Figure timeline
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was a French American artist, chess player, and inventor who played a key role in the development of the avant-garde in the United States and in New York City, where he spent the last 25 years of his life.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
culture · French-American painter, sculptor, and chess player (1887–1968) · actor · chess player · painter · sculptor · photographer · poet · librarian · designer · artist · visual artist · also Marcel Duchamp, Henri Robert Marcel Duchamp, Rrose Sélavy, R. Mutt, Rose Sélavy, Marcel Duchamp-Villon
Born 28 July 1887 · Died 2 October 1968 · Q5912
52 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
14 photos
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
It means that the whole foundation stone of conceptual art just collapses. A work of art is not a work of art just because somebody says it is. “This changes the history of art, and has huge implications for the contemporary art market, and the millions that have been invested in it.
Arensberg Duchamp collection
76%WikipediaSource
“It means that the whole foundation stone of conceptual art just collapses. A work of art is not a work of art just because somebody says it is. “This changes the history of art, and has huge implications for the contemporary art market, and the millions that have been invested in it.”
“Arensberg Duchamp collection”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him—as if anyone could—but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“Painting is washed up. Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? Tell me, can you do that?”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Forbes: Xie Lei And The Marcel Duchamp Prize: A Celebration Of Innovation And Artistic Excellence
Artnet: Does Marcel Duchamp Still Matter?
Hyperallergic: Robber Barons, Marcel Duchamp, and Big Museums’ Dirty Little Secrets
Artnet: In Pictures: See Marcel Duchamp’s Passport, Christmas Cards, and Sketches in an Engrossing New Online Portal About His Life and Work
By the French Ministry of Culture, including Des souteneurs encore dans la force de l'âge et le ventre dans l'herbe by Alphonse Allais, consisting of a green carriage curtain suspended from a wooden cylinder
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Laweekly: A New Marcel Duchamp Documentary Takes It Piece By Piece
Smithsonian Magazine: Marcel Duchamp Played With the Definition of Art and Now the Public Can, Too
The Daily Telegraph: Marcel Duchamp: His influence is still everywhere in contemporary art
The Daily Beast: Marcel Duchamp's Urinal and a Look at the History of Bathroom Fixtures
The Daily Beast: Marcel Duchamp's Secret Masterpiece
As "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
As a testimony to the legacy of Duchamp's work to the art world, a panel of prominent artists and art historians voted Fountain "the most influential artwork of the 20th century"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Is an annual award given to a young artist by the Centre Georges Pompidou
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And is published by CyberBOOK+ Publications, the digital publishing arm of the New York–based nonprofit Art Science Research Laboratory (ASRL)
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Died 1968-10-02.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage, at a concert entitled "Reunion"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Compared art with religion, saying that he wished to do away with art the same way many have done away with religion
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Complicates Duchamp's earlier disclaimers
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp and John Cage appeared together at a concert entitled "Reunion", playing a game of chess and composing Aleatoric music by triggering a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp helped to organize an exhibition in Rouen, France, called Les Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Curator Walter Hopps organized Duchamp's first retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum, and there he appeared in an iconic photograph playing chess opposite nude model Eve Babitz, photographed by Julian Wasse
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
By fellow Dadaist Hans Richter, in the second person, i
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
After his friend and biographer Robert Lebel asked whether the secrecy, symbolic language, and apparently initiatory character of Duchamp's work might indicate a connection with alchemy, Duchamp replied that if he had pr
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The publication in both French and English of Robert Lebel's catalogue raisonné made his work more widely accessible
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp said of creativity,
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Participated with Maya Deren in her unfinished film The Witch's Cradle, filmed in Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery, in which his hands manipulate the string game, Cat's Cradle, while his body is enmeshed
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
For the First Papers of Surrealism show in New York, surrealists called on Duchamp to design the exhibition
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
A collection of these aphorisms was published under the name of Rrose Sélavy, entitled, Poils et coups de pieds en tous genres
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp teamed with chess theorist Vitaly Halberstadt to publish L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled), known as corresponding squares
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
While looking at the sculptor's kinetic works, Duchamp suggested that these should be called mobiles
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Early in January 1928, Duchamp said that he could no longer bear the responsibility and confinement of marriage, and they were soon divorced.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
At André Breton's urging, with financing by Jacques Doucet, Duchamp built another optical device based on the first one: Rotative Demisphère, optique de précision (Rotary Demisphere, Precision Optics)
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
In a series of photographs by Man Ray showing Duchamp dressed as a woman
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Along with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray, as an experimental exhibition context that predates the Museum of Modern Art as the first modern art collection in the US
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
With help from Man Ray, Duchamp built a motorized sculpture, Rotative plaques verre, optique de précision ("Rotary Glass Plates, Precision Optics")
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp made a parody of the Mona Lisa by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And then back to the United States in 1920
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp took leave of the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the Large Glass, and went to Buenos Aires, where he remained for nine months and often played chess
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where he quickly befriended art patron Katherine Dreier and artist Man Ray
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Began work on the piece, financed by the support of the Arensbergs
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp installed a Bicycle Wheel in his studio
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp withdrew from painting circles and began working as a librarian in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève to be able to earn a living wage while concentrating on scholarly realms and working on his Large Glass
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“s cubist constructions of 1912 to 1914 were Duchamp”
Painted the last of his Cubist-like paintings
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Studied at École des chartes (1912).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Duchamp began his compulsory military service with the 39th Infantry Regiment, working for a printer in Rouen
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born 1887-07-28.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him—as if anyone could—but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.
Connections