Marcel Duchamp > Quotes

“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 force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”
― Marcel Duchamp

“I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.”
― 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

“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

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

“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

“Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination.”
― Marcel Duchamp

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

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― 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

“Destruction is also creation.”
― Marcel Duchamp

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

“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

“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

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

“The most interesting thing about artists is how they live”
― Marcel Duchamp, The Writings of 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

“Three or four drops of height have nothing to do with savageness.”
― Marcel Duchamp, The Writings of Marcel Duchamp

“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

“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