Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another.
Marcel Duchamp, “On Chess,” c. 1960
I don’t believe in [art] with all the trimmings, the mystic trimming and the reverence trimming and so forth.
nickkahler reblogged
Marcel Duchamp, The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes, 1912 (via rosswolfe)
Source: rosswolfe.wordpress.com
[Many contemporary sculptures] are products of an object culture, a post-Duchampian period in which the idea of the readymade has been so absorbed that an object from life is as obvious a material for art as oil paint, and a post-Rauschenbergian time in which the battle between the plop sculptural cash-and-carry object versus the mythic uncommodified work of art has lost its vitality.
Laura Hoptman, "Going to Pieces in the 21st Century" from Unmonumental, 2007
Since tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and readymade products, we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are 'Readymade Aided' and also the works of assemblage.
Marcel Duchamp in Laura Hoptman, "Going to Pieces in the 21st Century" from Unmonumental, 2007
America is the country of the art of the future.... Look at the skyscrapers! Has Europe anything to show more beautiful than this?
Marcel Duchamp, "On Precisionism and the US," 1915
nickkahler reblogged
Marcel Duchamp and John Cage Playing Chess, Toronto, Canada, 1968 (via people)
nickkahler reblogged
Andre Breton + Marcel Duchamp, First Papers of Surrealism Exhibition, New York City, NY, 1942 (via landscapearch)
“1942, Andre Breton organised a retrospective exhibition of Surrealist art in New York: First Papers of Surrealism. For the vernissage Marcel Duchamp created this installation – a gigantic web – called the Mile of String. He and Breton furthermore arranged for a number of children to ball in the room thereby making it very difficult for the guests to see the paintings.”
Source: wool-felt.blogspot.com.au
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, c. 1930 (via reads)
Autumn de Forest, Artist with Her Self-Portrait, c. 2009
'When Autumn de Forest was 4 years old, she brought home an art project from preschool.... Autumn created more art, much of it remarkable, and all of it suggesting a strange and precocious talent for shapes, colors and patterns. “At first we did think it was a fluke,” said Autumn’s mother, Katherine.... One day she walked into the garage where her father was working and asked if she could paint something for fun. “I turned away,” said Doug de Forest, “and what seemed like a few moments later I turned back, and I swear to you it was as if Mark Rothko had done some kind of mid-century masterpiece." Her paintings bring to mind the work of masters like Picasso, Warhol, Dali and Matisse. And it sells.'
Why are we as humans so obsessed with the idea of the child prodigy at some moments and so vehemently ageist at others? What does preschool art say to academically-certified abstract art, if the fundamental ideas (e.g. exploration of form, color, emotion) are the same? What has abstraction and conceptualism developed in a post-Duchamp world mean for art as a whole? What is the role of the parent in art?
Marcel Duchamp, With My Tongue In My Cheek, 1959 (via yamabato)
Perhaps the most explicit example of Charles Sanders Peirce's Sign Types:
- Index: The Plaster Cast of Duchamp's Face
- Icon: The Drawing of Duchamp's Face
- Symbol: Duchamp's Signature
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Marcel Duchamp, Adieu a Florine, 1918 (via fundacionproa)
Marcel Duchamp, Apropos of "Readymade," 1961
'In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn. A few months later I bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called "Pharmacy" after adding two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon. In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote "In advance of the broken arm." It was around that time that the word "Readymade" came to my mind to designate this form of manifestation. A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these "Readymades" was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste ... in fact a complete anaesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the "Readymade." That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal. Sometimes I would add a graphic detail of presentation which, in order to satisfy my craving for alliterations, would be called "Readymade aided." At another time, wanting to expose the basic antinomy between art and "Readymades," I imagined a "Reciprocal Readymade": use a Rembrandt as an ironing board! I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the production of "Readymades" to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my "Readymades" against such a contamination. Another aspect of the "Readymade" is its lack of uniqueness... the replica of the "Readymade" delivering the same message, in fact nearly every one of the "Readymades" existing today is not an original in the conventional sense. A final remark to this egomaniac's discourse: Since the tubes of paint used by an artist are manufactured and readymade products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are "Readymades aided" and also works of assemblage.'
Postmodern Architect Unveils 7-Story Found-Art Object (via The Onion)