MARCEL DUCHAMP

I may have mentioned that I studied Duchamp at college in a study group organised by Leicester Poly ' Fine Art department tutors, composer Gavin Bryars and historian Fred Orton. Those studies introduced me to a life long interest in Dada and Surrealism, alongside Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Francis Picabia and fellow artists of the period especially and a connection to fellow aficionado of Duchamp and reconstructor of the 'Large Glass' Richard Hamilton, the noted father of British Pop Art on whom I did my final thesis and interviewed him at length and got to meet him and his lovely partner fellow artist Rita Donagh many times and this connection with Leicester probably got me my job at MOMA Oxford for over ten years in the late seventies and eighties

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 ( Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) is a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp and is considered one of his seminal and most important early works. More broadly the work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. Before its first presentation at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants in Paris it was rejected by the Cubists as being too Futurist.

The hanging committee objected to the work, on the grounds that it had “too much of a literary title”, and that “one doesn’t paint a nude descending a staircase, that’s ridiculous… a nude should be respected." Duchamp’s brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, sent by the hanging committee, asked him to voluntarily withdraw the painting, or paint over the title and rename it something else.

“But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that.” – Marcel Duchamp