Duchamp1984
by Marcel Duchamp
One of the most controversial and enigmatic artists of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) fundamentally altered our way of looking at and understanding art. Associated in his early years with several avant-garde groups, notably the Cubists and Surrealists, Duchamp became most famous as the archetypal artist of the radical Dada movement.
Duchamp's art illustrates his conviction that painting, as it had been previously understood, was mere representation; it was Duchamp's goal to turn painting into a purely intellectual tool, to make art that was, in his words, "aesthetically anaesthetized.".
Duchamp's attempts to transform people's ideas about art were not readily accepted, and often created huge scandals. At the exhibition of the New York Independents in 1917, he presented...