Nude Descending a Staircase No.3 by Marco Brambilla

French conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp once described his 1912 work, Nude Descending a Staircase No.2, as an exercise in solving “the problem of motion in painting.” While many cubist artists were concerned with depicting objects as if viewed from multiple angles, Duchamp sought to represent the subject itself in motion. A little over a century later, Milan-born creative vanguardist Marco Brambilla has re-envisioned Duchamp’s fragmented image of a monochromatic human form by exploring the illusion of movement on a digital canvas. The London-based video artist incorporates the original painting’s multi-layered tableau of shattered geometric shapes and injects it with velocity. “The figures of No. 3 constantly reconfigure themselves to cascade down an unseen stairway,” says regular NOWNESS contributor Brambilla. “The body, shapes and colour palette are pure Cubism, now expanded into three dimensions using state-of-the-art computer technology.” Brambilla’s No. 3 is a simulation of a walk cycle, wh