02 April 2010

Nude Chess in Pasadena | Marcel Duchamp, 1963

Photograph of Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz posing for the photographer Julian Wasser during the Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art (now the Norton Simon), 1963. His major work, The Large Glass, or The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), a construction of wire and painted foil fitted between plates of transparent glass, is visible in the background.

In 1912, Duchamp painted his famous Nude Descending A Staircase, which caused a scandal at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. Duchamp developed a type of symbolic painting in which the image depicted successive movements of a single body, closely resembling the multiple exposure photography.

Stroboscopic study of a nude descending staircase, 1942. By the time this photograph was taken, Duchamp had stopped painting for 20 years and devoted himself to the game of chess.