In May 2012, with the help of the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Mexico, Argentina's Elkafka Espacio Teatral, the two parts of Shakespeare's Henry IV and the Globe Theatre in London, suddenly I was transported back to discussions surrounding the Armory Show in New York City in 1913, including Marcel Duchamp and his painting Nude Descending A Staircase, No. 2.

In 1912, Duchamp submitted the painting for inclusion at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, but a fairly ‘progressive’ and intellectual hanging committee, including his brothers Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, essentially rejected the painting for a variety of reasons, including the fact that Duchamp had painted the title on the canvas and that nudes do not traditionally descend staircases but rather recline. Upon hearing this criticism, Duchamp took a taxi and picked up the painting straightaway. Following a couple of European showings, Nude Descending A Staircase, No. 2 came to the Armory Show in New York City in 1913. There it caused considerable outrage: one New York Times critic labelled the piece ‘an explosion in a shingle factory’; another critic renamed it Rude Descending a Staircase (Rush-Hour at the Subway); and a magazine sponsored a contest for anyone able even to find the nude in the painting. Without question, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 made a number of impacts, and became hugely influential on modern and contemporary artists. Today, the painting is considered a classic, hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art.