Marcel Duchamp (Duchamp Marcel)

(1887-1968)
Born July 28, 1887, near Rouen in Normandy in the family of the artist studied at the Academy Julian in Paris. In 1910-1911 was carried away in physics and mathematics, at the same time Duchamp, with his brothers, an artist Gaston (known by the name of Jacques Villon), and the sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and other young artists organized the 'Beauty of the golden section'. The purpose of this study was to investigate the artistic association of ideal proportions and the golden section, as well as the mathematical foundations of art in general.
In the early period of creativity under the influence of Marcel Duchamp painting by Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse, wrote a very bright and bold color scheme on canvas. In 1912, experimenting with shapes and colors, the artist created one of the most controversial of his works, naked, down the stairs, where the motion passed with the following one after another, intersecting planes. The picture was not accepted at the Salon of Independent 1912, Duchamp and then sent it to Armor-show 1913 in New York, where one critic sarcastically called it 'an explosion at Pasta Factory'. The author explained the concept of painting as 'the organization of kinetic elements, the transfer time and space through the abstract image of the movement'. Already in 1913, when passed Armor-show, twenty-five Duchamp felt exhausted the possibilities of easel painting. This has created the concept of product 'ready-made' (Readymade) - the finished product (the term arose from the trade ads), . Marcel Duchamp's famed, . which was, . that any ordinary object, . selected from among their number or group of objects, . signed and exhibited artist, . can be called a work of art,
. 'Ready meals' Duchamp - a snow scraper, a hanger for hats, for drying bottles and bicycle wheel - were a challenge to what he considered pretentious and empty the traditional art.

The most monumental of these was the construction of glass bride, undressed her own bachelor, sometimes also called the Large Glass (1915-1923). This arrangement, which is considered one of the best works of Duchamp - a complex and skillfully performed a joke: a few 'bachelors', placed at the bottom,' harass' bride ', presented at the top. Among the most scandalous escapades Duchamp against public opinion and the arts in general - drawn on reproductions of the Mona Lisa's mustache and beard. On the New York Exhibition of Independent in 1917 the artist presented a urinal under the title 'Fountain'. Ironic name of the facility gave him the status of 'art'.

In 1923, Duchamp decided to abandon the arts, declaring that it succumbed to the influence of businessmen and, worse, made the middle class. In 1920 - the 1940's he organized several exhibitions of contemporary art. His 'staging' surrealist exhibitions in 1942 and 1947, . which were to participate viewers, . anticipated not only the happenings the 1950's and 1960's, . but the concept of modern art, . according to which the viewer plays in creating works equally active, . as artist,
.

With the emergence in the 1960's art pop art Duchamp's fame grew, were two large retrospective exhibitions (1966 - London, Tate Gallery, 1973-1974 - New York, Museum of Modern Art). Perhaps the best expression of ideas of Duchamp's found in his separate articles, published in 1934 under the name Green Box. Duchamp died in Neuilly, France October 1, 1968