Photograph of Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase
Silver gelatin print
6 3/4w x 11 1/2h inches

Estimate: €14,000 - 18,000

Subject to further research

Madrid, Paris & Berlin, 2007-10, p. 54

Vienne, 1996-97, fig. 10
Tokyo, 1996-97, p. 162
Tate, 2008, p. 90 (variant)
Madrid, 2007, p. 94

The right corners sligthly worn, with a tiny loss of the gelatin layer at the upper edge. Otherwise this rich print is in excellent general condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Marcel Duchamp's 1912 painting Nu descendant un escalier (No. 2) (Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), Philadelphia Museum of Art) is one of the icons of 20^thcentury art. The painting created a sensation when shown at the groundbreaking Armory Show in New York in 1913. Man Ray's own visit to the Armory Show proved decisive to the development of his art, causing him to paint on a larger scale in a style that was the fusion of "the bright colours of Fauvism with the broken planar structures of Analytic Cubism." (Montclair, 2003, p. 44)

Man Ray first picked up a camera in order to photograph his own paintings, disappointed as he was with photographic reproductions being done at the time. His photograph of Nu descendant un escalier arguably accentuates the painting's sense of movement, a reminder of the "chronophotography" of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge that had attempted to capture motion in a still image. Man Ray would not have an opportunity to photograph Nu descendant un escalier until 1919, when it was acquired by Duchamp's patrons Walter and Louise Arensberg, whom Man Ray had first met with Duchamp four years earlier. Indicative of the great importance that Duchamp's painting held for him, and his personal affection for the French artist, in the 1920s Man Ray displayed a reproduction of Nu descendant un escalier on the wall ꦜbeneath the staircase in his rue Campagne Première studio (see lot 7, fi💧g. 1).