When does a chamber pot stop being a chamber pot? When Marcel Duchamp declares it art. From the celebrated The Fountain to a bearded and moustachioed Mona Lisa, this essential introduction to the artist explores his ready-mades and other daring practices, as well as his decisive position in 20th-century art.

The man of the ready-mades

Duchamp, the before and after in 20th-century art

When does a chamber pot stop being a chamber pot? When Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) decided to declare it art. The uproar caused by the French artist's The Fountain (1917), a porcelain chamber pot displayed in a gallery, set precedents in art circles that are still relevant today.
Duchamp dedicated his artistic life to challenging the concept of art and, in the process, opened our minds to hitherto unimaginable possibilities. After a tangential foray into Cubism early in his career, the artist made his name with Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), a revolutionary combination of abstraction, Cubism and Futurism with a nude, present in the title and controversial for its mechanical character. From the same period date Duchamp's first forays into the now emblematic ready-mades, objects that seemed to have been found by chance and presented as art by the creator. These include Bicycle Wheel (1913), Bottle Holder (1914) and a snow shovel entitled Anticipation of a Broken Arm (1915).
However, Duchamp was not content with that and awakened astonishment among tradition-loving viewers with works such as L.H.O.O.Q.(1919), in which he presented a cheap copy of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa with a painted beard and moustache and whose title, if that were not enough, included a play on words that in French sounded like "Elle a chaud au cul" (literally "She has a hot ass", and which can be translated as "She is sexually excited").
This book distils all the boldness and scandal that accompanied Marcel Duchampen's art into a collection of his essential works and presents not only a pioneering creator but also a crucial period in Western art. It is here that, between attacks on the old masters and the fractured poetry of found objects, the art world evolved for the first time from "retinal" experiences to a more conceptual practice.

About the author

Janis Mink studied art history at Smith College and received her PhD in Hamburg under the direction of Martin Warnke. She is currently a writer and exhibition curator.

Publisher: Taschen