchamp has had an immense impact on 20th- and 21st-century art, and a seminal influence on the development of conceptual art.

At eight years old, Marcel Duchamp followed in his brothers' footsteps when he left home and began schooling at the Lycee Pierre-Corneille, in Rouen.

Marcel Duchamp won a prize for drawing in 1903, and at his commencement in 1904 he won a coveted first prize, validating his recent decision to become an artist.

Marcel Duchamp learned academic drawing from a teacher who unsuccessfully attempted to "protect" his students from Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and other avant-garde influences.

When he was later asked about what had influenced him at the time, Marcel Duchamp cited the work of Symbolist painter Odilon Redon, whose approach to art was not outwardly anti-academic, but quietly individual.

Marcel Duchamp studied art at the Academie Julian from 1904 to 1905, but preferred playing billiards to attending classes.

Marcel Duchamp became lifelong friends with exuberant artist Francis Picabia after meeting him at the 1911 Salon d'Automne, and Picabia proceeded to introduce him to a lifestyle of fast cars and "high" living.

Uninterested in the Cubists' seriousness, or in their focus on visual matters, Marcel Duchamp did not join in discussions of Cubist theory and gained a reputation of being shy.

Marcel Duchamp's painting Sad Young Man on a Train embodies this concern:.

Marcel Duchamp's brothers did approach him with Gleizes' request, but Marcel Duchamp quietly refused.

Marcel Duchamp later submitted the painting to the 1913 "Armory Show" in New York City.

At about this time, Marcel Duchamp read Max Stirner's philosophical tract, The Ego and Its Own, the study which he considered another turning point in his artistic and intellectual development.

Marcel Duchamp recalled that he took the short walk to visit this museum daily.

Marcel Duchamp scholars have long recognized in Cranach the subdued ochre and brown color range Marcel Duchamp later employed.

Marcel Duchamp credited the drama with having radically changed his approach to art, and having inspired him to begin the creation of his The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, known as The Large Glass.

Marcel Duchamp made notes, sketches and painted studies, and even drew some of his ideas on the wall of his apartment.

Marcel Duchamp painted few canvases after 1912, and in those he did, he attempted to remove "painterly" effects, and to use a technical drawing approach instead.

In 1913, Marcel Duchamp withdrew from painting circles and began working as a librarian in the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve to be able to earn a living wage while concentrating on scholarly realms and working on his Large Glass.

Marcel Duchamp then cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box.

Marcel Duchamp's circle included art patrons Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg, actress and artist Beatrice Wood and Francis Picabia, as well as other avant-garde figures.

Marcel Duchamp became part of an artist colony in Ridgefield, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City.

Marcel Duchamp created the Societe Anonyme in 1920, along with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray.

Key figures in the movement, apart from Marcel Duchamp, included: Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Hoch, Johannes Baader, Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Richard Huelsenbeck, Georg Grosz, John Heartfield, Beatrice Wood, Kurt Schwitters, and Hans Richter, among others.

Together with Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp contributed his ideas and humor to the New York activities, many of which ran concurrent with the development of his Readymades and The Large Glass.

When he returned to Paris after World War I, Marcel Duchamp did not participate in the Dada group.

In 1913, Marcel Duchamp installed a Bicycle Wheel in his studio.

Bottle Rack, a bottle-drying rack signed by Marcel Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade.

In 1919, Marcel Duchamp made a parody of the Mona Lisa by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee.

Marcel Duchamp executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust.

Marcel Duchamp published notes for the piece, The Green Box, intended to complement the visual experience.

Marcel Duchamp stated that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erotic encounter between a bride and her nine bachelors.

The piece is partly constructed as a retrospective of Marcel Duchamp's works, including a three-dimensional reproduction of his earlier paintings Bride, Chocolate Grinder and Glider containing a water mill in neighboring metals, which has led to numerous interpretations.

Marcel Duchamp repaired it, but left the smaller cracks in the glass intact, accepting the chance element as a part of the piece.

In 1920, with help from Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp built a motorized sculpture, Rotative plaques verre, optique de precision.

Marcel Duchamp asked that Doucet not exhibit the apparatus as art.

Marcel Duchamp had a printer produce 500 sets of six of the designs, and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them.

In collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allegret, Marcel Duchamp filmed early versions of the Rotoreliefs, and they named the film Anemic Cinema.

