The Fossil Record of Duchampian Motion--an Early Image in Spatial Time (1884)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2747

This is one of those times where science precedes art--that's the least significant aspect of this image, as the folks seeing it in 1884 couldn't see into the future didn't know that they were looking at what may pass for prehistoric fossil record of Duchamp's 1912 Nude Descending.  The Duchamp would cause trial and occasional outrage in much of the artworld due no doubt to it challenging aesthetic--I don't know what the readers of the Compte Rendus thought when they saw this image, but I suspect it did not involve evaluating its artistic impact.

This is the work of Etienne Marey (who has made a number of appearances on this blog), a very smart and versatile guy who would go from physiology to cinematography to aerodynamics in the course of his life and be a leader/pioneer in each field.  Marey published this "strobophotograph" in his article "Analyse cinematique de la marche" in the Comptes Rendus on 19 May 1884--this was a brilliant effort in the analysis of human locomotion by making a dozen or two exposures on a single photo sheets of a reflective-outlined walking figure. This was different from Marey's birthyear and deathyear buddy, the other motion picture pioneer, Eadweard Muytbridge (1830-1904 for both). Marey introduced his "chronophotography" and studied aspects of movement and motion that had been dispersed to human history because of the inability to observe and record them--with Marey, that issue necessary for the beginning of real scientific discourse was to a large extent solved. 

Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912, via Wikicommons

 There are more applicable Marey images for the Duchamp--for example his series on a single sheet of a naked woman descending a short set of stairs--but the image above has more aggregated motion in a confined space sense to it, so I'll stay with the sense-impressions than the more-visual ones. 

And here's Marey's  modeling of the action:

In any event, I just wanted to pass on this quick note on some seldom-seen Marey images...