Marcel Duchamp was born in 1887, on the 28th of July (a birth-date he also shares with another significant attachment to me, that being "La veinteocho de Julio," which happens to be Independence Day in Peru, and it was the date that I also started my own tender independence on laving school, as the first day of my apprenticeship!)... He was born in a small farming village in northern France called Blainville-Crevon. The Duchamps lived in a large house, which complemented the status of Marcel's father, who worked as a council / semi-government official, known as a Notaire. The young Marcel, was the fourth of six children, - but a seventh sibling unfortunately died in infancy.
All the children in the Duchamp household were encouraged to participate in the arts, music and literature. Duchamp’s grandfather, (on his mother's side) was a successful businessman, an engraver, and also a talented artist (I can draw some similarity to my own maternal grandfather, William Davis, whom I think I perhaps get the artistic gene from. I still look towards him as my own role model as an artist, in addition to my own father as a businessman).
It is interesting to note that the four oldest Duchamp children all became artists of some sort. The eldest Gaston, was trained to become a lawyer, but instead became a painter, (perhaps better known under the name of Jacques Villon). The second son Raymond, was destined to become a doctor, but eventually became a sculptor, (known as Raymond Duchamp-Villon). Perhaps the more famous sibling of Marcel's was Suzanne, the younger sister of Gaston, Raymond and Marcel, who painted throughout her life, (she is better known under her married name of Suzanne Crotti after her second marriage).
It seems that Marcel intended to pursue a career as an artist / painter, following his schooling, and he engaged and experimented with the progressive styles of Dada-ism, Cubism and to some degree, (I think), confrontation with the establishment. One of his more famous works that could have landed him in trouble with the "art-elite" in Paris, was the submission of a "Ready-made" (as he called mass produced objects like these), to an art exhibition. What he sent to exhibit was a urinal, usually found in public toilets, which was up-ended and called "fountain"....
(Some say that this might have represented the classical shape of the Fountain of Four Rivers (Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi) in the Piazza Navone in Rome; but my inteerpretation is that this may be a convergence of thought afteer Duchamp's submission),
The original Fountain by Marcel Duchamp photographed by Alfred Stieglitz at the 291 (Art Gallery) after the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibit. Stieglitz used a backdrop of The Warriors by Marsden Hartley to photograph the urinal.
Anyway, back to my research....
The Large Glass Drawing, - Or more correctly, the name given by Duchamp was The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même). This works is a baffling strange and highly unusual "Drawing", and, as such, is a great example of how drawing can be taken into a completely unexpected dimension or realm....for a detailed explanation of it, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bride_Stripped_Bare_by_Her_Bachelors,_Even
References taken from;
Tomkins, Calvin, Duchamp: A Biography. Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1996.
Postmodernism, A Graphic Guide, 2013, Richard Appignassi & Chris Garratt et al, Icon Books Ltd, London.
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