Abstract
This paper provides a comparative analysis of Marcel Duchamp's half-Cubist, half-Futurist painting Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) and Tom Stoppard's play Artist Descending a Staircase (1972). It examines the way in which Stoppard playfully temporalizes Duchamp's dynamic concept of space and confronts traditional and avant-garde positions of art. A continuation of After Magritte and an anticipation of Travesties, Stoppard's Artist Descending a Staircase is a brilliant series of contradictory caricatures voicing its author's often repeated and sometimes revised conviction: "In any community of a thousand souls there will be nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky dog painting or writing about the other nine hundred and ninety-nine." (ADS, 144)
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