Marcel Duchamp painted “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2,” which was exhibited at the 1912 Salon de la Section d’Or.
Duchamp’s 1912 oil painting combines Cubist fragmentation with the depiction of movement associated with Futurism and chronophotography. Rather than presenting a traditionally modeled nude, it uses overlapping, rhythmic forms to suggest successive positions of a body moving down stairs.
The work first became controversial when Duchamp submitted it to the 1912 Salon des Indépendants. Fellow Cubists objected to its title and its apparent Futurist character, and Duchamp withdrew it before the exhibition opened. Later that year, however, it was shown under its original title at the Salon de la Section d’Or in Paris.
The painting became much more famous after the 1913 Armory Show in New York, where its unusual imagery and title attracted ridicule as well as attention. It is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it remains one of Duchamp’s best-known early works.