Zitate von Marcel Duchamp

„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

„There is no solution because there is no problem.“

—  Marcel Duchamp

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

—  Marcel Duchamp

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

—  Marcel Duchamp

Quote by Harriet & Sidney Janis in 'Marchel Duchamp: Anti-Artist' in View magazine 3/21/45; reprinted in Robert Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets (1951)
1921 - 1950
Variante: I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

„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

Quote from 'Time Magazine', 10 March 1952; as quoted on Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
1951 - 1968

„Destruction is also creation.“

—  Marcel Duchamp

Quelle: Ref: en.wikiquote.org - J. Posadas / Quotes / War is Not the End of the World

„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

„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

Quote from The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (Marchand du Sel) e.d. Michel Sanouille and Elmer Peterson, New York 1973, pp. 139-140
posthumous
Kontext: The spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place... All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work into contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

„Art is either plagiarism or revolution.“

—  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

„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

„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

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Kontext: Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; 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.

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

—  Marcel Duchamp

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

—  Marcel Duchamp

„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.“

—  Marcel Duchamp

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Kontext: I want to clarify our understanding of the word 'art' – to be sure, without an attempt to a definition. 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 as a bad emotion is still an emotion.
Therefore, when I refer to 'art coefficient', it will be understood that I refer not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art in a raw state – 'à l'état brute' – bad, good or indifferent.

„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

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

—  Marcel Duchamp

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

—  Marcel Duchamp

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

—  Marcel Duchamp

Quelle: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp