Nude Descending a Staircase

A figure descends a staircase as a cascade of overlapping, semi-transparent planes, the body multiplied into a blur of mechanical, repeated forms that capture motion itself rather than a single pose. Marcel Duchamp fused Cubist faceting with the Futurist obsession with movement, and even his fellow Cubists found it too radical. Now in Philadelphia, Nude Descending a Staircase scandalized America at the 1913 Armory Show, mocked as 'an explosion in a shingle factory' - and became a notorious emblem of modern art's assault on tradition, motion and time dragged onto the static canvas.