As the most comprehensive publication on Marcel Duchamp to date, this lavishly illustrated volume spans six decades of his creative output, offering a sumptuous visual introduction for newcomers and serving as an indispensable resource for artists and scholars.

More than any other modern artist, Marcel Duchamp challenged and transformed the very definition of art. Published to accompany the first North American retrospective of his work in more than fifty years, organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Philadelphia Art Museum, the exhibition and catalogue leverage two of the most important collections of Duchamp's art in the world to bring together legendary works for the first time in decades. Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 works spanning six decades-including painting, sculpture, readymades, film, photography, and ephemera-and featuring a deeply researched chronology interwoven with archival and documentary material, Marcel Duchamp offers a new generation the first opportunity to experience the breadth of Duchamp's revolutionary work.

An expansive introduction by curators Ann Temkin, Michelle Kuo, and Matthew Affron explores Duchamp's radical rethinking of art and the museum, transformation of authorship, innovative exhibition and installation displays, and a lifelong dedication to changing the relationship between art and life. Revealing new dimensions of his conceptual brilliance, subversive wit, and lasting impact on generations of artists, Marcel Duchamp is a rich visual compendium and an essential scholarly resource for anyone seeking to understand an artist who changed the course of modern art.

Details

ISBN13: 9781633451803
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 388
Edition:
Publication Date: 23 Sep 2026
Publisher: Museum of Modern Art
Publication City, Country: New York, United States
Dimensions (cm): 26.7(H)x23(L)2040
Weight (gm): 2040

Author Biography

Ann Temkin is the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Michelle Kuo is Chief Curator at Large and Publisher at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Matthew Affron is the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Reviews

Duchamp helps us understand that 'art' shouldn't be thought of as a noun that picks out certain kindsof objects, but as a verb: We 'art' absolutely any object at all by using it to trigger thoughts andconversation.--Blake Gopnik "The New York Times"
[Charts] how Duchamp invented contemporary art one idea at a time.--John Vincler "Cultured"
[Duchamp is] the reason art today can be gloriously inventive, wonderfully permissive, mystifyingly experimental, beautifully opaque.--Lisa Yin Zhang "Hyperallergic"
[Lays] out Duchamp's production in an excellent and richly annotated timeline.--Helen Molesworth "Artforum"
[Presents] Duchamp not only as the father of conceptual art but also as a techno-imaginative innovatorand semiotic pioneer who anticipated how we read images, language and reality today.--Elisa Carolle "The Observer"
Before Duchamp, works of art were made by artists. Afterward, art was whatever an artist made.--Marion Maneker "Puck"
Duchamp most certainly provided a new model for what being an artist looked like....--Nicole Rudick "Apollo"
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp turned a urinal on its head and called it art. With that, he earned his place in the canon as the great usurper of artistic norms, the enemy of yesteryear's tastemakers, the banisher of everything that came before him, and the godfather of art provocateurs.--Hakim Bishara "Hyperallergic"
Love isn't a word, or a concept, that one usually associates with Marcel Duchamp, the modernist master of irony and distance, but love--love of the mind and what it can do, love of bodies and play, love of freedom, love of what art can be, love of women, queerdom, poetry, and chance--is what makes 'Marcel Duchamp' such a wonder.--Hilton Als "The New Yorker"
Not all art that works with concepts is meant to be reduced to general communication; some is meant not to, to define a secret code, a specific language. Duchamp plays between the two, and the playing is the art. He's still a prophet in this telling, just one whose prophetic texts haven't yet been exhausted.--Ben Davis "Artnet"
The exhibition will reflect the loops and the reiterations, the false starts and loose ends of a singular career.--Ben ` Luke "The Art Newspaper"
This image-rich book will accompany the king of the readymade's first North American retrospective in 50 years, opening this April at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Can't wait for both the exhibition and the book.--Hakim Bishara "Hyperallergic"