8 Marcel Duchamp Paintings You Should Know About

The French artist Marcel Duchamp is widely known for his readymades. Even those who don’t know who Duchamp is probably know about his work called The Fountain. However, his artistic journey began much earlier. In the beginning, he focused on paintings. Duchamp switched from one style to another in pursuit of something that would allow his ideas to materialize. Therefore, to understand how he became the genius we consider him today, we must turn to his first significant paintings that helped him pave the way for future grand artworks.

Sonata marked a turning point in Marcel Duchamp’s artistic journey. It was the first painting that indicated his shift to a more radical artistic perspective. He started working on it in January of 1911 in Rouen. The painting depicts his three sisters—Yvonne is seen playing the piano, Magdalene playing the violin, and Suzanne sitting in front of them, listening. There’s a fourth figure in the background which shows their mother. Historians believe that Duchamp’s mother was almost completely deaf, and he was not particularly close to her. However, Duchamp gave her an important place in this composition, supporting its symmetry. This painting was Duchamp’s first attempt to rely on Cubist theory while painting. He was only partly influenced by Cubism, having found its techniques more tempting than its spirit.

2. Young Man and Girl in Spring

Young Man and Girl in Spring was painted in 1911. It portrays two androgynous figures with featureless faces reaching upward toward a tree. Between them, we can notice a black circle drawn with black crayons or oil pastels. Within it, the viewers notice a small figure with a featureless face. The circle then continues down, cutting the head of another figure with yet another featureless face. The main focus of the painting is the figure portrayed within the enclosed black circle, which is located in the middle of the composition. Naturally, this circle and the figure within it served as the subject of numerous discussions among art historians and critics. They have tried to come up with a plausible explanation for this element and the painting in general.

Portrait (Dulcinea), executed in October 1911, shows five figures of the same woman on an abstract background. According to Duchamp, he painted the same woman multiple times to give Cubism a freer interpretation. In an interview with the painter, Pierre Cabanne suggested that Dulcinea was a “revenge for an unhappy love affair.” Duchamp disapproved of this theory at once. As it turns out, he didn’t even know who the woman he painted was. He only saw her walking her dog on the Avenue de Neuilly and knew that she lived in the neighborhood. But they never actually met and he didn’t even know her name. This indicates that the artist was likely not interested in this person but rather in her movement.

4. Portrait of Chess Players

If you’re acquainted with Duchamp’s art and his life story, you probably already know that chess was one of his biggest passions. Some art historians even believe that chess played a much more significant role than art in Duchamp’s life. The artist showed his interest in both from an early age and even found a way to mix them.

In 1911, he produced quite an unconventional painting showing two chess players. He aimed to depict the mental activity that occurs during a chess game rather than just chess players playing chess. Portrait of Chess Players was made after at least six preparatory studies. Although the techniques Duchamp used are close to the Cubist techniques, the theme behind the painting was still unusual for Cubism.

Portrait of Chess Players depicts Duchamp’s brothers, Raymond and Jacques, sitting across from each other playing chess. Marcel painted their profiles repetitively as if he was portraying the course of their thoughts as the game went on. The tiny chess pieces, on the other hand, seem to be mental projections of the players.

According to Duchamp, Coffee Mill was initially a simple painting he started working on at his brother’s request. Raymond asked several artists to paint something he could put on display in his house in Puteaux, so Duchamp decided to paint a coffee grinder. Instead of making a figurative coffee grinder, Duchamp turned to painting the mechanism behind this object and the idea of its movements. Therefore, the painting depicts the various steps of the coffee grinding operations. Coffee Mill opened the door to Duchamp’s fascination with machines, which would later be seen in his other works, including his masterpiece The Large Glass.

Coffee Mill was first exhibited by Alfred Barr during the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition. At the time, it was owned by Raymond’s widow. In 1948, the painting was acquired by Maria Martins, whom Duchamp was having an affair with. Marcel ensured that Coffee Mill remained in her possession. This gesture doesn’t only prove his profound affection for Maria, but it also shows how much the painting meant to him.

6. Nude (Study), Sad Young Man in a Train

Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train was painted in October of 1911, after Duchamp’s trip from Paris to Rouen. Viewers can easily observe Cubist influences in this painting. There’s an emphasis on the flat surface, repetition of lines, and the typical Cubist color palette featuring brown, greenish, and grayish tones.

This painting was the first one that Duchamp executed using elementary parallelism inspired by chronophotography. He distorted the figure via linear, parallel elements, thus stretching it out. These lines depict the idea of movement. The same technique was used in his famous work called Nude Descending a Staircase.

Critics have suggested that the sad man portrayed in the painting was Duchamp himself. However, they went even further to suppose that the word sad in the title was an implication of the artist’s psychological distress. Duchamp disapproved of this theory. According to him, the word sad appeared in the title only because it sounded interesting alongside the word train (sad in French is triste). This seems like a reasonable explanation since Duchamp was known for being a notorious wordplay practitioner.

The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes was executed after the famous Nude Descending the Staircase, No. 2. Duchamp first made several preparatory works: 2 Nudes: One Strong and One Swift, the King and the Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes, and The King and Queen Traversed by Nudes at High Speed. These new works emphasized speed and fluid motion. His goal was to depict the idea of a strong male king and a feminine female queen surrounded by floating nudes that were not “hampered by their materiality.” As Apollinaire stated, Duchamp wanted to penetrate the essential nature of forms. At the basis of The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes lies Duchamp’s fascination with science and technology. He may have even been inspired by Georges Matisse’s article entitled Histoire extraordinaire des Électrons.

8. Tu m’

Marcel Duchamp painted Tu m’ long after he gave up painting. In 1918, however, he received a commission to paint something that would be put on display in a library. Having long given up on what he called retinal art, this idea did not appeal to Duchamp at first. Nonetheless, he accepted the offer and produced his last painting titled Tu m’. The painting features a play between reality (the two-foot-long bottle brush extending out from the canvas, the safety pins suturing the tear in the canvas) and illusion (the painted hand that points to the right).

It also shows the shadows of three readymades: Hat Rack, Bicycle Wheel, and a corkscrew which was never exhibited. From the center to the top left corner, the painting features numerous color swatches. The title of the painting may also be seen as proof that Duchamp was not very pleased with the result. Although it can be completed by any French verb beginning with a vowel, art historians and critics suggest the title was just a contraction of tu m’emmerdes, which translates as you bore me.