Марсель Дюшан цитаты

„Если изображение не шокирует, оно ничто.“

„По всей видимости, художник действует наподобие медиумического существа, находя, в лабиринте по ту сторону времени и пространства, свою дорогу к просвету.“

„Шахматы могут быть описаны как движение частей съедающих друг друга.“

„Главным врагом искусства является хороший вкус.“

„Что меня более всего удовлетворяет в жизни, так это то, что я никогда не работал для того, чтобы выжить.“

„Полагаю, что художник не знает, что он делает, я придаю большее значение зрителю, он творец искусства.“

„Если художник, как человеческое существо, исполненное лучших намерений по отношению к себе самому и всему миру, не играет никакой роли в суждении, о его произведении, как можем мы описать феномен, заставляющий зрителя реагировать на произведение искусства?“

„Можно увидеть человека, который смотрит, но нельзя услышать человека, который слушает.“

„Человек, человек как человек, человек как мозг, если вам нравится, интересует меня больше того, что он делает, поскольку я заметил, что большинство художников только повторяют себя.“

„Я всегда стремлюсь изобретать вместо того, чтобы выражать себя.“

„Я часто противоречил самому себе, чтобы не подыгрывать моему вкусу.“

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

“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.”

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

“Destruction is also creation.”

“I feel shame, not for the wrong things I have done, but for the right things that I have failed to do.”

“The most interesting thing about artists is how they live”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“Possible reality [is obtained] by slightly bending physical and chemical laws.”

“[ Impressionism was] the beginning of a cult devoted to the material on the canvas – the actual pigment..”

“.. I am not going to New York, I am leaving Paris. That's quite different. Long before the war [World War 1. ] I already had a distaste for the 'artistic life' I was involved in. – It's quite the opposite of what I'm looking for. – And so I tried, through the Library, to escape from artists somewhat. Then, with the war, my incompatibility with this milieu grew. I wanted to go away at all costs. Where to? My only option was New York where I knew you [ Walter Pach, artist and friend of Duchamp] and where I hope to be able to escape leading the artistic life, if needs be through a job which will keep me very busy. I ask you to keep all this from my brothers [all his brothers were artists as well] because I know my leaving will be very painful for them.”

“Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N. Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp.”

“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.”

“.. the thing was to choose one [a ready-made object] that you were not attracted by.... and that was difficult because anything becomes beautiful if you look at it long enough... [My intention was to] completely eliminate the existence of taste, bad or good or indifferent.”

“I have been wanting to write to you for some time, but never have time, so absorbed I am in playing chess. I play night and day and nothing in the whole world interests me more than finding the right move... Nothing transcendental going on here – strikes [in Buenos Aires, where chess competitions were organized that year for not professionals] a lot of strikes, the people are on the move. Painting interests me less and less.”

“My brother [the sculptor artist Raymond Duchamp-Villon had a kitchen in his little house in Puteaux, and he had the idea of decorating it with pictures by his buddies. He asked Gleizes, Metzinger, La Fresnaye, and I think Leger [all Cubist painters, then] to do some little paintings of the same size, like a sort of frieze. He asked me too, and I painted a coffee grinder which I made to explode.”

“I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the production of 'ready-mades' to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more than for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my 'ready-mades' against such contamination.”

“I wanted to get away from the physical act of painting... For me the title ('Fresh Widow', 1920), with inscription under: 'Fresh Widow Copyright Rose Sélavy, 1920', [probably referring to all the widows because of the many killings of soldiers in World War, 1. which ended in 1918] was very important... I was interested in ideas – not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.”

“Received your letter and, almost at the same time, the long text at which I was overjoyed. You no doubt know that you are the only person in the world to have put together the gestation of the glass [ The Large Glass, circa 1923] in all its detail, including even the numerous intentions which were never executed [by Duchamp]. Your patient work has enabled me to relive a period of long years during which the notes were written for the 'Green Box' [the second of the three Boxes Duchamp created and this one was full of written notes] at the same time as the Glass [= The Large Glass] was taking shape. And I confess to you that, not having read these notes for a very long time, I had completely lost all recollection of numerous points not illustrated on the glass and which are a delight to me now”

“Millions of artist create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity.
In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally posterity include him in the primers of Art history.
I know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many artists who refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the creative act.”