Art for the Private Viewer
The Broad Usage of Sexual Figures in Art
Curated by Sree Balusu

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending A Staircase No. 2, 1912

Here Duchamp combines futurism and cubism to create an artwork that depicts the movement of a human (in this case a naked person). Duchamp admitted being influenced by stop-motion photography, most notably Muybridge's Woman Walking Downstairs. Duchamp said, "If a shadow is a two-dimensional projection of the three-dimensional world, then the three-dimensional world as we know it is the projection of the four-dimensional Universe."

Duchamp's unique way of perceiving reality influenced his work on this painting. Instead of simply painting an unclothed woman in the midst of walking down a staircase, he painted a series of frozen moments in time that show a progression of movement using a nude figure constructed from geometric shapes and lines.

The geometry that Duchamp uses to construct the figure conveys its movement as the lines and shapes meet at differing angles. The viewer can also see the downward orientation of the staircase in the foreground and a series of steps in the background that show that the woman is descending the staircase.

Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase is an example of how nude figures in art have been used abstractly to represent human motion and form, rather than any themes or symbols.