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 'readym… - Marcel Duchamp

You were asking my opinion on your work of art, my dear Jean [= Duchamp's brother-in-law Jean Crotti, who asked Duchamp his comment on an art-work he made].. .Artists throughout the ages are like Monte Carlo gamblers and the blind lottery pulls some of them through and ruin others.. .I do not believe in painting per se – A painting is made not by the artist but by those who look at it and grant it their favors. In other words, no painters knows himself or what he is doing – There is no outward sign explaining why a Fra Angelico and a Leonardo [da Vinci] are equally 'recognized'. It all takes place at the level of our old friend luck.

My brother [the sculptor artist Raymond Duchamp-Villon had a kitchen in his little house in Puteaux, and he had the idea of decorating it with pictures by his buddies. He asked Gleizes, Metzinger, , and I think Leger [all Cubist painters, then] to do some little paintings of the same size, like a sort of frieze. He asked me too, and I painted a coffee grinder which I made to explode.

I am a great enemy of critical writing as all I see in these interpretations and comparisons with Kafka and others is just an opportunity to open up the floodgates of words which, overall, amounts to Carrouges or at times a translation of Carrouges – very free to makes his ideas look good. Obviously any work of art or literature, in the public domain, is automatically the subject of the victim of such transformations – and this is not just confined to the case of Carrouges. Every fifty years, El Greco is revised and adapted to the taste of the day, either overrated or underrated. The same goes for all surviving works of art. And this leads me to say that a work of art is made entirely by those who look at it or read it and make it survive by their acclaim or even their condemnation.