Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
Born 1887 CE, died 1968 CE.
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (UK: , US: ; French: [maʁsɛl dyʃɑ̃]; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French American artist, chess player, and inventor who played a key role in the development of the avant-garde in the United States and in New York City, where he spent the last 25 years of his life. Duchamp is notable for his work of anti-art Fountain, where he signed the name "R. Mutt 1917" on a urinal. For his talk at the American Federation of the Arts in Houston, "On the Creative Act," for which he labeled himself a 'mere artist,' Duchamp said, "Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist, on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity...if we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it.
Text from the Wikipedia article Marcel_Duchamp, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.