The essential Duchamp

The nude figure is here portrayed as a mobile, mechanised form. To achieve this effect, Duchamp combined cubist abstraction, modern mathematical concepts of geometric space, and ideas for representing movement borrowed from scientific photography. Duchamp submitted 'Nude descending a staircase (no 2)' to the Salon des Indépendants, an important annual exhibition of modern art in Paris, in the spring of 1912. The hanging committee, which was led by some of his fellow cubists, asked Duchamp to make some changes to the work. Perhaps they objected to the representation of dynamic movement. It may also be that the subject of a nude walking down stairs or Duchamp’s writing the title in big block letters at the bottom of the canvas seemed preposterous. Duchamp withdrew the work. Ultimately, 'Nude descending a staircase (no 2)' became a success by scandal at the Armory Show in New York the following year.

'Bottlerack' was a circular stand with branches for putting wine bottles up to dry that Duchamp originally purchased in a Parisian department store.

Many readymades involved varying degrees of reworking. 'Apolinère enamelled' is a tin signboard advertising a brand of enamel paint. Duchamp added a reflection of the little girl’s hair in the mirror and altered the letters of the ‘Sapolin’ brand name in homage to his friend the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. The signature ‘[from] Marcel Duchamp’ – not by Marcel Duchamp – underscores the artist’s withdrawal from painting as a craft.

Ten years after 'Anemic cinema', Duchamp had a series of 12 designs printed on both sides of six cardboard disks. He then packaged the disks like a commercial product and introduced them to the public at a rented booth in the annual fair of the Association of French Inventors and Manufacturers. With these optical gadgets, he deliberately crossed the line separating fine art from industrial culture.