100+ Marcel Duchamp Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: - Wilfried Dörstel, Marcel Duchamp (1989). “Augenpunkt, Lichtquelle und Scheidewand: die symbolische Form im Werk Marcel Duchamps : unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Witzzeichnungen von 1907 bis 1910 und der Radierungen von 1967/68”

Topics: Art, Gaps, Art Is

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

Topics: Done, Shame, Feels, Wrong Things

Unless a picture shocks, it is nothing.

source: - Marcel Duchamp, Michel Sanouillet, Paul Matisse, Anne Sanouillet, Paul B. Franklin (2008). “Duchamp du signe, suivi de Notes”

Topics: Shock

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. 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 his 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.

Topics: Artist, Self, Space, Clearing, Self Analysis

Destruction is also creation.

Topics: Creation, Destruction

I was poking fun at myself most of all.

Topics: Fun, Artist, Poking Fun

I 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.

Topics: Thinking, Years, Ideas

I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.

source: - Marcel Duchamp (1994). “Duchamp: Passim : a Marcel Duchamp Anthology”, Craftsman House

Topics: Creativity, Ideas, Imagination

Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another.

Topics: Swag, Pieces, Movement

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.

Topics: Art, Drug, Habit

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.

Topics: Art, Mind, May

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

Topics: Artist, Player, Quality

I wanted to kill art for myselfâ€¦ â€¦a new thought for that object.

Topics: Art, Wanted, New Thought, Impressionism

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

Topics: Artist, Outcast, Pariahs

My art would be that of living: each moment, each breath is a work inscribed nowhere.

Topics: Art, Would Be, Moments

I 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.

Topics: Beautiful, Art, Oasis

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

Topics: New York, Snow, Broken

I consider painting as a means of expression, not as a goal.

Topics: Mean, Expression, Goal

Aesthetic delectation is the danger to be avoided.

Topics: Danger, Aesthetic

In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions.

Topics: Creativity, Artist, Creative

I thought to discourage aesthetics... I threw the bottlerack and the urinal in their faces and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.

Topics: Beauty, Faces, Admire, Aesthetic Beauty

I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist.

Topics: Believe, Artist, Doe

You 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.

Topics: Art, Needs, Definitions

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

Topics: Reality, Law, Bending

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.

Topics: Art, Breathing, Euphoria, Cerebral

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.

Topics: Artist, Space, Labyrinth

My 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

Topics: Ideas, Indifference, Ugliness

The most interesting thing about artists is how they live

Topics: Artist, Interesting, Most Interesting

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.

Topics: Two, Shadow, Three

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.

Topics: Artist, Serenity, Monk, Ordination

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

Topics: Self, Decision, Intuition, Self Analysis

Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.

Topics: Art, Lovely, Habit

It's true, of course, humor is very important in my life, as you know. That's the only reason for living, in fact.

Topics: Important, Facts, Reason

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.

source: - Ecke Bonk, Marcel Duchamp (1989). “Marcel Duchamp, the box in a valise: De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy : inventory of an edition”, Rizzoli Intl Pubns

Topics: Winning, Games, Atheism, Determinism

Since 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.

Topics: Artist, World, Painting, Assemblage

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

Topics: Three, Four, Height

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.

Topics: Men, Artist, Unique

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

Topics: Art, Sanskrit, Interest

Can one make works which are not works of 'art'?

Topics: Art, Works Of Art

Since a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow, we should be able to imagine the unknown four-dimensional object whose shadow we are. I for my part am fascinated by the search for a one-dimensional object that casts no shadow at all.