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This, following my Mondrian pages, is another exploration of the impact of an early piece of modern art on its own and on subsequent generations.
Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1913 is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The PMA's own web site states,
This painting created a sensation when it was exhibited in New York in February 1913 at the historic Armory Show of contemporary art, where perplexed Americans saw it as representing all the tricks they felt European artists were playing at their expense. The picture's outrageousness surely lay in its seemingly mechanical portrayal of a subject at once so sensual and time-honored. The Nude's destiny as a symbol also stemmed from its remarkable aggregation of avant-garde concerns: the birth of cinema; the Cubists' fracturing of form; the Futurists' depiction of movement; the chromophotography of Etienne-Jules Marey, Eadweard Muybridge, and Thomas Eakins; and the redefinitions of time and space by scientists and philosophers. The painting was bought directly from the Armory Show for three hundred dollars by a San Francisco dealer. Marcel Duchamp's great collector-friend Walter Arensberg was able to buy the work in 1927, eleven years after Duchamp had obligingly made him a hand-colored, actual-size photographic copy. Today both the copy and the original, together with a preparatory study, are owned by the Museum.
The influences seem to be Cubism and Muybridge's serial photographs (interesting sample here). Nude Descending Stairs, 1887 |
Two common questions are, 'where is the nude?' and 'where is the staircase?'. Fortunately, these are not important.
It is worth bearing in mind that Duchamp was a key player in the Surrealist, Futurist and American Dada movements. Two of his other most famous works are,
Duchamp produced several paintings in a cubist style, some similar to Nude Descending
Sonata, 1911 |
Dulcinea, 1911 |
Portrait of Chess Players, 1911 |
Transition of Virgin into a Bride, 1912 |
Bride |
Sad Young Man in a Train |
Two more important points before we continue:
What follows is a trawl of modern artistic output to discover homages to Duchamp's Nude Descending.
A new line starting in November 2011, Laurentiu Todié has emailed a new version. Good submissions will be gathered at the top. Pieter Myers submitted his Nude Descending in March 2012, but I didn't get around to adding it until July.
[26Aug12] From the book Arty Cats by David Baird and Vicky Cox, perhaps the closest to Duchamp's original and thus one of the cleverest and most artistic offerings. Further details here. |
text from here |
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Nude Descending from Laurentiu Todié. Here's a link to Pixels Painting. |
Nude Descending, by Pieter Myers, link . |
Let's start at home with Modest Self Portrait of the Artist as a Nude Man Descending a Staircase, 2005 also including the Mondrian Collection |
Here's another of mine, Muybridge nude descending Escher staircase, 2005 |
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Staircase Descending a Nude #2. Mark also does a fine line in Mondrians, see here . |
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Hananiah Harari, Nude Descending a Staircase from here. Artist's comments from the source web site, I felt impelled towards a renewed disposition of this subject made notorious with the uproar over Marcel Duchamp's entry in the 1913 Armory Show. The theme has since become generic, as have themes such as bathers, piping Pans, or reclining nudes.. But my own statement would not or could not, be cast in Duchamp's cubist-futurist idiom. Serendipity led me to the Pre-Raphaelite Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones whose painting The Golden Stairs suggested a scaffold for my own. His Victorian maidens, a saccharine demiseraphic troupe, were for me quite naturally no more embraceable than Duchamp's metallic robots. However the sweep of Burne-Jones' design provided my nude her stage. She makes entrance, then descends to diverse portraits comprising not only head, but body & temper - revealed step by step as it were, in shifting colors, light, and action. After "performing" in choreographed (sometimes mocking) descent , she exits below to Art and to the World. (My debt to Burne-Jones is acknowledged in the lower right hand corner of my work, where his name can be seen on a crumpled candy-wrapper. |
Angela Hrabowiak, Nude descending staircase with her cock in her hand, 1992 from [dead link]. |
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Rufus Butler Seder, Nude descending a staircase (detail) from here. |
n/a | Jonathan Lane. I once found a work called Nude; Descending Staircase Stairway at Tobacco Road - Miami, here. I wrote to the artist seeking permission to show it but did not receive a reply. I looked again in September 2009 and the site now has some nice snaps followed by a lot of wedding photos. Jonathan has missed his chance. |
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William Richard Hundley, Nude Descending Again, 2001 from here |
Dan Feldman, Fork Descending A Staircase, 1997 from here |
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Michael Townsend dead link |
Vince Budnick, Nude descending an escalator, 1998 from here |
