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
Since I found that one could make a case shadow from a three-dimensional thing, any object whatsoever - just as the projecting of the sun on the earth makes two dimensions - I thought that by simple intellectual analogy, the fourth dimension could project an object of three dimensions, or, to put it another way, any three-dimensional object, which we see dispassionately, is a projection of something four-dimensional, something we are not familiar with.
Since a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow, we should be able to imagine the unknown four-dimensional object whose shadow we are. I for my part am fascinated by the search for a one-dimensional object that casts no shadow at all.
Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him.
If a shadow is a two-dimensional projection of the three-dimensional world, then the three-dimensional world as we know it is the projection of the four-dimensional Universe.
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
Three or four drops of height have nothing to do with savageness.
In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote in advance of the broken arm .
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.
Humor is the only reason to live.