When French artist Marcel Duchamp painted “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” in 1912, he hurled himself headlong into uncharted artistic waters. Innovating a form of facet Cubism-Futurism, Duchamp (1887 – 1968) depicted the successive movements of a single figure, inspired by time-lapse photography. The painting inflamed such outrage, Duchamp was told to withdraw it from an exhibition at Paris’ Salon des Indépendants. When it was shown at New York’s Armory, it produced a controversy that made Duchamp an overnight success. The piece is now displayed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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