Marcel Duchamp. Il grande illusionista

Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneer artists, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, though, and vision act upon one another. There it changes form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art.
In the 1920s Duchamp gave up, quit painting. He allowed, perhaps encouraged, the attendant mythology. One thought of his decision, his willing this stopping. Yet on one occasion, he said it was not like that. He spoke of breaking a leg, "You don't mean to do it." he said.
He declared that he wanted to kill art ("for myself") but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, "a new thought for that object." The art community feels Duchamp's presence and his absence. He has changed the condition of being there.