Marcel Duchamp cut his teeth
with the Cubists
and flirted with the anti-art of Dada
but neither of these movements
was to define him.
In 1915 Duchamp left war-torn Europe
for New York, where the fame and notoriety
of his Cubist paintings preceded him, but
he'd already turned his back on painting,
which he described as a "retinal art",
appealing to the eye
rather than engaging the brain.
What Duchamp developed was the
revolution of his ready-mades,
manufactured objects
plucked from everyday life.
The power of the idea,
replacing the hand of the artist.
Duchamp's ideas came together in one of
the most ambitious works of the 20th century
The Large Glass, an endlessly analysed
work of machine-age erotic symbolism,
science, alchemy and then some.
Although he claimed to have quit
the art world for competitive chess,
Duchamp kept on quietly making art,
even by hand.
This great iconoclast and breaker of rules
was not above breaking his own.
