Marcel Duchamp, a french artist born on July 28 1887, was an important figure in the so-called "Dada" movement that started during the time of World War I and peaked from 1916-1922. Dadaism was a cultural movement that began in Switzerland and eventually spread throughout Europe and later expanded in the western culture. Dadaism corresponded to the outbreak of World War I and to many was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interest which to the Dadaist was believed to be the root cause of the war.
Dada was not art, it was "anti-art." For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend.
Marcel Duchamp work all started in 1912 while he was apart of the surrelalism/cubism movements. In the year of 1912 Duchamp would create a cubist-inspired technique for depicting motion, then move on to something that wasnt well known called "abstract painting". "Nude Descending a Starcase" was trying to show a human figure in motion in a cubist style. There is nothing in it that resembles an anatomical nude but instead is made up of abstract lines and planes. The abstract lines are there to support a sense of rythmic "motion" when this art peice came out, it was very confussing to the viewer on how to predict what here was actual going on.
Duchamp's next big project in 1915 coined the term "readymades". "Bicycle Wheel" was the first of a class of objects of a total of 21 of them from the years 1915-1923. These were already pre-made objects that everyone was familiar with that he changed the view of them in some certain way to make make the viewer think abstractly about whats going here. These "readymades" broke every rule of the artistic tradition in a way for Duchamp to create a new kind of art. Was this really art though? some say "yes" and some say "no", its just how you as the viewer applies to the thinking behind it.
Marcel Duchamp was a playful man who challenged conventional thought about what is actual art? Duchamp's famous and very controversial art piece, "Fountain" was displayed in 1917 at an art show. It was a urinal turned upside down or tilted with the signed name "R. Mutt" printed on it. This type of so-called art was called "ready mades" by Duchamp. Even though the art show where Marcel submitted the urinal said "all works would be accepted", the "Fountain" was never actually displayed and soon later got lost. Art or non-art this piece became one of the major landmarks that was thought to influence "surrealism" later down the road during the 20th century.
-Paul Miller
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