I would love to have seen the new art at the 1913 Armory Show and that which followed. Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” was mocked and referred to as shingles flying everywhere. Earlier, in 1912, Giacomo Balla’s painting, likewise portrayed motion in multiples. Now, all audiences would automatically recognized it as individual frames from motion picture film. The way of seeing reality is fascinating – it’s a convergence of the new technologies in x-ray (seeing the skeletal form), and silent film, evoking the Lumiere Brothers and also films from Edison’s studios. The art corresponded to the new wave of innovation which we now refer to as the Second Industrial Revolution (the first was steam power, the second technology that included automation, communications, sanitation), etc.).
 |
| Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) - Marcel Duchamp |
I had the chance to view “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The experience of seeing Duchamp’s work in real life makes it clear that the viewer is supposed to enter the experience of the work – emotionally and cognitively – as the work itself requires the viewer to interact with it in a unique / different way than simply looking at a sculpture or painting.
For example, the famous “objet trouvé / “found object” entitled "Fountain" and signed of R. Mutt, 1917, is a urinal that demands you perceive it as a sculpture, but you’re not at all prepared to do so, since you’ve interacted with this everyday item in the real world, and it’s a mass-produced industrial object which is gazed upon and regarded, but not in a museum and not as a work of art, but as a utilitarian, functional machine (is a toilet a machine?).
 |
| "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp |
“Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)” is a painting, but it has the feeling of being a balsa wood construction. In the early 20th century, balsa wood was regularly used to build models and prototypes of machines, vehicles, boats, and fanciful inventions. Thus, by creating a painting that looks like a balsa wood prototype, Duchamp forces the viewer to reperceive the work of art, and to challenge the viewer to think of art as speculative, and all about the way that inventions can be made, and that it does not matter if you’re an artist or an engineer. If you have a mind that can think in multiple dimensions, and across time, you’re a part of the exciting, seemingly infinite future.
 |
| "Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash" (1912) by Giacomo Balla |
The same can be said for Giacomo Balla’s hyperactive little dachshund in “Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash” – so cute! But what makes the depiction so relatable? Instead of focusing on the dog’s face, and instead of giving the dog oversized, emotional eyes that look directly into the eyes of the viewer, the dachshund is more quintessentially “dachshund” than a sentimental version could ever be, and every dachshund owner would absolutely agree. The dog is all about energy, action, and forward motion.
If you look at the breed from its utility, you’ll think of how it was bred to hunt gophers. At the same time, if you look at the breed from the perspective of a modern urban owner, you totally relate to a frisky, territorial, and cutely aggressive little dog that loves to run on his tiny little legs. Instead of the face, the big, soulful eyes, and a setting in nature, we have a little urban sweetie whose energy somehow reflects and refracts the energy of the young woman walking her little darling. It’s all about sympathetic energy, and thus, Balla paints life itself.
