Marcel Duchamp: An Innovative Groundbreaking Artist

Marcel Duchamp was an innovative groundbreaking artist who during his lifetime continually pushed the boundaries of the current art scene. Due to his pioneering in art, he had a definitive influence upon artistic styles to come. Duchamp is typically grouped in to the Dadaist or Surrealist movements, however his involvement in the art world is worth more than just being placed into a category. In particular, his work “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even” or “The Large Glass” shows just how much he can test the limits of art during his time. Duchamp was receiving much notoriety, both good and bad after painting “Nude Descending a Staircase”. At this time, World War I was making Paris a rather uncomfortable home for him, so he decided it better to leave for New York. There, he met Man Ray, who inspired him and engaged him in the New York Dada scene. He began reading Max Stirner’s “The Ego and Its Own”. Duchamp regarded this book extremely highly and it clearly had a remarkable influence upon his style. He also became interested in Raymond Roussel’s novel “Impressions d’Afrique” which depicts strange plots, word play, surrealistic settings and characters, and odd machines.
These new influences on his life had made Duchamp become frustrated with the art at the time. On a trip he went on with a few friends, he saw various mechanical objects and felt that they were so much more pleasing than art at the time. He began to drift away from optically pleasing art and focused purely on intellectually stimulating art. Duchamp decided to avoid art for a little while, and got a job as a librarian. He used this as “a sort of excuse for not being obliged to show up socially” (Marcel Duchamp. Moure, Rizzoli. 1988). This enabled him to remove himself from society and remain within his own realm. He was intrigued with various theoretical writings, such as those by Henri Poincare. The culmination of his interests in physics and the surreal combined with his dislike of