An abstract painting need in 50 years by no means look "abstract" any longer.
Marcel DuchampRead
The great problem was the selection of the readymade. I needed to choose an object without it impressing me: that is to say, without it providing any sort of aesthetic delectation. Moreover, I needed to reduce my own personal taste to absolute zero.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the challenge of choosing art that doesn't evoke personal taste or emotion.
Marcel Duchamp discusses the difficulties of selecting objects in the art world, specifically focusing on the need to detach personal emotions and aesthetic judgments from the selection process. By striving for a state of 'absolute zero' in personal taste, he highlights the complexities involved in objectivity in art and the concept of 'readymade' art, which challenges traditional notions of aesthetics.
Themes
ArtAestheticsReadymadeObjectivityPersonal Taste
In practice
Example use cases
In an art discussion group, sharing this quote can prompt a conversation on the nature of artistic value.
More from Marcel Duchamp
All quotes →All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with 'winning or losing this game of chess.
Marcel DuchampRead
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 DuchampRead
I never finished the 'Large Glass' because, after working on it for eight years, I probably got interested in something else; also, I was tired. It may be that, subconsciously, I never intended to finish it because the word 'finish' implies an acceptance of traditional methods and all the paraphernalia that accompany them.
Marcel DuchampRead
It's a product of two poles - there's the pole of the one who makes the work, and the pole of the one who looks at it. I give the latter as much importance as the one who makes it.
Marcel DuchampRead
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 DuchampRead
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