Quotes by Marcel Duchamp

“I dont believe in art. I believe in artists.”

“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”

“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.”

“I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products”

“Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another.”

“The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because Ive noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.”

“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.”

“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. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.”

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.

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, its a sort of constant euphoria.

I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because Ive noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Its not what you see that is art art is the gap.

Dada was an extreme protest against the physical side of painting. It was a metaphysical attitude.