Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

I really had no program or any established plan. I didn't even ask myself if I should sell my paintings or not.

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

Distortion came first from the fauves, who, in turn, were under the strong influence of primitive art.

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

It's a product of two poles - there's the pole of the one who makes the work, and the pole of the…

— Marcel Duchamp

If only America would realize that the art of Europe is finished - dead - and that America is the country of…

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

Words are the tools of 'to be' - of expression. They are completely built on the fact that you 'are,' and in…

— Marcel Duchamp

I like living, breathing better than working... Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual…

— 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…

— Marcel Duchamp

Since Courbet, it's been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone's error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had…

— Marcel Duchamp

I would have to think about it for two or three months before I decided to do something which would have meaning.…

— Marcel Duchamp

In the beginning, the cubists broke up form without even knowing they were doing it. Probably the compulsion to show multiple sides…

— Marcel Duchamp

“The American woman is the most intelligent woman in the world today - the only one that always knows what she wants,…

— Marcel Duchamp

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I…

— Marcel Duchamp

I never finished the 'Large Glass' because, after working on it for eight years, I probably got interested in something else; also,…

— Marcel Duchamp

All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and…

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

My art would be that of living: each moment, each breath is a work inscribed nowhere.

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

I was interested in ideas, not in visual products. I wanted to put painting again in the service of the mind.

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— 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'm not at all sure that the concept of the readymade isn't the most important single idea to come out of my…

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

I was highly attracted to chess for forty or forty-five years; then, little by little, my enthusiasm lessened.

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

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

— Marcel Duchamp

Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another.

— Marcel Duchamp

“André Breton was a lover of love in a world who believes in prostitution.”

— Marcel Duchamp