Portland Public Library

Duchamp, general editor, José María Faerna ; translated from the Spanish by Alberto Curotto

eng

Includes bibliographical references (page 63)

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

Duchamp

bibliographycatalogs

35718733

general editor, José María Faerna ; translated from the Spanish by Alberto Curotto

Great modern masters

This volume presents a survey of French artist Marcel Duchamp's (1887-1968) career documents; it includes more than 60 reproductions of his work and informative text discussing his preeminent role in the history of twentieth-century art. One of the most controversial and enigmatic artists of the twentieth century, Duchamp fundamentally altered our way of looking at and understanding art. Associated in his early years with several avant-garde groups, notably the Cubists and Surrealists, Duchamp became most famous as the archetypal artist of the radical Dada movement. Duchamp's art illustrates his conviction that painting, as it had been previously understood, was mere representation; it was Duchamp's goal to turn painting into a purely intellectual tool, to make art that was, in his words, "aesthetically anaesthetized." Duchamp's attempts to transform people's ideas about art were not readily accepted, and often created huge scandals. At the exhibition of the New York Independents in 1917, he presented his now famous overturned urinal, which he signed and titled Fountain. Indifferent to ideas of "good" or "bad" taste, Duchamp continued to make his artworks (called "Readymades") from innocuous objects which he "assisted" and "adjusted" in order to activate hidden meanings