In the ‘Nude Descending a Staircase,’ I wanted to create a static image of movement: movement is an abstraction, a deduction articulated within the painting, without our knowing if a real person is or isn’t descending an equally real staircase.
Dada was an extreme protest against the physical side of painting. It was a metaphysical attitude.
I haven’t been in the Louvre for twenty years. It doesn’t interest me because I have these doubts about the value of the judgments which decided that all these pictures should be presented to the Louvre instead of others which weren’t even considered.
Art doesn’t interest me. Only artists interest me.
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
I was highly attracted to chess for forty or forty-five years; then, little by little, my enthusiasm lessened.
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.
The danger is in pleasing an immediate public: the immediate public that comes around you and takes you in and accepts you and gives you success and everything. Instead of that, you should wait for fifty years or a hundred years for your true public. That is the only public that interests me.
My stay in Munich was the scene of my complete liberation.
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 is a painter because one wants so-called freedom; one doesn’t want to go to the office every morning.
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.
I would have to think about it for two or three months before I decided to do something which would have meaning. And it would have to be more than just an impression or pleasure. I would need an objective, a meaning. That is the only thing that could help me.
I didn’t abandon everything at a moment’s notice – on the contrary. I returned to France from America, leaving the ‘Large Glass’ unfinished.
I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.
I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.
I shy away from the word ‘creation.’ In the ordinary, social meaning of the word – well, it’s very nice, but fundamentally, I don’t believe in the creative function of the artist. He’s a man like any other.
I shy away from the word ‘creation.’ In the ordinary, social meaning of the word – well, it’s very nice, but fundamentally, I don’t believe in the creative function of the artist. He’s a man like any other.
In the midst of each epoch, I fully realize that a new epoch will dawn.
If only America would realize that the art of Europe is finished – dead – and that America is the country of the art of the future, instead of trying to base everything she does on European traditions!
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.
When I put a bicycle wheel on a stool, the fork down, there was no idea of a ‘ready-made’ or anything else. It was just a distraction. I didn’t have any special reason to do it, or any intention of showing it or describing anything.
Art is a habit-forming drug. Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. People always speak of it with this great, religious reverence, but why should it be so revered?
I didn’t abandon everything at a moment’s notice – on the contrary. I returned to France from America, leaving the ‘Large Glass’ unfinished.
Artists of all times are like the gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others. In my opinion, neither the winners nor the losers are worth worrying about.
One does not contemplate it like a picture. The idea of contemplation disappears completely. Simply take note that it’s a bottle rack, or that it’s a bottle rack that has changed its destination… It’s not the visual question of the readymade that counts; it’s the fact that it exists, even.
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