But after facing scads of rejection, mockery, and even a presidential put-down, this provocative piece rose to the ranks of masterpiece. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. However, Duchamp's use of 20 different static positions created a sense of motion and visual violence that Cubists claimed made this piece more Futurist than a true example of their avant-garde art movement. However, the tantalizing title Nude Descending a Staircase, No.

When the French artist Marcel Duchamp arrived by ship to New York in , his reputation, as the saying goes, preceded him. Two years earlier, in , after an inauspicious debut in France, Duchamp sent his painting Nude Descending a Staircase No. But why was the painting so shocking? The Armory Show also had the unfortunate effect of showcasing the provincialism of American artists who seemed to paint as if nothing had changed since the Realist and Impressionist movements of the nineteenth-century.

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. The work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. The discernible "body parts" of the figure are composed of nested, conical and cylindrical abstract elements, assembled together in such a way as to suggest rhythm and convey the movement of the figure merging into itself. Dark outlines limit the contours of the body while serving as motion lines that emphasize the dynamics of the moving figure, while the accented arcs of the dotted lines seem to suggest a thrusting pelvic motion.