Analysis Of Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending A Staircase

It’s rare that a single work of art can change the course of art history in such a concrete and dramatic way. Marcel Duchamp's painting "Nude Descending a Staircase (No.2)" is one rare piece that has perplexed and awed many critics. It was widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. In this essay, this piece of work will be analyzed, not only for its famous creator, but also for its form as well as its foundations of cubism and futuristic aspects. When speaking of form, there are some elements to consider. These elements include line, shape, light and value, color, texture and pattern, space and time and motion. Concluding this essay will be an evaluation of the physical aspects of the art as well
In this view, there is no resemblance of an anatomical nude, but only abstract lines and planes. Dark outlines bound the contours of the body of the woman while serving as motion lines that emphasize the dynamics of the moving figure, while the accented arcs of the dotted lines seem to suggest a thrusting pelvic motion. The lines suggest her consecutive static positions and create a rhythmic pattern. Decorative elements, such as painting geometric shapes, can highlight color depth and increase light reflection to create a radiant glow. Duchamp used repeated overlapping geometric shapes to create the silhouette of the woman. Each after-image of the woman runs into the next. Discerning one position from the next becomes nearly impossible for the viewer. However, this deconstructs the form and helps to construct the movement in space, producing a kind of elasticity of the image. The space consists of a foreground, mid-ground and background. As the woman descends down the staircase, one can notice the slow mechanical movements frozen in time. In the background, there is a slight drawing of her figure, so one could tell that she was there. In the mid-ground, one could make out her figure a little more, knowing that she was farther down the staircase, but not there in that exact moment. The foreground is where the woman is more in focus and one could see more detail in her body movements. The fluidity of this piece adds to aestheticism in a sense that one has to understand temporality to see this figure of a nude woman walking through time. The movement also seems to be rotated counterclockwise from the upper left to the lower right corner. This is where the gradient of the apparently temporal sequence corresponding to the bottom right to top left, dark colors begin to fade, which shows intention to simulate the present