Duchamp Chess Quotes & Sayings

[Photographer Julian Wasser] had this great idea that I should play chess naked with Marcel Duchamp and it seem to be such a great idea that it was just like the best idea I'd ever heard in my life. It was like a great idea. I mean, it was - Not only was it vengeance, it was art, and it was, like, a great idea. And even if it didn't get any vengeance, it would still turn out okay with me because, you know, I would be sort of immortalized. — Eve Babitz

All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with 'winning or losing this game of chess. — Marcel Duchamp

The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted. — Marcel Duchamp

You know, also I, you know, I was on those birth control pills and my breasts were like, they hurt ... and, you know, it was like they blew up like. You know, they wouldn't fit into any of my dresses. I had to quit taking those birth control pills ... This was like - I mean they were like, I thought they should be photographed really ... So they were, for immortality. (On being photographed nude playing chess with Marcel Duchamp at Duchamp's 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art.) — Eve Babitz

The Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem — Marcel Duchamp

I was highly attracted to chess for forty or forty-five years; then, little by little, my enthusiasm lessened. — Marcel Duchamp

In chess, there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It's the imagining of the movement or of the gesture that makes the beauty in this case. — Marcel Duchamp

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. (On giving up art to play chess) — Marcel Duchamp

Chess is a sport. A violent sport. — Marcel Duchamp

Perhaps Bach and Beethoven are strange bedfellows for Mickey Mouse, but it's all been a lot of fun. — Walt Disney Company

We grow a little every time we do not take advantage of somebody's weakness. — Bernard Williams

Men always do leave off really thinking, when the last bit of wild animal dies in them. — D.H. Lawrence

Chess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general. — Marcel Duchamp

Think I'm going to call her." "That's the worst idea you've ever had," Hassan replied immediately. "The. Worst. Idea. Ever." "No, it's not, because what if she's just waiting for me to call like I'm waiting for her to call?" "Right, but you're the Dumpee. Dumpees don't call. You know that, kafir. Dumpees must never, never call. There's no exception to that rule. None. Never call. Never. You can't call. — John Green

Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another. — Marcel Duchamp

The American press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies! — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn't geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves. It's a drawing; it's a mechanical reality. — Marcel Duchamp