Top 88 Marcel Duchamp Quotes

Can works be made which are not ‘of art’?

I am afraid to end up being in need to sell canvases – in other words, to be a society painter.

I like living, breathing better than working… Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral. It’s a kind of constant euphoria.

What would I do with money? I have enough for my needs. I don’t want any more. If I had a lot, I would have to care for it, worry about it.

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

One is a painter because one wants so-called freedom; one doesn’t want to go to the office every morning.

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a ‘breather.’

Man can never expect to start from scratch; he must start from ready-made things, like even his own mother and father.

The curious thing about the Ready-Made is that I’ve never been able to arrive at a definition or explanation that fully satisfies me. There’s still magic in the idea, so I’d rather keep it that way than try to be exoteric about it.

Why are all the artists so dead-set on distorting? It seems to be a reaction against photography, but I’m not sure.

The great problem was the selection of the readymade. I needed to choose an object without it impressing me: that is to say, without it providing any sort of aesthetic delectation. Moreover, I needed to reduce my own personal taste to absolute zero.

Can works be made which are not ‘of art’?

In French, there is an old expression, la patte, meaning the artist’s touch, his personal style, his ‘paw’. I wanted to get away from la patte and from all that retinal painting.

A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn’t geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves. It’s a drawing; it’s a mechanical reality.

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 ‘ready-mades aided’ and also works of assemblage.

I happen to have been born a Cartesian. The French education is based on a sequence of strict logic. You carry it with you.

When the vision of the ‘Nude’ flashed upon me, I knew that it would break forever the enslaving chains of Naturalism.

A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn’t geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves. It’s a drawing; it’s a mechanical reality.

Man can never expect to start from scratch; he must start from ready-made things, like even his own mother and father.

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.

The great problem was the selection of the readymade. I needed to choose an object without it impressing me: that is to say, without it providing any sort of aesthetic delectation. Moreover, I needed to reduce my own personal taste to absolute zero.

I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

Humor and laughter – not necessarily derogatory derision – are my pet tools. This may come from my general philosophy of never taking the world too seriously – for fear of dying of boredom.

One must pass through the network of influence. One is obligated to be influenced, and one accepts this influence very naturally. From the start, one doesn’t realize this. The first thing to know: one doesn’t realize one is influenced. One thinks he is already liberated, and one is far from it!

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

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.

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.

Art is all a matter of personality.

The entire world of art has reached such a low level, it has been commercialized to such a degree that art and everything related to it has become one of the most trivial activities of our epoch.

What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap.

I am against the word ‘anti’ because it’s a little bit like ‘atheist,’ as compared to ‘believer.’ And an atheist is just as much of a religious man as the believer is.

Marcel, no more painting; go get a job.

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

I couldn’t go into the haphazard drawing or the paintings, the splashing of paint. I wanted to go back to a completely dry drawing, a dry conception of art.

Painter after painter, since the beginning of the century, has tended toward abstraction. First, the Impressionists simplified the landscape in terms of color, and then the Fauves simplified it again by adding distortion, which, for some reason, is a characteristic of our century.

The last hundred years have been retinal; even the cubists were. The surrealists tried to free themselves, and earlier so had the dadaists, but unfortunately, these latter were nihilists and didn’t produce enough to prove their point, which, by the way, they didn’t have to prove – according to their theory.

The ‘Glass’ is not my autobiography, nor is it self-expression. Far from it.

I am against the word ‘anti’ because it’s a little bit like ‘atheist,’ as compared to ‘believer.’ And an atheist is just as much of a religious man as the believer is.

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.

All painting, beginning with Impressionism, is antiscientific, even Seurat. I was interested in introducing the precise and exact aspect of science, which hadn’t often been done, or at least hadn’t been talked about very much.

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

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.

Art doesn’t interest me. Only artists interest me.

Alchemy is a kind of philosophy: a kind of thinking that leads to a way of understanding.

Words such as truth, art, veracity, or anything are stupid in themselves.

Living is more a question of what one spends than what one makes.

My position is the lack of a position, but, of course, you can’t even talk about it; the minute you talk, you spoil the whole game.

Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase.

Since Courbet, it’s been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone’s error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral… our whole century is completely retinal, except for the Surrealists, who tried to go outside it somewhat.

I like living, breathing better than working… Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral. It’s a kind of constant euphoria.

When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in.

I came to feel an artist might use anything – a dot, a line, the most conventional or unconventional symbol – t say what he wanted to say.

Art is all a matter of personality.

I was never interested in looking at myself in an aesthetic mirror. My intention was always to get away from myself, though I knew perfectly well that I was using myself. Call it a little game between ‘I’ and ‘me.’

Marcel, no more painting; go get a job.

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 ‘ready-mades aided’ and also works of assemblage.

If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved – bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T.

I’m nothing else but an artist, I’m sure, and delighted to be.

I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. I made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clean conscience, but also to make a living. I was twenty-five. I had been told that one must make a living, and I believed it.

I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. I made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clean conscience, but also to make a living. I was twenty-five. I had been told that one must make a living, and I believed it.

From a purely ethnological point of view, I was not a period-born Dada.

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses.