Quotes & Sayings About Duchamp

Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades (mass-produced items promoted into art objects, such as Duchamp's "Fountain"-urinal as sculpture) abolish the separation between art and life. The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen. — Charles Simic

Artmaking is making the invisible, visible. — Marcel Duchamp

For me, the 'Three Stoppages' was a first gesture liberating me from the past. — Marcel Duchamp

Distortion came first from the fauves, who, in turn, were under the strong influence of primitive art. — Marcel Duchamp

There are times when I prefer a cerebral moment with an artist, and I'll just enjoy the wit of a Picabia or a Duchamp. It amuses me that they thought that what they did would be a good way of making art. — David Bowie

Why are all the artists so dead-set on distorting? It seems to be a reaction against photography, but I'm not sure. — Marcel Duchamp

[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

In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of posterity. — Marcel Duchamp

The basis for my own work during the years just before coming to America in 1915 was a desire to break up forms - to 'decompose' them much along the lines the cubists had done. But I wanted to go further - much further - in fact, in quite another direction altogether. — Marcel Duchamp

Appropriation was the language of my generation in many ways. It came out of Duchamp, Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstein. — Deborah Kass

Gravity is not controlled physically in us by one of the 5 ordinary senses. We always reduce a gravity experience to an autocognizance, real or imagined, registered inside us in the region of the stomach. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

Dali's Reclining Woman Wearing a Chemise looks like a dead slaughtered doll, and I can see preying eagles, broken arrows, and jazz musicians in Jackson Pollock, and because I believe that Man Ray and Duchamp were lovers. — Dionne Brand

And then there is that one-man movement, Marcel Duchamp for me a truly modern movement because it implies that each artist can do what he thinks he ought to a movement for each person and open for everybody. — Willem De Kooning

There is no solution because there is no problem. — Marcel Duchamp

There's no solution, because there's no problem — Marcel Duchamp

I've decided that art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is, for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it. — Marcel Duchamp

When cubism began to take a social form, Metzinger was especially talked about. He explained cubism, while Picasso never explained anything. It took a few years to see that not talking was better than talking too much. — Marcel Duchamp

It is curious to note how fragile the memory is, even for the important times in one's life. This is, moreover, what explains the fortunate fantasy of history. — Marcel Duchamp

One is a painter because one wants so-called freedom; one doesn't want to go to the office every morning. — 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

The 'value' of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art. — Joseph Kosuth

I'm nothing else but an artist, I'm sure, and delighted to be. — Marcel Duchamp

'Art or anti-art?' was the question I asked when I returned from Munich in 1912 and decided to abandon pure painting or painting for its own sake. I thought of introducing elements alien to painting as the only way out of a pictorial and chromatic dead end. — Marcel Duchamp

In the beginning, the cubists broke up form without even knowing they were doing it. Probably the compulsion to show multiple sides of an object forced us to break the object up - or, even better, to project a panorama that unfolded different facets of the same object. — Marcel Duchamp

I think there is a great deal to the idea of not doing a thing, but that when you do a thing, you don't do it in five minutes or in five hours, but in five years. — Marcel Duchamp

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-mades aided' and also works of assemblage. — Marcel Duchamp

Man can never expect to start from scratch; he must start from ready-made things, like even his own mother and father. — Marcel Duchamp

I was poking fun at myself most of all. — Marcel Duchamp

The 'Glass' is not my autobiography, nor is it self-expression. Far from it. — Marcel Duchamp

It became like a symbolic thing, to be "an artist." After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product. — Ai Weiwei

An abstract painting need in 50 years by no means look "abstract" any longer. — Marcel Duchamp

I didn't abandon everything at a moment's notice - on the contrary. I returned to France from America, leaving the 'Large Glass' unfinished. — Marcel Duchamp

I feel shame, not for the wrong things I have done, but for the right things that I have failed to do. — Marcel Duchamp

There was an incident, in 1912, which 'gave me a turn,' so to speak: when I brought the 'Nude Descending a Staircase' to the Independants, and they asked me to withdraw it before the opening. — Marcel Duchamp

Aesthetic delectation is the danger to be avoided. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It's not what you see that is art; art is the gap. — Marcel Duchamp

Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase. — Marcel Duchamp

Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. — Marcel Duchamp

Someday my prince will come," she lamented softly, "too fast. — Melinda DuChamp

I was never interested in looking at myself in an aesthetic mirror. My intention was always to get away from myself, though I knew perfectly well that I was using myself. Call it a little game between 'I' and 'me.' — Marcel Duchamp

I couldn't go into the haphazard drawing or the paintings, the splashing of paint. I wanted to go back to a completely dry drawing, a dry conception of art. — Marcel Duchamp

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

Alchemy is a kind of philosophy: a kind of thinking that leads to a way of understanding. — Marcel Duchamp

The only thing that is not art is inattention — Marcel Duchamp

Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it. — Marcel Duchamp

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a 'breather.' — Marcel Duchamp

Artists of all times are like the gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others. In my opinion, neither the winners nor the losers are worth worrying about. — Marcel Duchamp

There does not exist a painter who knows himself or knows what he is doing. — Marcel Duchamp

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination. — Marcel Duchamp

I don't know if you've noticed it. But Duchamp was magnificent. — Robert Barnes

In one sense, (Duchamp's) "The Large Glass" is a glimpse into Hell; a peculiarly modernist Hell of repetition and loneliness. — Robert Hughes

Marcel Duchamp said, "I don't believe in art. I believe in artists." This is actually a pretty good method for studying - if you try to devour the history of your discipline all at once, you'll choke. — Austin Kleon

