Marcel Duchamp is considered one of the most important members of the avant-garde and a ground-breaker in 20th century art. As his work provocatively reveals the relationship between art and life and the prerequisites for its existence - thus radically changing the notion of the work of art and its manufacturer - his influence extends well into the present. This book, companion to an exhibition at the Jean Tinguely Museum in Basle under the curatorship of Harald Szeemann, endeavours to trace the different periods of Duchamp´s oeuvre by means of a selection of his works, focusing mainly on aspects that influenced Jean Tinguely's oeuvre: the mechanical, movements and the optical, play and humor. His painting "Nu descendant un escalier" (Nude Descending a Staircase) from 1912, in which he dissects the movement of the nude into stills composed of abstract surfaces, thus creating a static picture of movement, is but one example. The publication contains statements by Duchamp himself as well as essays by renowned authors on such topics as the emergence and development of the ready-made concept and its impact on the art of the sixties. (German edition available ISBN 3-7757-1182-1; French edition available ISBN 3-7757-1196-1)

MARCEL DUCHAMP (1887-1968) was one of modernism's most influential artists. From 1913 on, his readymades, objects, installations, and word games radically questioned the common concept of art.