70+ Marcel Duchamp Quotes On Art, Innovative And Subversive

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist who is considered a pioneer of conceptual art. He is best known for his painting 'Nude Descending a Staircase', and for his 'readymades' – ordinary objects he declared to be artworks. He was a major influence on the development of modern art in the 20th century. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Marcel Duchamp on art, innovative, subversive.

Top 10 Marcel Duchamp Quotes

1. I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.
2. It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap.
3. I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
4. Artmaking is making the invisible, visible.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Humor is the only reason to live.
8. The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.
9. Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination.
10. Art is like a shipwreck; it's every man for himself.

Marcel Duchamp Image Quotes

It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap. — Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp Short Quotes

• I wanted to kill art for myself.. ..a new thought for that object.
• It's the viewer that makes the work.
• My art would be that of living: each moment, each breath is a work inscribed nowhere.
• Can one make works which are not works of 'art'?
• Aesthetic delectation is the danger to be avoided.
• I consider painting as a means of expression, not as a goal.
• It is the spectators who make the pictures.
• Three or four drops of height have nothing to do with savageness.
• Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.
• There is no solution, for there is no problem.

Marcel Duchamp Quotes About Art

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. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

I don’t care about the word ‘art’ because it has been so discredited. So I want to get rid of it. There is an unnecessary adoration of ‘art’ today. — Marcel Duchamp

I believe that a picture, a work of art, lives and dies just as we do. — Marcel Duchamp

The only thing that is not art is inattention — Marcel Duchamp

This concern which interests us more than anything else: the blurring of the distinction between art and life. — Marcel Duchamp

Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

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

Marcel Duchamp Quotes About Chess

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. — Marcel Duchamp

While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists. — Marcel Duchamp

The Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem — Marcel Duchamp

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

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. — Marcel Duchamp

Chess is a sport. A violent sport. — Marcel Duchamp

The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists. — Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp Quotes About Artists

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. — Marcel Duchamp

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 posterity. — Marcel Duchamp

The most interesting thing about artists is how they live — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

No, the thing to do is try to make a painting that will be alive in your own lifetime. — Marcel Duchamp

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

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. — Marcel Duchamp

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

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

I was poking fun at myself most of all. — Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Marcel Duchamp

It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

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

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. — Marcel Duchamp

The curious thing about that moustache and goatee is that when you look at the Mona Lisa it becomes a man. It is not a woman disguised as a man; it is a real man, and that was my discovery, without realising it at the time. — Marcel Duchamp

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

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

Destruction is also creation. — Marcel Duchamp

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

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

All in all, 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. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

Unless a picture shocks, it is nothing. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

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) — Marcel Duchamp

Anything is art if an artist says it is. — Marcel Duchamp

Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it. — Marcel Duchamp

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

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

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 — Marcel Duchamp

The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word. — Marcel Duchamp

I was interested in ideas, not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind. — Marcel Duchamp

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. — Marcel Duchamp

Life Lessons by Marcel Duchamp

1. From Marcel Duchamp, I can learn to think outside the box and challenge traditional norms. He was a pioneer in the art world and pushed the boundaries of what was accepted as art.
2. I can also learn to be brave and take risks. Duchamp was not afraid to experiment and push the boundaries of what was considered acceptable.
3. Finally, I can learn to be creative and open-minded. Duchamp was an innovator and his work continues to inspire and challenge us today.