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Artist Quotes by Marcel Duchamp

76 Artist quotes by Marcel Duchamp

All Artist quotes Marcel Duchamp’s page

Duchamp says a painter seeks freedom and wants to avoid a daily office. He believes the viewer gives meaning to a work, often more than the artist himself. He also claims that a painting must shock to be worthwhile and that breaking forms challenges ordinary expectations.

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I wanted to kill art for myself… …a new thought for that object.

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Anything is art if an artist says it is.

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

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“Not everyone is an artist but everyone is a fucking critic.”

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The most interesting thing about artists is how they live

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A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting.

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Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth.

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

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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…

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

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The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the…

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

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Things were sort of Bohemian in Montmartre - one lived, one painted, one was a painter - all that doesn't mean anything,…

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When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in.

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There does not exist a painter who knows himself or knows what he is doing.

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The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is…

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What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call…

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I have drawn people's attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, just like the oasis that appears in…

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All painting, beginning with Impressionism, is antiscientific, even Seurat. I was interested in introducing the precise and exact aspect of science, which…

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The entire world of art has reached such a low level, it has been commercialized to such a degree that art and…

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When cubism began to take a social form, Metzinger was especially talked about. He explained cubism, while Picasso never explained anything. It…

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Artists of all times are like the gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others.…

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In the 'Nude Descending a Staircase,' I wanted to create a static image of movement: movement is an abstraction, a deduction articulated…

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I shy away from the word 'creation.' In the ordinary, social meaning of the word - well, it's very nice, but fundamentally,…

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The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.' Now everyone makes something,…

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Painter after painter, since the beginning of the century, has tended toward abstraction. First, the Impressionists simplified the landscape in terms of…

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Rational intelligence is dangerous and leads to ratiocination. The painter is a medium who doesn't realize what he is doing. No translation…

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“Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the…

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Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art.…

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To all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out…

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The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows…

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Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.

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I was poking fun at myself most of all.

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Can works be made which are not 'of art'?

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

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Not all artists are Chess players, but all Chess players are artists

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Marcel, no more painting; go get a job.

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Art doesn't interest me. Only artists interest me.

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I consider painting as a means of expression, not as a goal.

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I'm nothing else but an artist, I'm sure, and delighted to be.

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More by Marcel Duchamp

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

Humor is the only reason to live.

Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work…

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and…

I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist.

Living is more a question of what one spends than what one makes.

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…

Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase.

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…

The basis for my own work during the years just before coming to America in 1915 was a desire to break up forms -…

The curious thing about that moustache and goatee is that when you look at the Mona Lisa it becomes a man. It is not…

I am afraid to end up being in need to sell canvases - in other words, to be a society painter.

In the midst of each epoch, I fully realize that a new epoch will dawn.

To all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a…

Words such as truth, art, veracity, or anything are stupid in themselves.