Marcel Duchamp Quotes

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 force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

~ 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

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

~ 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

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.

~ 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

It's not what you see that is art art is the gap.

~ Marcel Duchamp

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

~ Marcel Duchamp

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.

~ Marcel Duchamp

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.

~ Marcel Duchamp

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

~ Marcel Duchamp

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.

~ Marcel Duchamp

Tradition is the great misleader because it's too easy to follow what has already been done - even though you may think you're giving it a kick. I was really trying to invent, instead of merely expressing myself.

~ 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

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.

~ Marcel Duchamp

The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.' Now everyone makes something, and those who make things on a canvas with a frame, they're called artists. Formerly, they were called craftsmen, a term I prefer. We're all craftsmen, in civilian or military or artistic life.

~ Marcel Duchamp

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

~ Marcel Duchamp