Marcel Duchamp Quotes About Art

Quotes about: Art

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Believe, Belief

  "Marcel Duchamp: a riotous A-Z of his secret life" by Thomas Girst, www.theguardian.com. April 07, 2014.

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Order, Ontology

  Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp (1997). “The complete works of Marcel Duchamp”, Delano Greenridge Editions

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Attention, Art Is

• 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

  Art, Creativity, Creative

  Dalia Judovitz, Marcel Duchamp (2010). “Drawing on Art: Duchamp and Company”, p.56, U of Minnesota Press

• Anything is art if an artist says it is.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Artist, Ifs

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Gaps, Art Is

  Wilfried Dörstel, Marcel Duchamp (1989). “Augenpunkt, Lichtquelle und Scheidewand: die symbolische Form im Werk Marcel Duchamps : unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Witzzeichnungen von 1907 bis 1910 und der Radierungen von 1967/68”

• 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 it.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Drug, Habit

• 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

  Art, Mind, Adjectives

  Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp (1997). “The complete works of Marcel Duchamp”, Delano Greenridge Editions

• Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Lovely, Habit

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Mean, Years

• 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

  Art, Breathing, Euphoria

• 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

  Beauty, Art, Chess

  "TIME" Magazine, March 10, 1952.

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Believe, Dies

• Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Existence, Veracity

• Art is like a shipwreck; it's every man for himself.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Men, Shipwreck

• The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Sanskrit, Interest

  Pierre Cabanne, Marcel Duchamp (1971). “Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp”, Studio

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Distinction, Interest

• Can one make works which are not works of 'art'?

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Works Of Art

  Marcel Duchamp, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe (1999). “Marcel Duchamp, respirateur”, Hatje Cantz Pub

• Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Two, Giving

• I don’t care about the word ‘art’ because it has been so discredited. So I want to get rid of it. There is an unnecessary adoration of ‘art’ today.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Care, Want

• I have drawn people's attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, just like the oasis that appears in the desert. It is very beautiful, until the moment when you die of thirst, obviously. But we do not die of thirst in the field of art. The mirage has substance.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Beautiful, Art, Oasis

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Would Be, Moments

• You cannot define electricity. The same can be said of art. It is a kind of inner current in a human being, or something which needs no definition.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Needs, Definitions

• The only thing that is not art is inattention

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Inattention, Art Is

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Wanted, Impressionism

  "Marcel Duchamps 1887 - 1968". Artforum 7 no. 3, November 1968.

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