Later, in Alexander Calder's studio in 1931, while looking at the sculptor's kinetic works, Marcel Duchamp suggested that these should be called mobiles.

Between 1912 and 1915, Marcel Duchamp worked with various musical ideas.

Selavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray showing Marcel Duchamp dressed as a woman.

Marcel Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed several creations with it.

Marcel Duchamp signed his film Anemic Cinema with the Selavy name.

In 1918, Marcel Duchamp took leave of the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the Large Glass, and went to Buenos Aires, where he remained for nine months and often played chess.

Marcel Duchamp carved his own chess set from wood with help from a local craftsman who made the knights.

Marcel Duchamp moved to Paris in 1919, and then back to the United States in 1920.

Marcel Duchamp is seen, briefly, playing chess with Man Ray in the short film Entr'acte by Rene Clair.

Marcel Duchamp designed the 1925 poster for the Third French Chess Championship, and as a competitor in the event, finished at fifty percent, earning the title of chess master.

Marcel Duchamp continued to play in the French Championships and in the Chess Olympiads from 1928 to 1933, favoring hypermodern openings such as the Nimzo-Indian.

Sometime in the early 1930s, Marcel Duchamp reached the height of his ability, but realized that he had little chance of winning recognition in top-level chess.

In 1932, Marcel Duchamp teamed with chess theorist Vitaly Halberstadt to publish L'opposition et cases conjuguees sont reconciliees, known as corresponding squares.

Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was an associate of Marcel Duchamp, and used the theme as the narrative device for the 1957 play of the same name, Endgame.

In 1968, Marcel Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage, at a concert entitled "Reunion".

Marcel Duchamp left a legacy to chess in the form of an enigmatic endgame problem he composed in 1943.

Marcel Duchamp occasionally worked on artistic projects such as the short film Anemic Cinema, Box in a Valise, Self Portrait in Profile and the larger work Etant Donnes.

Marcel Duchamp was a co-founder of the international literary group Oulipo in 1960.

Interest in Marcel Duchamp was reignited in the 1960s, and he gained international public recognition.

Marcel Duchamp was invited to lecture on art and to participate in formal discussions, as well as sitting for interviews with major publications.

Marcel Duchamp participated in the design of the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, held at the Galerie des Beaux-arts, Paris.

Marcel Duchamp was named as "Generateur-arbitre", Salvador Dali and Max Ernst were listed as technical directors, Man Ray was chief lighting technician and Wolfgang Paalen responsible for "water and foliage".

Marcel Duchamp created an installation, His Twine, commonly known as the "mile of string", it was a three-dimensional web of string throughout the rooms of the space, in some cases making it almost impossible to see the works.

Marcel Duchamp made a secret arrangement with an associate's son to bring young friends to the opening of the show.

When questioned, the children were told to say "Mr Marcel Duchamp told us we could play here".

Breton with Marcel Duchamp organized the exhibition "Le surrealisme en 1947" in the Galerie Maeght in Paris after the war and named set designer Frederick Kiesler as architect.

Marcel Duchamp had worked secretly on the piece from 1946 to 1966 in his Greenwich Village studio while even his closest friends thought he had abandoned art.

In June 1927, Marcel Duchamp married Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor; however, they divorced six months later.

Early in January 1928, Marcel Duchamp said that he could no longer bear the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and they were soon divorced.

Marcel Duchamp died suddenly and peacefully in the early morning of 2 October 1968 at his home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

Marcel Duchamp is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France, with the epitaph, "D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent".

Marcel Duchamp advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.

Marcel Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and rejected the emerging art market, through subversive anti-art.

Marcel Duchamp famously dubbed a urinal art and named it Fountain.

Marcel Duchamp produced relatively few artworks and remained mostly aloof of the avant-garde circles of his time.

Marcel Duchamp went on to pretend to abandon art and devote the rest of his life to chess, while secretly continuing to make art.

Marcel Duchamp goes on to explain to the interviewer that "the word art etymologically means to do", that art means activity of any kind, and that it is our society that creates "purely artificial" distinctions of being an artist.

Marcel Duchamp's attitude was more favorable as evidenced by another statement made in 1964:.

The Prix Marcel Duchamp, established in 2000, is an annual award given to a young artist by the Centre Georges Pompidou.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2, in the Frederick C Torrey home, c 1913.