A cubist study of movement stopped and condensed in Duchamp’s painting, and translated into the movement on monitors forming stairs.

Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase

Shigeko Kubota

1976-1991

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Shigeko Kubota’s “Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase”, which is part of a series devoted to Marcel Duchamp, is an installation in the form of a video sculpture. A simple plywood staircase, each of whose four steps has an in-built TV monitor replaying a video collage, make up a contemporary version of a famous cubist painting of a nude woman walking down stairs in some twenty still-motion/stop-motion sequences. The 1976 copy of the work was the first video installation ever purchased by New York’s MoMA for its collection. The documentation of the opening of the Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe presents the second copy of the work made by the artist in 1991 and donated to the ZKM by Tokyo’s Watari Museum of Contemporary Art.

Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase