Marcel Duchamp (Art Monographs)

As this century draws to a close, it becomes increasingly clear how profoundly the elusive life and art of Marcel Duchamp have influenced the trajectory of modern art. Duchamp seems to have been one of those rare people with the ability to foreshadow the future, and ever since 1913, when his "Nude Descending a Staircase" created a sensation at the Armory Show in New York, his prophetic vision, his statements and his works have indicated new terrain in which artists could operate. The works Duchamp produced after his precocious and much-publicised retirement from "retinal" art, as early as 1922, have provided the springboard for a number of movements and tendencies in art since the 1950s: conceptual art, art-language, multi-media art, happenings and performance art. Duchamp's field of action was one where language, thought and vision acted upon one author, yet he had no messianic pretensions and summarised his attitudes as "Doubt in myself, doubt in everything, in the first place never believing in truth." This publication contains numerous newly researched documents, both written and visual.