Marcel Duchamp Quotes

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I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
Marcel Duchamp
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.
Marcel Duchamp
I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.
Marcel Duchamp
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
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
Marcel Duchamp
The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
Marcel Duchamp
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
Marcel Duchamp
Destruction is also creation.
Marcel Duchamp
To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.
Marcel Duchamp
The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.
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
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.
Marcel Duchamp
Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it.
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
Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination.
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
There is no solution because there is no problem.
Marcel Duchamp
Not everyone is an artist but everyone is a fucking critic.
Marcel Duchamp
The most interesting thing about artists is how they live
Marcel Duchamp (The Writings of Marcel Duchamp)
Possible reality [is obtained] by slightly bending physical and chemical laws.
Marcel Duchamp
All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone.. the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
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
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.
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
Among our articles of lazy hardware, I recommend the faucet that stops dripping when no one is listening to it.
Marcel Duchamp
While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.
Marcel Duchamp
Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum. The second person to install a urinal wasn't an artist, he was a plumber.
Seth Godin (Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?)
I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately (forms of) expression... for the spectator even more than for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my (art) against such contamination.
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 'readymades aided' and also works of assemblage.
Marcel Duchamp
Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing
Marcel Duchamp
there's no solution, because there's no problem
Marcel Duchamp (Notas (Metropolis) (Spanish and French Edition))
André Breton was a lover of love in a world who believes in prostitution.
Marcel Duchamp
Traditionally, artists suffered for their art, now it's the audience.
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp said, “I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.
Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative)
You get my idea. Nothing of "artistic" literature about it, just straight medicine, a universal panacea, a fetish in a sense: if you have a toothache go to your dentist and ask him if he is Dada.
Marcel Duchamp
D'ailleurs c'est toujours les autres qui meurent.
Marcel Duchamp
Three or four drops of height have nothing to do with savageness.
Marcel Duchamp (The Writings of Marcel Duchamp)
A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting-Marcel Duchamp
Alice Goldfarb Marquis (Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare: A Biography)
Art should grasp the mind the way the vagina grasps the penis-Marcel Duchamp
Alice Goldfarb Marquis (Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare: A Biography)
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 (Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative)
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.
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 (The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even)
Oh, I’m a breather, I’m a respirateur, isn’t that enough?” He asked, “Why do people have to work? Why do people think they have to work?” He
Calvin Tomkins (Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews)
is not really a system of painting but a method of internal investigation. It is not the philosophy of painting but painting as philosophy.
Octavio Paz (Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare)
I don't believe in art. I believe in the artist.
Marcel Duchamp
Thanks to Marcel Duchamp, men get to appropriate modern art with decorative urine every time they pee.
Nolan Yuma
To Marcel Duchamp’s blithe “There is no solution, because there is no problem,” the Japanese visual artist Shigeko Kubota replied, “There is no problem, because there is no solution.
Pico Iyer (A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations)
I don't want to be pinned down to any position. My position is the lack of a position, but of course you can't even talk about it; the minute you talk you spoil the whole game-Marcel Duchamp
Alice Goldfarb Marquis (Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare: A Biography)
Another said Ping Xi "marked the end of the sacred in art. Here is a spoiled brat taking the piss out of the establishment. Some are hailing him as the next Marcel Duchamp. But is he worth the stink?
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
Reversibility: seeing through opaqueness, not-seeing through transparency. The wooden door and the glass door: two opposite facets of the same idea. This opposition is resolved in an identity: in both cases we look at ourselves looking. Hinge procedure. The question “What do we see?” confronts us with ourselves.
Octavio Paz (Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare)
Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase.
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
Yes, and Duchamp too, when he was asked what he thought about God, said, 'Let's not talk about that. That's man's stupidest idea.' — Nikša Gligo (1972)
Richard Kostelanetz (Conversing With Cage)
They're such supreme egos. It's disgusting. I've never seen anything worse than an artist as a mind. It is very low, uninteresting as far as the relationship of men is concerned.
Marcel Duchamp
Instead I waited, which is what the Nude Descending a Staircase does, contrary to one's expectation and which is exactly why it has always provoked such a peculiar critical response.
