A revised and expanded edition of one of the most original books ever written on the enigmatic artist Marcel Duchamp. Genius, anti-artist, charlatan, guru, impostor? Since he arrived on the scene in 1914, Marcel Duchamp has been called all of these. Almost no other artist of the twentieth century has inspired more passion and controversy, nor exerted a greater influence on art. At the same time, Duchamp continually challenged the very nature of art and strove to redefine it as conceptual rather than as product by questioning why the medium was mostly a "retinal" experience. Always the provocateur, Duchamp never ceased to be engaged, openly or secretly, in activities and works that transformed traditional artmaking. Through his works like Fountain; Bicycle Wheel; L.H.O.O.Q.; and Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, Duchamp played with the idea of what art can be, opening new possibilities for future generations. This revised entry in the World of Art series, written by three leading experts on twentieth-century art, and published with support of Duchamp’s widow, is one of the most original books written on this enigmatic artist. Featuring a new chapter and preface, as well as updates throughout from specialist scholars who are active in their fields, this is the definitive introduction to Duchamp. Thoroughly illustrated, this volume combines thirty years of research by the authors and challenges history’s presumptions, misunderstandings, and pieces of misinformation about Marcel Duchamp and his legacy.

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of Marcel Duchamp’s death, Duchamp’s Last Day offers a radical reading of the artist’s final hours. Just moments after Duchamp died, his closest friend Man Ray took a photograph of him. His face is wan; his eyes are closed; he appears calm. Taking this image as a point of departure, Donald Shambroom begins to examine the surrounding context—the dinner with Man Ray and another friend, Robert Lebel, the night Duchamp died, the conversations about his own death at that dinner and elsewhere, and the larger question of whether this radical artist’s death can be read as an extension of his work. Shambroom’s in-depth research into this final night, and his analysis of the photograph, feeds into larger questions about the very nature of artworks and authorship which Duchamp raised in his lifetime. In the case of this mysterious and once long-lost photograph, who is the author? Man Ray or Duchamp? Is it an artwork or merely a record? Has the artist himself turned into one of his own readymades? A fascinating essay that is both intimate and steeped in art history, Duchamp’s Last Day is filled with intricate details from decades of research into this peculiar encounter between art, life, and death. Shambroom’s book is a wonderful study of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

Marcel Duchamp's critical examination of the conditions under which art is created and marketed set a trend that has continued from 20th century to the present. Due to the artistically provocative nature of his work, Duchamp received an enormous amount of critical attention but he maintained a "wall of silence" leaving his work to remain an enigma.

In 1913 Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase exploded through the American art world. This is the story of how he followed the painting to New York two years later, enchanted the Arensberg salon, and—almost incidentally—changed art forever. In 1915, a group of French artists fled war-torn Europe for New York. In the few months between their arrival—and America’s entry into the war in April 1917—they pushed back the boundaries of the possible, in both life and art. The vortex of this transformation was the apartment at 33 West 67th Street, owned by Walter and Louise Arensberg, where artists and poets met nightly to talk, eat, drink, discuss each others’ work, play chess, plan balls, organise magazines and exhibitions, and fall in and out of love. At the center of all this activity stood the mysterious figure of Marcel Duchamp, always approachable, always unreadable. His exhibit of a urinal, which he called Fountain, briefly shocked the New York art world before falling, like its perpetrator, into obscurity. Many people (of both sexes) were in love with Duchamp. Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood were among them; they were also, briefly, and (for her) life-changingly, in love with each other. Both kept daily diaries, which give an intimate picture of the events of those years. Or rather two pictures—for the views they offer, including of their own love affair, are stunningly divergent. Spellbound by Marcel follows Duchamp, Roché, and Beatrice as they traverse the twentieth century. Roché became the author of Jules and Jim, made into a classic film by François Truffaut. Beatrice became a celebrated ceramicist. Duchamp fell into chess-playing obscurity until, decades later, he became famous for a second time—as Fountain was elected the twentieth century’s most influential artwork.

Journalist and historian Marquis tells the story of French-born American painter and all-around celebrity Duchamp (1887-1968). A substantially different version of the biography was published as Marcel Duchamp: Eros, c'est la vie by Whitson in 1980. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR