Duchamp, Marcel. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

Duchamp, Marcel. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Robert Lebel, in his article on MD in Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia, 1974, juxtaposes to a photograph of Nude a multiple-exposure photo of MD descending a staircase, visually demonstrating Nude's presentation in Cubist style of, precisely, a multiple-exposure photograph of a humanoid form descending a staircase. Lebel notes, ". . . there is no nude at all but only a descending machine, a nonobjective and virtually cinematic effect that was entirely new in painting" (5.1079). Viewers in our time will probably see the form as robotic and feminine: cf. and contrast the robot that becomes Maria in F. Lang's METROPOLIS (q.v. under Drama). Keyword here: "Dada."