The Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting the first major U.S. retrospective devoted to Marcel Duchamp in more than 50 years. Spanning six decades, the exhibition traces an artistic career that moved across movements and resisted easy classification.
More than 300 works bring together painting, sculpture, film, photography, printed matter, exhibition design and readymades. Highlights include Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) (1912), The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), Fountain (1917), L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), Box in a Valise (1935-41) and Étant donnés (1946-66).
Duchamp began questioning his direction as a painter in 1912, later developing a practice associated with Cubism, Dada and Surrealism while continually reinventing his approach to art. The retrospective's broad selection offers a view of how his experiments continue to expand ideas about what art can be--and may inspire future generations to challenge creative boundaries.
