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 DuchampSociety takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him.
Marcel DuchampI believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist.
Marcel DuchampSince 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 DuchampNo, the thing to do is try to make a painting that will be alive in your own lifetime.
Marcel DuchampChess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general.
Marcel DuchampAll decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis.
Marcel DuchampI don’t care about the word ‘art’ because it has been so discredited. So I want to get rid of it. There is an unnecessary adoration of ‘art’ today.
Marcel DuchampIn my day artists wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. Now they are all integrated into society
Marcel DuchampYou 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 DuchampTo 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 DuchampMy 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 DuchampThe artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word.
Marcel DuchampThe 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 DuchampIt's true, of course, humor is very important in my life, as you know. That's the only reason for living, in fact.
Marcel DuchampI was interested in ideas, not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.
Marcel DuchampThe Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem
Marcel DuchampYou know exactly what I think of photography. I would like to see it make people despise painting until something else will make photography unbearable. (In a letter to Alfred Stieglitz)
Marcel DuchampI 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.
Marcel DuchampAll 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 DuchampI have drawn people's attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, just like the oasis that appears in the desert. It is very beautiful, until the moment when you die of thirst, obviously. But we do not die of thirst in the field of art. The mirage has substance.
Marcel DuchampMy art would be that of living: each moment, each breath is a work inscribed nowhere.
Marcel DuchampI have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
Marcel DuchampTo all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All this decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.
Marcel DuchampAmong our articles of lazy hardware, I recommend the faucet that stops dripping when no one is listening to it.
Marcel DuchampSince 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 DuchampI 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 DuchampI 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 DuchampThe life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.
Marcel Duchamp