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John Wrobleski, Nude Descending a Staircase, 2004 dead link a rather literal reading |
James M. Glenn, Nude descending stairs from here |
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Peter Saul, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1977 from here |
Phil Bacon, Nude Descending a Staircase dead link |
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G. Frederick Morante, Nude Descending the Stare Case, 1993 from here |
Elisabeth Flynn-Chapman, Nude Descending the Staircase, 2004 from here |
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Rolf-Maria Kr?kels, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1996 from here This is a single image from multiple-image works. |
Peter Max, Nude Descending. 1974 from here |
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Chuck Jones, Nude Duck Descending a Staircase, 1991 from here |
Reinier Kelder, Descending Nude dead link |
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Derek Sayer, nude descending a staircase from here |
Tony Ward, Ascending Staircase dead link |
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Glenn Ibbitson, male ascending staircase from here |
Another of mine, a rather fetchingly shaped carrot from the allotment gives us Carrot descending a sea of steps. Thanks to Robert W. Kolb for the background image from here |
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Steve Ritchie, Nude Descending Stairs from here |
another Steve Ritchie, Nude Reclining on Stairs from here |
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Ed Freeman, Nude on Staircase dead link |
Chad Robertson, Nude Falling Down a Staircase dead link from the web page, Disturbing, provocative, sometimes humorous, and often characterized by a seductive melancholy, Chad's paintings have a disarmingly lifelike quality and a colloquial style that make them appear at first glance to be poorly shot photographs-over-exposed and taken by a shaky hand. The result is a jarring study in the quiet isolation of his subjects. |
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Peter Edwards, Sarah nude Descending Stairs from here [14th May 2010] I have received an email from Tim Bingham who owns this picture and whose wife is the model. He states 'I have it in the study as I type, nearly life size'. Tim has corrected the title. Although Peter Edwards is featured in the linked site, this painting seems to have been removed. |
Dali, Nude Woman Climbing a Staircase dead link |
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Flea (artist or editor?), Alice ascending a staircase at a St. Louis Rave dead link |
MicHael Galkovsky (?), nudeStaircaseMultiple dead link This is probably the best so far. I would have straightened up the fishtank, but perhaps it was a conscious decision not to do so. |
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Patrick Lincoln, Nude coming down the staircase looking for Marcel Duchamp dead link but revitalised through an email from Patrick on 12th January 2020, So there I was looking for web mentions&/or links to my web-page Lincoln Gallery and I find a reference to one of my early works. I am pleased to find it in your presentation and this constitutes formal permission for you to use it , if you need such. I would like to have my gallery in Jerome, Az. and my web-page mentioned if you could be so kind. The piece is digitally manipulated photography by the way and the model was posed on steps in a structure that, years later, would contain my gallery. The real title is "Nude descending stairs while looking everywhere for Marcel Duchamp" |
Gerhard Richter, Ema (Nude on a Staircase) 1966 from here |
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artist unknown, nude descending a staircase (animated) from here |
Lorrie McClanahan, nude cat descending a staircase from here |
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John Carmichael, Nude on Staircase from here |
Ira Carter, Elvis Descending a Staircase from here I'll date the additions from here on: 14th Oct 05 |
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Ralph Lichtensteiger, Bea Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1999 from here 14th Oct 05 |
D M Scott, Julie Descending a Staircase, 2003 dead link 14th Oct 05 |
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Michael Bergt, Nude Descending a Stairway (2002), 27 x 20in, colored pencil, gouache on paper dead link 14th Oct 05 |
Jim McNitt, Nude Descending a Guitar Case, 2003 from here 14th Oct 05 |
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Gordon Lochhead, Descending, 1998 from here 14th Oct 05 |
This will be the last on the page, and the last on the last page if I get enough for a split. Mel Ramos, Nude Descending A Staircase from here Has qualities of draughtsmanship, but no artistic merit whatsoever. |
text from here |
text from here |
These pages were originally created in October 2005 and rewritten between September and November 2009. Judging from the number of links which have died over those 4 years, it looks as though I am performing a minor service here. During the rewrite I have found a number of new homages and will add these in due course.
Up - top - Mondrian - Mona Lisa - Nude Descending a Staircase - American Gothic - Guernica - Last Supper - Mondrian Portrait - Scream
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