Johns

One of the most controversial and enigmatic artists of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) 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.
Living in Paris and New York, Marcel Duchamp had a profound influence on artists in both Europe and America - he counted as friends, among others, Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Picabia, and Andre Breton, and worked on several films with Man Ray and Hans Richter. In 1955 Duchamp became a citizen of the United States, where he continued to influence all aspects of the contemporary art scene until his death in 1968.
This survey of Duchamp's career documents the artist's unusual achievement with more than 60 reproductions of his work and an informative text discussing his preeminent role in the history of twentieth-century art.

Janis Mink studied art history at Smith College and gained her doctorate in Hamburg under Martin Warnke. She is presently a writer and curator.