Marcel Duchamp summary

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Marcel Duchamp, (born July 28, 1887, Blainville, France—died Oct. 2, 1968, Neuilly), French artist and art innovator. In 1913 he caused a sensation at the Armory Show with his painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912), which combined the principles of Cubism and Futurism. His irreverence for conventional aesthetic standards then led him to devise his famous ready-mades: in 1913 he exhibited Bicycle Wheel, which was simply an ordinary bicycle wheel displayed as a work of art, and in 1917 he exhibited a urinal he entitled Fountain. Intended as a derisive gesture against the excessive importance attached to works of art, the ready-mades ushered in an era when contemporary art became in itself a mixture of creation and criticism. In Paris in 1919 he established contact with the Dada group of artists, whose nihilistic ideas he had anticipated. During this period he exhibited a photograph of the Mona Lisa with a moustache and goatee added, a gesture that expressed the Dadaists’ scorn for the art of the past. He greatly influenced the Surrealists, and his attitude toward art and society led to Pop art and other modern and postmodern movements. A legend in his lifetime, he is considered one of the leading spirits of 20th-century art.

Disks of Newton (Study for Fugue in Two Colours)

Orphism Summary

Orphism, in the visual arts, a trend in abstract art spearheaded by Robert Delaunay that derived from Cubism and gave priority to light and colour. The movement’s name was coined in 1912 by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire regarded the colourful Cubist-inspired paintings of

Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Cubism Summary

Cubism, highly influential visual arts style of the 20th century that was created principally by the artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914. The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of

Salvador Dalí: The Persistence of Memory

Surrealism Summary

Surrealism, movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism’s emphasis was not on negation but

First International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920.

Dada Summary

Dada, nihilistic and antiaesthetic movement in the arts that flourished primarily in Zürich, Switzerland; New York City; Berlin, Cologne, and Hannover, Germany; and Paris in the early 20th century. Several explanations have been given by various members of the movement as to how it received its