quotes by 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 force 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

"I don't believe in art. I believe in artists."
— 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 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

"Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination."
— 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

"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

"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

"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

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

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— Marcel Duchamp