My Kid Could Paint That

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.

To Those Which They Never Turned Another Cheek: 

L.H.O.O.Q., Duchamp, 1919

“Mass media is useless.”

Duchamp often repeated this as if to explain the motivations behind creating readymades. Unlike Andy Warhol’s collectable works of art, Duchamp emphasizes the worthlessness that the media often complicates in order to mass-produce economic values. To revolt against the monetary value of aesthetic qualities, Duchamp “defaces” commercialized commodities by infusing them with new perspectives.

L.H.O.O.Q., Duchamp’s interpretation of Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” refigures the female’s countenance by adding the presence of a goatee and perfectly-groomed mustache. The title further condemns the popular painting, acting as a pun on the phrase “Elle a chaud au cul,” colloquially translated into English as “She is hot in the ass.”

Duchamp paid no heed to the contempt that many viewers expressed toward his “readymade” art. Many failed to appreciate his rejection of retinal art, and considered his edits to the Da Vinci painting as “highly juvenile and representative of an elementary behavior.” Those self-proclaimed art critics who shared a “more palatable taste in art” felt insulted by Duchamp’s obvious rejection of aesthetics, feeling as if the artist was personally spiting their appreciation for high-art.

Duchamp’s “readymades” are now regarded as part of the Anti-art genre, a term applied to a wide array of philosophies that consider art to be a term inclusive of all variations and forms of art, even those that may be offensive or re-edit historical renditions of art.

Some people still reject the identification of Duchamp’s “readymades” as art, while claiming that their rejection stems from a deep respect for the old masters.

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

"And Billy traveled in time to the zoo on Tralfamadore. He was forty-four years old, on display under a geodesic dome. He was reclining  on the lounge chair which had been his cradle during his trip through space. He was naked. The Tralfamadorians were interested in his body- all of it." - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

The gears turned, thoughts formed, and inspiration took hold. I looked at the Duchamp, then at the bookshelf, then at the Duchamp, then back at the bookshelf. To my surprise neither was on a horse. Pop-culture references aside, I felt sincerely relieved as I walked to the shelf and picked up a favorite: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. After weeks of procrastination and second guesses, I had found a connection that I wished to explore. Now I just had to write about it...

Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2  captures in one image a concept that Vonnegut spends an entire novel exploring: The perception of time. Duchamp carefully illustrates the nude figure at each point in its stroll downstairs, allowing the viewer a perspective impossible to the naked eye. This investigation of the subject's mechanics, form, and the "fourth dimension" is similar to Vonnegut's use of the Tralfamadorian's ability to see time as a narrative technique. Just as the aliens study Billy Pilgrim and Montana Wildhack in the zoo on Tralfamadore, Duchamp's work explores the human body at several points in time in a single work, obscuring the figure to barely identifiable abstraction. While the painting shocked the public when shown at the Armory Show in 1913, Trafalmadorians would likely note that the figure had always descended the stairs, would always descend the stairs, and descends the stairs even as I type these words. While staggering, concepts such as these defined the early Cubist movement.