Duchamp "Nude Descending A Staircase (No. 2)"

Artist Jay Rolfe was in a discussion Saturday about Marcel Duchamp's famous painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Nude Descending A Staircase (No. 2)" from 1912. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has perhaps the best collection of Duchamp works in the world, and it includes 3 versions of this painting, No. 1 from 1911 painted on cardboard rather than canvas as was No. 2 the next year. No. 3, from 1916, graphite, pen and ink, pastel, crayon, watercolor on a silver gelatin photograph. No. 2 is my favorite, and is a famous example of Cubist technique from perhaps the third most famous Cubist, behind Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. "Nude Descending A Staircase (No. 2)" is not only Cubist but shows movement, sort of like a multiple exposure photograph taken in quick succession.

Artist Jay Rolfe enjoys spending time in the Duchamp gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and really looking at the paintings and sculptures. You can search artist Jay Rolfe's blog for references and photos of Duchamp's "Bicycle Wheel" and "Fountain."

Today's photo from artist Jay Rolfe is Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending A Staircase (No. 2)." Here's also a link to the Museum's website for more information. http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51449.html

That's the latest step of artist Jay Rolfe on his Journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You may view some of Jay Rolfe's Unique Artistic Idea, his Hyper Representational 3-D Shaped Stretched Canvas paintings, on his website at http://www.3dssc.com/. Artist Jay Rolfe uses vibrant color, 3-D, recognizable shape, and huge size to reveal beauty, touch emotion in a positive way, and create an Uplifting Conversation Piece.

Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel

Artist Jay Rolfe's photo of the day is the version of Marcel Duchamp's "Bicycle Wheel" in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. I previously posted the Philadelphia Museum of Art's version of "Bicycle Wheel" on my April 12, 2007 post. Duchamp's seemingly banal sculpture had great importance in the art world. It was the beginning of the very significant change in the definition of art to whatever someone who says they are an artist says is art is art. This "it's art because I'm an artist and I say it' art" trend is one that most people not in the art world don't get at all. And some of us in the art world wonder about too.

Now maybe you can have a better understanding of why the surrealist Duchamp and his "Bicycle Wheel" sculpture figures in some of my works.

Here's a link to the MoMA website page on the "Bicycle Wheel" sculpture. http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=81631

Here's an excerpt from the publication "The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights," revised 2004, 87.

"Bicycle Wheel is Duchamp's first Readymade, a class of artworks that raised fundamental questions about artmaking and, in fact, about art's very definition. This example is actually an "assisted Readymade": a common object (a bicycle wheel) slightly altered, in this case by being mounted upside-down on another common object (a kitchen stool). Duchamp was not the first to kidnap everyday stuff for art; the Cubists had done so in collages, which, however, required aesthetic judgment in the shaping and placing of materials. The Readymade, on the other hand, implied that the production of art need be no more than a matter of selection—of choosing a preexisting object. In radically subverting earlier assumptions about what the artmaking process entailed, this idea had enormous influence on later artists, particularly after the broader dissemination of Duchamp's thought in the 1950s and 1960s.

"The components of Bicycle Wheel, being mass-produced, are anonymous, identical or similar to countless others. In addition, the fact that this version of the piece is not the original seems inconsequential, at least in terms of visual experience. (Having lost the original Bicycle Wheel, Duchamp simply remade it almost four decades later.) Duchamp claimed to like the work's appearance, "to feel that the wheel turning was very soothing." Even now, Bicycle Wheel retains an absurdist visual surprise. Its greatest power, however, is as a conceptual proposition."

This is the latest step of artist Jay Rolfe on his Journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You may view some of Jay Rolfe's Unique Artistic Idea, his Hyper Representational 3-D Shaped Stretched Canvas paintings, on his website at http://www.3dssc.com/. Artist Jay Rolfe hopes you find his works to be the Uplifting Conversation Pieces he intends.

"Duchamp At The Middle East Peace Table"

Duchamp At The Middle East Peace Table is the latest work by artist Jay Rolfe. It is a large sculpture, his first. It is shown in today's photo in installation view. It consists of a Peace Table with a Peace Symbol top on an Oil Barrel base and 4 participants set on stools around the Peace Table, each represented by a symbol. Three symbols represent religions, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic. The fourth symbol represents Marcel Duchamp.

Duchamp At The Middle East Peace Table represents a lot of creative activity, time, and considerable effort, but the finished piece is well worth it to me. It looks amazing in person. Remember, this is an amateur photo in my dining room (which I had to empty out to take this).

This is the latest step of artist Jay Rolfe on his Journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You may view some of Jay Rolfe's unique artistic idea, his 3-D Shaped Stretched Canvas paintings, on his website at http://www.3dssc.com/.

Was Marcel Duchamp correct? ... my journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso

Jay Rolfe has been painting today, working on 2 paintings one after the other. I'm going to set those aside - they're not finished - and assemble a painting I finished painting a couple of weeks ago. It's composed of 5 painted stretched canvas panels. It will probably be tomorrow before I can hang it and photograph it.

Yesterday at the Philadelphia Museum of Art I visited several exhibits that interested me aside from the Thomas Chimes exhibit I posted about yesterday. I again looked at the Ellsworth Kelly Exhibit of early paintings. He painted small in those days, and then went big.

I went as always to the Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary galleries. I really enjoy being in them. I went to the Marcel Duchamp gallery. He did some nice landscapes and portraits before his radical cubist paintings. His "Nude Descending a Staircase" was groundbreaking.

Duchamp was extremely influential with his so-called Readymades. Two of his most famous Readymades, "Bicycle Wheel" from 1916 and "Fountain" from 1917 caused critics, curators, and artists to expand their definition of art. Since then a work is "art" if someone who declares themselves an artist declares the work to be art, even if it is a urinal like "Fountain." Here are photos of them. Was Duchamp right? What do you think? Please post a comment if you'd like.

That's today's step on the journey of Jay Rolfe From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You can see some expressions of Jay Rolfe's unique artistic idea on his website at www.3dssc.com.