Nude Descending a Staircase
(No. 2)
Marcel Duchamp
American, born in France
1887-1968
1912 Oil on canvas
This painting created a sensation when it was exhibited in New York in February 1913 at the historic Armory Show of contemporary art, where perplexed Americans saw it as representing all the tricks they felt European artists were playing at their expense. The picture's outrageousness surely lay in its seemingly mechanical portrayal of a subject at once so sensual and time-honored. The Nude's destiny as a symbol also stemmed from its remarkable aggregation of avant-garde concerns: the birth of cinema; the Cubists' fracturing of form; the Futurists' depiction of movement; the chromophotography of Etienne-Jules Marey, Eadweard Muybridge, and Thomas Eakins; and the redefinitions of time and space by scientists and philosophers. The painting was bought directly from the Armory Show for three hundred dollars by a San Francisco dealer. Marcel Duchamp's great collector-friend Walter Arensberg was able to buy the work in 1927, eleven years after Duchamp had obligingly made him a hand-colored, actual-size photographic copy. Today both the copy and the original, together with a preparatory study, are owned by the Museum. (Description taken from the website of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Nude)
This painting was not intended to depict the Madonna, but that is the image that comes to my mind when I look at it. It is my favorite painting of all time. I have a copy hanging in my home, and I feel a sense of reverence when I look at it, as I do every day.
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