Marcel Duchamp: Nude Descending a Staircase. 1912

Fig.: Muybridge: Study

Fig.: Marcel Duchamp: Nude Descending a Staircase. 1912

Fig.: Marcel Duchamp: Nude Descending a Staircase. 1911

Duchamp's relation with the Cubists was shot through with conflict, as seen in the objections that led to his withdrawal of his Nude Descending a Staircase from the 28th Salon des Indépendants, which was held in Paris in February 1912. This work however was to make him famous when shown the following year in New York at the Armory Show.
Duchamp, moreover, was not really happy as a painter; or he knew that the investigation of his own most basic concepts and presuppositions required a series of instruments much more radical than anything painting could offer.

Duchamp's solution to the problem and an invention of his own was a series of moving objects, the "rotoreliefs" as he called them. The rotoreliefs provided a visual experience of moving objects, which were visual objects and machines at the same time. The idea was to present an object which is not to be understood as a static object as paintics are, but rather a machine in action. Duchamp's studies in mathematics and engineering might led him to the concept of kinetic sculptures, which were extremely influential on artists as:

Jean Tinguely

Niki de Saint Phalle

Nicolas Schöffer

And later on in the 90ies then
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