Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

French: Nu descendant un escalier n° 2
Artist	Marcel Duchamp
Year	1912
Type	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	147 cm × 89.2 cm (57 7⁄8 in × 35 1⁄8 in)
Location	Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (French: Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) is a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp. The work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. In its first presentation at the Parisian Salon des Indépendants, it was rejected by the Cubists and caused a huge stir during its exhibition at the 1913 Armory Show in New York following a press copy of an abuse scandal. The work is now found in permanent exhibition at the Louis and Walter Arensberg Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia.

Description

The work, an oil painting on canvas with dimensions of 147 cm × 89.2 cm (57.9 in × 35.1 in) in portrait, seemingly depicts a figure demonstrating an abstract movement in its ochres and browns. The discernable "body parts" of the figure are composed of nested, conical and cylindrical abstract elements, assembled together in such a way as to suggest rhythm and convey the movement of the figure merging into itself. Dark outlines limit the contours of the body while serving as motion lines that emphasize the dynamics of the moving figure, while the accented arcs of the dotted lines seem to suggest a thrusting pelvic motion. The movement seems to be rotated counter-clockwise from the upper left to the lower right corner to move, where the gradient of the apparently frozen sequence corresponding to the bottom right to top left dark, respectively, becomes more transparent, the fading of which is apparently intended to simulate the "older" section. At the edges of the picture, the steps which are indicated in darker colors. The middle of the image is an amalgam of light and dark, that becomes more piqued as one approaches the edges. The overall warm, monochrome bright palette of the painting ranges from yellow ocher, to dark, almost black tones. The colors are translucent applied. At the bottom left of the painting Duchamp placed as title, "NU DESCENDANT UN ESCALIER" in block letters, which may or may not be related to the work, as the question of whether the figure represents a human body remains open; the figure viewers infer gives little clue to its age, individuality, character, or sex (though the work's title has the masculine gender).

Background

The painting combines elements of both the Cubist and Futurist movements. In the composition, Duchamp depicts motion by successive superimposed images, similar to stroboscopic motion photography. Duchamp also recognized the influence of the stop-motion photography of Étienne-Jules Marey, particularly Muybridge's Woman Walking Downstairs from his 1887 picture series, published as The Human Figure in Motion.^[1]

Duchamp first submitted the work to appear in a Cubist show at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, but jurist Albert Gleizes asked Duchamp's brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, to have him voluntarily withdraw the painting, or paint over the title that he had painted on the work and rename it something else. The hanging committee objected to the work on the grounds that it had "too much of a literary title", and that "a nude never descends the stairs—a nude reclines".^[2]

Of the incident Duchamp recalled,

I said nothing to my brothers. 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.^[3]

He submitted the painting to the 1913 Armory Show in New York City located where Americans, accustomed to naturalistic art, were scandalized. Julian Street, an art critic for the New York Times wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory," and cartoonists satirized the piece. It spawned dozens of parodies in the years that followed.^[4]

After attending the Armory Show and seeing Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote (using his own, also valid translation): "Take the picture which for some reason is called 'A Naked Man Going Down Stairs'. There is in my bathroom a really good Navajo rug which, on any proper interpretation of the Cubist theory, is a far more satisfactory and decorative picture. Now, if, for some inscrutable reason, it suited somebody to call this rug a picture of, say, 'A Well-Dressed Man Going Up a Ladder', the name would fit the facts just about as well as in the case of the Cubist picture of the 'Naked Man Going Down Stairs'. From the standpoint of terminology each name would have whatever merit inheres in a rather cheap straining after effect; and from the standpoint of decorative value, of sincerity, and of artistic merit, the Navajo rug is infinitely ahead of the picture." ^[5]

Homage

• The painting Femme nue montant l'escalier by Joan Miró conserved at his foundation in Barcelona.
• The cover and title of Dude Descending a Staircase (2003), a music album by Apollo 440.
• The same-titled instrumental on Bruce Cockburn's music album Life Short Call Now (2006).
• The poem Nude Descending a Staircase by X.J. Kennedy.
• The painting Nude Duck Descending a Staircase by Chuck Jones.
• The song "Naked Girl Falling down the Stairs" by the Cramps.
• A reference in Rocky and Bullwinkle to a character named Newton Figley, in a painting called Newt Descending a Staircase.
• A reference in "Rugrats" called "Angelica Descending A Staircase".
• Two references in the newspaper cartoon Calvin and Hobbes.
• A 2004 painting by "Paul Roberts" titled "Nude Descending."
• In the poem "Journey: The North Coast" by Australian poet "Robert Gray", the line "Down these slopes move, as a nude descends a staircase,/ slender white gum trees" is an allusion to this artwork.

See also

• Readymades of Marcel Duchamp
• Naked woman climbing a staircase, by Joan Miró

Notes and references

Notes

1. ^ Tomkins 1996, p. 78
2. ^ Gunnar, Olsson (2007). Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographic Reason. University of Chicago. p. 155. ISBN 0-226-62930-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=vU69nFrs3TcC&lpg=PA155&pg=PA155#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved 2 December 2010. 
3. ^ Tomkins 1996, p. 83
4. ^ Tomkins 1996, pp. 116–142
5. ^ Roosevelt 1913

References

• Tomkins, Calvin (1996). Duchamp: A Biography. U.S.: Henry Holt and Company, Inc. ISBN 0-8050-5789-7 
• Uli Schuster. "Marcel Duchamp: Nu descendant un escalier - Image Analysis". http://www.lpg.musin.de/kusem/lk/gym8/b/sequb.htm. Retrieved January 14, 2010. ^{[dead link]}
• Roosevelt, Theodoore (1913). History as literature, by Theodore Roosevelt.. U.S.: New York: Charles Scribner’s sons. ISBN 1-58734-046-1. http://www.bartleby.com/56/11.html 

External links

• Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Multiple exposure photograph of Duchamp walking down a flight of stairs reminiscent of his painting from Life magazine