Duchamp was born in a warm family in Blainville, France in 1887. Four of the six siblings devoted themselves to visual art. He worked as a librarian in his early years and received short-term painting training. From leaving the army in 1906 to 1912, he tried various styles such as Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism.

In 1912, he became famous for his work "Nude Descending Stairs", which led to requests for paintings. But Duchamp was not interested in this. He said, "No, thank you, I prefer freedom." In 1915, he came to New York and together with Picabia became the elite of New York Dada. In fact, Duchamp showed obvious Dada spirit long before the name Dada appeared. His works are always unique, bold and full of fantasy. He uses unconventional materials and new techniques such as tin sheets, lead wire, oil paint, and powder to create sculptures. He also uses ready-made products such as bicycle wheels, shovels, and combs to create sculptures, and even turns ready-made products directly into works. He sent a urinal signed by R. Mutt to the New York Society of Independent Artists exhibition in 1917, titled "Fountain". This unconventionality felt like a joke gone too far, and it was angrily rejected by the organizing committee, which prides itself on being avant-garde.

A prank as famous as "Fountain" are the several "Mona Lisas with beards" he did after returning to France in 1919. On Leonardo da Vinci's world-famous color reproduction of the Mona Lisa, he used pencil to add different styles of mustache to the beauty. As a result, the beauty's mysterious smile immediately disappeared, and the scene suddenly became weird and absurd.

《L. H． O. O. Q" is the most famous of the "Mona Lisa with Beards". L． H． O. O. Q is the fast pronunciation of French elle a ehaud au cul, which implies that the image in the picture is lewd and dirty. Here, Duchamp used Leonardo da Vinci's classic masterpiece as an object of blatant ridicule, demonstrating his true disregard for tradition and disregard for constraints. He pushed anti-art to the extreme and gave new inspiration to subsequent art movements.

For the Surrealists, Duchamp was a charismatic figure. His "gesture also has a surrealistic significance... expresses the ideas of the Surrealists who preceded them later. From an artistic point of view, the Surrealists hardly transcended this idea." (Encyclopedia of World Art) Selected Translation I", Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House, page 297) The new visual art field opened up by Dada became the most direct source of Surrealist art.