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

Categorized in : Artist Monk Serenity

I'm not at all sure that the concept of the readymade isn't the most important single idea to come out of my work.

concepts important ideas

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

intuition decision self

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.

chess beauty art

Chess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general.

quality artist player

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.

labyrinth space artist

The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.

sanskrit interest art

In my day artists wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. Now they are al... by Marcel Duchamp

In my day artists wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. Now they are all integrated into society

pariahs outcast artist

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

dripping lazy listening

Three or four drops of height have nothing to do with savageness. by Marcel Duchamp

Three or four drops of height have nothing to do with savageness.

height four three

You 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)

photography people thinking

In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote in advance of the broken arm .

broken new-york snow

There is no solution, for there is no problem. by Marcel Duchamp

There is no solution, for there is no problem.

no-problem solutions problem

An abstract painting need in 50 years by no means look "abstract"... by Marcel Duchamp

An abstract painting need in 50 years by no means look "abstract" any longer.

mean years art

I wanted to kill art for myself.. ..a new thought for that object... by Marcel Duchamp

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

impressionism wanted art

Le silence, c'est la meilleure production qu'on puisse faire, parce qu'il se propage : on ne le signe pas et tout le monde en profite.

Dada was an extreme protest against the physical side of painting... by Marcel Duchamp

Dada was an extreme protest against the physical side of painting. It was a metaphysical attitude.

side protest painting attitude

It is a matter of great indifference to me what criticism is printed in the papers and the magazines. I am simply working out my own ideas in my own way.

i-am great me ideas

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.

good you aesthetic time

Painting is a language of its own. You cannot interpret one form of expression with another form of expression.

own you painting language

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.

intelligence painting mystery poetry