Duchamp Quotes

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

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

I happen to have been born a Cartesian. The French education is based on a sequence of strict logic. You carry it with you. ~ 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

I wanted to kill art for myself ... ... a new thought for that object. ~ 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

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

I haven't been in the Louvre for twenty years. It doesn't interest me because I have these doubts about the value of the judgments which decided that all these pictures should be presented to the Louvre instead of others which weren't even considered. ~ Marcel Duchamp

When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in. ~ Marcel Duchamp

If only America would realize that the art of Europe is finished - dead - and that America is the country of the art of the future, instead of trying to base everything she does on European traditions! ~ Marcel Duchamp

I am against the word 'anti' because it's a little bit like 'atheist,' as compared to 'believer.' And an atheist is just as much of a religious man as the believer is. ~ Marcel Duchamp

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

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

Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp ~ Andrew O'Hagan

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

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

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

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

A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting. ~ Marcel Duchamp

One does not contemplate it like a picture. The idea of contemplation disappears completely. Simply take note that it's a bottle rack, or that it's a bottle rack that has changed its destination ... It's not the visual question of the readymade that counts; it's the fact that it exists, even. ~ 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

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

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

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

I never finished the 'Large Glass' because, after working on it for eight years, I probably got interested in something else; also, I was tired. It may be that, subconsciously, I never intended to finish it because the word 'finish' implies an acceptance of traditional methods and all the paraphernalia that accompany them. ~ Marcel Duchamp

You cannot define electricity. The same can be said of art. It is a kind of inner current in a human being, or something which needs no definition. ~ Marcel Duchamp

No, the thing to do is try to make a painting that will be alive in your own lifetime. ~ Marcel Duchamp

In France, in Europe, the young artists of any generation always act as grandsons of some great man - Poussin, for example, or Victor Hugo. They can't help it. Even if they don't believe in that, it gets in their system. And so when they come to produce something of their own, the tradition is nearly indestructible. ~ 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

he didn't murder Charles Duchamp, and he didn't murder Michael Decker. His ~ Douglas Preston

Two main groups like to drop the readymade bomb - galleries and art historians. Galleries love to drop the Duchamp brand because dealers can try to convince clients of an artist's worth just by mentioning the mouthwatering response readymade. Most Art Historians aren't interested in what artists are making in Bushwick studios, most of whom rarely wake up with Duchamp on the brain. ~ Paddy Johnson

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

Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. ~ 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

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

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

The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.' Now everyone makes something, and those who make things on a canvas with a frame, they're called artists. Formerly, they were called craftsmen, a term I prefer. We're all craftsmen, in civilian or military or artistic life. ~ Marcel Duchamp

The curious thing about that moustache and goatee is that when you look at the Mona Lisa it becomes a man. It is not a woman disguised as a man; it is a real man, and that was my discovery, without realising it at the time. ~ Marcel Duchamp

There is no solution, for there is no problem. ~ 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

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

I thought to discourage aesthetics ... I threw the bottlerack and the urinal in their faces and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty. ~ Marcel Duchamp

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

The curious thing about the Ready-Made is that I've never been able to arrive at a definition or explanation that fully satisfies me. There's still magic in the idea, so I'd rather keep it that way than try to be exoteric about it. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

Living is more a question of what one spends than what one makes. ~ 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 artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word. ~ Marcel Duchamp

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

All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually. ~ Joseph Kosuth

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

The danger is in pleasing an immediate public: the immediate public that comes around you and takes you in and accepts you and gives you success and everything. Instead of that, you should wait for fifty years or a hundred years for your true public. That is the only public that interests me. ~ Marcel Duchamp

In French, there is an old expression, la patte, meaning the artist's touch, his personal style, his 'paw'. I wanted to get away from la patte and from all that retinal painting. ~ Marcel Duchamp

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

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

The second time I was there I met Marcel Duchamp, and we immediately fell for each other. Which doesn't mean a thing because I think anybody who met Marcel fell for him. ~ Beatrice Wood

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

I really had no program or any established plan. I didn't even ask myself if I should sell my paintings or not. ~ 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

My stay in Munich was the scene of my complete liberation. ~ Marcel Duchamp

The last hundred years have been retinal; even the cubists were. The surrealists tried to free themselves, and earlier so had the dadaists, but unfortunately, these latter were nihilists and didn't produce enough to prove their point, which, by the way, they didn't have to prove - according to their theory. ~ Marcel Duchamp

All decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis. ~ Marcel Duchamp

Destruction is also creation. ~ Marcel Duchamp

I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products. ~ Marcel Duchamp

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

Artmaking is making the invisible, visible. ~ 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

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

One must pass through the network of influence. One is obligated to be influenced, and one accepts this influence very naturally. From the start, one doesn't realize this. The first thing to know: one doesn't realize one is influenced. One thinks he is already liberated, and one is far from it! ~ 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

If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved - bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T. ~ Marcel Duchamp

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

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

You have to approach something with indifference, as if you had no aesthetic emotion. The choice of readymades is always based on visual indifference and, at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste. ~ Marcel Duchamp

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

The great problem was the selection of the readymade. I needed to choose an object without it impressing me: that is to say, without it providing any sort of aesthetic delectation. Moreover, I needed to reduce my own personal taste to absolute zero. ~ Marcel Duchamp

The major sighed. "It's a cultural thing, Madam. Something to do with the embattled mentality they developed in the first centuries here when conditions were so harsh and they had no other way than the exoskeletal-mutations route. The only ones who think of full connection as essential are the ones who've gone to university on Pleth and had the visible exoskeletal mutations removed and acquired internal reinforcements - which, as I understand it, serves as a sort of rite of passage to adulthood. ~ L. Timmel Duchamp

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

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

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

I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist. ~ Marcel Duchamp

Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

Humor and laughter - not necessarily derogatory derision - are my pet tools. This may come from my general philosophy of never taking the world too seriously - for fear of dying of boredom. ~ 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

Not everyone is an artist but everyone is a fucking critic. ~ Marcel Duchamp

This concern which interests us more than anything else: the blurring of the distinction between art and life. ~ 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

Rational intelligence is dangerous and leads to ratiocination. The painter is a medium who doesn't realize what he is doing. No translation can express the mystery of sensibility, a word, still unreliable, which is nevertheless the basis of painting or poetry, like a kind of alchemy. ~ Marcel Duchamp

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

Anything is art if an artist says it is. ~ Marcel Duchamp