3 Standard Stoppages, Marcel Duchamp, 1913-14

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"Many of the stories he tells just don't line up," Shearer says. Consider Three Standard Stoppages, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, a key early work. Toward the end of 1913, Duchamp said, in his Paris studio, he cut three lengths of thread, each just under one meter long, dropped them from a height of one meter, and affixed the results on three separate canvases---a new standard of measure, incorporating chance and randomness, for the new art of this century."