Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchampwas a French, naturalized American painter, sculptor, chess player and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, conceptual art and Dada, although he was careful about his use of the term Dada and was not directly associated with Dada groups. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant...
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth28 July 1887
CityBlainville-Crevon, France
I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art -- and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.
An abstract painting need in 50 years by no means look "abstract" any longer.
The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.
Since the tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and ready made products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are 'readymades aided' and also works of assemblage.
I wanted to kill art for myself… …a new thought for that object.
In my day artists wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. Now they are all integrated into society
I like living, breathing better than working...my art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral, it's a sort of constant euphoria.
In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions.
Can one make works which are not works of 'art'?
I was poking fun at myself most of all.
To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.
Not all artists are Chess players, but all Chess players are artists
Chess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general.
The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.