High Contrast: Corrun's "Lotus Lilies" and Duchamp's Nude

Post 3

Alejandro Hincapie


        The western tradition of European oil painting experienced a dramatic change at the turn of the 20th century. For centuries, artists confided themselves to strict notions when representing their subjects—notions that were strictly tied to classical methods established in antiquity. While the Romantics in the early 1800’s began the shift from these classical notions, it wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century, decades later, that this shift reached critical speed and came to a head. The Cubists of the early 20th century abandoned any remaining desire to realistically depict subjects and embraced an almost complete abstraction of form based on geometric shapes and angles—suddenly, subjects weren’t viewed from one point of view, but from many; a collage of geometry and perspective. As Hunter, Jacobs, and Wheeler argue in Modern Art, the Cubists “gave effect to the flux and paradox of modern life and the relativity of its values” (Hunter 148). Indeed, the start of the 20th century was a period marked by vast social, cultural, and political changes in Europe—turmoil that directly influenced the formation and application of artistic movements like Futurism, Dada, and Constructivism. The following comparison between American late 19th century painter Charles Courtney Curran’s Lotus Lilies (1888) and French artist Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 (1912) reveals this radical change in approaches towards a subject's representation at the turn of the 20th century.

        Curran’s work Lotus Lilies is currently on display at the Newark Museum in an exhibition entitled Angles & Tomboys that examines the “beautiful and transgressive interpretations of nineteenth-century girlhood” in American art (Newark Museum). The painting depicts Curran’s new bride Grace Winthrop Wickham seated with her cousin Charlotte “Lottie” Ada Taylor on a boat on Old Woman Creek, an estuary of Lake Erie in Ohio (Charles Courtney Curran). The women are surrounded on the boat by blossoming water lilies and lotus flowers. The subject and setting was likely of personal significance to Curran as Grace carried a bouquet of water lilies during their wedding ceremony that summer (Charles Courtney Curran).

        The late 1800’s was a time of unprecedented industrial and economic growth in the United States. Consequently, the leisurely lives and activities enjoyed by the upper and middle classes were the preferred subjects for many American artists (Charles Courtney Curran). Curran himself avoided the long-valued genre of history painting, preferring instead to depict scenes of contemporary American life, particularly scenes of women in the leisurely outdoors. In Lotus Lilies, Curran captures the absolute tranquility of the scene—no signs of labor or exertion are evident, not even oars are visible. The lotus and lilies effortlessly blossom at the women’s sides.

Charles Courtney Curran. Lotus Lilies. 1888.

        Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 depicts an altogether different subject matter. Painted in 1912, the work depicts one of the most time-honored subjects in the tradition of European oil paintings: a nude. However, the female nude in Duchamp’s painting is not depicted in a traditional reclined pose, but instead, in movement, walking down a flight of stairs. It was for this very reason that the painting’s bid to be exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants exhibition in Paris was denied by the hanging committee that consisted of contemporary Cubist painters. They objected, "A nude never descends the stairs--a nude reclines” (Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2).

        If the hanging committee that dismissed Duchamp’s descending nude has not consisted of Cubist painters, it may have objected to a lot more than the subject’s pose. Indeed, Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 is an iconic artifact of early 20th century Cubism and Futurism. In the vein of Cubist works at the time, Duchamp reduced and abstracted his nude into a series of geometric, fractured planes rendered in monochromatic tones (Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2). In the face of complete obliteration of detail and realistic form, the visual essence of the nude is nonetheless capture though this abstraction. What’s more, Duchamp went further and attempted to depict the motion and kinetic energy of the nude’s body as it moves forward through space—an attempt that highly references the Futurist’s obsession with velocity and dynamism (Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2).  These fixations with mechanizing forms were rooted, for Duchamp and the Futurists, in an awareness of the “new mechanical factors at large [in early 20th century society] and their dehumanizing effect,” (Hunter 151) namely the complete onset of industry onto most aspects of everyday life.

Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2. 1912.

        The intense abstraction of Duchamp’s nude comes in high contrast to Curran’s tranquil, realistically depicted scene of two women on Old Woman Creek. A traveler to France, Curran adopted Impressionist sensibilities onto his work (Charles Courtney Curran). This is clearly evident in his bold use of bright color and free, unlabored brushwork. Any abstraction in Curran’s Lotus Lilies lies in the lightness of touch that the artist employed in rendering the work. It contains none of the weight of traditional, classically-minded works, and instead, focuses on color and light to capture the essence of the tranquility and fleetingness Curran observed in the scene. The effect created is that both women on the boat are completely immersed in the sea of blossoming flora and bright light around them, an effect ultimately realized by Curran’s Impressionistic honoring of the canvas as a two dimensional surface.

        Perhaps the only true similarity between both works is in their depiction of female subjects. While Curran’s completely embraces notions of the female gender in his portrayal of his two female subjects, Duchamp shakes notions associated with the most painted female subject, the nude. As stated in the Angels & Tomboys exhibition, the flora in Curran’s painting has strong socially constructed connections to notions of the female gender. The label next to the piece states, “Lilies symbolized purity and sometimes sweetness, while the lotus was associated with Japan… Flower imagery connected women, girls, and children indicating that all three had shared characteristics” (Angles & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th-Century American Art). While the connections between females and flowers may be clear, the connection between grown women and children isn’t; in 19th century America, young girls naturally modeled themselves after their mothers, but grown women themselves were often infantilized and encouraged to be sweet, passive, and dependent (Angles & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th-Century American Art). Duchamp, on the other hand, completely rejected traditional notions of how to handle and treat his female subject. Rather than making his nude an object of a male’s gaze by posing her in a reclined, passive position, he renders her in movement. She is highly abstracted in form and the vehicle in which Duchamp attempts to depict forward movement and kinetic energy. Viewed this way, the nude’s female gender is ultimately meaningless to the intentions of Duchamp’s work.

        When Corrun exhibited Lotus Lilies at the prestigious French Salon of 1890, his work was praised as “the best of modernity” by the prominent critic Ernest Hoschedé (Charles Courtney Curran).  Its claim as a quintessentially modern piece at the time is clear: it does not depict a classical subject matter and it mostly adheres to the sensibility of the latest genre at the time , Impressionism.  In retrospect, however, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2  is closer to the abstraction that visually defines Modernism. Like Modernist works, it is not concerned with depicting a visually-possible reality, but more concerned with capturing abstract relationships. Specifically, Duchamp is concerned with exploring the relationship between time and space as affected by movement—a concern that coincides with modern redefinitions of time and space by scientists, philosophers, and psychologists at the turn of the 20th century. Additionally, Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2,  like other  Modernist works, is made in complete rejection to traditional notions of one-point perspective that remained present in European oil painting until Post-Impressionism. This embrace of high abstraction as well as a rejection of traditional perspective in rendering subjects is the root from which all Modern art movements in the early 20th century grew from.

*Image descriptions link to image source

Work Cited

"Angles & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th-Century American Art.”  Newark Museum. 49 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102. 23 Nov. 2012.

 "Charles Courtney Curran." Terra Foundation for American Art: Collections. EMuseum, n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2012.<http://collections.terraamericanart.org/view/objects/asitem/People$0040178/0;jsessionid=65251120992D7056518031040E0B1E88?t:state:flow=daa3a4e7-1a5c-4dfa-8b6d-ca04a52a4ad5>.

Hunter, Sam, John Jacobs, and Daniel Wheeler. Modern Art. New York: Prentice Hall PTR, 2004. Print.

Newark Museum. Angels & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th-Century American Art. Newark: Newark Museum, 2012. Print.

"Nude Descending a Staircaise, No.2." Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2012. <http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51449.html>.