
In 1912 Marcel Duchamp (1886-1968) painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. When exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an art critic for the New York Times describes the work as "an explosion in a shingle factory". This canvas was controversial, provocative and, for many people, simply upsetting. Today, hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the painting is called an 'iconic holding'.