''Apolinère Enameled'' was painted in 1916–17 by

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

, as a heavily altered version of an

advertisement Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

for paint ("Sapolin Enamel"). The picture depicts a girl painting a bed-frame with white enamelled paint. The depiction of the frame deliberately includes conflicting perspective lines, to produce an

impossible object An impossible object (also known as an impossible figure or an undecidable figure) is a type of optical illusion that consists of a two-dimensional figure which is instantly and naturally understood as representing a projection of a three-dimen ...

. To emphasise the ''deliberate'' impossibility of the shape, a piece of the frame is missing. The piece is sometimes referred to as Duchamp's "impossible bed" painting. ''Apolinère'' is a play-on-words referencing the poet, writer and art critic

Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Poland, Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...

, a close associate of Duchamp during the

Cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

adventure. Apollinaire wrote about Duchamp (and others) in his book ''

The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations ''Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques'' (English, ''The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations''), is a book written by Guillaume Apollinaire between 1905 and 1912, published in 1913. This was the third major text on Cubism; followin ...

'' of 1913.Herschel Browning Chipp, Peter Selz, ''Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics'', University of California Press, 1968, pp. 221–248

References

External links

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Impossible objects 1916 paintings Works by Marcel Duchamp Paintings of children Guillaume Apollinaire {{20C-painting-stub

See also

References

External links