1908 - 1911 Duchamp arrives in Paris in 1908 and begins to paint. He comes into regular contact with the artistic bright lights of this time, such that by 1911 he is painting in a broadly Cubist manner.
1912 His ‘Nude descending a staircase’ of this year is one of the most significant art works of the early C20th. Not so much for the work itself - although it is a masterpiece - but for the fact that
the ‘Nude’ was rejected by the Salon des Independents. In consequence, Duchamp becomes a celebrity overnight.
1913 Having already started to tire of painting, in 1913 Duchamp mounts a bicycle wheel upside down in a stool. Very broadly speaking with this single gesture aesthetic frames of reference are changed for good and Modern Art is born.
1914 - 1917 Duchamp arrives in the USA in 1915 to a significant reception. In 1916 he is one of the founding members of the NY Society of Independent Artists. The following year he resigns from the Society when they reject his signed urinal. The urinal was not signed 'Duchamp' but 'R Mutt'. Duchamp did this to see whether or not the Society really were ready to accept the new challenges of modern art. Which, of course, they were not.
1918 on.. After the urinal Duchamp continued to work in ways which confounded the critics. Without doubt the most famous of these works is ‘The Large Glass’. He worked on this piece from 1913 until bringing it to “a state of incompletion” in 1923.
