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Course: The Museum of Modern Art > Unit 1
Lesson 2: 1913 Centennial Celebration- Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Glass, and Bottle
- Umberto Boccioni, "Dynamism of a Soccer Player"
- Louis Comfort Tiffany, Vase
- Vasily Kandinsky, "Klänge (Sounds)"
- Fernand Léger, "Contrast of Forms"
- Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley, "Suspense"
- Giorgio de Chirico, "The Anxious Journey"
- Olga Rozanova, "A Little Duck's Nest... of Bad Words"
- Léon Bakst, "Costume design for the ballet The Firebird"
- Constantin Brancusi, "Mlle Pogany"
- Robert Delaunay, "Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon"
- D. W. Griffith, "The Mothering Heart"
- Emil Nolde, "Young Couple," 1913
- Léopold Survage, "Colored Rhythm: Study for the Film"
- Ludwig Hohlwein, "Kaffee Hag"
- Mack Sennett, "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life"
- Louis Raemaekers, "Tegen de Tariefwet, Vliegt niet in't Web!"
- "Composition in Brown and Gray," Piet Mondrian
- Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages
- 1913 | Schiess-Dusseldorf by Ludwig Hohlwein
- Matisse, "The Blue Window"
- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Street, Berlin"
- Frank Lloyd Wright, Midway Gardens
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Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages
Learn how Marcel Duchamp reconceived a standard unit of measure. To learn about other great moments in modern art, take our online course, Modern Art, 1880-1945. Created by The Museum of Modern Art.
Want to join the conversation?
- Marcel Duchamp was undoubtedly a master at creating a ruckus and challenging the status quo. I would have loved to have seen him make greater use of his "metre." Did he have a name for this new "metre" itself? Just like the "metre" is called a "metre" (or Meter in American English) did he have any sort of fanciful name for his creation? Also, if he dropped three threads and they each of course fell randomly and differently...then WHICH is THE new metre that he chose? If in fact there is no one single one that he chose...then in fact he created THREE new meters!(8 votes)
- Why did he kinda let art die in him ? I wonder how the painting look before the lines of meter network . Dose anyone know what the painting looked like and what it was called before? ....... i can see two people in the panting....(2 votes)
- So basically Marcel Duchamp also made these "3 Standard Stoppages" to use for his other works of art?(1 vote)
- Yes, only as an afterthought. I would not say that he created them with that idea in mind. He wanted to create demand by using them in a very utilitarian manner.(2 votes)
- Did Duchamp ever use the stoppages he made?(1 vote)
- Does the painting at2:14(the one Duchamp painted over with his stoppages) have a name?(1 vote)
- It's called "Network of Stoppages," according to the video.(1 vote)
- Did Marcel Duchamp's "3 Standard Stoppages" influence the French Curve that we use today?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(drums) Ann: Marcel Duchamp had
been trained as a painter. He was a very capable painter in the impressionists style. A very terrific painter
in the cubists style. At the end of 1912, Duchamp decided, "Painting is dead. I'm going
to turn to different things." 1913 was the year that Duchamp
made his first ready made by putting an ordinary
store bought bicycle wheel atop an ordinary store
bought kitchen stool. What Duchamp said is, "It
is my power of choice." "It is my deed of making a selection that makes a work, a work of art." And one of the things that he did in 1913 was re-imagine how long a meter could be. He did so with the work of art behind me called, 'The Standard Stoppages'. He called The Standard
Stoppages a ready made because it was a ready made idea that a meter is a given thing. So, he was making a new meter. It was just a Duchampian meter and here's how he made it. He decided to cut three
threads, a meter in length, and then to stand with the three threads a meter above three canvases. He then proceeded to drop each thread to the canvas below and he
fixed each of the threads on the canvas. Cut down
the canvas into a rectangle and pronounced these the new standard. It was a work that was
beautiful in it's concept. If you're going to make a new meter stick you should use it, right? It shouldn't just be an abstract tool that you have sitting around. The way Duchamp decided to
put The Standard Stoppage he made to use was on an old painting that he had made several
years ago and abandoned. Tracing with his
templates that he had made from the way the threads
fell on the canvases, these very beautiful curvy shapes to grow, kind of like, this weird coral, calling the picture,
'Network of Stoppages'. Duchamp remains, 100 years later, one of the most daring
challengers of ideas that a century on, we
still hold pretty dear about what a work of art could be. (bells ringing)