Eadweard Muybridge's attempt (1887) to depict time, the fourth dimension, on a two-dimensional photograph was new for his time. He clearly considered himself a scientist, as revealed by the breadth of his subjects and the blank grid he recorded their images against. Still, his work, which made time a visual dimension, may have influenced the art that was to follow. Although the similarities with Muybridge's work are striking, Duchamp was in fact influenced by Étienne-Jules Marey, as the following conversation from the book Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp by Pierre Cabanne (Paris, 1967, p 57) makes clear:
P.C.: dans le « nu descendant un escalier », il n'y a pas
une influence du cinéma?
M.D.: bien sûr que si. C'est cette chose de Marey.
P.C.: La chronophotographie.
M.D.: Qui, j'avais vu dans l'illustration d'un livre de Marey comment
il indiquait les gens qui font de l'escrime, ou les chevaux au galop, avec
un système de pointillé délimant les différents
mouvements (.) C'est ce qui m'a donné l'idée de l'exécution
du « nu descendant un escalier ».
[I am grateful to Charl Lucassen
for this information].
Duchamp imbues motion into two dimensions by depicting the sweeping motions of an abstract person descending a staircase. When it was first exhibited at the legendary Armory Show in New York (February 17-March 15,1913), it caused an uproar which both outraged many people and made Duchamp famous in America. One critic called it "an explosion in a shingle factory". Duchamp removed this painting from an exhibition after complaints. Supposedly he took it down and took it home in a taxi. It was listed in the catalogue but not shown. Later it was used in the film Dreams That Money Can Buy.
At the time it was painted, the Italian futurists were working along
similar lines, but Duchamp's interest in futurism, (as well as cubism,
if not painting itself), was on the wane.
Repetition of schematic lines, without any regard for anatomy or
perspective--a parallelism of lines describing movement through the different
positions of a moving person.
Duchamp
Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.
We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh--
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.
One-woman waterfall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair
Collects her motions into shape.
X. J. Kennedy
Linda
Dalrymple Henderson: Marcel Duchamp's The King and Queen Surrounded by
Swift Nudes (1912) and the Invisible World of Electrons Weber Studies:
An Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal,14 (Winter 1997), 83-101
Duchamp
in Context - more
here
"X Rays and the Quest for Invisible Reality in the Art of Kupka, Duchamp,
and the Cubists," Art Journal, vol. 47 (Winter 1988), 323-40
Here's
a great page on the Nude Decending Stairs
I felt impelled towards a renewed disposition of this subject made notorious with the uproar over Marcel Duchamp's entry in the 1913 Armory Show. The theme has since become generic, as have themes such as bathers, piping Pans, or reclining nudes.. But my own statement would not or could not, be cast in Duchamp's cubist-futurist idiom. Serendipity led me to the Pre-Raphaelite Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones whose painting The Golden Stairs suggested a scaffold for my own. His Victorian maidens, a saccharine demiseraphic troupe, were for me quite naturally no more embraceable than Duchamp's metallic robots. However the sweep of Burne-Jones' design provided my nude her stage. She makes entrance, then descends to diverse portraits comprising not only head, but body & temper - revealed step by step as it were, in shifting colors, light, and action. After "performing" in choreographed (sometimes mocking) descent , she exits below to Art and to the World. (My debt to Burne-Jones is acknowledged in the lower right hand corner of my work, where his name can be seen on a crumpled candy-wrapper.)
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is one of the most important paintings in the genesis of modern art. Both in style and in subject matter, it represents a radical departure from traditional modes of representation. Inspired by Muybridge's Dropping and Lifting of a Handerchief (1885), it pictures a moving sequence of five women (one in a biomechanically impossible posture), undergoing a gradual geometrization (the beginnings of Cubism) as the 'action' progresses from left to right. It ends in a 4D view of the squatting whore, who symbolizes the ravages of syphillis.
"You've been trying to paint the fourth dimension. How amusing!"
Leo Stein
Bacon emphasised the key role of Muybridge in his artistic development, asserting that it was difficult to disentangle the photographer's influence from that of Michelangelo: the two of them, he said, 'are mixed up in my mind together'.
In
Woman
Emptying a Bowl of Water, and Paralytic Child on All Fours (1965),
Bacon lifted both his subjects straight from from Muybridge. Bacon’s painting
features two grotesque naked figures enigmatically perched on opposite
sides of the catwalk- the crouching woman employing her bowl of water and
the disfigured child on all fours.
