Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was a French-American artist associated with Cubism and Dada and widely regarded as a forerunner of conceptual art. He is best known for the readymade Fountain (1917), the painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) and The Large Glass. Between 1912 and 1915 he also wrote a few musical pieces built on chance procedures, decades before chance became central to the work of John Cage. Duchamp's surviving music consists of two compositions and a note for a musical happening. Erratum Musical, for three voices, was published in 1934.