Roberto Bolaño (The Savage Detectives)
He gives her his Art History lecture. ‘Then you get Mo-net and Ma-net, that’s a little tricky, Mo-net was the one did all the water lilies and shit, his colors were blues and greens, Ma-net was the one did Bareass on the Grass and shit, his colors were browns and greens. Then you get Bonnard, he did all the interiors and shit, amazing light, and then you get Van Guk, he’s the one with the ear and shit, and Say-zanne, he’s the one with the apples and shit, you get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures, you get my man Mondrian, he’s the one with the rectangles and shit, his colors were red yellow and blue, you get Moholy-Nagy, he did all the plastic thingummies and shit, you get Mar-cel Du-champ, he’s the devil in human form….’ She’s asleep.
Donald Barthelme
Natasha took his arm, gushing to him that she was ready for outrage from PETA, a protest or two, an Op-Ed in the New York Times that would be publicity gold. Ping Xi nodded blankly. I called in sick the day of the opening. Natasha didn’t seem to care. She had Angelika fill in at the front desk. She was an anorexic Goth, a senior at NYU. The show was a “brutal success,” one critic called it. “Cruelly funny.” Another said Ping Xi “marked the end of the sacred in art. Here is a spoiled brat taking the piss out of the establishment. Some are hailing him as the next Marcel Duchamp. But is he worth the stink?
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
Humanism in Five Images 29. Humanist Politics: the voter knows best. 29.​© Sadik Gulec/Shutterstock.com. 30. Humanist Economics: the customer is always right. 30.​© CAMERIQUE/ClassicStock/Corbis. 31. Humanist Aesthetics: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain in a special exhibition of modern art at the National Gallery of Scotland.) 31.​© Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images. 32. Humanist Ethics: if it feels good – do it! 32.​© Molly Landreth/Getty Images. 33. Humanist Education: think for yourself! 33.​The Thinker, 1880–81 (bronze), Rodin, Auguste, Burrell Collection, Glasgow © Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)/Bridgeman Images.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
Humanism in Five Images 29. Humanist Politics: the voter knows best. 29. © Sadik Gulec/ Shutterstock.com. 30. Humanist Economics: the customer is always right. 30. © CAMERIQUE/ ClassicStock/ Corbis. 31. Humanist Aesthetics: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain in a special exhibition of modern art at the National Gallery of Scotland.) 31. © Jeff J Mitchell/ Getty Images. 32. Humanist Ethics: if it feels good–do it! 32. © Molly Landreth/ Getty Images. 33. Humanist Education: think for yourself! 33. The Thinker, 1880–81 (bronze), Rodin, Auguste, Burrell Collection, Glasgow © Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)/ Bridgeman Images.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
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. I think there’s an element in the slowness of the execution that adds to the possibility of producing something that will be durable in its expression, that will be considered important five centuries later.
Calvin Tomkins (Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews)
The American woman is the most intelligent woman in the world today - the only one that always knows what she wants, and therefore always gets it. Hasn't she proved it by making her husband in his role as slave-banker look almost ridiculous in the eyes of the whole world? Not only has she intelligence but a wonderful beauty of line is hers, possessed by no other woman of any race at the present time.
Marcel Duchamp
Indeed, the first thing you might learn, in considering jokes, is that Marcel Duchamp’s urinal was one—quite a good one the first time around, corny by mid-twentieth century, and downright stupid today.
Roger Scruton (Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged (Brief Encounters))
things of great importance have to be slowly produced. I don’t believe in speed in artistic production, and that goes with integration.
Calvin Tomkins (Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews)
Ten shockingly arty events What arty types like to call a ‘creative tension’ exists in art and music, about working right at the limits of public taste. Plus, there’s money to be made there. Here’s ten examples reflecting both motivations. Painting: Manet’s Breakfast on the Lawn, featuring a group of sophisticated French aristocrats picnicking outside, shocked the art world back in 1862 because one of the young lady guests is stark naked! Painting: Balthus’s Guitar Lesson (1934), depicting a teacher fondling the private parts of a nude pupil, caused predictable uproar. The artist claimed this was part of his strategy to ‘make people more aware’. Music: Jump to 1969 when Jimi Hendrix performed his own interpretation of the American National Anthem at the hippy festival Woodstock, shocking the mainstream US. Film: In 1974 censors deemed Night Porter, a film about a love affair between an ex-Nazi SS commander and his beautiful young prisoner (featuring flashbacks to concentration camp romps and lots of sexy scenes in bed with Nazi apparel), out of bounds. Installation: In December 1993 the 50-metre-high obelisk in the Place Concorde in the centre of Paris was covered in a giant fluorescent red condom by a group called ActUp. Publishing: In 1989 Salman Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verses outraged Islamic authorities for its irreverent treatment of Islam. In 2005 cartoons making political points about Islam featuring the prophet Mohammed likewise resulted in riots in many Muslim cities around the world, with several people killed. Installation: In 1992 the soon-to-be extremely rich English artist Damien Hirst exhibited a 7-metre-long shark in a giant box of formaldehyde in a London art gallery – the first of a series of dead things in preservative. Sculpture: In 1999 Sotheby’s in London sold a urinoir or toilet-bowl-thing by Marcel Duchamp as art for more than a million pounds ($1,762,000) to a Greek collector. He must have lost his marbles! Painting: Also in 1999 The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting by Chris Ofili representing the Christian icon as a rather crude figure constructed out of elephant dung, caused a storm. Curiously, it was banned in Australia because (like Damien Hirst’s shark) the artist was being funded by people (the Saatchis) who stood to benefit financially from controversy. Sculpture: In 2008 Gunther von Hagens, also known as Dr Death, exhibited in several European cities a collection of skinned corpses mounted in grotesque postures that he insists should count as art.