Can works be made which are not 'of art'? — Marcel Duchamp

It's true, of course, humor is very important in my life, as you know. That's the only reason for living, in fact. — Marcel Duchamp

Possible reality [is obtained] by slightly bending physical and chemical laws. — Marcel Duchamp

Art is like a shipwreck; it's every man for himself. — Marcel Duchamp

Tradition is the great misleader because it's too easy to follow what has already been done - even though you may think you're giving it a kick. I was really trying to invent, instead of merely expressing myself. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions. — Marcel Duchamp

Words are the tools of 'to be' - of expression. They are completely built on the fact that you 'are,' and in order to express it, you have built a little alphabet, and you make your words from it. — Marcel Duchamp

As I see it, all of them - Tachists, Action Painters, Informel artists, and the rest - are only part of an Informel movement that covers a lot of other things as well. I think there's an Informel element in Beuys, as well; but it all began with Duchamp and chance, or with Mondrian, or with the Impressionists. The Informel is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism - the age of kings, or clearly formed hierarchies. — Gerhard Richter

What would I do with money? I have enough for my needs. I don't want any more. If I had a lot, I would have to care for it, worry about it. — Marcel Duchamp

The entire world of art has reached such a low level, it has been commercialized to such a degree that art and everything related to it has become one of the most trivial activities of our epoch. — Marcel Duchamp

My idea was to chose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see — Marcel Duchamp

Three or four drops of height have nothing to do with savageness. — Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art ... He declared that he wanted to kill art ("for myself") but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object". — Jasper Johns

Varese, Apollinaire, Ezra Pound, Leger, Gleizes, Severini, Villon, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and many others were to me household names in the literal sense - names of familiar figures around the house. — Jacques Barzun

Art is all a matter of personality. — Marcel Duchamp

What attracted me about my mirrors was the idea of having nothing manipulated in them. A piece of bought mirror. Just hung there, without any addition, to operate immediately and directly. Even at the risk of being boring. Mere demonstration. The mirrors, and even more the Panes of Glass, were also certainly directed against Duchamp, against his Large Glass. — Gerhard Richter

The object [Duchamp's Fountain] was rejected , giving Duchamp the opportunity of issuing a statement, which he published in a review, The Blind Man. In his statement he emphasized that the act of choice was sufficient to justify it as a creative art. Placing it in such a way that its normal use was disguised caused a new reality for the object to be invented. To the criticism that it was rude he replied, logically enough,How could this object be acceptable when displayed in a plumber's shop window and yet be immoral anywhere else? — Neville Weston

From a purely ethnological point of view, I was not a period-born Dada. — Marcel Duchamp

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

I have drawn people's attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, just like the oasis that appears in the desert. It is very beautiful, until the moment when you die of thirst, obviously. But we do not die of thirst in the field of art. The mirage has substance. — Marcel Duchamp

It is the spectators who make the pictures. — Marcel Duchamp

I was interested in ideas, not in visual products. I wanted to put painting again in the service of the mind. — Marcel Duchamp

My art would be that of living: each moment, each breath is a work inscribed nowhere. — Marcel Duchamp

In the '50s, to appropriate was a real no-no. However, once you go from Duchamp to Jasper Johns to Warhol, appropriation becomes not only a common thing to do, but possibly the central way of working in the era we call postmodernism. — Irving Sandler

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses. — Marcel Duchamp

Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories. — Marcel Duchamp

For a moment it seemed that her impeccably impractical education - in which she'd learned about Middle English and Duchamp's urinal and sub-Saharan droughts but had never been taught how to apply for a credit card or answer an office phone - wasn't useless after all. — Ralph Sassone

In the 'Nude Descending a Staircase,' I wanted to create a static image of movement: movement is an abstraction, a deduction articulated within the painting, without our knowing if a real person is or isn't descending an equally real staircase. — Marcel Duchamp

Painter after painter, since the beginning of the century, has tended toward abstraction. First, the Impressionists simplified the landscape in terms of color, and then the Fauves simplified it again by adding distortion, which, for some reason, is a characteristic of our century. — Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp had taken art to its logical conclusion.
Every act of perception is art.
So everything that perceives is an artist. — Chris F. Westbury

I wanted to use my possibility to be an individual, and I suppose I have, no? — Marcel Duchamp

Marcel, no more painting; go get a job. — Marcel Duchamp

It's a product of two poles - there's the pole of the one who makes the work, and the pole of the one who looks at it. I give the latter as much importance as the one who makes it. — Marcel Duchamp

Humor is the only reason to live. — Marcel Duchamp

I believe that a picture, a work of art, lives and dies just as we do ... — Marcel Duchamp

Art is a habit-forming drug. Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. People always speak of it with this great, religious reverence, but why should it be so revered? — Marcel Duchamp

I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. I made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clean conscience, but also to make a living. I was twenty-five. I had been told that one must make a living, and I believed it. — Marcel Duchamp

What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion. — Marcel Duchamp

The thinking of John Cage derived from Duchamp and Dada. I was not interested in that. — Sol LeWitt

In the midst of each epoch, I fully realize that a new epoch will dawn. — Marcel Duchamp

The most interesting thing about artists is how they live — Marcel Duchamp

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

Among our articles of lazy hardware, I recommend the faucet that stops dripping when no one is listening to it. — Marcel Duchamp

My Ready-Mades have nothing to do with the 'objet trouve' because the so-called 'found object' is completely directed by personal taste. Personal taste decides that this is a beautiful object and is unique. — Marcel Duchamp

I consider painting as a means of expression, not as a goal. — Marcel Duchamp