Or, “Oh, Wikipedia, How I Love Thee. Let me count the ways: one, two, phi…”
From Wikipedia’s page on Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (today’s version):
It has been noted disquisitively [link] that the number 1001 of Duchamp’s entry at the 1912 Indépendants catalogue also happens to represent an integer based number of the Golden ratio base, related to the golden section, something of much interest to the Duchamps and others of the Puteaux Group. Representing integers as golden ratio base numbers, one obtains the final result 1000.1001φ. This, of course, was by chance—and it is not known whether Duchamp was familiar enough with the mathematics of the golden ratio to have made such a connection—as it was by chance too the relation to Arabic Manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights dating back to the 1300s.
Euhhhhh, non.
As best I can tell, all this is saying is that the catalogue number of Duchamp’s painting contains only 0s and 1s.
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