The I Index

Spellbound by Marcel: Duchamp, Love, and Art

Bottom of the pile

21

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

2/100

Critics

40/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Ruth Brandon

Publisher:

Pegasus Books

Date:

March 1, 2022

In 1913 Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase exploded through the American art world. This is the story of how he followed the painting to New York two years later, enchanted the Arensberg salon, and—almost incidentally—changed art forever.

What The Reviewers Say

Lauren Elkin,
New York Times Book Review
A group biography of sorts, which charts, in sometimes gratuitous detail, the triangulated love affair between Duchamp, Wood and Roché, and the others who crossed their paths and their beds.
Donna Seaman,
Booklist
Brandon...takes an unusual approach to the famously enigmatic Marcel Duchamp by focusing on his relationships.
Arthur Hoyle,
New York Journal of Books
Brandon has woven a narrative that intermingles complex romantic entanglements with persistent artistic aspirations, giving readers a book that is one part 20th century cultural history, two parts gossipy soap opera.

Publishers Weekly
A swirling tale.