Martin Cohen (Philosophy For Dummies, UK Edition)
All that exists, or remains, of Duchamp’s stay in Buenos Aires is a readymade. Though of course his whole life was a readymade, which was his way of appeasing fate and at the same time sending out signals of distress. As Calvin Tomkins writes: As a wedding present for his sister Suzanne and his close friend Jean Crotti, who were married in Paris on April 14, 1919, Duchamp instructed the couple by letter to hang a geometry book by strings on the balcony of their apartment so that the wind could “go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages.” Clearly, then, Duchamp wasn’t just playing chess in Buenos Aires. Tompkins continues: This Unhappy Readymade, as he called it, might strike some newlyweds as an oddly cheerless wedding gift, but Suzanne and Jean carried out Duchamp’s instructions in good spirit; they took a photograph of the open book dangling in midair (the only existing record of the work, which did not survive its exposure to the elements), and Suzanne later painted a picture of it called Le Readymade malheureux de Marcel. As Duchamp later told Cabanne, “It amused me to bring the idea of happy and unhappy into readymades, and then the rain, the wind, the pages flying, it was an amusing idea.” I take it back: all Duchamp did while he was in Buenos Aires was play chess. Yvonne, who was with him, got sick of all his play-science and left for France. According to Tompkins: Duchamp told one interviewer in later years that he had liked disparaging “the seriousness of a book full of principles,” and suggested to another that, in its exposure to the weather, “the treatise seriously got the facts of life.
Roberto Bolaño (2666)
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
Look, everybody has a turn, Snicket. Giacomo Casanova had a turn. Marcel Duchamp had a turn. Beverly Cleary had a turn. People have done difficult things for more or less noble reasons. Your turn now.
Lemony Snicket ("Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?" (All the Wrong Questions, #4))
But there were also men of far greater value who were drawn to Cubism, men whose language was paint or sculpture: among them Léger, Picabia, Delaunay, La Fresnaye, Le Fauconnier, Dufy for a while and Friesz, Lhote, Kisling, Herbin of the Bateau-Lavoir, Survage, Marcoussis, Diego Rivera, Mondrian, Archipenko, Brancusi, Lipchitz, and perhaps the most important of them all, the three brothers Jacques Villon, Duchamp-Villon, and Marcel Duchamp.
Patrick O'Brian (Picasso: A Biography)
They differed from one another and they differed from Braque and Picasso: Delaunay, for example, was unorthodox from the beginning; he insisted upon the role of light and color, and presently he moved on, or off, to a painting that Apollinaire baptized Orphism: Léger’s variations earned him the name of Tubist: Marcel Duchamp introduced movement: Jacques Villon described himself as an Impressionist-Cubist, and he refused to abandon his subtle shades: and in time many of the others relinquished the object entirely and with it all reference to reality, their pictures becoming wholly abstract. But all these differences were nothing compared to the difference between the Cubists’ work and any painting that had been seen before: the Cubist revolution was fundamental; the “Demoiselles d’Avignon” had changed the very nature and concept of painting, and it could never be the same again.
Patrick O'Brian (Picasso: A Biography)
By shifting from the air to the ground, I sought to destroy any notion of scale as in Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp's Elevage de Poussiere. It's a picture which fascinates me and which I kept in my mind throughout the time I was working out there [in Kuwait]. The constant shift between the infinitely big and the infinitely small may disorientate the spectator. But it is a good illustration of our relationship to the world: we have at our disposal modern techniques for seeing everything, apprehending everything, yet we see nothing.
Sophie Ristelhueber