Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) became one of the best known painted images of the twentieth century when it developed into a major focal point for the hilarity and outrage that surrounded the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art. On view in New York, in February and March, the exhibition--which is better known as the Armory Show, after its location--was presented by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) and assembled chiefly by two of its members, Arthur B. Davies and Walt Kuhn, who went to Europe to select the works. When the show opened it proved to be one of the wonders of the age, and a defining moment in the history of American art. The American public, and even the members of the AAPS, had never seen anything like these works, which ranged from Van Gogh and Gauguin to Picasso and Brancusi. Duchamp's painting, with its seemingly provocative title and abstraction at a level seldom seen before by its audience, was greeted with shouts of laughter and a leavening of disgust. The painting was certainly very radical compared with most of the American works displayed at the Armory, but it was a relatively tame exercise and did not really compare with the vision of some of the other painters. Gradually, however, the fame of the piece and changes in taste in art have made it an image that is not difficult for most people to appreciate. The painting's greatest legacy resides in its position in the foreground of the arrival of radical new European painting styles in America--and in its role in moving Duchamp to America and on to the more significant phases of his career.
The origins of Duchamp's painting are well understood since many extant pieces from 1911-12 show the movement toward it. In 1910-11 Duchamp lived in the town of Puteaux with his brothers, who called themselves Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon (both of whom became well-known artists and exhibited in the Arm...