An abstract painting need in 50 years by no means look "abstract" any longer.
Marcel DuchampRead
I was never interested in looking at myself in an aesthetic mirror. My intention was always to get away from myself, though I knew perfectly well that I was using myself. Call it a little game between 'I' and 'me.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
Duchamp reflects on the complexity of self-identity and the playful nature of self-examination.
In this quote, Marcel Duchamp expresses his disinterest in superficial self-reflection, preferring instead a deeper exploration of identity through artistic practice. He recognizes the delicate interplay between his true self and the persona he presents, suggesting that this dynamic tension is akin to a game of introspection that goes beyond mere aesthetics.
Themes
Self-IdentityArtIntrospectionPhilosophyPersona
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on modern art, one might use this quote to illustrate the concept of self-exploration in artistic expression.
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
Similar quotes
All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.
Richard DiebenkornRead
Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world.
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The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes.
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Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
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Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story that's next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right. In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you can't. I mean by that the good short stories like Chekhov wrote. That's why I rate that second - it's because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless. There's less room in it for trash.
William FaulknerRead
Write as you like, use the rhythms that come out, try different instruments, sit at the piano, destroy the metric, shout instead of singing, blow your guitar and ring the horn. Hate mathematics, and love eddies. Creation is a bird without a flight plan, that will never fly in a straight line.
Violeta ParraRead