One could compile a fat anthology of tributes to Marcel Duchamp’s charm – especially what one friend called the artist’s ‘physical fineness’ – but it would be hard to top Georgia O’Keeffe’s memory of their first meeting:
Duchamp was there and there was conversation. I was drinking tea. When I finished he rose from his chair, took my teacup and put it down at the side with a grace that I had never seen in anyone before and have seldom seen since.
A tempest stirred by a teacup!
Duchamp exerted – without ever exerting himself – a magnetism at once obvious and inexplicable
Made famous by his painting ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’ (1912) – ‘an explosion in a shingle factory’ per the New York Times – Duchamp was effortlessly attractive to both men and women. A mysterious figure, kind, clever, calm, elegant, easy and almost programmatically unconventional, he exerted – without ever exerting himself – a magnetism at once obvious and inexplicable.
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