Foot Medication Poster, lithograph,16" x 16" inches, edition 100
Foot And Hand, 1964, Offset Lithograph on white wove paper , 17" x
21" inches, edition 300
The Italian and Russian Futurists such as Russolo, Boccioni, Larionov and Goncharova, attempted to represent movement: an approach known as "dynamism".
Universal dynamism must be rendered as dynamic sensation ... motion
and light destroy the substance of objects.
Futurist manifesto
the
Italian 20 Eurocent
Muscular Dynamism (1913)
Charcoal on paper (864 x 591), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Technical Study
for 'Girl Running on a Balcony'
(Ink and pencil on card (170 x 245), Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna,
Milan
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912 (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York)
He was a regular at the Moulin Rouge, for which he painted cheerful posters. He lived the high life, and adored wine and women, albeit a tad too much. By the mid 1890s he had contracted syphilis and was a chronic alcoholic. His alcoholism was taking its toll on his heart and his art. In 1899 he suffered delirium tremens, and was admitted to a clinic, where he drew from memory, a series of circus drawings. Upon discharge, he started drinking again. In 1901 he was struck down by a paralytic stroke and was forced to give up painting.
One of a variety of movements associated with sleep called the parasomnias. The term somnambulism comes from the Latin words for sleep (somnus) and walking (ambulus). A typical sleepwalking episode is rather short. Sleep walking occurs during stages 3 and 4, the deepest state of sleep. This observation lead to the conclusion that the sleepwalkers are not acting out their dreams. Various possible causes of somnambulism are known, however, none are definite. For example, stress and anxiety can cause sleep walking, however, the precise mechanisms are not known.
Anna Freud, Sigmund's daughter did a lot of investigative work on this subject and sleepwalking is a relatively "normal" finding in the pediatric population. Normal children can sleep walk and they generally outgrow the problem by age 15. Almost 20 - 40 percent in some people's studies. There appears to be a genetic or inherited factor as it often runs in families, but as we age, the phenomena of sleep walking generally resolves. Psychologists and other investigators have shown that children who sleep walk are usually normal in every respect but a few studies have suggested that in some of the parasomnias some children may have inner conflicts that they are not able to verbalize. And in a few cases, family counseling and reassurance have been all the therapy necessary in patients with frequent parasomnias. So there appears to be a tendency for children to have this, a tendency for an inherited component, and especially as the patient becomes older, a possible psychological element. And as such all the factors you mentioned may come into play to some degree.
According to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders,
severe sleep walking is considered as occurring greater than or equal to
1 time per week. Some statistics suggest that 1 percent or less of the
adult population may sleep walk. Adults who sleep walk often have strong
underlying psychological difficulties that may be responsible in some way
for the
nighttime behavior. In some reports, fever with illness, sleep deprivation,
the excessive use of certain drugs may also make
sleep walking worse. In these cases, as stated before, in an attempts
to prevent further sleep walking episodes, the
neuropsychologists in our insomnia clinic will thoroughly evaluate
for these possibilities and then institute appropriate behavioral,
cognitive or recommend medications that might be deemed appropriate
for what would otherwise the primary problems. When
we have an otherwise normal individual, child or adult, who for example
would like to go on a mountain-side campout, where
sleep
walking could be life threatening, we often recommend a single night 's
use of a medicine in the group of drugs called
benzodiazepines. These medications insert a fast brain wave activity
that in some regards parallels a
disruption of the normal deep delta brain wave pattern from where sleep
walking generally arises. As such, a marked reduction
in the capacity to sleep walk is generally appreciated. Nevertheless,
there are many hazards that are possible with the chronic
use of these medications, although there use can be considered in severe
cases.
It is important to realize that sleepwalkers are actually sleeping.
If you try to wake them up, it is potentially very threatening to this
confused/sleeping individual. The attempt to awake a sleepwalker has been
the general period of time where there have been reports of relative violence
as the confused patient may in some respects try to defend themselves or
fend off the individual who may appear in some regard to be attacking them.
Usually it is best to gently lead the patient back to their room without
any active attempts to awaken them. This is routine associated with no
major problems.
"My father did not permit even the mention of Lenin's name in our house," recalls Goutman. A prosperous Czarist industrialist, the senior Goutman lost most of his worldly goods under the communist rule of the early leader of the former Soviet Union.
The Goutmans emigrated to Latvia and then Holland, before being allowed to enter the United States in 1931. After studying art in Detroit, young Goutman attended the Art Institute of Chicago, where he won a $2,500 Traveling Fellowship.