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Marcel Duchamp
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„So if I say you that your paintings [which his brother-in-law recently made] have nothing in common with what we see generally classified and accepted, and that you have always managed to produce things that were entirely your own work, as I truly see it, that does not mean you have the right to be seated next to Leonardo -What’s more, this originality is suicidal as it distances you from a ‘clientele’ used to ‘copies of copiers’, often referred to as ‘tradition’-One more thing, your technique is not the ‘expected’ technique – It’s your own personal technique, borrowed from nobody – and there again, this doesn’t attract the clientele…. In a word, do less self-analysis and enjoy your work without worrying about opinions, your own as well as that of others.“
„They say any artist paying six dollars may exhibitMr. Richard Mutt [= Duchamp himself; an inscription written by Duchamp] sent in a fountain. Without discussion this article disappeared and never was exhibited.What were the grounds for refusing Mr. Mutt fountain:1. Some contented it was immoral, vulgar.2. Others, it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing.Now, Mr. Mutt fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bit tube is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumber’s show windows.Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made this fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that’s its useful significance disappeared under the new title [‘The Richard Mutt Case’] and point of view – created a new thought for that object.As for plumbing, that is absurd. The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.“
„Another aspect of the ‘readymade’ is its lack of uniqueness…. the replica of a ‘readymade’ delivering the same message; in fact nearly every one of the ‘ready-made’s existing today is not an original in the conventional sense.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-made’s aided’ and also works of assemblage.“
„A point which I want very much to establish is that the choice of these ‘Readymade’ was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste…. in fact a complete anesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the ‘readymade’. That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal.“
„.. because his applying paint to it [the sculpture ‘Painted Bronze, two painted ale cans’, created by the American pré-Pop Art artist Jasper Johns ] was absolutely mechanical or, at least, as close to the printed thing as possible. It was not an act of painting; actually, the printing [or painting? ] was just like printing except it was made by hand by him. That doesn’t add a thing to it.“
„Miro came of age as an artist just at the time World War 1. ended. With the end of the war came the end of all the new pre-war art conceptions. A young painter could not start as a Cubist or a Futurist, and Dada was the only manifestation at the moment. Miro began by painting farm scenes from the countryside of Barcelona, his native land… A few years later he came to Paris [circa 1914] and found himself among the Dadaists who were, at that time, transmuting into Surrealism. In spite of this contact Miró kept aloof from any direct influence and showed a series of canvases in which form submitted to strong colouring expressed a new two-dimensional cosmogony, in no way related to abstraction.“
„The Dada movement was an anti-movement which corresponded to a need born of the first World War. Although neither literary nor pictorial in essence, Dada found its exponents in painters and writers scattered all over the world. Max Ernst’s activities in Cologne in 1917 made him the foremost representative of the Dada painters. Between 1919 and 1921 his paintings, drawings and collages depicting the world of the subconscious were already a foretaste of Surrealism… In fact his previous achievements had certainly influenced, to a great extent, the literary Surrealist exploration of the subconscious.“
„I wanted to get away from the physical act of painting… For me the title (‘Fresh Widow’, 1920), with inscription under: ‘Fresh Widow Copyright Rose Sélavy, 1920’, [probably referring to all the widows because of the many killings of soldiers in World War, 1. which ended in 1918] was very important… I was interested in ideas – not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.“
„If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All this decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.“
„.. I am not going to New York, I am leaving Paris. That’s quite different. Long before the war [World War 1. ] I already had a distaste for the ‘artistic life’ I was involved in. – It’s quite the opposite of what I’m looking for. – And so I tried, through the Library, to escape from artists somewhat. Then, with the war, my incompatibility with this milieu grew. I wanted to go away at all costs. Where to? My only option was New York where I knew you [ Walter Pach, artist and friend of Duchamp] and where I hope to be able to escape leading the artistic life, if needs be through a job which will keep me very busy. I ask you to keep all this from my brothers [all his brothers were artists as well] because I know my leaving will be very painful for them.“
„I have been wanting to write to you for some time, but never have time, so absorbed I am in playing chess. I play night and day and nothing in the whole world interests me more than finding the right move… Nothing transcendental going on here – strikes [in Buenos Aires, where chess competitions were organized that year for not professionals] a lot of strikes, the people are on the move. Painting interests me less and less.“
„My brother [the sculptor artist Raymond Duchamp-Villon had a kitchen in his little house in Puteaux, and he had the idea of decorating it with pictures by his buddies. He asked Gleizes, Metzinger, La Fresnaye, and I think Leger [all Cubist painters, then] to do some little paintings of the same size, like a sort of frieze. He asked me too, and I painted a coffee grinder which I made to explode.“
„To be looked at [from the other side of his art-work ‘The Glass’] with one eye, close to, for almost an hour.“
„Painting is over and done with. Who could do anything better than this propeller? Look, could you do that?“
„Millions of artist create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity.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 the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally posterity include him in the primers of Art history.I know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many artists who refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the creative act.“
„Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing. This gap which represents the inability of the artist to express fully his intention, this difference between what he intended to realize and did realize, is the personal ‘art coefficient’, contained in the work.“
„He [= Duchamp himself, writing in the third person] CHOSE IT. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.“
„In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions. His struggle towards the realization is a series of efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusals, decisions, which also cannot be fully self-conscious, at least on the aesthetic plane. The result of his struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference which the artist is not aware of.“
„.. Yes, indeed, what have we been up to? I feel rather like I’ve retired to the country, in some remote province, for that’s what my life is like in N. Y. I see few people and people don’t try to see me anymore as they know they bore me. I write to the Arensberg’s once a year and they do the same. There is a general weariness which, I think, is not confined to our generation. To tell the truth, most people prefer war to peace… Well, there you are, my dear Yvonne. Nothing as usual. Chess as much as possible: at least chess players don’t talk“
„Somebody in Germany [the German artist Joseph Beuys, who frequently visited America to discuss and to do performances] has been talking about my ‘silence’, saying that it is overrated. What does that mean? [this quotes you find also in Joseph Beuys’ quotes on Wikiquote], he himself heard this ‘rumor’ from several American artists! (Joseph Beuys continued: ‘I am convinced that he [= Duchamp] knew very well what it meant. If he was unsure about it, he could have written me a letter’).“
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