Marcel Duchamp Quotes

While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.

..we must remember that this 'art coefficient' is a personal expression of art 'à l'état brute', that is, still in a raw state, which must be 'refined' as pure sugar from molasses, by the spectator; the digit of this coefficient has no bearing whatsoever on his verdict.. ..the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the aesthetic scale.

I have impressed upon you my preoccupation with earning money so as to have a secure existence over there. That's the way it have to be.. .I am very happy to hear that you Walter Pach sold these canvasses for me and thank you very sincerely for your friendship. But I am afraid of getting to the stage of needing to sell canvases, In a word, of being a painter for a living. – So I'll be leaving probably on the 22nd or rather 29th May , if the police authorities allow me to take the steamer.

In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn. A few months later I bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called 'Pharmacy' after assign two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon. In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store an snow shovel on which I wrote 'In advance of the broken arm'. It was around that time that the word 'Readymade' came to mind to designate this form of manifestation.

The Dada movement was an anti-movement which corresponded to a need born of the first World War. Although neither literary nor pictorial in essence, Dada found its exponents in painters and writers scattered all over the world. Max Ernst's activities in Cologne in 1917 made him the foremost representative of the Dada painters. Between 1919 and 1921 his paintings, drawings and collages depicting the world of the subconscious were already a foretaste of Surrealism.. .In fact his previous achievements had certainly influenced, to a great extent, the literary Surrealist exploration of the subconscious.

A point which I want very much to establish is that the choice of these 'Readymade' was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste.. ..in fact a complete anesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the 'readymade'. That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal.

You [ Katherine Sophie Dreier; director of the Art Center in New York City; she co-founded with Duchamp and Man Ray the 'Sociéte Anonyme' in Manhattan in 1920] must understand:
My attitude toward the book is based upon my attitude towards 'Art' since 1918 – so I am furious myself that you will accept only partly that attitude [in a new publication by Katherine Dreier]. It can be no more question of my life as an artist’s life: [because] I gave it up ten years ago; this period is long enough to prove that my intention to remain outside of any art manifestation is permanent.. .The third question is that I want to be alone as much as possible.
This abrupt way to speak of my 'hardening process' is not meant to be mean, but is the result of '42 years of age'.. ..10 000 apologies for this rough letter and affectueusement
Dee -

Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing. This gap which represents the inability of the artist to express fully his intention, this difference between what he intended to realize and did realize, is the personal 'art coefficient', contained in the work.

The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.. .I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.

..the thing was to choose one [a ready-made object] that you were not attracted by.. ..and that was difficult because anything becomes beautiful if you look at it long enough.. .[My intention was to] completely eliminate the existence of taste, bad or good or indifferent.

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good — I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

Another aspect of the 'readymade' is its lack of uniqueness.. ..the replica of a 'readymade' delivering the same message; in fact nearly every one of the 'ready-made's existing today is not an original in the conventional sense.
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 'ready-made's aided' and also works of assemblage.

the idea of movement.. ..just transferred from the Nude [ Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 - Duchamp painted this in 1912] into a bicycle wheel Bicycle wheel, his early ready-made from 1916-17].

People talk of Pablo Picasso as the leader of the Cubists but, strictly speaking, he is no longer a Cubist. Today he is a Cubist, tomorrow he will be something else. The only true Cubists are Gleizes and Metzinger.

Another important point which you so very accurately sensed concerns the idea that the glass in actual fact is not meant to be looked at (with 'aesthetic' eyes). It should be accompanied by a 'literary' text, as amorphous as possible, which never took shape. And the two elements, glass for the eyes, text for the ears and understanding, should complement each other and above all prevent one or the other from taking on an aesthetic-plastic or literary form. All in all, I am hugely indebted to you for having stripped bare my Bride stripped bare [the complete title is: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), c. 1915 – 1923].